Scientists sometimes refer to the effect a hotter world will have on this country’s fresh water as the other water problem, because global warming more commonly evokes the specter of rising oceans submerging our great coastal cities. By comparison, the steady decrease in mountain snowpack ”” the loss of the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that melts each spring to provide the American West with most of its water ”” seems to be a more modest worry. But not all researchers agree with this ranking of dangers. Last May, for instance, Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the United States government’s pre-eminent research facilities, remarked that diminished supplies of fresh water might prove a far more serious problem than slowly rising seas. When I met with Chu last summer in Berkeley, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which provides most of the water for Northern California, was at its lowest level in 20 years. Chu noted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. “There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.”
Yet a friend of mine in Colorado said last year they had the earliest and latest snowfalls ever, and in record amounts.
Another friend of mine, also in colorado, said they are currently having the first snowfall of the year, with heavy winter condition warnings.
ON THE OTHER HAND, north Georgia is exeriencing the worst drought in a long time, due, in part, to the lack of tropical storm rains.
This is a delightful article about the fragile web of man-made changes to the landscape that permit the support of literally millions more people than should be able to live in our “Western Deserts.”
Although the article makes a (weak) attempt to connect these water shortages to more than cyclically poor rainfall and exploding populations and usage (like human-induced climate change), the money quote was a thousand year map of rainfall pulled from tree rings and the geological record which showed droughts lasting 60 years OR MORE were evident in the record from long before the time Industrialization showed up. Specifically mentioned was one that covered the mid 12th century that if repeated, would prove catastrophic today.
KTF!…mrb
I have this article waiting to read..but it seems to me that we are facing a disaster caused mostly by our appetites. I was in the Pheonix area a couple of years ago, and a ranger from the Park Service, worrying aloud about the declining diversity in fauna due to reduced groundwater supplies, but it simply:
“Green, manicured golf courses do not occur naturally in the desert.”
Good point BCP28 (wish I had thought up THAT handle, BTW!), in the article you will see much made of how potable water has become in some areas a commodity for the highest bidder, thus Las Vegas, with over 1.8M people living in the middle of a desert, is throwing wads of money at water-creating projects for the future and is not nearly as worried about running dry as states like Az, UT, or CO.
Golf courses keep the money flowing! So that’s why they won’t be going away any time soon….
KTF!…mrb
Yeah, my dad tells me much the same thing, in West Palm Beach, they have periodic water restrictions: can’t wash the car, can’t water the lawn, etc. But the golf courses have the sprinklers going both in the evening and in the mornings.
Water issues are one of the reasons that many people, mostly in No. Calif., think that the state should be divided in two. Most of the water is in the north.
This quote is fairly sobering:
“A crisis is an interesting thing,†he said. In his view, a crisis is a point in a story, a moment in a narrative, that presents an opportunity for characters to think their way through a problem. A catastrophe, on the other hand, is something different: it is one of several possible outcomes that follow from a crisis.
Disasters are so humbling. Climatic changes have brought about the decline of civilizations and caused major shifts in political power. See “Africa in the Days of Noah” here: http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2007/10/africa-in-days-of-noah.html
Of course it is not to be mentioned that the previous year was one of the wettest in N. Cal. that we’ve had this decade. ’05-’06 we had 54″ at our place.
Ann,
sshhhh! You are not supposed to interject logic into a discussion on climate change. Shame on you!
I heard a weather expert say something that made me say “HUH???” yesterday:
The reason we haven’t had a large number of hurricanes was because of the La Niña effect changing the steering currents and producing drier air.
However at the beginning of this hurricane season, the reports were:
Last year was so non-productive in regards to hurricanes because of the el Niño effect. But this is usually followed by the la Niña system WHICH PRODUCES A WETTER, MORE CONDUCIVE ENVIRONMENT FOR HURRICANE DEVELOPMENT.
Ok, so which is right: La Niña produces more, stronger hurricanes or la Niña prevents their development?