Letters to the Editor
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Another Choice
Sun Belters, you have a choice: get used to the droughts, or move to Detroit -- or Cleveland, or Syracuse, or Chicago, or Duluth -- and get used to the winters. They're not as tough as they used to be. As you may have noticed, the climate is changing.
There is another choice -- Aberdeen, Washington. We have lots of water, mild winters and plenty of room.
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Drinking sewage
It should be part of the conversation ,that we have been doing just that for probably hundreds of thousands of years. The water in the lakes, rivers, etc. have been recycled in nature for some billions of years; it's the same water. disigny
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That's why we left Arizona
After 15 years in Arizona, my husband and I were looking at the climate data, noticed that it hadn't rained in 7 years where we lived, and thought, we want to live where the water is. I grew up in the Midwest and was tired of the pickup truck culture out there, anyway. Glad to be back, and like you said, it's not even as cold or snowy as it used to be! . . .For better or worse.
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Recycled water
Twenty-five years ago, when my husband and I built our house in northern California, we tried to install a gray water system, which would have meant that we would have watered the plants in our yard with the run-off from our shower, sinks, and washing machine. You would have thought we suggested that we hang dead bodies from the rafters the way the building department acted. There are plenty of ways to re-use water that's pretty darned clean to begin with. But now we send all that water into our septic tank and have to use extra water to water our (drought-tolerant, I hasten to add) plants. We need to get over some of our knee-jerk germ phobias when it comes to issues like these. And quickly!
Incidentally, where we live, we get about 33 inches of rainfall a year and tons of snow fall in the surrounding mountains; a lot of our water is shipped south, along an open canal, through hundreds of miles of desert, with the water evaporating all along the way. And farmers are still farming rice, cotton, and alfalfa in the Central Valley, which are all hugely water intensive. Farmers in the Southern Delta, meanwhile, are often paid NOT to grow these crops, for which their climate is so well-suited. In this case, we really need to start acting more cooperatively in economic and political ways. We don't need to start shipping water all over the damn place.
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Lawright makes an excellent point
"Only good leadership based on sound science is going to get us through."
Man, are we in trouble!
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Nulla's posts remind me of that song...
Greetings
Remember "Don't Know Much Geography..."
Nulla, Nulla, Hulla...
Duluth on the west edge of Lake Superior is a busy OCEAN port. Yeah, ocean as in Atlantic... Look it up you'll be amazed
But the biggest problem - the folks in the western desert don't learn ie Las Vegas is busily appropriating the water of northern Nevada to use for Golf Courses, irritating fountains and far too many people.
And when that's gone?
And when they've sucked Lake Superior dry and every river is diverted to their service?
What then?
Better they take the pain of "no water" now maybe it will be a teachable moment
There are worse things then winter. Living among 'snowbirds' and eating gtits, for instance
Enjoy the journey
WarLord
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As for reviving Texas' '70s "Let the bastards freeze in the dark" motto...
1) Not only does Canada have oil, so does North Dakota. Lots of it. Much more than ANWR, and it won't trash the earth anywhere near as much to get at it. (Venezuela has oil too, and their leadership seems to be a lot more benign than some US pols I could name.)
2) Transmitting energy long distances over power lines is very inefficient -- lots of energy loss -- so the idea of the Sun Belt powering anything other than itself from solar is a pipe dream unless somebody gets cracking on superconductivity that works at freezing temps or above.
Local power producers are the way to go: Solar-roofed skyscrapers, windows and even normal surfaces that serve as solar cells (think about if all of the surface of your car and the street you drove it on could be made to collect solar energy? It's not unlikely, now that printed thin-film solar technology is a reality), wind turbines with thin-film solar skins, manure digesters (which not only keep waste from entering the groundwater, but also trap the methane that would otherwise contribute to greenhouse-gas effect and use it for fuel), all of these are things that can be used in any climate.
You will notice the absence of corn-based ethanol on this list. Why? Because it's sucking up our aquifiers faster than people realized it would: It takes six gallons of water to get a gallon of corn ethanol. And we can use the corn for better things. Even the corn states are starting to back away from it. Celluosic ethanol looks to be better, but it's still pretty water-hungry.
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That water isn't just yours
I'm from Canada, specifically Ontario, more specifically Hamilton, on the shores of Lake Ontario. As McClelland says, there are agreements in place among the stage governments of the states on the Great Lakes that prevent the export of water from the Great Lakes basin. I am quite grateful for that, but what hasn't been mentioned as much is that these agreements are also international, including the provincial government of Ontario and the Canadian federal government. And let me tell you, on this one we're completely in agreement with our state colleagues. The entire local economy and natural environment depend on the Great Lakes staying as they are. If Americans want to flee the winters to go live in the desert that's their problem, but the water they covet doesn't just belong to the United States.
It's not like that water isn't being exported at all; it goes into bottled water that goes all over the continent, sidestepping the international treaties that demand that Great Lakes water cannot leave the Great Lakes Basin.
To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if you enjoy the acquiescence of the Canadian federal government soon. The next election will probably see a Conservative majority, and Stephen Harper is quite reliable in kissing whatever @$$ the White House demands.
Here's hoping the local state governments remain as hardheaded as they have been for a long time to come!