The Mighty Yangtze Humbled

Asia’s longest river, the Yangtze, has fallen to its lowest level in 142 years. Prolonged drought is blamed for the drop which has disrupted drinking supplies, stranded ships and imperilled already endangered species of marine life. Fron the Sydney Morning Herald:

The scale of the problem was revealed by the Yangtze Water Resources Commission in a report on the Xinhua news agency’s website. It said that the Hankou hydrological centre near Wuhan city found the river’s depth had fallen to its lowest level in 142 years.

The measurement confirmed fears raised in recent weeks by the appearance of islands and mudflats not normally seen at this time of year. Local farmers reported far more ships than usual being trapped in unnavigable shallow waters.

Jianli county is among the areas suffering water shortages. Officials say the problem has grown worse in the past 10 years, raising concerns of a link to climate change.

“Before 1996, we were short of water for three months of the year, but now there are only three months when we can use water as normal,” Wu Chunping, the vice-manager of Jianli county’s water utility, said

Along the endangered animals likely to be affected are the finless porpoise and the Chinese sturgeon, which returns to the sea at this time of year.

With the Yangtze three times as crowded with traffic as the Mississippi, conservationists fear the animals will be torn up by boat propellers or contaminated by more concentrated pollution from the 9000 chemical plants along the Yangtze.

 

Defending the Great Lakes

U.S. environmentalists are calling for stronger laws to defend the Great Lakes against demands for fresh water from the drought-striken southern states. From the Buffalo News:

“The Great Lakes are facing the one-two punch of global warming and water diversion,” said Noah Hall, an environmental law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit and a co-author of the report. “We have known for many years that existing laws are inadequate to protect the Great Lakes from diversions and overuse. Now we know that climate change is certain to put additional stress and pressure on the Great Lakes.”

The National Wildlife Foundation published the report, with the backing of Environmental Advocates of New York and five other environmental groups from across the Great Lakes states.

In some ways, Lake Erie, because it’s a very shallow lake, is facing a bigger problem,” Hall said. “This could really change the surface area and the shoreline.”

More shoreline will be exposed, thereby making current lakefront properties less attractive, the report said. In addition, docks and marinas may have to be relocated, and ships may have to reduce the amount of cargo they carry to avoid scraping bottom.

And that would be just the beginning of the region’s problems. Noting that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democratic presidential candidate, recently suggested a national water policy — and said “Wisconsin is awash in water” — environmentalists fear that the parched Southwest and South could try to divert water from the Great Lakes.

Great Lakes states have a chance to prevent that by ratifying — and getting Congress to ratify — the Great Lakes Compact as soon as possible, environmentalists said.

The proposed compact is an eight-state agreement that would call for joint management of the Great Lakes. The deal also would ban new or increased water diversions either within the Great Lakes basin or to other parts of the country.

If you think this problem is overblown, take some time to look through southern papers such as the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Then head west and check out some papers from Nevada and Arizona. There’s a very serious drought going on down there and that’s coupled with enormous population growth over the past two decades. Something has to give.

 

Forget Global Warming, Global Drying Will Get Here First

The thing about global warming is that we’re told the real consequences won’t arrive for several decades at least, possibly even centuries. Whew! I’ll be long gone by then. Don’t worry, be happy – unless you live in one of the many spots around the world that have fallen strangely dry, and arid.

You see, long before the polar ice caps melt into the seas, maybe even before you get you start decorating next year’s Easter Eggs, you’ll be hearing a lot about what I like to call Global Drying. It’s a craze that’s positively sweeping the American south and it’s the hottest thing in the eastern Mediterranean, southern Europe, Australia, big hunks of Africa, parts of Mexico and all sorts of other places.

Drought is here, and it’s there, and over there too. But, until this year, it was often out of sight/out of mind. That, friends, is coming to an end.

Atlanta, Georgia is a booming metropolis of more than four million people and it’s currently beset by drought. Take a look at the map above. See if you can locate Atlanta. What colour is that anyway?

Now that map shows you how the droughts affecting the US are expected to develop into February of next year. February is going to be a key month for the good folks of Atlanta – it’s the month in which that city is expected to run out of water.

Interesting question – what do you do with more than four million people who find themselves without water? If you’re Governor Sonny Perdue, the answer is obvious – you get down on bended knee and pray to Jesus for help. And that, sad as it may be, is about the best idea Sonny has come up with.

Now I’m sure there are answers to Atlanta’s problems but, like most of these things, implementing them takes time and Atlanta appears to be as short on time as it is on water. For FEMA, Atlanta may make Katrina look like child’s play. Atlanta isn’t an isolated case. The drought spreads (as the map shows) across an entire, densely populated region and there’s another one much like it now besetting the southwest and a developing drought along the states in between.

Scientists are now beginning to whisper the word “megadrought.” Until very recently, most drought studies barely went back more than a century or two. However that’s changing and we’re now looking back, 1200-years and more. Can you say “oopsie”?

We’ve all heard of the Dirty Thirties and the seven-year drought that afflicted the prairie grasslands. What you probably haven’t heard about are the 60-year droughts or the one that ran in North America from AD 900-1300, a full 400-years.

It’s been less than 200-years since we really began filling up the US and Canada and less than a century since we created the “hydraulic society” that allowed the southwest to be populated thanks to massive government water projects. What we didn’t understand at the time was that those regions, the Great Plains included, were enjoying an unusually wet period. We assumed there would be a reliable source of adequate amounts of precipitation that we could harness to let people live in deserts, complete with manicured lawns, artificial lakes and golf courses.

Even at our most optimistic moment, the illusion was never sustainable. We managed to empty the High Plains aquifer by more than a hundred feet. The once mighty Colorado River no longer flows into Mexico. We’ve sucked these things almost dry – just in time for the arrival of what might be a severe, multi-year drought.

So, keep an eye on the ice packs and the polar bears and the vanishing glaciers. These things are important. But, if your relatives from Atlanta call to tell you they’re coming for a visit, they might just be staying for a while.