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Pakistan: A Question of Water
This may not be the most tactful time to bring it up, with much of Pakistan underwater and many millions homeless, but Pakistan's real problem is not too much water. It is too little water - and one day it could cause a war.
The current disastrous floods (to which the response of both the Pakistan government and the international community has been far too slow) are due to this year's monsoon being much stronger than usual. But that is just bad weather, in the end: every fifty or one hundred years you can expect the weather to do something really extreme. It comes in various forms - blizzards, floods, hurricanes - but it happens everywhere.
The long-term threat to Pakistan's well-being is that the country is gradually drying out. The Indus river system is the main year-round source of water for both Pakistan and north-western India, but the glaciers up on the Tibetan plateau that feed the system's various tributaries are melting.
While they are melting, of course, the amount of water in the system will not fall steeply - but according the Chinese Academy of Sciences, some of the glaciers will be gone in as little as twenty years. Then the river levels will drop permanently, and the real problems will begin.
When India and Pakistan got their independence from Britain in 1947, there was plenty of waters in the Indus system for everyone. In fact, almost half the water was still flowing into the Arabian Sea unused. But the population has grown fast over the years, especially on the Pakistani side of the border - from 34 million in 1947 to 175 million now - and the amount of water in the rivers has not.
The per capita supply of water in Pakistan has fallen from over 5,000 cubic metres (175,000 cu.ft.) annually in 1947 to only about 1,000 cubic metres (35,000 cu.ft.) today, a level defined by the United Nations as "high stress". Ninety-six percent of that goes to irrigation, and the Indus no longer reaches the sea in most years. That's what has already happened, even before the melting of the glaciers has gone very far.
Fifteen or twenty years from now, the water shortage (and therefore also food scarcities) will be a permanent political obsession in Pakistan. Even now, Pakistani politicians tend to blame India for their country's water shortage (and vice versa, of course). It will get worse when the shortage grows acute.
What turns a problem into a potential conflict is the fact that five of the six tributaries that make up the Indus system cross Indian-controlled Kashmir on their way to Pakistan. There is a treaty, dating from 1960, that divides the water between the two countries, with India getting the water from the eastern three rivers and Pakistan owning the flow from the western three. But the treaty contains a time-bomb.
India's three rivers contain only about one-fifth of the system's total flow. To boost India's share up to around 30 percent, therefore, the World Bank arbitrators proposed that the treaty also let India extract a certain amount of water from two of Pakistan's rivers before they leave Indian territory. The proposal was reluctantly accepted by Pakistan.
The amount is not small - it is, in fact, enough water to irrigate 320,000 hectares (1.3 million acres) - and it is a FIXED amount, regardless of how much water there actually is in the river. Now roll the tape forward twenty years: the glacial melt-water is coming to an end, and the total flow of the Indus system is down by half. But almost all of the loss is in Pakistan's three rivers, since the smaller Indian three do not depend heavily on glaciers.
So India is still getting as much water as ever from the eastern three rivers, AND it is still taking its full treaty allocation of water from two of Pakistan's rivers, although they do depend on glacial melt-water and now have far less water in them. As a result, India's total share of the Indus waters rises sharply (and quite legally) just as Pakistanis start to starve.
In these circumstances, would an Indian government voluntarily take less water than the treaty allows? Get real. India will be having difficulties with its food supply too, though it will not be in such grave trouble as Pakistan. Any Indian government that "gave India's water away" would promptly be driven from power - by parliament if it was the usual fractious coalition, or by voters at the next election if it were an unusually disciplined single party.
On the other hand, no Pakistani government, civilian or military, could just sit by as land that has been irrigated for a century goes back to desert and food rationing is imposed nationwide. Especially not if India's fields just across the border were still green. That is the nightmare confrontation that lies down the road for these two nuclear powers.
Meanwhile, the homes of millions of Pakistanis are underwater. In terms of human suffering, it is twenty times worse than Hurricane Katrina was in the United States five years ago, and it needs a proportionate response now. But the future holds something much worse for Pakistan (and for India), unless they start revising this fifty-year-old treaty now, before the crisis arrives.
26 Comments so far
Show AllI'm reading 'Climate Wars' by Gwynne now. It's a must-read for all interested in the geo-political ramifications of Global Warming. Get it and prepare to be shocked. Little of what he had to say is in the Mindless Mass Media in the US.
