DEAD POOL OR DAM MULE?

Book Review: Dead Pool: Lake Powell , Global Warming, and the Future of Water in the West by James Lawrence Powell (University of California Press, 2008).
By Wayne Lusvardi

American newspaperman Louis Malcolm Boyd once wrote “there are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan and pool.” Recently, the world has begun to learn about the dealings of the first type but we still seem to be living in a bubble about the second.

In this case, the second type is not a table pool player but James Lawrence Powell’s apocalyptic new book, Dead Pool: Lake Powell , Global Warming, and the Future of Water in the West.  Powell’s book tells us that there is a 50% chance of Lake Powell and the whole Colorado River dam system ending up as a “dead pool” by 2017 to 2021, OR SOONER, due to global warming (p. 184). Dead pool is defined as a permanent condition when the water level behind a dam is too low to spill water or generate hydroelectric power; or when silt buildup behind a dam has made it so the water overtops the dam and collapses it.

Powell is no light weight journalist trying to write some pop book that is way over his head. He is the executive director of the National Physical Science Consortium at the University of Southern Cal and an author of several books.  In his book Powell extols early explorer and founder of the U.S. Geological Survey, John Wesley Powell, who Lake Powell is named after. John Wesley Powell had a near Luddite pastoral vision of how Colorado River water should be used. But author James Powell never tells us if he is related.    

Firstly, let me say that Powell is a master story teller. His book will teach the average reader more about our water system than almost any other I have read. He ironically starts his book with an apocalyptic story of near dam collapse of the Glen Canyon Dam due to too much water in 1983. And he ends his book with the story of how civilization in the Southwestern U.S. will end soon due to too little water; not from a bang but from the whimper of a series of dead pool reservoirs along the Colorado River due to global warming.

The book’s many Armageddon-like stories are so well written that you are convinced that the stories are true. They read more like a novel or an adventure movie. Incidentally, there was a 1988 Clint Eastwood movie titled “Dead Pool” where the character “Dirty Harry” becomes embroiled in a string of murders involving a game called the "Dead Pool," involving a list of celebrities likely to die soon, from which participants wager on who will die first. For James Lawrence Powell, Lake Powell will die first; others will follow.

For proof positive Powell has a photo on the cover of his book showing the present-day bathtub ring on Lake Powell way, way above the water line. How could he be wrong? Look at the picture. Run the numbers and look at the data as Powell has done.     

But is Powell’s alarmist book right about an imminent disaster for civilization in the Southwestern United States due to dead dams?  His book requires a skeptical review even if, under some highly improbable scenario, he is right with his prognostications. To be an unquestioning convert to the environmentalist anti-dam movement which Powell is apparently part of would not be responsible. 

Powell’s book is being compared favorably with Mark Reisner’s popular 1986 book Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water. But little known is that Reisner recanted much of what he wrote in that book after he learned more about how rice farmers re-use water. Powell is, however, very knowledgeable about water issues and probably can tell more stories about the dams along the Colorado River than any person I am aware of.  But the gnawing question after reading Powell’s powerful book remains: is he right; and if so, how right?  

One of the centerpieces of Powell’s argument is a bar graph on page 164 which shows the Annual Flow at the northerly point of the Colorado River dam system (Lee’s Ferry) with a Ten Year Running Mean. Sun spots have an 11-year cycle, so a ten year average seems reasonable. Down the left hand column of his bar chart is the annual flow of water measured in millions of acre feet from zero to 25 million. (An acre foot of water is one foot high of water spread over an acre of land; able to support about two urban families for a year).  Across the bottom of the chart are the years from 1896 to 2007.    

The graph shows fourteen years when the water flow in the Colorado River exceeded 20 million are feet; and fourteen years when it fell below ten million acre feet. The average was 13.6 million acre feet (MAF). For some strange reason Powell doesn’t start counting his 10-year trend until 1905, leaving out the first ten years. At the other end of his chart he shows the 10-year average trend line in near free-fall downward at year 2007.   

