Wall Street Journal reporter Jim Carlton says Lake Mead is shrinking because of climate change. Is it? We report. You decide.
Here’s is Carlton’s claim:
First, the history of Lake Mead’s elevation is actually quite volatile.
And the elevation is relatively low now — about 1,070 feet.
But today’s elevation is not all that different from the low points of 1956 and 1965 (about 1,090 feet, shown in first graph), especially when you consider the increases in water use and human management of reservoir levels over time.
No doubt that drought is affecting Lake Mead. But Western drought is natural (the region is a desert, after all), and Lake Mead was comparably low more than 100 ppm CO2 ago.
We visited Lake Powell around 1983, and were told the water level was low. A rented motorboat took us all around, looking at the white “bathtub ring” and other wonders, then entering a side canyon ordinarily underwater. We were able to proceed dryshod up the canyon to view sights that folks complained would never be visible again when the waters first rose.
Betcha they’re visible again.
So what is the total amount of water used from the lake each year and is this amount increasing? How many sources of flows into the lake has also been similarly tapped and in some cases tapped out?
Carleton’s narrative can be shown to be based upon an application of the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness under which an “abstract” event is taken to be a “concrete” event by an argument made by a climate model. An “abstract” event lacks a location in space and time while a “concrete” event has such a location. That an “abstract” event lacks a location in space and time makes an “abstract” event unobservable. That a “concrete” event has a location in space and time makes a “concrete” event observable. Lacking the support of observable events, Carleton’s narrative is scientifically nonsensical.
a combination of ignorance, incompetence (as a journalist), and desperation to keep the CAGW story line going.
A true due diligence search of history would have shown that this is just another part of the long term weather cycle in that part of the country, but then they couldn’t whine and snivel that I need to get rid of my barbecue grill and lawn mower to “save the planet”.