I have stated it here on CD many times. Fresh water will be the world's most important commodity by 2050. Not oil/energy. Not wheat.
In the 1980s DoE evaluated the threat of diminishing fresh water (the research excluded any potential influence from climate change, so it stands to reason that the report's conclusions are very, very conservative) and advised the Reagan Administration that military force will be required to protect the homeland's need for water and American interests abroad.
I also am reading "Climate Wars". Excellent.......Definitely not Al Gore
One point that is alluded to in this article is the origin of glacial snow melt in Tibet which is effectively under Chinese control.
Gwynne explains the increase of ocean temperatures, especially in the tropics, leading to an expansion of Hadley cells in temperate regions. Since Hadley cells are directly responsible for desertification, their expansion in marginal rain fall areas is problematic. This combined with increased snow and glacial melt spells disaster.
Areas affected by the increase in cells include the irrigated croplands of California, the grain belts of the US Midwest and Great Plains and the rice and wheat belts of China.
At present, much of the grain production in China is the result of irrigated agriculture from major river system that originate in Tibet. As mentioned in the article, Tibet is also the source of water for India and Pakistan
Gwynne explains that reduced/no melt from the Himalayas, combined with increased Hadley desertification will result in an elimination/abandonment of irrigated agriculture in northern India with a relocation to southern India.
Pakistan does not have a south to relocate to ....
Gwynne also explains that the Chinese will have to relocate northwards into Manchuria and Siberia (now favored by climate shift). China vs Russia .... Nice.
Gwynee also predicts mass starvation in China with several hundred million lives lost. China will do everything possible to feed its people .. including total control of Tibet and the waters of India and Pakistan.
With hundreds of millions starving, China will shut off the water to India and Pakistan.
Move into Siberia - two nuclear powers. Shut-off India and Pakistan- three nuclear powers.
.........
While all of this may be occurring in the next 30-40 years, estimates keep moving up and we could be approaching a point where all is irreversible.
But don't trust my interpretation of this book - get it and read it and be very, very concerned.
For those so inclined, a three part audio presentation by Gwynne Dyer based on Climate Wars is available here: http://www.gwynnedyer.com/ as Ideas1, Ideas2 and Ideas3.
Not to take away from the interesting points that Dyer made, but the article failed to mention that Kashmir (and Jammu) is illegally occupied by both India and Pakistan in violation of UN Resolution 47, dating way back to 1947. India has refused to allow a plebiscite all these years while Pakistan has supported it.
Since the world seems not to want to assist in seeing that this long-standing injustice is righted, I guess this situation will continue. But if justice ever prevailed there, and Kashmir and Jammu were to ever get their independence, then both India and Pakistan would have to seek a treaty with the rightful owners. Given the stance of India over the years, one can only surmise that India would end up with less than favorable terms.
The Black Horse of the Apocalypse waiting in the wings and the Pale Horse has visited a few places already too including Metropolis,Illinois. Tony
> But that is just bad weather, in the end.
No, it is worse than that. Global warming has increased the average amount of moisture in the air by five per cent. Warmer air holds more water vapour. Increased warmth and moisture in the air extend the range of possible intensity of every monsoon. Bad weather has become an extremist.
On the cheery side, the increase in extreme climate may debilitate Pakistan and India so much, that neither side will be able to fight an intensive war. The loss of glaciers, drought, and periods of extreme flooding, may render the entire region not worth fighting over.
Aye, but remember that India and Pakistan need not fight an intensive war: they both have nuclear weapons. This is not a cheery side at all.
As in Haiti.
The US Military controls major Airbases in Pakistan. These are used to keep US forces in Afghanistan supplied.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/SKEA-88GFWJ?OpenDocument
>>According to the Daily Dawn, the largest circulated English newspaper, Mr. Khushnood Lashari, the health Secretary during an appearance at the Senate Standing Committee on Health, revealed that health relief operations are not possible in the flood-affected areas of Jacobabad because the airbase is under the United States control. The coordinator of the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Centre, Dr Jahanzeb Aurakzai, told the standing committee of the Senate that foreign health teams could not start relief operations in remote areas because there are no airstrips close to several areas, including Jacobabad.
Excellent, brief, and informative article.
Comments are also very informative.
