Guest essay by Dr. Tim Ball
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
– H.L.Mencken
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) failed to prove human CO2 is causing global warming as evidenced by their incorrect projections. Their hypothesis said global temperature would rise as CO2 levels increased. It hasn’t for 15+ years. It doesn’t matter where the heat went, their hypothesis that human CO2 is driving temperature and climate is disproved. The null hypothesis that it isn’t CO2, which they ignore, is proved.
CO2 was the premeditated IPCC target because it was the exhaust of industrialized developed nations. Maurice Strong said those nations were the problem for the planet and it’s our responsibility to get rid of them? Show their exhaust is causing runaway warming and you achieve the goal. The IPCC failure means CO2 and climate lost their potential as the vehicle for political change. What’s next?
Exploitation of fear about environmental problems kept shifting from ozone depletion, acid rain, desertification, rainforest destruction, global warming, sea level rise, climate change, and climate crisis, among others. In Farad Manjoo’s[1] post-fact society, water, like all previous environmental issues is used to push an ideology or political agenda with experts providing the ‘facts’. A synopsis of his book wonders,
“Why has punditry lately overtaken news? Why do lies seem to linger so long in the cultural subconscious even after they’ve been thoroughly discredited? And why, when more people than ever before are documenting the truth with laptops and digital cameras, does fact-free spin and propaganda seem to work so well?”
Once the problem is falsely established, control is not far behind. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) needs a replacement. It must be a natural global resource, little understood by most so they can easily mislead transcend national boundaries and quickly raise passions and concerns. The target, water, is already in play.
Figure 1
UNEP, the agency that brought you Agenda 21 and the IPCC established The International Decade for Action ‘WATER FOR LIFE’ 2005-2015. On the 20th anniversary of World Water Day UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said, “Water holds the key to sustainable development,” “We must work together to protect and carefully manage this fragile finite resource.” The UN established a base of declining water quality, not of quantity, as shown in Figure 1. The focus is quality because there are no water shortages. There are regions of deficit and surplus, which change over time.
Environment Canada (EC) produced the map information, but their credibility is close to zero because of involvement in the IPCC from the start. (Notice “Insufficient data” is the largest region.) EC Assistant Deputy Minister Gordon McBean chaired the founding meeting of the IPCC in Villach, Austria in 1985. He was also instrumental in creation of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) that provided most of the IPCC 2007 Report on that region. It is a very inadequate Report.
Recently Gregory showed on Watts Up With That how EC’s climate model is the worst of any used by the IPCC. EC display their failures on their web page. Figure 2 shows their 12 month precipitation forecast on the top half and a map of the accuracy of previous forecasts on the bottom. Notice it is ”Not significantly better than chance” for over 90 percent of the map. Publishing these results shows either an incomprehensible level of arrogance or knowledge they won’t be held accountable.
Figure 2
As a climatologist I learned early that droughts are the most devastating climate events. One list of the top 20 world weather disasters of the 20th century illustrates the point. Two extremes dominated, first drought and second flooding. This led to teaching a Water Resources course at university for 20+ years. I served on the Manitoba Water Commission for 17 years resolving water conflicts. I was appointed Chair of the Assiniboine River Management Advisory Board charged with developing a management strategy for an entire drainage basin. The need was triggered by the severe drought of 1988/89 that produced the lowest flow on the river in 90+ years of record. Fortuitously, the river’s highest flow occurred just six years later, providing the basis for planning for natural extremes.
Figure 3
Water is not lost, only taken out of the Water Cycle (Figure 3) in one place and returned elsewhere. Like with the Carbon Cycle, we have virtually no measures of any segment. I discussed the limitations of precipitation data previously. They are worse for river flows, lake volumes or any other water data.
At the 2011 Heartland Institute Sixth International Conference on Climate Change in Washington, DC somebody asked about the next major environmental scare. I said, overpopulation would continue as the underlying theme, as it has from Malthus to the Club of Rome (COR) to Agenda 21, but water was the next target.
Malthus argued population would outgrow food supply. The COR argued it would outgrow all resources accelerated by industry, hence the demonizing of CO2 to achieve Maurice Strong’s goal. Paul Ehrlich linked food and water in his completely flawed book The Population Bomb. The COR listed water third after pollution and global warming as its target in the 1991 publication The First Global Revolution.
