Top all-time · #10230
John Fleck
Personal blog · inkstain.net/flecksciencepolitics
John Fleck writes jfleck at inkstain, a personal blog at inkstain.net about science and politics. Since 2018, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 10 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link John Fleck's posts on Western US water, including the Colorado River, drought, and rainwater, and on the history of climate science. Commenters cite them as background reading.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A few thoughts from John Fleck, a writer of journalism and other things, living in New Mexico
Most-linked posts?
- /fleck/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-04-01
What Hacker News says?
There were never great fears of a new ice age in the 60s/70s. > This distinction can be made because a serious review of the literature shows that there was no such “scientific verity”. There are anecdotes that can be plucked from the record, primarily from the popular media. But a rigorous review by Tom Peterson and William Connolley (with some minor help from myself) shows that, even as the planet was in a short t…
Comment linking /fleck/2008/02/global-cooling-the-underlying-problem/
on “Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money”Submitted For the first time in four decades, the Rio Grande through Albuquerque is dry as a story · 107 points
HN discussion> They simply didn't understand this in 1922 The scientists (various disciplines did). They were explicitly ignored by the compact negotiators. John Fleck has written about this quite a bit at https://www.inkstain.net/fleck/
Comment linking /fleck/
on “Why don't we use awnings anymore (2022)”Submitted Simon Rifkind's great mistake and the shortfall on the Colorado River (2013) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe CRT was established after an atypically wet cycle, by people who were decidedly incurious about long term precipitation patterns. http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/2022/01/a-lack-of-curiosity-ab... We would barely have to cut agricultural use in order to completely cover the water needs of doubling the entire population of the US southwest. Yes, surface and ground water sources are "stressed", but residential use is…
Comment linking /fleck/2022/01/a-lack-of-curiosity-about-the-colorado-rivers-flow-100-years-ago-in-compact-negotiations/
on “Rare ‘triple’ La Niña climate event looks likely”Submitted Tipping Point: Colorado River Reckoning as a story · 1 points
HN discussionNative New Mexican here. Rainwater collection is more nuanced than this article suggests. Water that runs off a roof of a building isn't "wasted." It typically drains into an aquifer or a river. This is well-known in Tucson, a city that pumped so much groundwater that the Santa Cruz river dried up decades ago. [1] There are also legal ramifications. In New Mexico, it's not clear whether rainwater collection is legal…
Comment linking /fleck/2011/07/rainwater-harvesting-in-new-mexico/
on “In Tucson, subsidies for rainwater harvesting produce big payoff”Fixed link is http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/
Comment linking /fleck/
on “Arizona’s dry future begins as Colorado River shrinks”More reading suggestions from Jeff Fleck's article "If you read two books about the West’s water problems, one of them probably shouldn’t be Cadillac Desert." http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/2015/07/if-you-read-two-books-...
Comment linking /fleck/2015/07/if-you-read-two-books-about-the-wests-water-problems-one-of-them-probably-shouldnt-be-cadillac-desert/
on “Arizona’s dry future begins as Colorado River shrinks”Maybe you could read some of the original sources instead of putting out a bunch of "Just sayin'" questions into the world. Your questions are all answered in the original sources, at least once you've got enough background to read and understand their contents. If you can't handle original sources, then the next best thing is probably to read Jeff Fleck, either one of his books such as "Science Be Dammed (How Ignor…
Comment linking /fleck/
on “An unsolved math problem on the Colorado River”