Or so we seem to be told. CNN recently reported that the mighty Colorado River has lost TEN TRILLION gallons of water!

Shocking! Lost! Where did all that water go? The headline tells us it is enough to completely fill up Lake Mead, the poster child for “global warming” or manmade “climate change” (or to use the new in term, “climate collapse”). Incredible? Did someone steal it? Is that a result of government corruption? Perhaps the FedGov’s Bureau of Reclamation or its US Army Corps of Engineers “accidentally” gave all that water to China or even Ukraine?

No! We are told by CNN that it was lost “due to warming temperatures.”

Aha! Is the mystery solved? Did all that water just evaporate into the air because it is too hot? Is that bad? Unnatural? Due to poor government (or even private) management? Did the water not only evaporate (that is, become a gas rather than a liquid) but actually disassociate: become separate hydrogen and oxygen molecules? Did the hydrogen actually then drift out into space?

If fact, government and MSM and others blame it all on manmade global warming (MMGW).

The article does admit that poster child Lake Mead actually rose more than 40 feet in level due to the 2022-2023 winter precipatation. Since the lake is roughly about 150,000 acres, that was about 40 million acre-feet (the normal unit of measure for large quantities of water). Since an acre-foot is 43,560 cubic feet, and there are 7.48 gallons of water in a cubic foot, that is 13 trillion gallons! (Apologies to the math-challenged, if any, reading this. 13 trillion is a lot more than 10 trillion. Really.)

And it turns out that 10 trillion gallons claimed is over ten years. This is a very long-term scam or theft, it seems. But we also point out that the headline is also wrong: 10T is almost certainly NOT enough to totally fill Lake Mead. Since its current level is still dozens of feet below “full.” And the more a reservoir fills, the larger the surface area.

We also point out that the average American family uses 300 gallons a day; 110,000 gallons per year. A city of 100,000

The truth is:

The Colorado River Basin has been in a drought, as even Wikipedia states. During the period from 2020 to 2023, there was a lot less precipitation than usual (and most of the Basin doesn’t get much in good times). At the same time, higher-than-average temperatures have increased the evaporation rate. From lakes and streams and especially from lawns and ditches and cropland. And evapotranspiration (that is water lost from the leaves and other parts of plants) has remained steady. From forests and crops and grass and even weeds. Supposedly, this is a “mega-drought.”

This isn’t the first “mega-drought” for the Colorado River Basin, and won’t be the last. It also probably is not the biggest or worst. The drought back in the 1100s and 1200s (AD) probably was much worse, and certainly contributed to or even caused the collapse of one or more civilizations. And literally untold misery and premature deaths. There seems to have been another one in the 1830s. Such droughts are actually fairly frequent in the last 5,000 or so years, according to tree rings, records, and observation of erosion and sedimentation. They are caused by terrain, by weather patterns such as La Nina and El Nino, by variations in solar radiation, and even by volcanic action and erosion.

FYI: the Colorado River Basin includes the States of Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California: parts of all of those. Vast quantities of the water which flows down the Colorado from the mountains and deserts of western Colorado, southwestern Wyoming, and a third or more of Utah and parts of NW New Mexico are provided to huge urban areas. Those include Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, and the huge metropolises of southern Arizona, like Phoenix, Tempe, and Tucson. And apparently some of that water is shipped in hay and other products to Saudi Arabia! The Colorado River also is a source of water for two Mexican States: Baja California del Norte and Sonora. At least when there is any left.

So why is there a water problem, beyond mother nature: climate, topography, and weather cycles? Well, greed and government. Greed NOT on the part of big corporations and multinationals, but on the part of the residents of Arizona, California, and Nevada. They are greedy for green lawns and swimming pools, and water fountains and ponds to look at and get ducks to swim in. And of course, that is what they vote for: and their government officials constantly give them more and more water – by stealing it from other people. (Just like tax money.) And because the voters and politicians are too stupid to understand climate and climate cycles and what deserts and semi-arid places are. Or how evaporation works.

So instead they blame it on greedy oil companies and power companies who use fossil fuels to satisfy the demands of their customers (those greedy residents, especially), Because, they claim, MMGW is caused by the CO2 and methane released by burning those fuels in cars, trucks, and power plants. (Oh, and because cows and sheep and horses give off gas.)

So the propaganda is that big greedy corporations value profits more than mother earth or health of their customers or preventing much of San Francisco, LA, and San Diego from being swallowed up by the Pacific Ocean.

Don’t believe it: stupid government (and voter) decisions over decades have created this problem. Replacing gas- and diesel-cars with electric vehicles and coal- and gas-fueled electric power plants with solar and wind will NOT solve it. But it will make life even more miserable for everyone.

Think about it.