“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
In UN’s Agenda 21 it’s a separate category in Chapter 18 – The Water Page.
18.3. The widespread scarcity, gradual destruction and aggravated pollution of freshwater resources in many world regions, along with the progressive encroachment of incompatible activities, demand integrated water resources planning and management.
It’s a false claim, like most assumptions made when environment and science are used for a political agenda. However, if the science doesn’t work there’s the standard fall back of the precautionary principle covered in Agenda 21, Principle 15.
In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.
They define “lack of full scientific certainty” and it becomes a conflict between genuine uncertainty and what is required to promote the political agenda.
All the terminology familiar to the CO2 issue is now in use for water. The Water Footprint of a product is the volume of freshwater appropriated to produce the product, taking into account the volumes of water consumed and polluted in the different steps of the supply chain. Like the Carbon Footprint it is a totally contrived and meaningless measure, but allows environmental guilt finger pointing.
Peak Oil was created to imply we were running out of the resource – as the COR Limits to Growth predicted. The term Peak Water has been put forward as a concept to help understand growing constraints on the availability, quality, and use of freshwater resources. Neither “Peak” is valid.
World Water Day was established at Rio 1992 but implemented first on 22 March 1993. On Water Day June 2012 in conjunction with Rio +20 they identified the following objectives as they already knew climate change was not unfolding as they predicted.
• Demonstrate to the broad range of stakeholders, particularly decision makers, that some of the major challenges facing humanity today relate to water management; this will be based on findings of the major UN-Water reports.
• Identify major water issues that connect with the themes of the Rio+20 Conference, particularly its link with the notion of green economy.
• Focus on the means of implementation, especially the action areas where UN organizations and agencies can act together through UN-Water.
These are similar global policy directions and takeovers promoted by the IPCC through the Summary for Policymakers (SPM).
In the US recently the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began the process of control over water similar to the one they followed for CO2. One commentator says this is ongoing.
A full scale attack by EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to take control of all water from any source whatsoever is under way. What these agencies are attempting is an end run around water and land rights. These agencies are constructing regulations and fictional jurisdictional control.
Calling it carbon then defining it as a pollutant created deliberate confusion over CO2. The Canadian government listed it as a toxic substance – the terminology changes to suit the legal definitions in place. The EPA defined it as a “harmful substance” and arranged for the US Supreme Court to agree on that term thereby giving them control. The focus with water is quality under existing laws.
According to senior EPA officials, the rule, crafted by both the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, will provide greater clarity about which waters are subject to Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction and greater certainty about which activities require CWA permits.
Environmentalism was a necessary new paradigm hijacked by a few for a political agenda. The goal was political control with subjugation of individuals and their rights to a world government through the UN. Elaine Dewar, author of The Cloak of Green explained,
“Strong was using the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environment crisis and the Global Governance Agenda.”
Neil Hrab wrote,
“What’s truly alarming about Maurice Strong is his actual record. Strong’s persistent calls for an international mobilization to combat environmental calamities, even when they are exaggerated (population growth) or scientifically unproven (global warming), have set the world’s environmental agenda.”
Strong appeared to achieve his goal with CO2 through the UN, particularly the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that gave the IPCC effective control of national weather agencies and therefore national policy. Global warming seemed like an easy control agenda until nature took over. Instead of acknowledging their science was wrong the UNEP, IPCC and national environment agencies simply moved the goalposts to climate change and more recently to climate crisis. Now that is failing a move to a new goalpost, water, is underway to pursue the real objective – total control. As always it is cloaked in righteousness (green). Who could oppose a desire for clean air or water?
[1] Manjoo, F., 2008, True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-fact Society.
