I have read recently that the southwest is experiencing the beginnings of a long drought that's been cycling for thousands of years. Is this true? And if so, perhaps the best measure is to adapt and move elsewhere, as civilizations untold have done so for a million years.
That seems like a telephone-d version of the actual factoid? When the Army Corp of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation built dams and resevoirs on the Colorado, they set baseline numbers for those facilities that were overly optimistic because they were doing the work during an unusually wet decade.
I'm not sure how we could even know, with any level of certainty, that there are thousand year drought cycles or how they work. It's true that the Colorado is oversubscribed and the whole Southwest is fairly unsustainable as-is.
Yes, California has had droughts lasting ~220 and ~140 years before.
The findings suggest, in fact, that relatively wet periods like the 20th century have been the exception rather than the rule in California for at least the last 3,500 years, and that mega-droughts are likely to recur.
The South American drought was of "horrendous proportions," said Dr. Kolata, and it destroyed Tiwanaku's agricultural base. The empire's cities were abandoned by about 1000. Dr. Kolata believes that the raised fields could no longer support the cities, and archeological evidence shows that the fields were abandoned between 1000 and 1100. The political state collapsed, the population dispersed and, with agriculture no longer possible, the people relied on raising alpacas and llamas.
One of the root causes of the dysfunction of water policy in the West is that expectations around water availability were set in the early 20th century which turned out to be historically anomalous. Long term water agreements between states and with Mexico were based on assumption that those water levels would continue. Now we are seeing reversion to the mean, but it takes a long time for water policy to be updated.
There is a saying that water policy in the West is 21st century needs on top of 20th century infrastructure and 19th century law.
Is the implication here that we should wait another 3,500 years for our reservoirs to return to their former peak levels? I'm not sure that trends from a geological time scale are helpful in current public policy debates on natural resource shortages or climate changes.
>> I have read recently that the southwest is experiencing the beginnings of a long drought that's been cycling for thousands of years. Is this true? And if so, perhaps the best measure is to adapt and move on, as civilizations untold have done so for a million years.
Can you site a source? I'm not even skeptical, but if that's true it would be nice to stop blaming climate change.
While this is true, the parent has a point. Politicians and Media are quick to blame Climate Change for any crisis, since it's a great way to deflect blame on to individuals instead of government institutions that failed them. The Colorado River situation is a great example of a mismanaged, centrally-planned government program gone wrong. If water were being priced appropriately, market forces would correct the issue.
Are you saying that people would be more likely to blame the government if the cause of the drought was entirely natural compared to if it was caused by human action?
EDIT: I read about it in the following paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01290-z