Tim this looks a little like nit-picking, which can easily be misinterpreted as discrediting Scott's general evaluation of things. The question is whether or not you agree with his general prognosis, which seems to me to be very reasonably that as the planet warms, the proportion of water residing in air has to go up, thus removing it from land, and evidence of this we are seeing by the water levels in rivers going down.
It has to be connected also with flooding in other areas like Pakistan, where they seem to have been dumped by water logically lost from elsewhere, why not the US.
All of it can be explained by global warming, which we have to admit really exists, and is a non-linear phenomenon, relative to temperature because it results from greenhouse effects which increase, due to its own action.
This logically will turn into the "brick wall" Scott mentions, in only a few years, it is a snowball effect hyperobject, which unchecked, will become unmanageable.
My own system analysis stories indicate this is a symptom of the deeper problem of what I call the grand Energy Ponzi, of all power used by humanity being from finite extracted stores, which are all kinds of energy from Earth.
Being a hyperobject, we have to expect that every attempt to try to estimate timescales will continue to fall short, as we've seen. The actual point at which we will be too late is almost impossible to predict, but we are not there yet, as far as I can see.
Because this is a physical problem, which directly also impacts economy, by way of inflation, there will come a point when we are economically too late, to make the changes needed to infrastructure, namely conversion to community based solar-hydrogen,
That seeems to have been demonstrated already by Sri Lanka, they are now having to accept "Rescue money", in the form of IMF loans trapping them into yet more energy by extraction, so actually is no fix. Only donated money can help them, according to my analyses.
If we wish to avoid becoming the same in all Western "Developed" countries, we need to bite the bullet, and pre-empt the outcome of being too far gone, to change direction.
The change in direction needed, as far as my analyses indicate, is issue of money reflecting solar product put to use. It can't be solved by further issue of money-as-debt, which just entrenches us deeper in the problem, accelerating us to being ever deeper buried in the brick wall, when we hit it.
Because of the economic effects, no-one, no matter how rich they might be, the economic effects of devaluation of all money and capital will leave no-one out.
For me, it looks like only a matter of time now until those in control have to accept this. But whether that will be too late or not, is anyone's guess.
Hence why folk like evidently Scott, and I, write about it in Medium, to try to bring that to folk's attention, sooner rather than later.
It is all the same issue, depletion of survivability of energy extracted from Earth.