Graham Knopp's Blog

Topics in land use, culture, and nature.

  • Planning and Houston

    copyright Graham Paul Knopp 2026 It’s really difficult to put these two words in the same sentence. Houston is infamous for its lack of urban planning. Now, planning has been a subject of study for some time now, more  than a minute. It became a formal study when I prepared for the American Institute of…

  • Climate Change Update

    It’s late February and the sea surface anomaly map looks like this. Yes, this is starting to get serious. Let’s update a few other maps in this post. Like drought. Here’s the USA, and the much less important (irony alert, just to be sure), rest of the world. Not a great picture, but look at…

  • Commodities and Climate Change, a Simple Question Asked

    Observing the global drought monitor, it appears that much of the world is in drought. International | Drought.gov There are significant parts of Europe, central Asia, Africa, South America, and North America in significant drought (D3 or worse). While the USA drought map shows somewhat improved conditions in recent weeks, particularly in California, the situation…

  • The Ogallala Aquifer and Texas Values

    Have a gander at the GoogleEarth image below, in which the Texas-New Mexico border runs down the middle. The difference in color, due to irrigation for crops, is the important thing here. Texas law permits essentially unregulated groundwater withdrawals while New Mexico law does not permit this. Underlying this area is the Ogallala Aquifer: The…