A cursory look at the graph doesn’t support Powell’s apocalyptic claims. Two other times (in 1934 and 1977) the water flow in the River has fallen as low, or lower, than it was in 2001 (about 12.5 MAF). In 1979 the flow dropped to a low of 6 MAF. In 1984 the flow reached an all-time recorded high just over 25 MAF.  What makes Powell convinced this is any different at this time and that water flows won’t rebound, FOREVER?  Is Powell living in a global warming “bubble” just as we have been recently living in a financial bubble which has blinded us to logic and common sense?  Or as Powell quotes William Weld, former governor of Massachusetts , in his book: “we don’t have to be logical about this. This is politics.”  Is his book politics or science?   

As statistician Donald T. Campbell writes in his classic book A Primer on Regression Artifacts, “regression (or progression) toward the mean (average) is as inevitable as death and taxes.” How Powell is certain that global warming will defy the laws of gravitation toward the mean average is not totally convincing.  Nevertheless, this is not to exclude the possibility of a small probability event.  

This is the problem I have with both global warming advocates and denialists.  There is data that can show global warming or no global warming, whichever you choose. The selective perception of the Warmists is a leap of faith that seems more connected to the anti-urban, counter modern sociology of the Knowledge Class than it does science (more on this below).

On Page 173 Powell lays out his convincing case for global warming in five “evidences.”

First, warming is global as evidenced by 20^th century temperatures rising on nearly every continent. Once again, those who evangelize for global warming can prove their point by selectively picking data like the preacher who finds proof for his positions in the Bible. Sure, you can find data that shows warming on every continent in the last century. But you can also probably find evidence of cooling on every continent as well.  Powell’s assertions about global warming might stand up to the pseudo-scientific methodology he employs in his book, but it wouldn’t stand up to cross examination in a court room.  We shouldn’t forget that science, according to Karl Popper, involves trying to disprove your hypothesis (null hypothesis), not finding selective evidence to prove it.

Meteorologist Roy W. Spencer reports in his book, Climate Confusion (p. 16), that he computed the correlation between U.S. temperatures and globally averaged temperatures from reliable satellite data. The result was a near zero correlation coefficient.  Heat waves or cold snaps are unrelated to global warming.  One down, four to go.

Second, the troposphere, nearest the earth’s surface, has warmed, while the layer about it, the stratosphere, has cooled.  Really? As a layman, isn’t the greenhouse effect what gives life to the earth compared to, for example, the moon?  If the earth didn’t warm the lower atmosphere we wouldn’t have life would we?  Weather is the movement of heat to where there is more to where there is less. Which should we measure, the more or the less?   

Global warming proponents say that the warming tendency near the earth’s surface caused by excess carbon dioxide will result in faster evaporation of water, and thus a humidifying effect. As meteorologist Roy Spencer explains, the amount of water vapor in the middle and upper troposphere (near the earth) is regulated by precipitation. Spencer points out that without precipitation it would only take a week or so for the atmosphere to approach 100% humidity.  Instead, precipitation limits the natural greenhouse effect, most likely in proportion to the amount of sunlight available.  Two down, three to go.

Third, minimum nighttime temperatures have risen not due to the urban heat island effect but due to the oceans warming; thus warming is global not continental. Once again, what is called the El Nino Southern Oscillation Phenomenon is highly quixotic and unpredictable. El Nino is a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon.  El Nino is Spanish for “Little Boy,” named after the Christ child due to the effect occurring around Christmas time. 

There is no such thing as a “world average ocean temperature,” if for no other reason there is no way to measure it.  Average ocean temperature is a social construct, not a scientific measurement.  There is no God-like thermometer that can measure the average temperature trend of the ocean the world over. Nonetheless, even global warming proponents report a drop in ocean temperatures the last four years not reported in Powell’s book.  Three down, two to go.

