Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Clean Technica’s Steve Hanley claims that looming water shortages in Phoenix, Arizona and large scale internal US migrations will lead to Middle East style resource conflicts. But we’ll all be OK if Phoenix embraces renewables, and if we all re-read the “3 little pigs”.
Climate Change May Make Phoenix Uninhabitable By 2050
September 29th, 2017 by Steve Hanley
Phoenix, Arizona, is America’s fifth largest city. As you fly in to Sky Harbor airport, the city stretches from horizon to horizon beneath you. It’s hot in Phoenix. Always has been. The people who live there laugh about it, calling it a “dry heat” because there is so little humidity in the air. Be that as it may, living in Phoenix without air conditioning is almost unthinkable.
…
Phoenix requires two things not found naturally in the area — electricity and water. Without both, the Phoenix of today would never have happened. Despite its abundant sunshine, Arizona has depended for decades on electricity generated by burning coal. Utilities companies in Arizona have been slow to transition to renewables, although lower prices are driving them to look in that direction.
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Heat is not the only factor making the Phoenix area less hospitable to humans. Hondula says that lack of water could be more of a problem than rising temperatures. “As much as 20 percent of the river could dry up by 2050,” he says. The majority of the drinking water for the area comes from the Colorado River — the same source that much of southern California depends on.
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It’s the long term water shortages that [Ray] Quay is concerned most about. In the 1960s when growth in the Phoenix area was exploding, the federal government had plenty of money to spend on infrastructure. “The issues that we’re going to be facing with climate change and drought, well, we’re in an era when we don’t have a lot of money anymore,” Quay says. In other words, Washington may not be there to help when the water crunch hits the Southwest.
Many experts think that most human conflict is attributable to competition for scarce natural resources — food and water. A drought in the Middle East is seen as one factor contributing to the intractable war in Syria. Hungry and thirsty people tend to go on the move in search of food and water. Climate change may be partially responsible for the refugee crisis overwhelming Europe and causing a spike in nationalism there.
Americans who might like to think such problems can’t happen in their country may be surprised when millions of their countrymen begin moving in large numbers away from low lying coastal areas subject to flooding and cities lacking an adequate supply of water. The disruption within American society could also lead to significant conflicts as the competition for scarce housing and jobs pits people against one another.
Phoenix is a cautionary tale for why rational people should begin planning now for the effects of climate change. But will they? If past history is any guide, the prospects for such appropriate decision making are dim and getting fainter by the day. The world could learn a lot from rereading The Three Little Pigs.
Even if Steve Hanley is right about the severity of the problems, which I doubt, renewables are not the solution.
Cheap energy is the safety margin which makes life in difficult environments possible. With cheap energy you can affordably purify and desalinate poor quality water, and properly air-condition homes and businesses. Cheap energy makes affordable manufacturing possible – fertiliser for farmers, inexpensive machines, enough leisure time to properly investigate solutions to problems.
Embracing useless renewables is about as far from cheap energy as you can get. Renewables are the surest path to creating energy poverty and economic hardship.
Having said that, I doubt renewable hardship would lead to actual resource conflicts, at least in countries like the USA. Republics and Democracies have other means to depose idiot politicians who mess up their lives.
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Phoenix metro has some of the best water management, conservation and recycling practices in the world. My water bill in the winter there per unit of use is cheaper than in the summer in Alberta. I’ll have to look it up but I didn’t think coal was a big percentage of power generation there. Nuclear, natural gas and solar.
I’m not at all worried about water shortages. The past year has replenished a lot of the water sources. Ground water depletion is a problem in parts of Arizona.
Hanley should go back on his medication.
It is egregious (way past disingenuous) to stretch it all the way to the Middle East to find urban water conflict, and cast thirsty desert cities as ‘victims’ rather than the predators that they are. Cities and the provincial attitudes that thrive therein are the real bringers of mindless environmental disaster and ruin. The lush lawns of Los Angeles were started on the small remnant of the East California water table, a lush natural environment that was all but destroyed following the Water Wars of the 1920s. Urban California has since turned its attention to water tables further North and East. If you live up hill from Los Angeles, beware!
Ironically the latest political struggle in the U.S. heralds its future. By the small margin awarded by the Electoral College this has been the last time the geographic majority of rural America is able to elect a president despite the wishes of its densely populated urban centers, and the blue/red line divides them surer than any party-ideological divide. It is literally now the city versus country people. Just as the city of Baltimore has (politically) conquered the rest of Maryland, so so shall the aims and desires of cities take the entire country. As cities come to power, expect to see those fair-weather ecological causes, first exploited to gather influence and control, drop by the wayside as urban areas suck out water, and anything else they can get their hands on.
