Sean Hannity notwithstanding, we have a real problem coming down the pike if we don’t get a handle on CO2 emissions. I won’t even pretend to legitimize the climate change deniers by arguing about this. The vast majority of the scientific community agrees on this, you can read to your heart’s content at the International Panel for Climate Change web site.
(I think these deniers are the same poor bastards who maintain that smoking cigarettes isn’t bad for their health, and even if it is they are going to continue to smoke just ’cause the government tells them they shouldn’t. That’s showing those evil govenment health advocates!!)
I was just reading on Crain’s Chicago Business that Chicago and the surrounding region are going to be suffering a serious water shortage in a couple years as their population increases, and they are already pulling 85% of the water from Lake Michigan that they are allowed by a 1967 Supreme Court decree. Somehow I don’t see Chicago (or anyone else who has squandered their own water, including the desert southwest) not trying to figure out how to get more water from the Lakes. So I decided to do some research into how climate change is projected to impact the Great Lakes. Since there may be more designs on our water, I was interested to see how much water and of what quality we may be fighting over.
As it happens, the EPA has already been doing some modeling and has several pages of content on their web site. Here is a sample:
Possible Water Resource Impacts in North America
In general, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) concludes that climate change will strain many of North America’s water resources, increasing the competition for water. A warmer climate will affect the seasonable availability of water by increasing evaporation and reducing snowpacks. The Columbia River and other heavily used water systems of western North America are expected to be particularly vulnerable. Groundwater-based systems in the Southwest are also likely to be stressed by climate change. Heavier precipitation will very likely increase waterborne diseases and affect water quality, and higher variability of precipitation will make water management more difficult.
Great Lakes
The states surrounding the Great Lakes are heavily populated. Variations in lake levels and flows would affect hydropower, shipping, tourism and recreation, municipalities, shoreline structures, and human health.
- Possible lake-level declines
- Reduced hydropower production; reduced channel depths for shipping
- Decreases in lake ice extent – some years without ice cover
- Changes in phytoplankton/zooplankton biomass, northward migration of fish species, possible loss of coldwater species in certain areas
- Declines in water quality
They go on to say on another page devoted to U.S. Regions that while they are still in the process of studying this, they have some “illustrative examples of some of the higher likelihood effects of climate change in different parts of the United States (IPCC, 2007):. . . .”
The part that relates to the Great Lakes is not without some up-side if you are growing grain, but water to irrigate may be a problem.
In the Midwest and Great Lakes:
- Lowered lake and river levels, resulting from warmer temperatures and increased evaporation, impact recreation and shipping
- Warming lake and river temperatures leading to reductions in many fish stocks
- Decrease in water quality leading to habitat loss and eutrophication
- Increased agricultural productivity in many regions resulting from increased carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures
Well that doesn’t sound good, does it? Particularly the parts about hotter summers, warmer winters, lower lake levels, habitat loss, reduction of cold water fish stocks, and the decline of water quality. That pretty much destroys all the reasons that I like to live up here!
Well, the good news is that this hasn’t happened, YET. If we get off of our collective duffs and can get our hired help in Washington to get off of their collective duffs we can change how much CO2 we are dumping into the athmosphere as a society, and of course we can all reduce our carbon footprint on a local level with some thought and changes in our habits. We need tougher air quality standards, tough climate change legislation and we need to get on-board with the rest of the world at the Climate summit in Copenhagen this December. If we fail to act now we are screwed, plain and simple. We have seen this bearing down on us for a long time (sorta like the end of cheap oil) and have ignored it or just paid it lip service. The time has come for action or we may have to add trout fishing to pheasant hunting as something we remember fondly but won’t see again in our lifetimes. I can’t accept that, and you shouldn’t either!
October 24th is the International Day of Climate Action, visit the web site of 350.org, the folks who are promoting it.
This is too important to trust that “somebody” is taking care of it. Talk about what we stand to lose with your elected officials, your family, hell, anybody who you can corner for 3 minutes.
Mark Twain wrote, “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”
Don’t let this be one of those disappointments. It’s not a story you want to have to tell your grandchildren.
