Southwest Faces Looming Threats From Climate Change

I was at a meeting a few days ago where an old timer talked about dealing with our extended drought and hanging on until "normal" rain patterns return.  I couldn't let that pass and stood up to point out that our planet has entered a new climate regime and using past experience to plan for the future is a recipe for disaster.  


Why?  Because our planet is indisputably warming. 
{even if the GOP and the Murdoch Press, etc. chooses to continue willfully ignoring the evidence - or worse, to continue their misrepresentation of the knowledge climatologists have acquired these past decades}
Keep in mind we continue to relentlessly pile on atmospheric greenhouse gases into our thin atmosphere.  It's simple physics! Consider our planet as a global heat distribution engine - inject more energy and it will accelerate... that is, intensify it's heat distributing weather patterns accordingly. 

Shouldn't developers and government agencies and our elected representatives learn to accept obvious hard facts and start to plan accordingly?  For our particular region that means facing the reality that drier days are here to stay.  And it's not me, this is real experts who are saying this.

Since I like to support my opinions with the authoritative sources I base them on, I've been compiling a list of peer-reviewed scientific papers regarding the expert prognosis for future Southwest USA rain/snow patterns.  

In the process I came across this timely article from  ClimateCentral's Michael Lemonick about the recent release of the draft of the "National Climate Assessment" report, his article does a good job of summarizing the situation.

I post it here because it highlights a big reason why Red McComb's grandiose 1980s dream of building a vacation village at well above 9,000 feet above sea level during the 2010s and beyond is doomed to failure.  

Now it's one thing to waste millions of dollars on a folly, it is quite another to irreparably destroy a precious functioning watershed - read productive biological jewel - one that's in the heart of the interstate, international Rio Grande River source waters; one that millions of people depend on.

With that introduction and a thanks to ClimateCentral.org for their permission - here is Mr. Lemonick's complete article:

Southwest Faces Looming Threats From Climate Change (via Climate Central)

By Michael D. Lemonick
(Follow @MLemonick) 

The American Southwest, which is already the hottest and driest region of the nation, is likely to become even hotter and drier in the next few decades thanks in part to the ongoing effects of human-generated…

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