[getsmart-l] Two complimentary articles describing the probable results of water wasting

[John O'Gorman]

The first says "The paper says the large number of major droughts in mid-latitude regions from 2002-2005 cut plant growth, leading to the reduced carbon dioxide uptake on land. "

And the other says""The next round of debate around climate change will concern our abuse of water because they are inextricably linked," Ms. Barlow believes. "The Earth is heating up because we don't have the same amount of water running through our watershed systems." 
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071023.wclimate23/BNStory/Business/
A clog in the world's carbon dioxide 'sinks'
Nature is having a harder time absorbing greenhouse-gas emissions, which may increase the pace of global warming, research shows 
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT 

>From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

October 23, 2007 at 4:30 AM EDT

The capacity of the world's oceans and land to absorb carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by industrial activity is diminishing, raising the possibility that global warming will happen more rapidly and will be more dramatic than is currently anticipated, a new research paper says.

The paper, by an international team of scientists and published yesterday in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says nature's reduced ability to remove carbon dioxide that humans are adding to the atmosphere, along with surging world economic growth, explain why atmospheric concentrations of the gas rose in the 2000-2006 period at the most rapid seven-year pace since modern record keeping began in 1959.

"All of these changes characterize a carbon cycle that is generating stronger-than-expected and sooner-than-expected climate forcing," the paper concludes.

Carbon dioxide concentrations are at the highest level in the past 650,000 years, and probably the past 20 million years, according to the paper.

About half of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by human activity is later absorbed by water in the ocean and plants on land, a process that has led scientists to dub them "sinks." This natural process has blunted the full impact of greenhouse-gas emissions from human activity on the world climate.

The failure of the oceans and land to absorb as much carbon dioxide as they once did is being attributed to global warming, and is raising the worrisome possibility that this could lead to a cycle of weather destabilization that could cause the pace of warming to accelerate, according to one of the study authors.

"It's a positive feedback whereby sinks appear to be responding to global warming in a way that increases global warming," said Corinne Le Quéré, a researcher at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, and at the British Antarctic Survey. "It's not good news."

Dr. Le Quéré said the rapid growth in the atmosphere's carbon dioxide concentration in the seven-year period was "beyond the worst scenarios" outlined by most experts and indicates that getting the threat of climate change under control will be more difficult than expected. 

The research team also included scientists based in Australia, the United States, France and Austria.

The paper says the large number of major droughts in mid-latitude regions from 2002-2005 cut plant growth, leading to the reduced carbon dioxide uptake on land. When plants grow, they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In the oceans, global warming has caused increased wind around the Antarctic Ocean, churning up carbon rich waters that are normally isolated from the atmosphere.

The amount of carbon dioxide staying in the atmosphere is about 5 per cent more than expected, based on the trends observed since the late 1950s.

If the reduced ability of nature to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere weren't worrisome enough, the paper says carbon emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels have increased significantly.

So far this century, emissions have surged 3.3 per cent a year, more than double the 1.3 per cent annual growth rate of the 1990s, and the most rapid pace of increase since the beginning of the industrial revolution more than 200 years ago.

The paper says carbon dioxide releases last year were 35 per cent above the 1990 level.

Part of the reason for the rapid rise is the burgeoning economies in many developing countries, including China and India.

However, the paper notes that for the first time in more than three decades, emissions of carbon dioxide are rising more rapidly that the world's economic growth rate.

Most experts have assumed that as the world economy grows, it would require less in the way of fossil fuels to produce each unit of output, as businesses introduce energy-saving and energy-efficiency measures.

This trend of reduced carbon dioxide to produce goods was observed from 1970 to about 2000, but has since reversed.

"The recent combination of rapidly increasing emissions and deteriorating carbon intensity of [global economic output] amplifies the challenge of stabilizing atmosphere CO{-2}," the paper says.

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What's the plan for the world's water woes? 

GARY MASON: VANCOUVER Globe and Mail Oct. 23/07

gmason at globeandmail.com 

Living on the Wet Coast, you'd be forgiven for assuming the world is awash in water. After all, it would be easier to count the number of days it hasn't rained here this year than the number it has. 

But as we .are increasingly learning, the planet's reserves of water, of drinkable fresh water at least, are evaporating. Australia, China, India, Africa, you name it, are all experiencing a water crisis of historic levels. 

A prolonged drought in the southwest United States has now spread east, gripping major metropolitan centres such as Atlanta. Last weekend, the New York Times devoted pages of its Sunday magazine to the water crisis now affecting large sections of the country. 

Maude Barlow, author and national chair of the Council of Canadians, has been studying the global water emergency for the past several years. 

Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water her second book on the subject - has just been published. It is a sobering read. 

The last chapter talks about the pressure Canada will soon face to export water to our thirsty neighbours. Which is why, Ms. Barlow argues, we need a national debate, leading to a national water strategy, before any decisions are made about shipping water south or anywhere else for that matter. And she's right. 

The world's water problems are surely going to get worse before they get better. As a country, we don't want to wait until the planet is in the grips of a full-scale panic before having a discussion about what to do with the dwindling resources of our own. 

*?While the chapter on Canada's water future certainly gives a reader plenty to think about, it's the rest of Ms. Barlow's book dealing with the rest of the world that I found particularly disturbing. And in this regard it's impossible not to notice one major similarity with the climate change debate: We can do our part to become better stewards of water here in Canada but it won't do one speck of good in terms of helping solve the planetary water crisis. 

Countries like China and India have huge water issues, mostly of their own making, that have the potential to undermine their robust economies. 

In north China, groundwater depletion has reached, by any measure, catastrophic levels. This has been caused by massive over-pumping for agricultural purposes as well as the fact that billions of tonnes of water have been diverted in recent years to sustain the industrial economic expansion that has made China a world power. 

"Two-thirds of the cities in northern China are facing severe water crisis," Ms. Barlow told me recently. "Eighty per cent of all the surface water in China is now polluted beyond use - this is a World Health Organization statistic. Four-fifths of the people in China are drinking substandard or dangerous drinking water every single day, according to WHO." 

Then there is India. Twenty-three-million tube wells operate around the clock, according to Ms. Barlow. These wells are going so deep into the aquifer that they are taking up water formed at the time of the dinosaurs, scientists believe. 

The pumps are taking 200 cubic kilometres of water out of the Earth every year, with only a fraction of that replaced by monsoon rains, according to Blue Covenant. 

Countries like Mexico, meantime, are taking water from rural parts of the country to supply major cities that are running out. Many of those cities are along the coast and a lot of the fresh water they are getting is ending up in the ocean instead of being recycled. 

Less green space in and around our coastal cities is another reason why fresh water is ending up in the ocean instead of the ground. 

It's like these cities are covered by a cement umbrella. 

Scientists believe this phenomenon is also contributing to rising sea levels. 

"The next round of debate around climate change will concern our abuse of water because they are inextricably linked," Ms. Barlow believes. "The Earth is heating up because we don't have the same amount of water running through our watershed systems." 

Now I know that there will be those who will quickly lump Ms. Barlow among the world's growing army of climate scaremongers. Or write her off as an irascible lefty who is always predicting the end of the world because of corporate greed. I think either of those characterizations do her a disservice. 

Ms. Barlow's book is another in what can only be described as a gathering storm of evidence of the global water crisis. The statistics are becoming increasingly more compelling and disturbing. 

And, in my opinion, ever more impossible to ignore. 
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