SOUTHWEST DROUGHT ENDS LIFE 700 YEARS AGO … WILL TUCSON be the next CHACO

WATER is always a emotional topic in the Southwest United States. Talk of water rights and who owns the rights to Green Valley’s CAP allotment, can they sell it and who can use the Central Arizona Project will always be big news and the fights will just get bigger and more important as time goes by. The new CAP spur being built to Green Valley is said allow the new ROSEMONT MINE access to all the water they will need but what about LOS ANGELES and LAS VEGAS, I thought these U.S. cities got whatever water that was left over and wasn’t sent south to MEXICO and we owe MEXICO water by TREATY. Shall we assume since the mine will not have to pump ground water that its construction on the slopes of the Santa Rita Range is now a slam dunk. Better get used to the idea says Congresswomen Gabbie Giffords. According to Giffords, there has never been a Copper Mine not allowed to be built in ARIZONA because of the 1872 Mining Law, a law written, passed and enacted long before Global Warming

Abandoned due to drought which made farming impossible, fuel scarce and building supplies 50 miles away.

.[/caption] SOUTHWEST DROUGHT ENDS ANASAZI CIVILIZATION … WHAT MAKES SW IMMUNE TODAY ? GB Cornucopia, a park ranger, is taking the two professors from the University of Arizona on a tour of a major climate catastrophe. Here in New Mexico, a civilization grew and thrived for centuries before disappearing in the face of a 50-year drought. “Well, once a lot of people lived here, or at least came here to visit and then they went away, and they have a lot of ideas why, but no one knows for sure,” Jonathan Overpeck explains. “And one of the reasons we think they went away was, in part, because it got dryer. And it got so dry that it was difficult to live here.”This is not as far-fetched as it might seem. The Southwest is in the midst of a drought that started in 1999. And if forecasts of global warming are correct, the region could end up in a drought that’s even longer and more severe than the one that forced the Anasazi to abandon Chaco Canyon .Julie Cole can’t help but see that parallel.”I have often imagined the streets of Tucson or Phoenix as abandoned, and it’s a bit scary,” she says. “You think that the place that’s the center of your region, the biggest city around, could never crumble and fall, and here it has.”Of course, there is more advanced technology now, not only to predict droughts, but to adapt to a changing climate. A permanent drought in the Southwest would surely force some changes in the way people live.