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204 comments on DrumBeat: April 4, 2007

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Darwinian on April 4, 2007 - 9:17am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

Things are already getting very tough out West. Cities are drying up. Desal plants are restarting. They take a lot of energy, mostly diesel energy. When both the price of water and the price of oil go through the roof, people in the Southwest will be in a world of hurt.

From the New York Times. It requires (free) registration:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/us/04drought.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=...

The scramble for water is driven by the realities of population growth, political pressure and the hard truth that the Colorado River, a 1,400-mile-long silver thread of snowmelt and a lifeline for more than 20 million people in seven states, is providing much less water than it had.

According to some long-term projections, the mountain snows that feed the Colorado River will melt faster and evaporate in greater amounts with rising global temperatures, providing stress to the waterway even without drought. This year, the spring runoff is expected to be about half its long-term average. In only one year of the last seven, 2005, has the runoff been above average.

Ron Patterson

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tate423 on April 4, 2007 - 10:04am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

You beat me to it....but how about this one...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/9e60dd7a-e1fd-11db-af9e-000b5df10621.html

Opportunities for water ­companies are booming around the world because of looming shortages and decades of underinvestment, a conference in Barcelona heard on Tuesday.

China, Saudi Arabia and Algeria, where water shortages have become acute, are placing billions of dollars of contracts out to tender to improve water supplies for their growing populations. The trend is expected to grow, as 40 per cent of the world’s population will suffer water shortages by 2050, according to the United Nations Development Programme. Global warming is expected to exacerbate the problem.

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GreyZone on April 4, 2007 - 11:52am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Most water companies deal with this "problem" by drilling wells as a "solution". But all that does is drain the existing aquifer faster, much like we're doing with some of our oil fields.

Many people don't really know what to expect from climate change but decreasing fresh water availability, coupled with rising temperatures, makes me expect massive desertification. This is what I believe Lovelock sees too, hence his belief that homo sapiens will consist of a "few million breeding pairs" scrounging out a living near the arctic circle by 2100.

Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett

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godraz on April 4, 2007 - 3:19pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

re: water shortage problem solved by well drilling solution, resulting in faster depletion.

In a nut shell, this encapsulates our entire insane 'mop and bucket' mindset toward all our problems!

Rather than making acknowledgment of the impending and collective cliff faces surrounding mankind a matter of supreme public policy reversal (i.e., give our complete and undivided attention to living on less while there is still time & energy), we instead scurry up more mops and buckets which only hasten us closer to the noose tightening cliff.

In all this mop and bucket insanity I am reminded of the natural history museum dioramas depicting pre-historic hunters driving buffalo herds toward and over a cliff. Despite our advanced technological prowess and veneer of sophisticated civilization, we still tend to operate with blunt tactical force toward the problems we confront.

Except now the diorama would depict all of mankind being herded forward closer and closer to the precipice and it is our present day civilization cart with all its insane mops and buckets that is behind this march of doom.

Indeed, what a march of folly we continue to trod.

"It was your skill and your science
That led you astray.
And you thought to yourself,
I am, and there is none but me."
Isaiah 47:10

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12231989 on April 4, 2007 - 8:22pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Well not even the slightest sing of water conservation here in Phoenix peoples grass lawns are as green as ever

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204 comments on DrumBeat: April 4, 2007

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