ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP

in a time of VANISHING WATER

“Climate change” is changing our assumptions about water resources. As climate change warms the atmosphere and alters the hydrological cycle, we will continue to witness changes to the amount, timing, form, and intensity of precipitation and the flow of water in watersheds, as well as the quality of aquatic and marine environments. These changes are also likely to affect the programs designed to protect the quality of water resources and public health and safety.” 

Ironically, there is nothing new here. This observation made by EPA authors for the Climate Change Adaptation Implementation Plan is a conclusion many of us make from the daily science we study, and the attention we pay to the ecosystems of bees, malformed frogs discovered in our lakes and streams, annual rising mean global temperatures,  watching time lapse photography from NOAA satellites and NASA – studies such as the one here.  So forth and so on.

In other words, it doesn’t take a genius.  IPCC scientists have marshalled the best science.  Anyone left in America who argues “Well, nothing new here. There are no rising temperatures. The Earth always goes through cycles and we are just now in one of those cycles” is content to live in the bubble of ignorance that encapsulates so many in America and on Capitol Hill in Washington.  Your response to such arguments should be that ” we have accounted for all of the natural occurring cyclic events, (Chandler Wobble of the Earth, Sunspots, 25,000 year cooling and warming cycles as seen from the ice cores)”.  Yet there is a residue left over when these affects are subtracted out.  Computer models accurately forecast the climate trends and are so conservative that they have continually underestimated the rise in mean global ocean temperatures since 1980. As Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes concluded, “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.“ And the truth is that the effects we see are of course not due to Natural cycles.  The effects we see are the results of Human Activity the past 100 years. 

This is not a bad thing in and of itself.  Humans are learning how to live with each other, and this means learning to share the planet. And it has taken the genus Sapiens about 180,000 years just to get this far after hominids split from the great apes about 5 million years ago.  So humankind is new at this “cooperation thing”.  That’s one argument.  Perhaps an effective way to mobilize human effort is to affect the money that flows into defeating attempts at regulating toxins expelled into the air, water and onto the land.  Can we do this? How do we get our voices heard above the money and the mendacious squeaky wheels who repeat themselves time and again until lies become the truth? “The Lie is half way round the world, while Truth is just getting its boots on.” is Mark Twain’s oft-quoted paraphrase that aptly applies.

If you can’t see it, is it real?  If you cannot see the part per billion or part per trillion contaminant in your tap water, is it OK to drink the water?  How much do you “risk”?  What is your personal assessment of “risk”?  Think of cigarettes.  If 10 extra years of life mean something to you at 70, but not at 20, then you will smoke and lose the ten years, only to regret it when you reach 60. If the cancer you contract at 50 is due to years of drinking traces of Atrazine (a toxic herbicide that feminizes fish, and humans) and perchlorate or nitrate, or plasticizers in so much of our tap water, are you OK with having lost many years of an otherwise productive life because you could not physically see the contaminants in your tap water all of those years?

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