Implications of Climate Change on Water: Investment in water has been patchy and neglected

Climate Change changes the way plants grow. It 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.
And 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. - Economist.com

SHOOT: If you want to be part of the solution, eat less meat. Having a more produce-oriented diet is healtheir for you, more energy and water efficient and combats Climate Change.

clipped from www.economist.com So the shift from vegetarian diets to meaty ones—which contributed to the food-price rise of 2007-08—has big implications for water, too. In 1985 Chinese people ate, on average, 20kg of meat; this year, they will eat around 50kg. This difference translates into 390km3 (1km3 is 1 trillion litres) of water—almost as much as total water use in Europe. The shift of diet will be impossible to reverse since it is a product of rising wealth and urbanisation. In general, “water intensity” in food increases fastest as people begin to climb out of poverty, because that is when they start eating more meat. So if living standards in the poorest countries start to rise again, water use is likely to soar. 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.

USA Faces Exceptional Drought Crisis

And it is worsening. In 5 years 36 States are projected to experience catastrophic water shortages. Not 50 years, not 15 years, 5 years.

To appreciate how serious the conditions have become, notice how large the BLACK area is in the graphic above. These are large areas that are exceptionally and unusually dry.

To watch a video on the drought crisis in the US, go here.
Meanwhile consider this 2 year old CNN article below: UK scientists slam U.S. climate loonies. Loonies because they were arguing that the 'exceptional' hurricane season was not related to human activity, and that warming wasn't a certainty. It amounted to entrophy, all that dilly dallying and flip flopping. Right now, right now in the world, in everything we do, delay matters.

Farmer's around the world are going to have to learn how to conjure crops as weather becomes erratic, transitioning from droughts to floods to storms and all the way back and forth, again and again.

China’s Future Is Drying Up

By JIM YARDLEY

SHIJIAZHUANG, China — Hundreds of feet below ground, the primary water source for this provincial capital of more than two million people is steadily running dry. The underground water table is sinking about four feet a year. Municipal wells have already drained two-thirds of the local groundwater.

South-to-North Water Transfer Project Above ground, this city in the North China Plain is having a party. Economic growth topped 11 percent last year. Population is rising. A new upscale housing development is advertising waterfront property on lakes filled with pumped groundwater. Another half-built complex, the Arc de Royal, is rising above one of the lowest points in the city’s water table.

“People who are buying apartments aren’t thinking about whether there will be water in the future,” said Zhang Zhongmin, who has tried for 20 years to raise public awareness about the city’s dire water situation.
For more from this New York Times article, click here.