1. Your 2002 Daily Mail article is interesting, but does not say that Rumsfeld sold chemical weapons to Saddam. It does say that Rumsfeld negotiated on behalf of the Reagan administration to provide Iraq material support to defeat Iran. We had a little beef with Iran at the time, but did not want a tiff with the USSR in that flashpoint to start WWIII. If we had directly intervened, WWIII would have commenced with Nuclear Armageddon the sure result. The article implies, but does not provide any details of transfer of supplies of Anthrax and “other biologic agents” which is a little strange considering that Anthrax is endemic to the fertile crescent region. A later article on the same subject by the Guardian (with an obvious ax to grind) implied that a Reagan administration authorized shipment of insecticide was the basis of the Iraqi Sarin, but while the precursors are similar, they are not the same thing. The timing of this also seems a trifle odd as the build up to the Iraq war was beginning and the Mail had a gleeful time trying to paint Mr Blair into a corner. (Always assume the papers in the UK have picked a party and will praise their partisans and condemn their opponents – there are a few glaring exceptions but that is usually a safe bet – and as a conservative I tend agree with the Mail – except when they are being too pigheadedly partisan). I doubt Mr Rumsfeld’s actions were nearly as diabolical as you have implied. (And having served under him, I don’t agree with much of his strategy for prosecuting the Iraq war and didn’t appreciate my suggestions based on intelligence and history being rejected out of hand in favor of a blitzkrieg type offensive that left the army free to melt into the population and form the core of the trouble spots after we “won”.)
2. Cluster bombs are painted with Zinc Oxide ( a yellow-green color) to prevent corrosion – and are painted so by just about any nation that develops such weapons as a rusted mass is not an effective weapon. (So what type of cluster munitions did the Soviets use in Afghanistan?) They tend to be rather small, but if half-buried, could be thought a partially covered relief bag. The lighting would have to be pretty bad as the colors are quite different in their parts of the yellow spectrum. I would think the larger threat to people in those areas would be the mine fields that still largely litter that area from both the Soviet and Taliban armies/militias and the Afghan civil war. Most of those fields are not marked and exist in agricultural areas or at least flat, not too rocky patches of ground someone might find tempting to plant. The death and maiming of innocents has happened in every war. The question of whether or not the intent to injure innocents and what actions were taken to prevent it once the threat to innocents is known are the guiding policies of “war crimes”. All of this hand-wringing after the fact is offensive to all who take such things seriously.
3. Prior to WWII, the economies in free Eastern Europe were in pretty good shape for rural provinces. They of course suffered from the trade barriers that were the main cause of prolonging the depression in the 30s, but were buoyed by the restriction on Germany and lulled into a false sense of security about their safety. As a result they did not invest in modern weaponry, but had a decent quality of life. All that changed with the war and what they had was destroyed. The Soviets did not really rebuild any of it and did not allow the Marshal plan to be used in any of the areas they controlled. So Eastern Europe was condemned to the third world for two generations. That does not mean that the Soviets weren’t formidable. They used their influence to change the politics of Central and South America – helped by the inept US policy in that area that supported dictators because it was easier to know who to buy.
4. While it is true that China had only a regional role, the veterans of the Pusan campaign might have a little beef with you on whether or not they were a threat. Large numbers of troops will eventually cause defenders to run out of ammunition and have to retreat, and China definitely had people and weren’t afraid to lose them at horrendous rates. That bloody minded thought pattern was what made them an enemy to fear.
Hi guys I have no clue how to get an article onto this site but a few minutes ago Obama issued another Friday night special Ex Order re climate change just saw on the Fox news site.Help me out and find it , thanks.
There is more than enough food and water in the world. It’s a question of distribution. It was recently discovered that Africa has huge, previously hidden aquifers – estimated to be 100 times what’s on the surface.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17775211
Recently water used to be a problem in parts of Australia. So much of a problem they had to mothball de-salination plants because of ‘Biblical floods’ and overflowing dams. They started the schemes because they were promised more drought due to global warming.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12102126
The water ain’t going anywhere but back on and inside the ground. It’s a cycle.
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Is this it?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/01/obama-creates-climate-change-task-force/
The problem isn’t the water used by the power generation, it is that we don’t use the excess heat to produce potable water. Releasing the heat directly to the atmosphere in the form of the APs favorite stock photograph of backlit steam isn’t an effective use of the heat, particularly if folks are going to hand-wring over “water depletion”. Building a large number of low pressure high temperature pebble bed nuclear power stations in coastal areas using the waste heat to desalinate and the excess electricity to pump the water to agricultural areas kills two birds with one stone, without actually killing any birds at all. The pebble bed technology does not have the melt down problems of traditional fuel rod systems, doesn’t have the pressure vessel problems and even in catastrophic cooling failure undergoes neutron-poisoning (stops the reaction) at temperatures far below the melt point of the fuel casing. Right now its only problem is pipe corrosion from the corrosive salt solution, but they aren’t far from clearing that hurdle as well.
