Swollen rivers flooded parts of the central United States on Friday and threatened to engulf a major interstate highway in Missouri, after violent rainstorms caused at least 16 deaths, according to reports on Friday.So which is it? Are we running out of water or is there so much of the damn stuff we're drowning?
The truth is, of course, the amount of water in the world is the same as it's always been. The oceans, the water aloft and the icecaps; all there. The rain will continue, the rivers will flow, the snow will fall. No matter what the loony environmentalists have to say, and no matter how long they say it, the cycle will continue.
Indeed, it is raining here in Grand Forks at the moment; what a surprise.
Update
There has been so much derision, criticism and even vitriol poured on this post, I thought I'd ask an expert. The one I chose was Garry Clarke, Professor Emeritus Glaciology at the University of British Columbia. I asked him March 31, 2009 what he thought of my post. Here is his reply in full:
What you say about the total amount of water on Earth not varying much with time is, of course, true but it is not true that the areal pattern of precipitation or the timing and rate of delivery remain more-or-less constant. So, for example, climate change would affect the patterns, timing and rates in ways that would not necessarily be advantageous. In western Canada the prairies were anomalously wet for much of the 20th century and it would be risky to imagine that this represented the new normal.Well, that's fair. He agrees with me that a) the total amount of water on earth doesn't vary much. Secondly, b) he says the amount of available water will vary and that this may not be advantageous and third, c) he says my observation about rain and floods is 'incidental'.
However I think the "world running out of water" statement is more concerned with supply and demand than with whether the available water is the constancy of available water. Thus I think your points about floods in the USA and rain in Grand Forks are incidental to the main issue of water availability. Even without an increase in population there is evidence for an increasing demand, e.g. water for steam extraction processes in the tar sands. So I would side with people like David Schindler who is concerned about Canada's supply of freshwater rather than with those who suggest there is no problem to think about.
In one of my comments I said if people were really worried about water availability, they could support the building of nuclear desalinization plants until there was plenty of water. Of course this would cost enormous sums of money; but that wasn't what I was discussing. I was discussing whether the world was somehow losing water. It isn't. And indeed it can't.
The cost of water for agriculture, manufacturing and cities will, of course, vary with the weather, the seasons and the various cycles of the earth's warming and cooling (such as the ice ages). If costs go up you can bet usage will go down, Adam Smith being who he is. So the whole issue is, as Professor Clark confirms, an economic one.
Not an actual, or spiritual, one.
13 comments:
I saw that too! The far, far, left leaning Council of Canadians was on CTV blathering about running out of water because of the tarsands and agriculture, and right after that piece, they talked about the floods.
So now they are targeting farmers? Maybe they should stop eating then, that will teach those nasty farmers.
That's not entirely true; the reservoirs of fresh water underneath the ground in many places in North America constitute a vast majority of our fresh water for drinking and household/industrial use. And they are being depleted at unimaginable rates that are simply not sustainable. Just because we have a lot of a resource doesn't mean we should be wasteful with it. Appliances that conserve water make good environmental and economical sense, as do water reclamation systems. Furthermore, flooding often doesn't result in replenished water sources, if at all. In fact, flooding often results in contamination of fresh water supplies. Once the flood passes, underground reservoirs are still left depleted, and the problem still exists. While I don't buy into the whole movement that seeks to prevent so-called 'water commodification' due to their strong socialist undertones, I don't see anything wrong with conservation and better urban policy to reduce wastage of such a precious resource.
I'm glad Griff set you straight.
I still don't understand such pride in the right for ignorance of natural cycles and our affect on them.
Griff says that flooding "often' doesn't result in replenished water sources. I think it would be more true to say that in temperate climates, flooding almost always replenishes water sources. If the water table comes up to the surface, and then rises above the surface, the water sources are all replenished. Ask a farmer in the Red River Valley what happened to the water table after the great Red River Floods.
Indeed, ask anyone who lives in a flood plain what happens every spring.
My point, however, was not specific to a particular place and time, it was in general. Not only can people not conserve water, they can't waste it either. It's actually impossible to get rid of it. If, for example, you spread it on your lawn, the sun evaporates it, convection condenses it and gravity returns it to the river and the water table.
