Here is a deeply disturbing memo from the first U.S. Intelligence Community Assessment of Global Water Security. The document predicts that by 2030 humanity's "annual global water requirements" will exceed "current sustainable water supplies" by forty percent!
All this may sound like "government speak" and hard to assimilate into our day-to-day lives, but contemplate this: When Lake Mead falls below 1,050 feet, the Hoover Dam's turbines shut down and the lights in Vegas start going out. But the Hoover Dam doesn't just supply the electricity needs for Las Vegas. Southern California, the city of Los Angeles, and the state of Arizona are supplied by Hoover Dam, as well.
In an article by Alex Daley, we read this prescient opinion: You can always build more power plants, but you can't build more rivers, and the mighty Colorado carries the lifeblood of the Southwest. It services the water needs of an area the size of France, in which live 40 million people. In its natural state, the river poured 15.7 million acre-feet of water into the Gulf of California each year. Today, twelve years of drought have reduced the flow to about 12 million acre-feet, and human demand siphons off every bit of it; at its mouth, the riverbed is nothing but dust.
If you are able to connect the dots, you will realize that this greatly affects the agricultural areas in the Southwest. But it's not just our rivers that are being depleted. Important groundwaters are drying up. Science Daily reports that if current trends continue some parts of the southern High Plains that currently support irrigated agriculture, mostly in the Texas Panhandle and western Kansas, will be unable to do so within a few decades. You see, our massive underground aquifers have always been able to support our agricultural needs and were responsible for the US being the breadbasket of the world. That role is now in danger.
According to the NewsForChristians site "Once the water from those aquifers is gone, it is gone for good. That is why what is happening to the Ogallala Aquifer is so alarming. The Ogallala Aquifer is one of the largest sources of fresh water in the world, and U.S. farmers use water from it to irrigate more than 15 million acres of crops each year. The Ogallala Aquifer covers more than 100,000 square miles and it sits underneath the states of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and South Dakota. Most Americans have never even heard of it, but it is absolutely crucial to our way of life." The author provides these alarming statistics:
• The Ogallala Aquifer is being drained at a rate of approximately 800 gallons per minute.
• According to the U.S. Geological Survey, "a volume equivalent to two-thirds of the water in Lake Erie" has been permanently drained from the Ogallala Aquifer since 1940.
• Decades ago, the Ogallala Aquifer had an average depth of approximately 240 feet, but today the average depth is just 80 feet. In some areas of Texas, the water is gone completely.
• According to a recent National Geographic article, the average depletion rate of the Ogallala Aquifer is picking up speed.... Even more worrisome, the draining of the High Plains water account has picked up speed. The average annual depletion rate between 2000 and 2007 was more than twice that during the previous fifty years. The depletion is most severe in the southern portion of the aquifer, especially in Texas, where the water table beneath sizeable areas has dropped 100-150 feet; in smaller pockets, it has dropped more than 150 feet.
• According to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. interior west is now the driest that it has been in 500 years.
• Experts report that U.S. water bills are likely to soar in the coming years. The drinking water infrastructure is old and it will cost more than $1 Trillion to repair, resulting in water bills tripling in the near future.
• It has been estimated that the state of California only has a 20 year supply of fresh water left; New Mexico only has 10 years left.
These facts only concern the United States! When you add in what scientists and experts report about the global water crisis, you can see that this takes on Apocalyptic dimensions. Consider these facts:
• Total global water use has quadrupled over the past 100 years, and it is now increasing faster than it ever has been before.
• According to USAID (US Agency for International Development), one-third of the people on earth will be facing "severe" or "chronic" water shortages by the year 2025.
• The flow of water along the Jordan River is down to only 2 percent of its historic rate.
• It is being projected that the demand for water in China will exceed the supply by 25 percent by the year 2030.
• Every 8 seconds, somewhere in the world a child dies from drinking dirty water.
• Due to a lack of water, Saudi Arabia has given up on trying to grow wheat and will be 100 percent dependent on wheat imports by the year 2016.
• Once upon a time, the Aral Sea (in Central Asia) was the 4th largest freshwater lake in the entire world. At this point, it is less than 10 percent the size that it used to be, and it is being projected that it will dry up completely by the year 2020.