Number four: the solar sunspot cycle can cause temperatures at the surface to increase, but the maximum that has been measured since the late 1800’s is only 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit.  This contradicts Powell’s own argument and logic in his Evidence No. 2.  An opposing attorney would love this sort of logic for cross examination.  Once again, even global warming promoters admit that atmospheric temperatures have cooled the last four years which coincides with the sunspot cycle. Four down, one to go.

Fifth, in the second half of the last century, the world’s oceans heated by 0.7 degrees but the sun’s output rose by less than 0.1%. Thus, the sun doesn’t explain global warming. Again, this ignores the earth’s counter regulating mechanisms such as precipitation. Neither has Powell eliminated geothermal warming as the basis of any rise in ocean temperature. The U.S. comprises only 4.8% of the earth’s surface mass (Wikipedia). Score: 0 for five.

Another assertion of Powell’s book is that dams don’t create more water; they actually result in less water by impounding it behind dams for evaporation.  Oddly, Powell doesn’t seem to explore whether increasing atmospheric water vapor from dams might be the cause of the global warming he asserts. But Powell ignores the obvious: that dams bring new water to former dry places; namely cities and farms.   

This is the point made in a fantastic new book by Carl Abbott How Cities Won the West (Univ. New Mexico Press, 2008). Abbott writes:

“Cities more than pay for themselves by making it easier for human beings to gain protection from the cold, shelter from the storm, and respite from hunger. This is the trade-off that justifies urban claims on their landscapes and on relationships with their environs. Only on the margins do we explicitly weigh the relative virtues of a few more subdivisions against a few more berry fields or orange groves. Knowing that time will soon have its way, few of us are rushing to cast down the walls, rip up the pavements, and invite the fireweed and thistles to repossess Boise or sagebrush to reoccupy El Paso. Were we to abjure cities, and with them the benefits of civilized society, we would all be huddling and howling with (King) Lear on the windswept heath” (British: a tract of level wasteland).

This does not even mention the benefits to civilization of regional water hydraulic systems on human health via sanitation systems. Civilization can be viewed as one big effluent removal system. But Powell would have us return to nature and the socialistic farm, and I guess to all the disease that went with it. 

Abbott’s pro-urban book is the counterpoint to the anti-modern worldview of James Lawrence Powell.  Powell’s appeal is to return to the vision of explorer John Wesley Powell to live self-sufficiently on a 160-acre tract of land (p. 44-45; 245).   

Powell’s use of language is a tip off to his underlying anti-urban worldview. He couches his apocalyptic story in quasi-religious language.  Powell’s antagonists, pro-dam politicians and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, are not just flawed or bureaucratic, they are portrayed as evil.  Like John Wesley Powell, James Lawrence Powell is fond of Mormon theological socialism and irrigation systems (p. 35). Wesley Powell was opposed to the “theology” of Floyd Dominy, who is portrayed as an archetypical evil commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (p. 136).  And anti-capitalist and anti-modernist Wesley Powell is quoted as saying he was “more interested in the home and the cradle than in the bank counter.”  (For the social basis of counter-modernization see Peter L. Berger, The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness).     

Dead Pool is bound to be cited as secular scripture like the story of Noah and the Ark in the Book of Genesis in the Judeo-Christian Bible. And like Noah, for all we know, Powell could be right. But what is the order of magnitude of probability for his anti-dam apocalyptic to justify his radical prescriptions?  After reading his book, I don’t believe we know.  

Powell is a certaintist.  Like all fundamentalists, he is convinced he is right. I have come to learn to be skeptical of certaintists, whether religious or secular. Powell’s book takes you on a mule ride down the Grand Canyon . Which, in closing, reminds me of the following definition in Ambrose Bierce’s book The Devil’s Dictionary:

“Obstinate, adj.  Inaccessible to the truth as it is manifest in the splendor and stress of our advocacy. The popular type and exponent of obstinacy is the mule, a most intelligent animal.”

 

 

Comments

[Wayne Lusvardi]

I had no knowledge of the following when writing the above: From the online biography for James Lawrence Powell:

He is married and has three children, three grandchildren, five horses, two dogs, two cats, and a burro.