Heresy Snowboarding

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One of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard from a skier or boarder (or anyone in ski resort management) is: “I/we don’t care about global warming or less snow, we can use snow guns”.

Well, no, not really. Warmer temps, and/or less precipitation, equals either more rain, or less snow and rain, so either way, snow guns are pretty useless.

Too-warm temps will render snow guns useless.

Snow guns can not, and must not, be the base upon which a ski resort runs it’s on-snow operations. Besides the fact that they don’t scale as well as natural snow, they use electricity and a load of water, in order to maintain a leisure activity. This contributes to the problem that is causing the problem – a positive feedback loop of the worst kind (ok, the carbon footprint of snowguns is not large, but, using energy and water to solve a problem we caused, is pretty silly).

Do we really want to rely on such inefficient water and energy use considering the fact that the world is running out of water? I see more and more commentary about water being the next resource that humanity goes to war over.

Currently, we have some very serious droughts (the following LA Times article is a must-read in full), particularly in Australia with the prospect of droughts/dustbowls in:

• U.S. Southwest
• Southeast Asia
• Eastern South America
• Southern Europe
• Southern Africa
• Northern Africa
• Western Australia

This sourced from an NOAA study (located here):

A new scientific study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reaches a powerful conclusion about the climate change caused by future increases of carbon dioxide: to a large extent, there’s no going back.

The pioneering study, led by NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon, shows how changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are completely stopped. The findings appear during the week of January 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Climate Progress has a great wrap-up here.

Beyond the lack of water, which is already producing food shortages, we face a much more serious problem: widespread water shortages.

Mexico City recently turned the taps off to 5 MILLION people.

The reek of unwashed toilets spilled into the street in the neighborhood of unpainted cinder block houses. Out on the main road, hundreds of residents banged plastic buckets and blocked the path of irate drivers while children scoured the surrounding area for government trucks. Finally, the impatient crowd launched into a high-pitched chant, repeating one word at fever pitch: “Water, Water, Water!”

About five million people, or a quarter of the population of Mexico City’s urban sprawl, woke up Thursday with dry taps. The drought was caused by the biggest stoppage in the city’s main reservoir system in recent years to ration its depleting supplies. Government officials hope this and four other stoppages will keep water flowing until the summer rainy season fills the basins back up. But they warn that the Mexican capital needs to seriously overhaul its water system to stop an unfathomable disaster in the future. (See pictures of the world water crisis.)

The UN is warning of a large percentage (50%) of the world’s population being in water stress by 2030, the population explosion will not help the issue – it could lead to “water bankruptcy“, which could lead to war.

Let’s just think about that. War, over water. What would our grandparents have said? Sure, going back in history (and even today), war over resources was common, but today?!

It really confuses me when people say the world is not warming, or that glaciers aren’t melting. I mean, really. Really? Glaciers are crucial to river health and therefore food production.

The Economist has a fantastic article on the water issue here:

The trouble with this conclusion is that no one knows how much water people can safely use. It is certainly not 100% (the amount taken in Gulf states) because the rest of creation also has to live off the water. In many places the maximum may well be less than one fifth, the average for Asia as a whole. It depends on how water is returned to the system, how much is taken from underground aquifers, and so on.

But there is some admittedly patchy evidence that, given current patterns of use and abuse, the amount now being withdrawn is moving dangerously close to the limit of safety—and in some places beyond it. An alarming number of the world’s great rivers no longer reach the sea. They include the Indus, Rio Grande, Colorado, Murray-Darling and Yellow rivers. These are the arteries of the world’s main grain-growing areas.

Freshwater fish populations are in precipitous decline. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, fish stocks in lakes and rivers have fallen roughly 30% since 1970. This is a bigger population fall than that suffered by animals in jungles, temperate forests, savannahs and any other large ecosystem. Half the world’s wetlands, on one estimate, were drained, damaged or destroyed in the 20th century, mainly because, as the volume of fresh water in rivers falls, salt water invades the delta, changing the balance between fresh and salt water. On this evidence, there may be systemic water problems, as well as local disruptions.

Two global trends have added to the pressure on water. Both are likely to accelerate over coming decades.

The first is demography. Over the past 50 years, as the world’s population rose from 3 billion to 6.5 billion, water use roughly trebled. On current estimates, the population is likely to rise by a further 2 billion by 2025 and by 3 billion by 2050. Demand for water will rise accordingly.

Or rather, by more. Possibly a lot more. It is not the absolute number of people that makes the biggest difference to water use but changing habits and diet. Diet matters more than any single factor because agriculture is the modern Agasthya, the mythical Indian giant who drank the seas dry. Farmers use about three-quarters of the world’s water; industry uses less than a fifth and domestic or municipal use accounts for a mere tenth.

And:

The other long-term trend affecting water is climate change. There is growing evidence that global warming is speeding up the hydrologic cycle—that is, the rate at which water evaporates and falls again as rain or snow. This higher rate seems to make wet regions more sodden, and arid ones drier. It brings longer droughts between more intense periods of rain.

Climate change has three big implications for water use. First, it changes the way plants grow. Trees, for example, react to downpours with a spurt of growth. During the longer droughts that follow, the extra biomass then dries up so that if lightning strikes, forests burn more spectacularly. Similarly crops grow too fast, then wilt.

Second, climate change increases problems of water management. Larger floods overwhelm existing controls. Reservoirs do not store enough to get people or plants through longer droughts. In addition, global warming melts glaciers and causes snow to fall as rain. Since snow and ice are natural regulators, storing water in winter and releasing it in summer, countries are swinging more violently between flood and drought. That is one big reason why dams, once a dirty word in development, have been making a comeback, especially in African countries with plenty of water but no storage capacity. The number of large dams (more than 15 metres high) has been increasing and the order books of dam builders are bulging.

Third, climate change has persuaded western governments to subsidise biofuels, which could prove as big a disaster for water as they already have been for food. At the moment, about 2% of irrigated water is used to grow crops for energy, or 44km3. But if all the national plans and policies to increase biofuels were to be implemented, reckons the UN, they would require an extra 180km3 of water. Though small compared with the increase required to feed the additional 2 billion people, the biofuels’ premium is still substantial.

In short, more water will be needed to feed and heat a world that is already showing signs of using too much. How to square that circle? The answer is by improving the efficiency with which water is used. The good news is that this is possible: vast inefficiencies exist which can be wrung out. The bad news is it will be difficult both because it will require people to change their habits and because governments, which might cajole them to make the changes, are peculiarly bad at water policy.

All of which makes the push for reclaimed water (instead of desalination plants which contribute to the problem) to be implemented in Australia – particularly south east Australia – really urgent.

Time magazine has two great photo essays here and here.

Central Asia is rich in water, but 90% of it is concentrated in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, above. In Soviet times, the water was controlled by a central government, so that the lakes and rivers of the two upstream nations serviced the fields and electric needs of the downstream nations, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, these controls have broken down and national self-interests have taken hold.

Things are about to get very interesting.

Similar Posts:

• Australian drought
• Climate change: here, now – Part II the human toll
• Climate Change: not so good for anyone (especially for snow seasons and drinking water)
• Despair + Hope.
• Think climate change won’t affect you, Snow Person? Wrong.