Climate-Related Disasters

We now have rolling blackouts because high winds may blow down power lines and start fires. When folks talk about how our infrastructure is not ready for what's here now, much less what's coming, this is but one example.

 

Panhandle.

 

Complexity theory is all the vogue these days in emergency management/crisis response. I won't go into all the details except to say you have multiple complex human systems (often seeking maximum efficiency at the expense of robustness) interacting with complex natural systems in ways that create a large amount of brittleness across the intersections and interdependencies of all systems, many of which are beyond our view until they fail.

For a simple example, natural gas lines condense and freeze in cold weather while some plants that generate electricity depend on natural gas, thus creating a double whammy for both gas and electricity users. Homes go unheated, pipes break, houses are damaged, water is unavailable or must be boiled, food spoils, people are cold, and some die in their garages trying to stay warm.

That increasing complex interconnectedness puts us now in a world where the assumptions we make about expertise and experience may no longer hold because the current and future is so far removed from the patterns of the past. Predictability becomes more difficult, less certain. Obviously, the increasing specialization and complexity of human society is a big driver and we're heading straight into the complex system of climate change that influences everything across all systems. Stresses will continue to exceed designed tolerances.

When things break, we'll hear "Who could have predicted?" a lot from people who lived in the past until they were forced into the current and future. Even after an enlightening incident, the draw of the past, of what was previously considered common sense, will be great. Common sense will say this was a one-off and something that need not change our way of doing things. No need to plan for this one-off happening again. But of course, it's no longer a one-off.

 

Really good chance that Lake Powell reaches the dead pool level this year. That means there will not be water that can flow through the turbines, rendering Glen Canyon Dam unable to produce power. For a reservoir designed to store around 25 million acre feet (amount of water needed to cover one acre with one foot of water), the range for this summer will be somewhere between 5 and 2.5 million acre feet. That is not good and could significantly drawdown water flow through the Grand Canyon, leading to a host of ecological problems.

(You could also post this under the thread about Vegas dying.)

Not only will there be no electricity generated, the dam was not designed for water levels that low and extended low level operation could damage the dam and related infrastructure. The only way to prevent this is to only release what comes into Lake Powell while accounting for evaporation and seepage, which means less water released downstream to Lake Mead, which has diversions for drinking water that go to Phoenix/Tucson and LA as well as the Imperial Valley Irrigation District, which would affect a huge number of crops.

 

Water availability will be a prime driver of housing prices. Already, there are neighborhoods around Phoenix that must pay enormous sums to have water trucked in and they have no option because nobody will buy their house because it doesn't have any water.

https://grist.org/housing/arizona-rio-verde-foothills-water-wildcat-subdivisions/

Just another datapoint (see also the Lake Powell post from a few days ago) that the cities of the desert SW are dead men walking. Most of those folks will need to move somewhere over the next few decades.

And then we have data centers, which are going to speed this kind of thing up in many places beyond the desert.

TLDR: Be careful about a 30 year mortgage these days, particularly if you are west of the 100th (now 98th and moving east if you are on the southern half) meridian, where average rainfall drops to 20 inches or less.

The dotted line is the 98th meridian, which is right at Corpus.

 

By the way, this is a great book.

 

New flood maps coming out for Houston. Just to be clear, the maps will not raise insurance rates or lower home prices or make development more expensive. It's the flooding that does those things and the maps just document the reality. If the maps go away, the water will still be there.

https://www.fox26houston.com/video/fmc-gncl4kwxl29zkwvs