From The Central Valley To The Andes, Warming And Warning Signs - CC Times

[hatrack]

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Farmers in the Central Valley, where a quilt of lush, green orchards on brown hills displays the alchemy of irrigation, want to believe this is a passing dry spell. They thought a wet 2006 ended a seven-year drought, but this year is one of the driest on record. For the first time, state water authorities shut off irrigation pumps to large parts of the valley, forcing farmers to dig wells. Farther south and east, the once-mighty Colorado River is looking sickly, siphoned by seven states before dribbling into Mexico. Its reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are drying, leaving accusatory rings on the shorelines and imperiling river-rafting companies.

Seager predicts that drought will prompt dislocations similar to those of the Dust Bowl. "It will certainly cause movements of people. For example, as Mexico dries out, there will be migration from rural areas to cities and then the U.S.," he said. "There is an emerging situation of climate refugees." Global warming threatens water supplies in other ways. Much of the world's fresh water is in glaciers atop mountains. They act as mammoth storehouses. In wet or cold seasons, the glaciers grow with snow. In dry and hot seasons, the edges slowly melt, gently feeding streams and rivers. Farms below are dependent on that meltwater; huge cities have grown up on the belief the mountains will always give them drinking water; hydroelectric dams rely on the flow to generate power. But the atmosphere's temperature is rising fastest at high altitudes. The glaciers are melting -- initially increasing the runoff, but gradually getting smaller and smaller. Soon, many will disappear.

A view from the top

At the edge of the Quelccaya Glacier, the largest ice cap in the Peruvian Andes, Ohio State University researcher Lonnie Thompson sat in a cold tent at a rarefied 17,000 feet. He has spent more time in the oxygen-thin "death zone" atop mountains than any other scientist, drilling ice cores and measuring glaciers. He has watched the Quelccaya Glacier shrink by 30 percent in 33 years. Down the mountain, a multitude of rivulets seep from the edge of Quelccaya to irrigate crops of maize, the water flowing through irrigation canals built by the Incas. Even farther downstream, the runoff helps feed the giant capital, Lima, another city built in a desert.

"What do you think is going to happen when this stops?" Thompson mused of the water. "Do you think all the people below will just sit there? No. It's crazy to think they won't go anywhere. And what do you think will happen when they go to places where people already live?"

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http://www.contracostatimes.com/nationandworld/ci_6687139?nclick_check=1

[XemaSab]

1. We need a global moratorium on the words "global warming."

It's simply not accurate.

This is one of the coolest summers in memory here in Redding.

[phantom power]

2. To be fair, nobody is using the phrase "Redding warming." It's, well, global.

[XemaSab]

3. Climate change is a better term

When the gulf stream shuts down, ain't gonna be no warming nohow. :P

[Xithras]

4. The CV references in this article are garbage.

I live in the CV, and have all my life. I live on a riverside ranchette surrounded by farms, and irrigated by canal water.

First, I don't know where the author got this "seven year drought" reference. 05-06 was an incredibly wet year that followed a series of normal to above normal rainfall years. While there has been drought across much of the west, the 06-07 rain year was the first substantially below average year we have in Northern/Central California had since the mid 90's. SOUTHERN California has suffered with drought, Nevada and the Colorado River basin have suffered with drought, but Central Valley farmers haven't seen a water reduction in a decade.

Even this year there haven't been any severe water reductions to farmers, and as the article said, this past winter was one of the driest on record. The previous decade of normal and above-normal rainfall has all of our reservoirs at max capacity, giving us a minimum of a three year supply. Farmers won't get hit unless next winter is dry too.

Farmers farther south in the valley are seeing water reductions, but they have nothing to do with global warming. Recent court decisions to rewater the San Joaquin river are about to reduce the amount of water available for farming...once one of the largest rivers in the west, it's completely dry most summers because of diversion. When water allocations are reduced to make up for the lost diversions, these farmers plan on supplementing with wells.

There's also profit-taking going on here. Many farmers are selling irrigation rights to developers, who use the water to enable additional sprawl. California law now requires developers to prove a water source for any major new developments, and many farmers have figured out that they can make a HELL of a lot of money by selling their water rights forever. They use a little of their profit to sink a well, and keep on farming with a tidy profit in their pocket.

Even the reductions mentioned in the article had nothing to do with drought. Environmentalists have been trying to save the endangered Delta Smelt, a slow swimming fish that is being wiped out by the huge pumps that send the water south to these farms. A judge issued an injunction which shut the pumps down for a time, completely cutting water deliveries to Southern California and to the southern SJV farmers who depended on that water. Many farmers were caught off-guard by the shutdown, and more than a few took major hits because they couldn't water their fields. They too are digging wells as insurance against future shutdowns.

I 100% completely agree with the authors point, that global warming will create climate refugees if it isn't addressed. I can't help but wonder at the fiction in the article though. A 7 year drought? I think I'd have noticed that!

[jimlup]

5. too late!

I think it is too late to avert most of the affects we are now noticing. Perhaps not to late to avert truely castastrophic consquences but we'll see. The Bushies and their elk will put every block in the road that they can. They will drag and drag and cloud the debate as best they can. Only by pushing at the emergency level of activism will we be able to avert the deep catastropies of climate change.