Denver Post

Climate change is likely to diminish already scarce water supplies in the Western United States, exacerbating problems for millions of water users in the West, according to a new government report.

A report released Monday by the Interior Department said annual flows in three prominent river basins - the Colorado, Rio Grande and San Joaquin - could decline by as much 8 percent to 14 percent over the next four decades. The three rivers provide water to eight states, from Wyoming to Texas and California, as well as to parts of Mexico.

The declining water supply comes as the West and Southwest, already among the fastest-growing parts of the country, continue to gain population.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called water the region’s “lifeblood” and said small changes in snowpack and rainfall levels could have a major effect on tens of millions of people.

The report will help officials understand the long-term effects of climate change on Western water supplies, Salazar said, and will be the foundation for efforts to develop strategies for sustainable water resource management.

The report notes that projected changes in temperature and precipitation are likely to alter the timing and quantity of stream flows in all Western river basins, with increased flooding possible in the winter due to early snowmelt and water shortages in the summer due to reductions in spring and summer runoffs. Changes in climate could affect water supplies to a range of users, from farms and cities to hydropower plants, fish, wildlife and recreation, the report said.

Western states are growing faster than the rest of the country, with some of the fastest growth occurring in the driest areas, such as Nevada, Arizona and Texas.

“Impacts to water are on the leading edge of global climate change,” said Mike Connor, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, an Interior Department agency that provides water to more than 31 million people in 17 Western states and power to 3.5 million homes.

The report “affirms the urgency of the planning we are engaged in,” Connor said at a news conference Monday. “We need to take actions now to plan” for changes that are likely to occur over the next several decades.

The report addresses the expected impact of climate change on eight major rivers basins in the central and Western United States. Besides the Colorado, Rio Grande and San Joaquin, the report also looks at the Columbia, Klamath and Sacramento rivers on the West Coast; the Missouri River Basin in the Northwest and Great Plains; and the Truckee River Basin in California and Nevada.

All eight basins should see an increase in temperature of about 5 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, the report says. Four basins will see an increase in overall precipitation by 2050: the Upper Colorado, Columbia, Missouri and Sacramento, while four will see a decrease: the Lower Colorado, Rio Grande, San Joaquin and Truckee.

Reductions in spring and summer runoffs could lead to a drop in water supply in 6 of the 8 basins, the report said.

Due to early snowmelt and relatively higher winter rains from warmer conditions, all but the Colorado basin could become more vulnerable to floods, the report said.

Aiguo Dai, a climate scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said the report echoes predictions he and other researchers have made that climate change would reduce stream flow rates in Western U.S. rivers. But he said computer models used to assess global trends would not be helpful for small river basins such as the Klamath or Upper Rio Grande.

Even regional models that take local topography into account “still contain large uncertainties,” Dai said.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said the report did “a solid job” cataloguing Interior’s efforts to respond to climate change. Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, sponsored a 2009 law that aims to improve water management in the West and increase analysis of water-related data. The report released Monday was prepared in response to the Secure Water Act.

“Faced with forecasts of decreased stream flows and increased temperatures, it’s more important than ever for communities to actively plan for changing conditions,” Bingaman said. “In arid environments like New Mexico, every drop counts, and conservation and efficient water use are essential. Having tools available to accurately monitor existing water supplies, and to accurately predict future scenarios, can provide more certainty to water users and help decrease tensions.”

Icecap Reality Check: Lets look instead of at models at the actual precipitation an an annual basis for the southwest including California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado and the Pacific Northwest - Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Note the southwest plot since 1895 has no, nil nada trend and the Pacific Northwest is cyclical with a net upward trend.

This is a revealing graph! I have not seen the DOI report, but my guess is that all their emphasis is most likely on ‘future climate’ as predicted by models with little attention being paid to observed climate trends.... There is a really strong bias in government agencies towards a ‘CO2-driven future climate’ to the point that the term ‘climate change’ is almost entirely associated in the minds of managers with ‘model predictions’ and ‘emission scenarios’.  Recently, I wanted to make a presentation at the Forest Service about observed climate and I had to clarify several times to the leadership of the Rocky Mountain Station that I’m talking about trends in actual measured data, not model simulations. At the end, when they realized that I was going to discuss (among other things) the lack of warming over the past 10-12 years, they canceled my talk with the argument that I’m not a ‘climate scientist’ and therefore do not have the necessary expertise, and that FS has made a large investment in adapting to GCM-predicted climate change. This is the crux of the problem. What an entangled web they weave.

By Chris Moody, Daily Caller

Speaker John Boehner that Congress should “be looking into” quelling subsidies for oil and gas companies, President Obama sent a letter to House and Senate leaders urging them to pass his proposal to end tax credits for oil companies and transfer them to other companies that produce energy through other means.