More nuclear can clear both hurdles, but coal plants can use their excess heat as well if need be. The point wasn’t about the water vapor evaporated off to fall as rain somewhere else, but about capturing all that heat in a concerted way and using entropy to our advantage for a change.
Reminds me of the time I went to the LA Harbor to see the ceremony for the new Fire-boats being put into service. As part of the ceremony, the fire-boats shot out their water jets way up into the air. However one woman was upset and said, “They’re wasting all that water!!!” You can’t fix stupid. :-))
Owen in GA says:
November 1, 2013 at 8:19 pm
There was method to the madness behind China’s human wave assaults in Korea. The Communists put captured Nationalist soldiers in the first waves to soak up Allied fire. UN troops learned to let the first wave into their positions, which tactic naturally forced the Communists to change their tactics, too, aided by the fact that so many prisoners had already been killed. The Red Army did the same thing in WWII with their penal battalions, which also were used to clear mine fields.
Allan MacRae says: November 1, 2013 at 6:48 pm
I suggest that there IS a problem of excess depletion of certain aquifers, for example the Ogallala.
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Gunga Din says: November 1, 2013 at 7:02 pm
Water problems, whether in supply or treatment, are regional, not global.
Man can do something about that.
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Allan again:
Yes we probably can, but the Ogallala is one huge aquifer, part of the even larger Great Plains Aquifer and we’ve been pulling it down for a long time. Even if we started now, it would take many decades to improve and many more to resolve.
Foolish “green energy” schemes like corn ethanol have exacerbated the problem due to increased irrigation.
Further afield, the greens are also behind clearing the rainforests for palm oil plantations for biodiesel and sugar cane plantations for corn ethanol.
Furthermore, the greens have crippled the energy systems of entire countries through their aggressive promotion of ineffective and costly wind and solar power schemes.
Since about 1990, the greens have been a highly destructive force, causing great harm to both humanity AND the environment.
How is it that since about 1990, almost every green energy scheme that has been widely adopted is inefficient, ineffective, wasteful and destructive?
We clearly stated this point in an article published in 2002, but since then more than a trillion dollars off scarce global resources have been squandered on green energy nonsense.
How is it we confidently knew all these facts then, clearly stated these facts widely and publicly, and yet it all happened anyway?
Apparently, we are led by scoundrels and imbeciles.
We wrote in 2002:
[PEGG, reprinted at their request by several other professional journals , the Globe and Mail and la Presse in translation, by Baliunas, Patterson and MacRae]
http://www.apegga.org/Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
On global warming:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
On green energy:
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
[Calgary Herald, September 1, 2002, based on a phone conversation with Paleoclimatologist Dr. Tim Patterson]
On global cooling:
“If (as I believe) solar activity is the main driver of surface temperature rather than CO2, we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.”
______________
Bundle up, good people. It’s going to get colder out there.
Regards, Allan
OT, but you have to hear this.
It provides irrefutable evidence that angels walk among us.
With no prior vocal training or coaching, a nine-year-old girl stuns judges on “Holland’s Got Talent” with her breathtaking opera voice.
Watch and hear the video at: http://www.wimp.com/girlleaves/
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The song is a favorite: “O mio babbino caro” from the opera Gianni Schicchi, composed by Giacomo Puccini in 1918.
Here is Kiri te Kanawa singing the same piece
Enjoy, Allan
“Their hypothesis said global temperature would rise as CO2 levels increased. It hasn’t for 15+ years”
You leave OHC out of that analysis, without a justification, so the reader is left to guess as to why. Also, what about the 15 year periods you can pick where the earth was warming faster than the models?
Bill Illis says:
November 1, 2013 at 5:42 pm
Hi Bill, you may find this interesting……full article is open access so just click on the pdf.
http://m.pnas.org/content/early/2012/03/02/1115705109.abstract
Anyone wish to know a profitable way to save 12 to 15 percent of the worlds need for agricultural water?
Increase the CO2 in the atmosphere from 280 to 400 PPM.