And the facts go on and on .... each one more striking than the last. All in all, the picture looks bleak. Pure and simply, mankind cannot live without water; clean drinking water and an amply water supply to support agriculture are necessary to sustain the world's population. At this point, it looks as if we are facing a devastating water crisis with no reprieve in sight. It looks as if prayer is our only answer!
Haggai 1:10-11 "Therefore the heavens above you withhold the dew, and the earth withholds its fruit. For I called for a drought on the land and the mountains, on the grain and the new wine and the oil, on whatever the ground brings forth, on men and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands."
Global warming (Climate Change or anything else you want to call it) is real. Even the Republican deniers are starting to wake up, albeit too late.
ReplyDeleteThe earth is always changing, and will continue to change and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Nothing, zero, nada. The biggest problem with the planet is the people that inhabit it. We will consume every resource until each one is gone and we will pollute the air/ground/water. That is our nature and it will continue this way no matter how many politicians warn us otherwise.
DeleteFocus on what is within the realm of your control. Or I guess you could pour all of your time and resources into climate change awareness, only to see your efforts easily stamped out by billions of people who could care less. A sad reality. Good luck.
Global warming is a scam to redistribute wealth. There is no conclusive scientific evidence that supports it. The most famous global warming fanaticists have all been proven to be corrupt manipulators of data.
DeleteSo brave with your comments, Anonymous! Truth is that sea levels have been rising for the last 10,000 years or so (since the end of the last ice age). How many factories and cars were there then?
DeleteYou buy the lie because it's socially acceptable, and you're too vapid to think for yourself. The truth is that mankind is destroying the planet, and no amount of carbon taxation, or cap and trade, will ever change that. Human nature is to be stupid and greedy (at least for 90+%) and your kind will be pointing fingers and throwing blame until the Obama zombies rip your door off its hinges and take everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) you have.
Best of luck being a close-minded douche until then.
I'm incredibly disappointed to see so many comments buying into the absurd lies that climate change isnt happening, or that it's not man-made. Over 95% of climate scientists agree on both those claims - and if Gino or Bubba have published a new study changing the minds of the experts, please- by all means - link us to it.
DeleteFor me, these changes are bigger than any calamity man has brought about. I believe that God, the Creator of the Universe, is in control of the changes we are seeing.
ReplyDeleteGod help us......weve made our own destiny.
ReplyDeleteWait - the Missouri River had MASSIVE flooding 1 1/2 years ago - so bad it shut down the Nuclear Power plant in Nebraska. Half of Omaha was under water most of that summer. And this year they are getting LOTS of snow. I'd like to see a recent report on that "reservoir"
ReplyDeleteThe universe moves in cycles and rythms, and the song is never exactly the same.
ReplyDeleteI choose to listen to the song, with no spaghetti strainers on my head, and see only wonder at the changes the earth grows through, and horror at the filth we create, and again wonder as nature absorbs and adapts and still makes her own changes.
I would be scared witless if the climate STOPPED changing after billions of years. Now the pollution and abuse of resources is what all these climate nutters should be freaking out about. Filth and toxic garbage, even the food is polluted now, and gross waste a profitable business plan. It is so hard to fix real problems and so easy to fix made up ones.
PS it is the sun not the fairy tale of cow farts and caravans. how about stop global SPRAYING.
One of the biggest contributing factors is the global increases in population, more people = more consumption. If we, as a people are unwilling to face that fact and reverse the trend, we need to find solutions to help alleviate this problem.
ReplyDeleteIt is not beyond our technology to create some more "great lakes", although that would likely consume valuable crop lands. Farmers could add more ponds to their acreages to irrigate their crops instead of pumping it all out of the ground, thus relieving stress on the acquifers.
It is far more likely that Governmemts, including ours will just stick their heads in the sand and do nothing until it is too late. Our dwindling supply of fresh water is an ever increasing problem and I've seen warning signs for many years, it is akin to our National debt problem, we've had it for a long time but most people have just ignored it.
more senstational - alarmist - we're all going to die any minute news that's been wrong so many times it has no credibility.
ReplyDeleteFrom coffee kills you to coffee save you and from running out of oil 40 years ago to today swiming in it.....yawn