The Colorado River
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources issued a bulletin recently saying that “systems within Wisconsin may be susceptible to connections from malicious cyber actors.”
They noted that it has not yet been confirmed that their systems have been compromised by Iran but are concerned that they might be susceptible.
“This leads us to believe that the cyber threat is ongoing in Wisconsin and requires immediate action to prevent potentially serious impacts to our systems,” a bulletin said.
Wisconsin said that Minnesota had reported that hackers had managed to lower pressures in water systems. Minnesota denied having said anything of the sort: “Minnesota has not reported that threat actors lowered pressure across multiple water systems or that pressure changes prompted a law enforcement response,” said a spokesperson.
Just in case, federal agencies advised states to isolate their PLC’s behind secure gateways and firewalls. Minnesota’s state IT agency disclosed that at least 30 community water systems in the state had been breached in what it described as a “coordinated attack,” but it did not name Iran as the perpetrator.
Programable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are lightweight computers that used streamlined operating systems to control machinery or factory processes. If they were alive, they might be compared to the ‘brains’ in each arm of an octopus – they run certain limited systems but there is a larger brain controlling them.
Unless they are hacked.
Then their compulsion to obey orders can lead to some nasty results.
That is what is alleged to be happening in new attacks on water systems in seven states.
Iranian hackers claimed last month to have targeted water systems in California in what they said was a response to U.S. missile strikes that damaged water facilities in Iran.
Trump, oddly enough, did not blame Iran. He blamed Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Walz had run against with Kamala Harris in the 2024 campaign
“I blame it on Minnesota because they are grossly incompetent,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting, adding that Walz is “corrupt” and “Iran has bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota.” Asked later if he could rule out Iranian responsibility, Trump said, “ I don’t think there was an Iranian cyberattack. I think Minnesota ought to get its act together.”
It’s always comforting to get a technical read from the man who thinks we can fight wildfires by turning on a spigot in California.
And exactly why Minnesota would attack its own water supply was never explained.
But in a sense, all the American states have been attacking their water supplies for decades.
America is drying out.
And it has done this to itself.
An illustration of the “great drying” can be found in the Colorado River system.
Lake Mead lost 6 feet in the 30 days prior and the rate is accelerating. In just the past week, Lake Mead has lost almost a full foot. At that rate, it will lose 30 more feet before the end of August.
Google Earth, 1985 and 2026:
Together with Lake Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the United States have fallen to their lowest combined storage levels since 1957, when Lake Powell was first being filled. Lake Mead is at 27% of capacity; Lake Powell at 23%.
People in the west have been shouting about this for decades, but have not managed to get together on a plan.
And all major US rivers are in large decline.
Europe is also burning.
And as most Americans are aware, Canada has been suffering a bout of forest fires, with smoke drifting down south.
Trump jumped in with a solution:
The driver of this global dry-spell is of course climate change, and just in case there are still any hold-outs from the theory that it exists, please glance at this chart:
Climate change is wrought mostly by the rise in CO2 levels, which heat the Earth.
One country in particular has been the major contributor to the rise of CO2: the United States.
So when I see Trump telling Canada to keep its smoke on its own side of the border, I confess I go a bit bat-spit crazy.
I quote Paul Klugman: “Wildfires have been raging in Canada’s boreal forest, which covers 2 million square miles — the majority of Canada’s land area — and is mostly unmanaged because it’s completely inaccessible. Blaming Canada for not controlling fires that are, in reality, largely a consequence of global warming is unutterably idiotic.”
Do I think that the Earth is doomed?
Not at all. Changes are making a difference. Climate TRACE reported that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the month of May 2026 totaled 5.0 billion tonnes CO₂e. This represents a decrease of 0.1% vs. May 2025. We seem to have hit a peak, and are now stalled or perhaps heading down. Climate researcher Nabil Swedan says that “None of these climate dimensions will cause the end of human civilization.” Either way, good news.
