By Wayne Lusvardi

The word arid has two meanings: insufficient rainfall to grow trees or dull and boring.  The second meaning seems to characterize the level of intelligence that’s on display in the recent media water war that has broken out between the major newspapers in Los Angeles and Phoenix.

This e-water war was provoked by William deBuys’ op-ed article in the March 14 Los Angeles Times, “Phoenix’s Too Hot Future.” The Phoenix-based Arizona Republic newspaper retorted on March 15 with an editorial, “Los Angeles More of a Water Vacuum than Phoenix.”

DeBuys is the author of the book: “A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest.” He is a Ph.D.-holding environmentalist who lives on a farm in New Mexico.  His book adds to the growing number of recent gloom-and-doom books on water that give predisposed pessimistic and fearful readers what they want to hear.  But deBuys’ provocative article is meant to set back the real progress that has been made between California and Arizona in its longstanding war over Colorado River water.

This is why deBuys inserts into a discussion of water references to the culture war between California and Arizona over the controversial topic of immigration and contentious Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.  Many of the online commenters take their cues from deBuys’ provocations and aim emotional potshots at each other without gaining any new information on the water issues between the two states.

Author won’t let facts, history get in way

DeBuys charges that Phoenix is creating too much global warming that will suck water out of the Colorado River, leading to hydroelectric power shortages and Katrina-like natural disasters.  DeBuys claims that Phoenix’s high-profile dust storms are caused by its contribution to climate change.

But it is deBuys’ total omission of the history of the Colorado River Compact and the famous California vs. Arizona U.S. Supreme Court case that makes his argument arid.  If it weren’t for the obstreperous W.S. Norviel of Arizona, California and the other Lower Basin states in the Colorado River Compact that was finalized in 1944 probably would not have been allocated half of the river’s available water.  And if Arizona had not shorted itself of its full entitlement of water over the past few decades, California would have been shorted of bonus water.  But deBuys prefers to use clichés that incite resentment and reverses the historical record: “If cities were stocks, you’d want to short Phoenix.”

Now that Phoenix is taking its full river water allotment by building the Central Arizona Project, California is finally the state this is shorted.  This is why California is proposing to spend up to $39 billion to shift from depending on Colorado River water to tapping wet year water surpluses from the Sacramento Delta. California has been living off the good graces of unused Arizona water surpluses for decades. Now Phoenix has decided to put its water surplus into sustainable water banks. But deBuys charges that it is Phoenix — not Los Angeles — that is unsustainable.

No, Phoenixians aren’t on the brink of frying

DeBuys also is scientifically challenged. He contends that the urban heat island effect from the paving of the Arizona desert will fry Phoenixians.  As Stanford University climatologist Mark Jacobson has pointed out, combating warming near the ground surface will result in the dreaded inversion layer that traps air pollution.  Jacobson states that efforts to reduce global warming would be a “public health disaster waiting to happen.”

In other words, if there is going to be a Katrina-like disaster in Phoenix, it is likely to be caused by efforts to combat global warming.  So much for deBuys’ fear-mongering.

The entire federal water storage and hydraulic conveyance system in the Southwest was put into place precisely to lessen the natural droughts caused by “climate change.”  By building a regional water works system spreading over several states and watersheds, local droughts could be overcome and urban civilization could thrive in arid areas.  The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation were 100 years ahead of the negative environmental prophets of today in building a sustainable water system that would withstand “climate change.”

If you want an informed discussion about water shortages and climate change, avoid the false pop prophets of water decline and catastrophe.

By Wayne Lusvardi

A piece of legislation may end up putting Gov. Jerry Brown on the global warming “denier” hot seat.  It’s AB 296, the Cool Pavements Research and Implementation Act,  sponsored by Assembly Member Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley. That is because if Brown signs the bill into law he will have to “deny” accepted global warming science about how inversion layers create smog.

Skinner’s bill would develop definitions, draw up new building codes and allocate $2 million for research and pilot projects to use cooler paving materials on freeways and highways to reduce “global warming” and the local “urban heat island effect.” An “urban heat island effect” is created when soil and vegetation is replaced with impervious paved roads, sidewalks and buildings.

But the proverbial “rubber meets the road” when it comes to the lack of a scientific basis for legally adopting cool road pavement standards.

Cool Pavement Would Be Health Disaster, Says Professor

Mark Jacobson, professor in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, says switching to cooler — and thus lighter colored — road-paving materials to reduce global warming would be a “public health disaster waiting to happen.” He said it is very well known in environmental science that “pollutants would hug the ground surface” if hardened road surfaces were cooler.

According to Jacobson, cooler and lighter-colored road pavement would cause colder and thus more stationary air near the ground surface.  In turn, this would reduce cloudiness and allow more sunlight to reach the ground surface.  Jacobson used the analogy of hot air rising in a room.  He said it would be very difficult to push air upward if it were cooler than hot air above.

Cooler ground surface air would result in the creation of an “inversion layer” that traps pollutants in what we call smog.  To prevent smog, heat and moisture must be allowed to rise to form clouds.

Jacobson further said that any lighter-colored road surface would probably only last a few days until particulate matter from diesel-fueled vehicles and soot from rubber tires darkened the road surface.

Another problem raised by Jacobson was that cooler road paving would only theoretically work better in the summer.  But the extra heating costs in the winter would outweigh those theoretical summer benefits, according to a study done at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Jacobson is an atmospheric scientist.  His research indicates the urban heat island effect is a relatively minor contributor to warming compared to greenhouse gases and particulate black carbon. Jacobson’s research showed that white roofs caused greater net global warming because they resulted in creating an inversion layer.

But Skinner’s cool pavements bill continues to roll toward adoption regardless of a lack of any sound basis in global warming science or health science.

Cool Pavements Bill Steamrolled Through Legislature

AB 296 would require the California Environmental Protection Agency first to define the term “Urban Heat Island Effect” and develop a standard specification for “sustainable or cool pavements.”

Upon the completion of the definition of “urban heat island effect,” Caltrans would be required to develop a standard specification for cool pavements for freeway and highway construction to reduce the “urban heat island effect.”

AB 296 was first introduced in the  Assembly on Feb. 9, 2011.  It was approved in the Assembly on June 1, 2011 along straight Democratic Party lines, 54 to 21 and advanced to the Senate.  It was passed by the State Senate on Aug. 29, 2012 and now goes to the governor for signature.

Will Brown Join the “Denier” Club?  

AB 296 will now be forwarded to California’s most environmentally activist governor for signature.  This is ironic because AB 296 has no known basis in accepted atmospheric science and would result in greater warming and air pollution.  The resulting greater air pollution would be hard to deny as an unanticipated consequence because it is certainly foreseeable.

Repeatedly, Brown has declared that science is on his side in the contentious debate over global warming.  Recently, he has called global warming skeptics “deniers” of accepted science.  But accepted atmospheric science about how inversion layers create urban air pollution does not support the Democratic Party’s legislation for cool pavements.  In fact, cooler road pavement will result in the reverse effect — greater global and local warming.

Brown has painted himself into a corner of a hot paved road with a diesel truck headed in his direction with his “denier” rhetoric about global warming skeptics.  If Brown approves AB 296, he will join the ranks of those “global warming deniers.”