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Drought denial's tougher to pull off than climate denial.Photo: Luke RobinsonWhere and how will climate change first affect large numbers of American voters? Answering that question may be crucial to the global efforts to protect the Earth's climate. The tsunami of stupidity and science denial that has washed over Washington, D.C., won't be held back by earnest calculations of long-run risks, or by the potential inundation of remote island
nations, or by the news that polar bears and other iconic species are endangered.

While climate change may seem remote, the water crisis in the Southwest is all too immediate. Recent years of drought have reached critical levels, threatening to curtail agriculture and even the normal patterns of urban life throughout the region. Even if today's climate remained
unchanged, water use in Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah would more than double over the next century, just from population and income growth.

In a recent study, Elizabeth Stanton and I show that the changing climate will make a bad situation worse, increasing the Southwest's water consumption by an additional one-third of today's level of use. There is simply no way to get that much water; the region's rivers and rainfall aren't going to grow. Ocean desalination is expensive, energy-intensive, and environmentally controversial. Groundwater, which makes up the water deficit today, is bound to run out at some point; it is being used far beyond its recharge rates in California and Arizona, and probably elsewhere as well. There are two different estimates of California's current groundwater reserves; the state would need three times the more optimistic estimate in order to make it through the next century.

Solving the water crisis will require reductions in water use. Nevada and Utah are the top two states in per capita residential water use today. Extensive conservation and efficiency measures will be needed, reshaping urban water use, improving irrigation methods, and cutting back on the region's lowest-value crops, which are worth less than the water used to grow them.

It gets much harder to solve the water crisis when it gets hotter: We found that climate change could add as much as $1 trillion to the costs of water scarcity for the five Southwestern states over the next century. As Americans start to experience mounting costs of climate change in this and other areas, spending money to reduce carbon emissions will look like a bargain
by comparison.

So here's a message from planet Earth to our newly elected congressional "leaders." You've made it clear that you're not planning to protect the climate because of what's happening to polar bears, or the islands that are sinking beneath the waves, or even because you care about the lives of your great-grandchildren. But you've got to take action anyway; controlling climate
change is crucial if you want people to have reliable water supplies in the Southwest. This isn't the only way that you'll feel the impacts of climate change in years to come -- but it could be the first big one.

The biggest names in the tech industry seem to have collectively decided it's time to make the billions. Sure Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have sold some ads and Foursquare brokered some promotional deals. But with the second wave of IPOs on the horizon and investors' eyeballs getting as round as the tech bubble, the time is nigh for tech demigods to show that they can make money off all those users they've spent years accumulating. And hopefully not alienate them in the process. Today, Mark Zuckerberg inched closer to that dream of a trillion dollars by offering streaming movies — and tanking Netflix's stock. Meanwhile, YouTube closed a deal on a production company presumably to make its very own content. Intel cast a wide net to examine tech companies' latest money-making ventures. Then we looked into our CrystalBall app to see what they might try next.

Facebook

Moneymaker: Warner Bros. just became the first Hollywood studio to stream movies directly on the social network. Facebook has been making a big move toward e-commerce lately, and the fact that you have to use Facebook Credits to buy movies and TV shows could be the tipping point to get users to hand their credit card info over to Mark Zuckerberg. Plus, studios looking for a way to stop Netflix's growth might not make Facebook suffer the same 28-day waiting period for new content.

Downside: At 30 credits (or $3) for a 48-hour rental for The Dark Knight, it will cost you. Plus, you have to "like" the movie or the director to get the privilege. Do you really want hundreds of your Facebook friends to see you "liked" and watched Valentine's Day on Valentine's Day?

What's next: Why should you use a credit card to buy Facebook Credits when you can use Zuckerbills (coming to a U.S. Treasury in 2020)?

Twitter

Moneymaker: In order to make money off its free iPhone app, this weekend Twitter introduced a number of new features, including Quickbar, a "forced trending topics bar" that includes promoted tweets — negating the idea of a service that quickly shows you what's actually trending.

Downside: Pundit John Gruber quickly dubbed the feature "Dickbar" after Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, but Gruber issued the unfortunate nickname on Twitter and it was widely retweeted. Advantage Costolo.

What's next: Can we pay someone to monitor our Twitter feed for us? It's getting overwhelming. Either that or design personalized lists of the best people to follow based on what's important to us, like updates on Libya and breaking bear-cub news.

Foursquare

Moneymaker: At SXSW this week, Foursquare is set to announce a partnership with American Express that will link users' credit cards with their Foursquare accounts. The incentive to consumers? Deals like "spend $5, save $5" at participating merchants. Although Foursquare said its motivation is to increase membership and loyalty and that it won't charge Amex for the privilege, it's hard to believe that will stay the case if it catches on.

Downside: We don't have an Amex card. And (confession) although we use the app for recommendations, we've never actually checked in anywhere. Sorry, Dennis and Naveen! But if they add other credit cards, we would.

What's next: How about a service that warns you beforehand if you're about to friend one of those compulsive people who check in with handfuls of people at name-dropping locales?

YouTube

Moneymaker: YouTube just closed a deal to buy Internet video company Next New Networks, the producers behind Auto-Tune the News, for less than $50 million. Although rumor had it that Google was trying to get into the video-production business, Business Insider reports that the move is actually designed to help existing YouTube partners make "more and better content." Which then leads to more users and, subsequently, more expensive ads.

Downside: Isn't YouTube's strength either grainy weird viral videos or pirated television, movie, and music content? The second could definitely use better quality, but does it even matter for the former?

What's next: How about veering into Hulu territory?

Skype

Moneymaker: Just regular old advertising on the Windows version of its paid video communications service.

Downside: Although Skype says it won't show ads during the video conferencing yet, this could devolve into a Minority Report-style advertising assault.

What's next: Would it be possible to embed microphone/receiver in our brain so we don't have to use the special headset? Just curious.

Update: TechCrunch makes an important clarification. Facebook hasn't announced its own streaming movie service. Rather the movie offering comes from Warner Brothers app that uses Facebook Credits' payment system. But if it proves successful and other studios follow suit, Zuckberg can still count on more personal credit card info coming his way. Someone better go tell Netflix's shareholders.

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