“I am writing to urge you to take immediate action to eliminate unwarranted tax breaks for the oil and gas industry, and to use those dollars to invest in clean energy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” Obama said in a letter addressed to Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In an interview with ABC News this week, Boehner said that oil and gas companies will “pay their fair share in taxes and they should,” adding that subsidies for oil companies are “certainly something that we oughta be looking at.”

Boehner’s spokesman said in reaction to Obama’s letter that the president’s proposal would do nothing to lower gas prices, suggesting Republicans would not take up the measure.

“The Speaker wants to increase the supply of American energy and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and he is only interested in reforms that actually lower energy costs and create American jobs,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel. “Unfortunately, what the President has suggested so far would simply raise taxes and increase the price at the pump.”

Daniel Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, an oil industry think tank, said Obama has long supported policies that would increase the price of oil, including limits on oil production in the United States, and is now pointing fingers at the oil companies for high gas prices.

“Now that his plan is bearing expensive fruit Americans don’t like, his attempt to shift blame away from his actions is pathetically akin to what we would expect from Hugo Chavez or some other third world populist.  His chickens are coming home to roost,” Kish said.

In the past, Congress has not shown much interest in Obama’s call to transfer the subsidies. The president’s budget proposals for the past two years have called for removing the subsidies for oil companies, but the proposals never made it through Congress. The Senate last year defeated a measure shortly after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that would effectively end all tax breaks and subsidies now being targeted by the White House.

Citing last year’s vote, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment, also suggested that Obama’s initiative was unlikely obtain the votes needed to pass through Congress.

“My bet is this won’t happen,” he said.

While in the Senate, even Obama voted for an energy bill in 2005 that extended the 14.6 billion in subsidies and tax breaks for oil and gas companies. The bill passed the Senate 74-26. Read story and comments here.

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Paging RGGI States: Here’s Your Cap-n-Trade Reality Show
By Chris Horner

There’s a new documentary out exploring the scam the greens and (mostly) the Dems tried to pull over on you, nationally, and succeeded in cramming into numerous key states as part of their plan to soon say again how unfair it is that only a few suffer under such bad judgment, so really, everyone must be forced to do it to ‘level the playing field’ to right this wrong.

Trading on Thin Air interviews a wide array of parties to deconstruct the morass in which Europe finds itself, California is wading into, and several states like New Hampshire, New Jersey and Delaware are trying to wiggle out of. It is available on Hulu (Netflix, too, I understand, if you view that way).

You can see Trading on Thin Air story on HULU.

By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

In a setback for environmentalists, the Supreme Court signaled Tuesday that it would throw out a huge global warming lawsuit brought by California and five other states that seeks limits on carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants in the South and Midwest.

Encouraged by the Obama administration’s top courtroom lawyer, the justices said the problem of regulating greenhouse gases should be left to the Environmental Protection Agency. It is too complex and unwieldy to be handled by a single federal judge acting on a “public nuisance” lawsuit, some of them said.

A defeat for the lawsuit would put more pressure on the administration and the EPA to enforce limits on carbon pollution in the face of strong opposition from congressional Republicans, environmental advocates said.

“The stakes will be very high. The question is whether they can deliver,” said David Doniger, a climate change expert for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The issue debated before the high court Tuesday was not whether greenhouse gases are causing global climate change, but who should regulate them. The decision involves politics, economics and science, the lawyers said.

“It’s a question of tradeoffs,” said Peter Keisler, a lawyer representing the power producers. “There is no legal principle here to guide the decision” if it were made by a judge.

Keisler, a former George W. Bush administration official, was joined by acting U.S. Solicitor Gen. Neal Katyal in urging the justices to throw out the lawsuit against the power plants as too sprawling.

“In the 222 years that this court has been sitting, it has never heard a case with so many potential perpetrators and so many potential victims,” Katyal began. Everyone on the planet is an emitter of carbon dioxide, he said, and everyone is a potential victim of global warming. Judges and courts are not suited to handling global problems through a lawsuit, he said.

In their comments and questions, it became clear that the justices - liberals and conservatives alike - also were dubious of allowing a single judge to decide on the regulation of greenhouse gases.

This “just sounds to me like what the EPA does,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told a New York state lawyer who was defending the lawsuit. A judge cannot be “a super EPA” who sets and enforces detailed regulations, she said.

Four years ago, the justices cleared the way for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Since then, the government has adopted stricter standards for new motor vehicles, which take effect next year. But regulation of power plants has stalled. The agency says it will propose new rules in July.

All the while, the states have pressed ahead with their suit against five large power producers. It began in 2004 during the time when the Bush administration maintained that it had no authority to tackle global warming.

Lawyers for California, Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Iowa, as well as New York City, sued the power plants that were responsible for 10% of the nation’s carbon emissions. They said these gases were causing the globe to heat up, posing a threat to U.S. coastal communities and to crops in the heartland. It asked for a judge to impose limits on the emissions.

Four more states - Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and North Carolina - endorsed the suit when it reached the high court. But 23 other states, led by Indiana, said the suit posed a “political question” that should not be resolved by a judge. Read more here.