Love it or hate it, water is here to stay, no matter what the environmentalists say.
I'm not gonna bother going into any long explanations here about the various things water gets used for Frank - right off the top of my head I'm just see if you know about things like "cement", or "bricks", or even "paint"..... the water is there, how you gonna drink it?
"Swollen rivers flooded parts of the central United States on Friday and threatened to engulf a major interstate highway in Missouri"
how you gonna get that delicious mo flood water into your mesopotamian (oh! the boundless irony!) resevoirs, frank?
"It's actually impossible to get rid of it."
it is not impossible, however, render it unfit, nor unreclaimable, nor inaccessible, nor impracticable.
nature didn't put that tap in your house, you know....
KEvron
Did you hear that Harper wants to sell our water in bulk to the U.S.A.?
If you do not believe me..prove it.
Look it up on google.
Here are some responses.
Stage left must know that the water used in concrete will evaporate until the concrete reaches atmospheric or dirt fill water levels.
Kevron must know the reason the Mosopotamian basin is so fruitful are the rivers, and regular floods, that inundate them. Same with the Red River. You guys really should study up some before knocking the idea of flooding.
As for the water being dirty, that ain't dirt, my friend, that's soil! Give it a few months and it'll all fall to the bottom of the reservoir.
On that other subject, I'm all in favour of selling water to the US, providing it is within the range of the annual re-input.
The one thing my critics haven't tackled me on is the ice age leftover water. This is what makes up the bulk of the Great Lakes (and the London ponds, oddly enough) and if we sold that, we really would loose it (until the next ice age).
So, OK, if we sell or use left over Ice Age melt, we could be in trouble in the short time span of our own civilization. But my general point still holds true; the Great Lakes would fill up again just as soon as the ice barrier crosses the St. Lawrence.
A shallow water table is one thing to refill after a natural flooding season. However there are also massive underground reservoirs in the United States that are tapped to the limit. These things are massive, on the scale of hundreds of square kilometres of water deep below the surface bedrock, and they are becoming dangerously depleted. They don't refill quickly just from a few floods, it takes time.
A number of western states in the US are currently in a bind over where their water sources will come from in the future, so much so that they are involved in some fairly serious political wrangling with neighbouring states; so it is indeed a serious problem for them.
As I said, in my humble opinion conservation makes both economic and environmental sense (and the geek in me appreciates efficient urban policy). While I don't think the end is nigh for Canadian Water supplies, I think we have a duty to ourselves to be responsible with our water usage, and to practise conservation where possible. Thanks for the discussion. :)
you know, frank, i was going to throw some words at you, like "logistics" and "infrastructure" and "finite supply" and "ever increasing demmand", but i chose to hit myself in the head with a hammer instead.
orwellian mindset: "arid regions have always been arid regions."
KEvron
Don't hit yourself over the head with a hammer, it won't change the facts on, and under, the ground.
Logistics relate to moving things, this has nothing to do with water, everything to do with man. Infrastructure is another one of those things we humans like, but is irrelevant to water. And likewise finite supply. In every human environment there is the possibility, indeed the probability, that humans will outrun the locally available supply of water. This has nothing to do with water, everything to do with humans.
You want water? Build 100 nuclear power plants, link them to desalinization plants and criss cross America with pipes and aqueducts and you'll have enough to
float everyone's boat.
That's not what you're talking about. You're talking about cheap, filtered, distributed water. You're talking about the cost of population expansion. Hey, I know that issue. But that's not a water issue, that's a economic issue associated with our desire to concentrate in warm, dry areas.
Water doesn't care about these issues. It exists. It evaporates. It condenses. It rains. And will continue to do so until the next great ice age comes along to slow the process down.
If you'd like to talk about the limits to growth, I'm happy to oblige. But water -- in the absolute sense -- is not one of them.
Oh my god. I can't read this. It burns, the stupid, it burns. Frank, have you ever heard of the fallacy of the undistributed middle?
Hi Renee,
Sure; and your point is?
Frank Hilliard
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