This fascinating and chilling article from the New York Times Sunday magazine surveys the effects that a warming climate is already having on the American West. Among the worrisome observations and predictions:
- 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear
- a "catastrophic reduction in the flow of the Colorado River" has already caused the level of Lake Mead to drop by 100 feet and threatens the 30 million people who depend on Colorado River water
- groundwater tables are dropping all over the west and those around Denver will be exhausted by 2050
- dendrochronology suggests that western drought cycles often last 60 years
- virtually all climate models show the west getting drier over the next century
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