Problem

A coal-fired power station in Mount Storm, W.Va., in January. The coal industry played an instrumental role in efforts to unwind the Obama administration’s climate policies. Credit Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

nytimes.com - by Coral Davenport and Eric Lipton - June 3, 2017

The Republican Party’s fast journey from debating how to combat human-caused climate change to arguing that it does not exist is a story of big political money, Democratic hubris in the Obama years and a partisan chasm that grew over nine years like a crack in the Antarctic shelf, favoring extreme positions and uncompromising rhetoric over cooperation and conciliation . . .

<In 2008 Senator John McCain, who had just secured the Republican nomination for President, sounded the alarm on global warming.>

 . . . Since Mr. McCain ran for president on climate credentials that were stronger than his opponent Barack Obama’s, the scientific evidence linking greenhouse gases from fossil fuels to the dangerous warming of the planet has grown stronger.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

#Evacuations Ordered; #OrovilleDam Spillway #Collapse Imminent . . . https://t.co/1IiDlPdyDz

— Kathy Gilbeaux (@GilboKat) February 13, 2017

A firefighter hosed down burning pipes on Saturday near Santa Clarita, Calif. David McNew/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

nytimes.com - by Nick Strayer - July 25, 2016

As a large fire forced evacuations this week near Los Angeles, experts pointed out that wildfires in the United States are now more destructive and dangerous than ever.  The sharp increase in fire damage has been attributed to the warming climate, fire-management tactics and the nonstop construction of homes in fire-prone areas.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Vegetation grows between boat docks at the now defunct Echo Bay Marina in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Thursday, May 19, 2016, near Las Vegas. Lake Mead's surface was at its lowest level Wednesday since the reservoir was created.
(AP Photo/John Locher)

Lake Mead's drop to an all-time low is another sign that solutions to the West's prolonged drought may involve creative approaches to water allocation and conservation.

csmonitor.com - by Lucy Schouten - May 21, 2016

Extended droughts has shrunk the country's largest reservoir to an all-time low, and leaders in the West's water planning say the area's water users must shift how they view their most valuable resource.

“California and the rest of the West are now at a point where they really can’t dismiss ideas that once would have been considered downright silly,” Rich Golb, former president of the Northern California Water Association, and now a Vancouver-based water consultant for PacificComm, LLC, told The Christian Science Monitor. 

Lake Mead, hemmed in by the Hoover Dam, is the largest manmade reservoir in the United States and supplies water to California, Nevada, and Arizona, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.