It is estimated that around 15,000 tons a year of extraterrestrial objects enter Earth’s atmosphere. What percentage of the ablating molecules from these objects is H2O? I remember a few years ago there was some excitement about H2O being found in some of the spectral studies of meteoroid ablation, but then further studies refuted this. To the extent that some stony meteoroids do contain H2O molecules, it seems to me that the Earth could be receiving a small amount of extraterrestrial water every year. But then maybe it loses just as much or more to outer space in the upper reaches of its atmosphere. Are there any studies that have investigated the Earth’s water budget that includes its setting in the cosmos?
Good to see so many people joining the dots. MMGW wasn’t a mistake or an isolated example of the UN’s war on humanity. It is part of an organised, sustained, orchestrated campaign to extend it’s control & simultaneously destroy truth, science & reason. It’s going on in many, many other areas of science. Fluoride, vaccines, GMO’s, cancer causes & treatments… Someone has declared a war on our minds & bodies. The MMGW myth is just one aspect of this obscenity. I urge others to seek the truth & go wherever it takes you, regardless of how uncomfortable that is…Our lives & our liberty depends on it.
Google “Agenda 21 Eugenics Huxley Depopulation” I dare you. Double dare you. This is just the tip of the MMGW iceberg… Until we see the true nature of the attack we are unable to defend ourselves & for my children & yours I post this & hope truthseekers will take action…
Reblogged this on Head Space and commented:
Coming to an Executive Order near you.
The cost of desalination has plummeted from $6+ per cubic meter in the early 1990s to now getting around $0.50/m^3 and below already for some recent projects, about $0.002 per gallon, which, for industrialized countries, is cheap enough even for agriculture if needed. (If a country isn’t industrialized, its root problem for almost everything under the sun is not being so; economic growth is what solves most problems called environmental, like parasite-infested drinking water is the case in poor but not rich countries).
U.S. cities using water from ordinary sources, not desalinated, typically have municipal water prices of such as $24 to $73 per month for a household using 12000 gallons a month (400 gallons a day), meaning a total of $0.002 to $0.006 per gallon … a figure which would be raised somewhat if sourcing from desalinated seawater but not greatly.
A cost example for desalination (though one built recently in Singapore is even cheaper than the following figure): http://www.water-technology.net/projects/israel/
Desalination cost figures include energy costs, of course, and nuclear is among options, with literally billions of tons of uranium in seawater (extractable for a cost not causing more than a small price rise in total electricity generation expense in itself) and more fissionables (thorium too) in the crust. As a paper by Dr. Cohen illustrates, such are the equivalent of many millions of years of supply in today’s terms ( http://sustainablenuclear.org/PADs/pad11983cohen.pdf ).
Such is not to imply that desalination of seawater is usually necessary, given how much fresh water and rainfall continues to circulate as always, but to counter global peak water BS.
Like the CAGW movement being destroyed in coming decades by global cooling ( http://img176.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=81829_expanded_overview_122_424lo.jpg ), it will be a pleasure to watch further expansion in and advancement of increasingly inexpensive desalination wipe out other dishonest propaganda memes.
Steven Mosher said:
November 1, 2013 at 3:42 pm
“The null hypothesis that it isn’t CO2, which they ignore, is proved.”
illiterate.
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It may be a awkward sentence, but an illiterate person would not have been able to write it.
By your own “standard” you would be likewise “illiterate” for having misused the word “illiterate”, for having used a sentence fragment, and for not having capitalised “illiterate”.
Depleted water aquifer?
Easy
Frakking and direct excess flood waters back to the aquifer. End of problem and reduced flooding
They do say that if you drink a glass of water in London, it’s been through at least half a dozen other people since the earth last had it. If there are problems managing water elsewhere, they are political, not technical, period.
It’s also way past time for the human race to consider the legitimacy of the UN. None of us ever voted for any of these arrogant fascists, therefore they have no more authority to do anything “on behalf of the human race” than have you or I. Those of us who get to vote (even in our carefully neutered Western “democracies”) should be sure to inform our would-be representatives that acceptance of the UN will result in no job for them, non-negotiable. The provision of a neutral table around which nations can try to settle their differences is one thing, and a good thing; the arrogant generation of anti-human ukases by unelected bureaucrats who represent nobody is quite another.
