Rising sea levels ... what a joke. I launched out to the Pacific Ocean from the mid-80's thru 2015. The difference between the high/high to low/low tide can exceed 8'+. Combine that with a swell that can exceed 8 feet how in hell can an inch or 2 of ocean rise make a difference ... plus where is all this water come from???
Polar ice caps, Greenland, receding glaciers, etc.
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If you live where YOU feel it's too dry.....MOVE!
Personally, I'd like to keep the Californiacators west of Vegas, at a minimum.
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SL Ocean level rise is two fold, unusually rapid ice melt globally, and warmer water occupies a larger volume. Measure it has a point. The southwest has seen enormous population growth since the seventies. Water decisions in this part of the country were made based on "current" conditions. This area experienced the wettest hundred years in geological history during this period. If you look at current population shifts, the Great Lakes region (Rust Belt) is seeing population growth. Due to the Great Lakes Compact, water from this basin can not be moved outside the basin. If states adjoining the Mighty Mississippi do not enact a similar resolution, a wealthy private entity will figure a way to divert this resource.
I'm pretty sure it won't be a private entity. No way they could navigate/fund the environmental studies this would require, much less fund the construction of something that would involve eminent domain of so much land. Nah, this would be a Corps of Engineers, or Bureau of Reclamation style project. Most likely a Reclamation project with a Corps permit since Reclamation owns the dams on the Colorado River into which the water would go and the Corps mostly manages the Mississippi.
As far as the Great Lakes pact, that is simply a pact between the states to oppose any project that were to divert Great Lakes water out of the Great Lakes watershed. It doesn't have the weight of federal law, which is what would be required to divert water from the Mississippi to the Colorado.
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Mark my words....It's a very bad idea to pipe water across a continental divide!!! Just don't do it!!
Mehh, we do it all the time. Minnetucky moves water around quite a bit in between different watersheds. There's a Milk River diversion that takes water from the Missouri watershed into the Hudson's Bay watershed. All kinds of water diversions exist in this country. When you really think about it, water is just another resource/commodity. Why we think it's any different than oil, coal, iron, copper, wheat, or cars escapes my logic. We are irrationally attached to water because it has multiple uses (drinking, beer making, fishing, etc), but at the end of the day...water moves in the direction of money.