>----------
>From: blh@hydrosphere.com[SMTP:blh@hydrosphere.com]
>Sent: Friday, September 26, 1997 3:47 AM
>To: gcboaters@songbird.com
>Subject: Re: Crystalling
>
>On 25 Sep 97 at 17:10, Kent Crispin wrote:
>
>> -- it's hard to make meaningful predictions about human
>> values 100 years from now.
>
>A one-hundred-year event has a 1% chance of occurring in any
>year. No need to wait 'til 2067. As Earl points out, our
>experience is short. The recent floods in Fort Collins,
>Colorado overwhelmed facilities reportedly designed against the
>100-year event. The instant the floods occurred, though, the
>"100-year event" was demoted and replaced with a new, more
>severe one.
>
>Working strictly with the statistics of Lee Ferry flows, we
>have synthesized 1400 years of inflows for the Colorado River
>system. In that 1400-year sequence, we found one _extreme_
>event with an annual flow of 60-70 maf (I can't recall
>exactly). That's the 1400-year event, based on roughly 70
>years of record. Industrial-strength extrapolation and perhaps
>lacking a physical basis. A doozy, nevertheless.
>
>One of the less-appreciated effects of climate warming (whether
>anthropic or natural) is an increased frequency of extreme
>precipitation events. This is because a warmer atmosphere can
>hold more water vapor, which in turn stores energy. Just like
>building bigger dynamite warehouses increases the frequency of
>bigger booms, more severe storms should result from a warmer
>climate.
>
>> In practical terms, what this means is that truly unrunnable
>> rapids wil develop, which further implies either 1) human
>> intervention to open them up (explosives), or 2) the river will
>> be closed to all boats that can't be portaged. Number 1) is at
>> this point unlikely,
>
>In about '76 or '77 I was at the Interagency Whitewater
>Committee meeting, a confab was held annually for all federal
>river managers and at the same time and the same place as the
>annual Western River Guides Association meeting. It was
>winter, maybe January, and word came back that a science trip
>had encountered a rock fall in the 20's (Tiger Wash, maybe) and
>that it was impassable to outriggers. Discussions of "human
>intervention" followed.
>
>Ben
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