Great insight. Disturbing but great.
hunter
Agree. Certainly for the USA.
Probably already true for Australia.
I am not sure about the UK – seems more of an age-related split [with many exceptions, of course].
Those too young to remember the fiasco of the Wilson/Callaghan years – running to the IMF to pay next week’s Civil service wages; the dead unburied; national bin men’s strike of many weeks; three months minimum to get a telephone line installed (we have mobiles, but central monitoring and oversight will extend to a fortnight to get a number, and probably another fortnight to get a handset, never mind one of your choice); a railway run to suit the needs of the drivers, signal-box staff, and even the stewards – not travellers – times, punctuality, interconnections, cleanliness, etc. Transferring an account for gas, water, or electricity could take over a month – and you had no choice; what the North Thames Gas Board charged – you paid, if in the NTGB area. No changing supplier – there was a state monopoly: take it or chill.
The restrictions – selective Employment Tax, for example – that socialists apply to businesses mean that a coffee will be nearer £5 than £3, in a year after any decisive Corbyn victory.
And Uber will be unionised – so no service after 1800 or before 0700.
Likewise the restrictions of free-market services will kill the likes of Feest, and other service-orientated start-ups.
The press will be Pravdaized; no unfavourable comment -even as a skit -0 will be permitted – on pain of compulsory re-education.
Enough.
I must to bed to arm myself for tomorrow’s battles against the encroaching Stalinist Monster.
Auto
Not wishing to believe, but not prepared to belittle the risks.
Goodness – the Tories have just run the worst General Election campaign in my memory – I remember the 1964 one [others here, more experientially gifted that I, will remember earlier campaigns still . . . ] – and 2017 Tories was worse than 1983 Labour/Michael Foot.
Crossing my fingers is not enough.
.
Claims like this I find really frustrating since as the IPCC itself acknowledges, models do not do regions well, nor do they do precipitation well. There is absolutely no point in using a model to see what drought conditions might be like in any region.
Anyway these types of claims are inherently absurd, since we live on a water world. There is one resource that we will always have enough of is water.
We pipe oil, which is a difficult substance to handle, thousands of miles. We have no problem in pumping water wherever it may be needed.
We can, if necessary, build desalination plants and extract water from the sea.
<b.All we need to adapt to any coming change, is cheap, abundant and reliable energy.
PS. An illustration of the fallibility of model predictions, with regional patterns of precipitation, and the stupidly of man in seeking to rely and act on model predictions, is the Australian experience pushed by Tim Flannery. I cannot recall the precise details but he pushed the Australian Government to build several desalination plants based upon model predictions of droughts. These were built at the cost of billions and have never been used. Since those plants were built, the reservoirs have consistently been full towards record highs. just another failed prediction by Climate Scientists. When have they ever got anything right?
And combustion of fossil fuels generates water. Top of my head calculation is that about a gallon of water is produced per gallon of gasoline consumed.
If you like reading fiction try The Water Knife by Paulo Bacigalalupi, it is water allocation disputes in the American West wound to the max.
“Claim: Phoenix Water Shortage will Lead to Middle East style Resource Conflict”
I’m sure it will – just like it did in California *Sarcasm* 🙂
“Phoenix requires two things not found naturally in the area — electricity and water.”.
When if ever is “electricity” found naturally in any area?
I read through the entire thread and only one other person caught that.
However, I’ve studied the issue thoroughly and people in Phoenix do indeed have ‘bad hair days.’
Never considered this question before: Would cloud borne static electricity be a significant source of renewable energy? OK, maybe in Florida where they get a lot more thunderstorms?
Uhhh…Tesla?
Are we talkiing permadroubt here? Just like the ones in Texas and California
“Despite its abundant sunshine, Arizona has depended for decades on electricity generated by burning coal.”
That has to be among the dumbest non sequiteurs ever. Coal has always been the cheapest source of electricity, though that has been challenged by NG in recent years.
Despite it’s September 29, 2017 date I strongly suspect that Steve Hanley’s analysis was determined by events prior to the November 2016 election.
You see, like many people Steve probably expected Hillary Clinton to win the election, and therefore he logically expected Hillary to take her actions as Secretary of State, in regards to Libya, and as President apply that same stunning success to the United States.
Ouch.
“A drought in the Middle East is seen as one factor contributing to the intractable war in Syria. Hungry and thirsty people tend to go on the move in search of food and water. Climate change may be partially responsible for the refugee crisis overwhelming Europe and causing a spike in nationalism there.”