And the best news is that people are switching to renewable energy. In the developing world, Pakistan is a brilliant success story. Faced with constant electricity blackouts and a failing grid, people in Pakistan took matters into their own hands. The result is a lesson for the rest of the world. There was no national rooftop scheme. No feed-in tariff. People just did it. By last summer solar had become Pakistan’s single largest source of electricity. People will lead themselves.
The world added a record 692 GW of renewable energy capacity in 2025, more than the entire power capacity of India, marking the fastest renewable energy expansion ever recorded and bringing renewables to nearly half of global installed electricity capacity.
As a result, in the past hundred years there has been a spectacular rebound of forests in places like the northeast U.S. It is “the greatest forest recovery in the history of the world, and it all happened because of benign neglect.” Forested areas are 3 or 4 degrees cooler.
This is international. Italy is now, for example, effectively a forest nation. Wooded areas have surpassed 100,000 square kilometers in extent and cover more than a third of the national territory. Waters are rising in Africa’s Sahel. Not everything is gloom.
We are doing all that without losing an improvement in global economies:
This comes about because the higher the degree of technology we put into our products, the less material we use making them. Most modern products use less mass than they did earlier due to computer-aided design, advanced lightweight materials, and digital convergence. This general trend is known as dematerialization. A standard desk phone when I was growing up weighed about 4 pounds. A cell phone today weighs half-a-pound – and you can watch video on it.
And the share of the world population living in poverty has diminished from 79% in 1820 to about 9% today.
It’s hard for doomers to explain why life was better in the past when 79% of people lived in poverty and a small cut would kill you.
How does all this help the Colorado River?
The largest renewable energy infrastructure project in U.S. history has now become fully operational.
SunZia can generate and deliver more power than the Hoover Dam and supply affordable, reliable energy to the western United States.
The 3,650-megawatt (MW) wind project and 550-mile high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line that comprise SunZia are generating and delivering affordable, American-made energy from New Mexico to Arizona and to customers across the western grid.
Hunter Armistead, CEO of the project builder Pattern Energy, said “We did this the right way, we did it on time and on budget – in genuine partnership with the local communities and landowners who trusted us, with the environmental stewardship this unique landscape deserves…”
A clean and sustainable future awaits.
If we act now, we can level off climate warming and even reduce temperatures if we take aggressive acton.
There are bumps on the road. Wealth inequality actually drives climate change; the rich see no reason to slow down their assault on our resources. Political priorities are more concerned with obtaining oil from abroad than with eliminating the need for it at home. The AI construction trend is a complete waste of resources, in the name of profit (more in another rant).
But I’m not telling you anything new. Get out and vote in November.
We need a complete political re-haul to save rivers like the Colorado. It will likely never completely “fill up” to its historical high marks again under current climate and usage patterns. Decades of careful restraint will be needed, with mandatory water use cuts, better agricultural efficiency, and flexible federal management plans. If next year is very wet, similar to Water Year 2023, the Basin’s largest federal reservoirs would recover somewhat, but would provide only about two years of cushion before we find ourselves again in the same position we are in today, unless consumption decreases further.
Can we hold on until nature sends help?
I’m betting ‘yes’.
But it won’t happen if we are diverted to blame Iran for water alarms.
Or Canada for blowing smoke.
Someone is blowing smoke, but it’s not your friends north of the border!
We too are looking forward to seeing Trump as a museum relic.
Can’t happen fast enough.
We have a transformation coming.
The International Space Station soars over Stonehenge.
100 years ago, our great-grandparents thought airplanes were a miracle.
Now you can fly from Australia to France non-stop in 24 hours; you can scroll across pictures of the surface of Mars on your cell phone.
And one of the things that keeps me optimistic, are the responses from readers of this Substack and other social media.
People are wonderful. All the stories are powerful.
Keep going – be the river that never dries!
Thank you for being there.
Thank you for following Barry’s Substack, focusing on the meaning behind the headlines. A regular summary of a topical book will provide more depth to enable full subscribers to stay ahead of the conversation.
In the coming weeks we will look at WHAT IF THE PRESIDENT IS AN IDIOT – Trump, power and the death of serious politics – How a reality show became a presidency.
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