Climate Change Is Not Behind Lake Mead’s Decline, Overuse and Poor Management Are
By
H. Sterling Burnett
February 9, 2024
With an atmospheric river dumping trillions of gallons precipitation on California and other western states, some news outlets have asked how the precipitation might affect Lake Mead, suggesting that the rainfall will do little for the lake or the Colorado River basin which feeds it because it’s drying out due to climate change. Although it is true that the current storm will likely do little to reverse Lake Mead’s decline in the long-term, the reason for its decline is not climate change, but instead, overuse and poor management of the reservoir.
A number of mainstream media outlets ran stories in recent days remarking on the fact that the recent atmospheric river event is dumping more water in a few days than Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir by volume, can hold at full capacity. On February 7, for example, Newsweek, ran two stories on the heavy rains, “Bomb Cyclone To Dump More Water Than in Lake Mead on California,” and “Atmospheric Rivers Won’t Refill Lakes Mead and Powell, says expert.”
These two stories were largely straight forward reporting, the kind of honest journalism Americans used to expect from the media outlets. Newsweek did not attribute the present atmospheric river or Lake’s Mead or Powell present water levels to climate change.
https://climaterealism.com/2024/02/climate-change-is-not-behind-lake-meads-decline-overuse-and-poor-management-are/
