Norm Geras sent me a link to this Guardian article by Matthew Engel. Norm found the article worrying and wondered if I had any thoughts on it. I dismissed the article at the time as "too stupid to waste time with". IMO it isn't particularly useful to do line by line refutation of such a deeply flawed article. To do so one must descend to its level, accept a deeply flawed framework and waste time and energy refuting nonsense and dragging chains of thought to useful frameworks. But it bothered me that I didn't respond well to Norm's inquiry. The previous post on forest management was prompted by errors in that article as is this post on the Salton Sea. It seems more useful to provide good information than to argue with angry politicians.

The article begins with a photo of a dead fish on the salt encrusted shore of the "Salton Sea", with no discussion, counting on ugliness to stand as thoughtful criticism, perhaps implying that something is amiss and that it is primarily George Bush's fault but that the U.S. as a whole is also exposed for its shameful environmental record. Perhaps a little history, geology and ecology will be useful.

The Salton Sea is not a sea. It is an intermittent lake in the Colorado desert of south central California in a formation that geologists call the Salton Trough. It is a low spot in the desert, 235 feet below sea level, that over geologic time has had a stagnant pool of water in it from time to time. The Salton Trough is an ancient part of the Colorado river system. In the past it was a channel of the Colorado River until it silted up and blocked the outlet to the sea.

It is called the "Salton" sea - or lake or basin or trough - since any fresh water that enters the rainless region dissolves salts from the soil and adds to the natural sodium content of the water. The enormous evaporation rate in the heat and dryness of the desert concentrates the salts as the fresh water rapidly disappears into the air. The bed of the "lake" is layered with ancient salts deposited there over the millennia. It was totally dry until 1891 when a natural diversion of a portion of the Colorado river meandered into the area to produce a 6 foot deep but 30 mile long pond. It would soon have evaporated but in 1901 a development company built a canal system designed to bring irrigation water to the Imperial desert. In 1905 a Colorado River flood jumped the banks of the new canal, destroyed the regulating machinery and allowed the full flood of the Colorado river to empty into the Salton Trough for two years until repairs could be effected. By that time 350,000 acres of land had been flooded though evaporation quickly began to reduce that area. Today it has reached an equilibrium between evaporation and replenishment by tail water from irrigation projects in the area, growing ever more saline as the fresh water evaporates.

Developers took advantage of the temporary lake to develop homes as well as farms in the area. It was a rough and ready resort for decades but over time it built up, the waters were stocked with salt water fish (thus the dead fish in the photo), and marinas were built for water craft. It became a profitable sport fishing center and had commercial potential.

Desert wildlife and migratory birds also discovered the new water body and its prodigious production of fishes. The Colorado river delta is part of the same extended ecosystem. As the delta has diminished due to diversion of Colorado River water for cities and agriculture the wildlife has in part shifted to the Salton Trough.

That the shallow "sea" was doomed was obvious to anyone with a glimmer of insight into desert water bodies having neither natural inlets nor outlets. It has steadily become more brackish. The Salton Trough will return to its natural condition as a dry lake bed in the desert. It may take another 100 years to finally disappear completely, but with neither inlet nor outlet there is no realistic alternative. Fresh water is too precious to use for such purposes. The farms in the area are converting from traditional flood irrigation to modern water thrifty drip irrigation or the use of subsurface soak lines, so there will be ever less tail water runoff. Cities are buying the farmer's water for more than it is worth for irrigation.

As the lake shrivels fine sediments are exposed. Desert winds pick up these fine sediments and transport them for long distances creating a health hazard for downwind communities and damaging agricultural land. There are half formed proposals to preserve the temporary lake by extracting salts from the water and adding alum powder to precipitate out nutrients that lead to eutrophication. These proposals would be expensive and fail to address the central problem of diminishing inflows of fresh water to replace evaporation loss, but the consequences of inaction will be expensive too.

There is a real environmental problem here but it isn't what angry leftists like Engel and Meacher claim. The Salton Sea should dry up. The natural cycle of that area for millennia has been occasional overflows and meanders of the Colorado river creating temporary puddles in the Salton Basin which quickly evaporate in the intense desert heat. The real environmental problem is that so much Colorado River water is being used for cities and agriculture that very little reaches the delta with its life giving waters and sediment load. Like river deltas everywhere it is shrinking and drying up. River deltas and estuaries are profoundly productive environments for wildlife providing habitat and breeding grounds for fish, birds, insects, amphibians and mammals..including people. The sediment not only maintains the delta for wildlife, it protects the mainland from storm surge and erosion.

Politicians posing as environmentalists have no true concern for the environment. They want power, assuming that this will allow them to take control and change things somehow though they lack clear understanding of the problems as well as useful policy proposals. The issues they raise and the prescriptions they offer have little to do with effective environmentalism. The result of this is cynicism and fatigue about environmental issues among sensible citizens. The deceits and exaggerations of political pseudo-environmentalists make it more difficult for real environmentalists to be heard and respected. These angry politicians do more to harm the environment than those who oppose environmental regulation. Opposition can be debated and refuted by clear and valid data but the deceits and exaggerations of poseurs turns people off to the subject.

Perhaps a way to understand how politicians posing as environmentalists harm the environment is to consider the narrow mindedness and short sightedness of such angry group thinkers. Virginia Postrel blogged about this recently.

At PopTech, one of those "angry liberals" Arnold Kling wrote about was terribly shocked to discover that I had voted for George Bush in 2000 and that, given the same choice, I'd do so again. He proposed a thought experiment: How many persistent toxins, such as PCBs, would be in the environment a century hence if Bush were president vs. Gore? He didn't like my answer--that on that question, the election results made no difference. The time scales are off. Technological innovation, not environmental regulation, will determine the state of the earth in 100 years.

Understanding the dynamics of technosocial development and evolution allows us to pick our battles, to propose system interventions informed by the knowledge of broad long term progressions. Small interventions consistent with the trajectory of society can deflect the course of events to more desirable outcomes, but even large interventions squander our energies and resources when they attempt to oppose societal trends. We can't control society. We can't even guide it. What we can do is influence society, help it be something that it wants to be. We can make suggestions and offer small assistance to overcome barriers to achievement of what Stuart Kauffman calls the "adjacent possible". Of the many states adjacent to our present state some seem more desirable than others. We can help select from that menu of possible choices but we can't rewrite the menu.

The Arnold Kling article mentioned by Postrel contains some insights and suggestions.

I think that it would be a mistake to react to the current anger of the [angry] left by writing them off or by getting angry in turn. We ought to try as best as we can to discern the ideas of the group-thinkers, even if it means that we have to sift carefully through their rhetorical rubble.

I think that the main consequence of political rage is to shut out other opinions. I would argue that barriers against ideas are to politics what barriers against trade are to economics. An import tariff on goods hurts both countries, but generally does the most damage to the country imposing the tariff. Similarly, when one side puts up barriers to listening to the other side's ideas, then both sides are damaged, with the side that refuses to listen suffering the worst.

The politicized anger of Engel and Meacher is not best opposed by equal and opposite anger. Buried in their rhetorical rubble are ideas to consider to which we can formulate useful responses that serve the true goal of environmental remediation and continuing care.