Dry and down?

The Four Corners of the American Southwest is one of the driest places in the States, and its climate is highly variable.

This has been the situation for millennia. There is significant evidence of periods of high precipitation, but most notably, periods of great drought. The abandonment of what we call cliff dwellings and the large cities and towns in Colorado and New Mexico in the 1200s is often attributed to a century-long super drought.

Today, for close to thirty years, the doomsayers have claimed that the region is again entering into a massive drought. These pronouncements of disaster took on new life in the past few weeks. Local radio stations reported that the immediate Four Corners area (Montezuma CO, San Juan UT, Apache AZ, and San Juan NM) in May 2024 received just 0.025 inches of precipitation: 2 percent of normal.

Thus this Cowpokes cartoon by Ace Reid comes home hard:

Of course, a bit of math reveals the “normal” rainfall isn’t much. For example, Farmington, NM, the largest city in the region, only gets more than 1 inch of moisture in just two months: July and August. The average in most of the area is less than 15 inches a year: some places the normal or average is less than 10 inches. And of course to balance that, there are years when only a couple of inches is given from the skies and other years where 30 or 40 inches falls in some places. The weather and storm patterns are highly variable. In time and space.

And have nothing to do with the modern screams and claims of “manmade global warming” or “manmade global climate change.” Or with past claims of “manmade global cooling” (made in the 1970s). In fact, the extremely low levels of reservoirs in California and on the Colorado River bemoaned in 2022 and 2023 seem to be filling nicely in 2024. Will that continue? We do not know. It is variable!

So what causes it? Solar radiation, for one – and perhaps the major factor. Others include volcanic activity, both locally (that is, in North America) and worldwide. In the Four Corners, annual fluctuations are caused by the well-known El Nino and La Nina weather patterns in the Pacific Ocean. And now and then the remnants of a very powerful hurricane or a really big shift in the jet stream across the continent can result in those changes in weather.

And manmade activity can have a big (but short-term) effect on local weather conditions: dust from farming and construction and particulate emissions from power plants and other industry, for one. Paving and roofing large areas in cities and towns create heat islands together with the associated human activities. Building of vast solar arrays and construction of huge windfarms. Massive timber cutting, overgrazing, allowing noxious species of plants (weeds) to spread uncontrolled. All these can cause problems on a local basis. And the data gathered by poorly conceived research projects from such things are used wrongly to support political claims of manmade global warming.

But back to the Anasazi (currently politically correctly called “Ancestral Puebloan”) culture. Why did it collapse? Was it truly due to a large, decades-long drought? That certainly should and can be considered as a factor. According to archeologists, modern Montezuma County Colorado (2,000 square miles) had an estimated population of 100,000 in the year AD 1100. (That is about the time that Bernard of Clairvaux was writing his still popular hymns and whipping up participation in the Crusades, over in Belgium.) By the 1300s, and into the 1800s, it had an estimated population of 1,000 or less: and not in settled communities, but nomads. (Today it has about 30,000 people, including Ute and anglo “settler” people.)

But archeologists (at least some, often condemned by their fellows) point out that there were many factors: constant warfare, strong evidence of enslavement of whole towns and villages, changes in farming practices, and disruptions in society on every level are indicated in the archeological record. Even signs of cannibalism – not from hunger but from evil actions to dominate and punish – can be seen. (Even if often denied.) There are signs of invasion and the destruction of war. And some ancient tales and legends speak of that. Some point to the incredible evil of the Azteca in central Mexico and point out that trade (and invasion) routes connect the areas.

And point to patterns in Africa centuries later that resemble those in the Southwest and Mexico: massive wars and invasions, destruction of whole societies, slave trading, and more. All of these involve human governments, tyranny, greed, and domination: the lusts of those who would rule others and are parasites on other humans and society.

Can we learn lessons from the past? Absolutely. Will we learn lessons from the past? That is often answered in the negative. We should learn much from the mistakes of our ancestors and the inhabitants of our lands in the past. We should.

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