As for those who believe that “the enemy is humanity itself”, they are thereby self defining as enemies of humanity, and should accordingly be treated like any other terrorist by the appropriate national government, which is the highest authority yet devised (however imperfect all real governments are). The longer we allow them to go on poisoning the well of human discourse, the greater will be the difficulty of eliminating their vile prejudices from our future.
Their slogan for the stupid was invented some time ago.
“What do you switch to when you run out of water”. Voilà, every little girlie greenie and every little boysie greenie is now primed.
thingadonta says:
November 1, 2013 at 5:28 pm
I remember reading a book as a kid which showed ships in the future towing icebergs from the poles to supply fresh water to the nations that were predicted to be dying due to lack of water. Big tugs with giant blocks of ice in tow were shown entering San Francisco, from memory. I wish I still had it.
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Hi All – the document referred to is…
Cold Regions Research & Engineering Laboratory – Research Report No 200 – January 1973
“Icebergs as a Fresh Water Source: An Appraisal”
by W.F. Weeks & W. J. Campbell
I see that I received my copy in Nov 1973!
You can read it at…
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924067511422;view=1up;seq=6
cheers edi
Thank you, Dr Ball, for a thought-provoking article; the spooky thing is that only this morning, while making my breakfast, I heard on BBC radio news a report on ‘concerns’ about global water supplies. The strategy, it seems, has already begun – and once again we will find the shameless, politically-driven, Agenda 21 supporting BBC at the forefront, willing (as always) to propagandise this next new ‘global crisis’ for the sake of the Common Purpose.
Will this idiocy never end?
Also, Dr Ball, if you should ever write a book on this and/or other climate change related matters you can count me as your first sale – you write clearly, so that even a complete layman like myself can follow your points with ease.
Someone has had a theory for decades that Earth is being bombarded by thousands of snowball sized comets daily, contributing significantly to the Earth’s water.
@tallbloke says:
November 1, 2013 at 3:22 pm
Far easier to blame the bill paying population for water shortage than privatised companies for failing to invest in water resource infrastructure. The UK govts allowed the population to be increased through unchecked immigration, but doesn’t negotiate with the water companies to build more reservoirs.
Alas, Tallbloke, you have it slightly the wrong way around.
In the UK, the water companies had proposed 8 new reservoirs to service the increase in population on SE England. Government inspectors stopped ALL of them, using the grounds that the government plans required people to use 20% less water, so those reservoirs were not necessary.
Stephen Rasey says:
November 1, 2013 at 3:56 pm
There can be a shortage of POTABLE water.
There can be a shortage of FRESH water.
There can be a shortage of FRESH water when and where you need it.
Now that is a classic example of a green argument – willfully misunderstanding what I have been saying.
I repeat again: There can NEVER be a shortage of water
There are many places in the world where you cannot get fresh, clean water when you want it. But this is NOT because WATER is short. It is because the Infrastructure is short. That means it is NOT a natural resources problem. It is an economic one.
The green trick is to point out places where people are short of water, and then treat this as a resource problem. It is not. If we wanted to, we could run a string of fresh-water swimming pools across the Sahara in case another ‘Phoenix’ crashed, and we wouldn’t waste any water at all. We would have wasted a large amount of money. Unless, of course, this created a new tourist attraction… 🙂
Where fresh water is short, the appropriate response is NOT to ‘save water’. It is to consider the economics. If you have only enough water for 50 people in one spot then your choice is to either keep to that number, or spend more money to provide a better supply (which you will ALWAYS be able to do). You many not be able to do it cheaply. But the thing that is short in this case is NOT water. It is money, and the economic/political ability to provide it.
What this means is that the appropriate response when told that you are ‘short of water’ is to consider how to address the problem, and the two available ways will always be:
1 – limiting local population
2 – providing more water
In practice, for a typical town, item 2) above will be the answer, and the discussion will centre on how best to pay for that. The one thing that is NOT an answer is to get everyone to cut back on consumption so as to service more people with the same infrastructure. All that does is lower people’s standard of living and ensure that when the problem arises again it will be more dangerous, because everyone will be living that much closer to the critical point where they cannot survive…