And I thought the war in Syria and the resulting refugee crisis was the result or people rebelling against a despotic dictator who oppresses religious and ethnic minorities.
Despotic dictator, yes. Oppressing religious and ethnic minorities, no. A strange world.
So, climate alarmists are rational. The rest of us are not. Well, there you have it.
“Many experts think that most human conflict is attributable to competition for scarce natural resources — food and water.” But not oil and gas, huh? Oil and gas are “natural resources”. Nature — let’s use it.
People the vast majority of water used in Arizona is for agriculture. Most of this water gets wasted due to evaporation, but there is a solution. Use the Israeli example, drip irrigation. Israel has even changed the climate of the region by greening up due to better water usage; it rains more now than in the past. Also, Phoenix is getting more humid as people move in, plant grass (I know, why grass?), fill swimming pools, etc. Water will always be available if we don’t block civilization from running as it should, it will just cost more.
FACT – You can’t build new construction in this area unless you have a 100 year guaranteed water supply. They are building new houses everywhere.
More doom from the peak water nitwits. They were predicting imminent crisis during the California drought.
Lake Powell could dry up in as little as six years, study says
http://tucson.com/news/local/lake-powell-could-dry-up-in-as-little-as-six/article_0e0b61d1-10d7-51aa-a29a-bcb1d9d6eb0f.html
That was last September before the rain and snow dumped on their fallacy.
All of their worst banter about vanishing Lake Powell was silenced with the entire west having a wet year.
The lake is fine of course. Powell is up 17.38 feet from one year ago
http://lakepowell.water-data.com/
If you need it all explained here is Peter Gleick
“Very clearly one of the things that sets this drought apart is that now there is this incredibly clear climate signal. I think it’s unambiguous and that’s new.”
https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/articles/2016/08/23/peter-gleick-why-californias-current-drought-is-different
Then it rained and snowed like crazy all winter in California and the west making the “climate signal” a wee bit foggy.
Where is electricity “naturally” found? And how come it isn’t scarce in other places such as NW where there are few thunderstorms thunderstorms
Steve Hanley should have probably waited for this year’s water year to be over (on September 30th) for the Colorado River basin. From:
http://lakepowell.water-data.com
Snow pack is 225% of average and the largest reservoir on the Colorado River, Lake Powell is now almost 18 feet above last year’s water level. Water releases to the smaller Lake Mead have run 109% above minimum release. Other metrics for the Colorado River are available at the above site including historical averages.
The US and Mexico (Colorado River runs through Mexico) just concluded a water agreement, the first in many decades.
It seems that Mr. Hanley had this piece already written and didn’t bother to check the latest information.
Greetings from Perth, Western Australia, a city with a hot dry summer and winter rains and a climate very similar to San Diego. Australia’s very own climate guru, Tim Flannery, predicted a few year’s back that Perth would become the first ghost city of the 21st century, due to encroaching desertification. I am happy to report that we have had good winter and early spring rain these last few months.
Is Arizona divided into three mutually incompatible religions comparable to Judaism, Shia Islam and Sunni Islam?
I’m sure there are quite a few people of all three religions in the Phoenix area. In the American culture, they don’t kill each other.
Of course, there are those trying to change our culture.
Noticed that climate change is now substituted for weather with full acceptance in the media and the general public. This is not what winning looks like.
“It’s the long term water shortages that [Ray] Quay is concerned most about. In the 1960s when growth in the Phoenix area was exploding, the federal government had plenty of money to spend on infrastructure. “The issues that we’re going to be facing with climate change and drought, well, we’re in an era when we don’t have a lot of money anymore,”
SAY WHAT?
Federal Government Tax Revenues in 1965: $117 billion
Federal Government Tax Revenues in 2017: $3.46 TRILLION
Factor in inflation and the 1965 tax dollars would be equal to $792 billion dollars today. IN constant dollars, the federal government is collecting 4.3 times as much revenue as it did in 1965, and that does not include the billions more that they are printing and borrowing now.
So don’t tell me that we are “…in an era when we don’t have a lot of money anymore,” We are in an era when we have an out of control Federal Government spending more money than ever, largely on things that are Unconstitutional.
The biggest problem is too much money leaves the States to the Federal that doesn’t come back to the States. States can’t take care of their own issues as the Federation was designed to do. Because the Federal Government has become larger than it was intended to become. I’m a 10th Amendment advocate Constitutionalist. Those were the Anti-Federalist at the founding, that fought for State Right’s and added the first 10 Amendments to our Constitution. They foresaw the Federal Government getting too big, because people by nature in power – can’t be trusted. They were right.
Does this mean a farmer uprising against the tyranny of the tract housing developers, or what?