Meanwhile, doesn't the U.S. already have a serious issue with the riparian rights of the Colorado River, and water wars between northern and southern California, and the battle over irrigation versus saving the salmon in the Northwest?
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"The population has grown fast over the years, especially on the Pakistani side of the border - from 34 million in 1947 to 175 million now"
In three generations the population has expanded by a factor of six. Hmmm. You know in the three generations before that the population didn't expand by a factor of six. If that rate were the norm then the population would have been only a few thousand people in the 1700-1800s.
So how did the masters of the universe create such an unsustainable population explosion here during the petro-age? By sheer stupidity. The elites are pea-brained and idiotic. They put massive amounts of land into food production, fueled by petroleum, and dumped the harvest all over the world, trying to build mega-markets for their gigantic profiteering rackets.
The signal from monotheistic religion was to "go ye forth and multiply", and with the cheap petro-fodder, more kiddies became feasible and profitable. So the population exploded and the water dried up in Pakistan. Mindless stupidity on the part of elites, the "bigtime" stupid "movers and shakers".
The ridiculous part of it is that so many people idolize the elites. Hilarious!
Mr. Dwyer:
I am very disturbed by your largely unscientific, fear mongering article, and your plug that over population of brown skinned humans is going to be catastrophic for the Tibetan glaciers and therefore world climate and political stability.
Let me take some of your wildly false "facts" and then get back to my point. You say:
"The long-term threat to Pakistan's well-being is that the country is gradually drying out. The Indus river system is the main year-round source of water for both Pakistan and north-western India, but the glaciers up on the Tibetan plateau that feed the system's various tributaries are melting."
There is no assertive, specific scientific statement here and what you say is patently false. I do not know which planet you live on, but on Earth the Copenhagen World Climate Conference in December 2009 was sunk by the stupid IPCC making this same false assertion about the Himalayan Glacier system. It was taken to task by the Indian Academy of Sciences and Chinese Scientists at the Conference. In fact, because of this false alarm put into an otherwise reasonable 3000 page report by the IPCC, Dr Pachauri ,who is head of the IPPC and an Indian, was dragged over the coals for several months as it gave the Climate Change nay sayers powerful grist for their right wing crusade against any international effort. The Indian scientists questioned the 35 year estimate for the disappearance of the Tibetan Plateau glaciers, which is called the Third Pole because of its immense size and feeding of every major river in Asia. In fact the glaciers are melting at GLACIAL speed and the size (in many places almost a 1000 metres thick) is such that it won't melt much over the next hundred years if world population stabilizes at 9 billion as is widely expected.
You also say:
"While they are melting, of course, the amount of water in the system will not fall steeply - but according the Chinese Academy of Sciences, some of the glaciers will be gone in as little as twenty years. Then the river levels will drop permanently, and the real problems will begin."
Again, this is not the official position of the Chinese Academy since they were as vociferous at Copenhagen as the Indians were. Please provide official reference.
Also saying "some of the glaciers are melting and will be gone in 20 years" is logically saying nothing substantial at all. It is a truism to say "some Antarctic glaciers" will melt away in 20 years. Same holds for any ice anywhere on Earth. "Some" means you are waffling and have no scientific fact. The conclusion from a truism that you assert with such glee: "Then the River levels will drop ...begin" does not follow from your premises.
You also say:
"The amount is not small - it is, in fact, enough water to irrigate 320,000 hectares (1.3 million acres) - and it is a FIXED amount, regardless of how much water there actually is in the river."
Not only you do not know facts about the Himalayan glaciers, you don't even know how to count. 1 square km = 100 hectares = 250 acres. Thus 1 hec.= 2.5 acres. So 320,000 hectares = about 780,000 acres and NOT 1.3 million acres.
At any rate, Pakistan as well as India and China have water problems. So has the USA, in fact much larger given its enormous agribusiness in California, among the driest regions in North America.
The National Geographic magazine of April 2010 is entirely dedicated to world water resources and the rate at which they are being consumed. The world water situation is not dire, and certainly no reason to be alarmed and worry about an over population of coloured humans despoiling the Earth. That is what fear mongers such as you in the West do. I get upset that so many know nothing sycophants agree with his soothsaying 20 year long predictions that no self respecting statistician that I know of dealing with Climate Change will make with such lightweight information.
The essential problem with fresh water is that 95% of the world’s supply is iced up in glaciers and only about 1% or less is flowing in rivers. About 20-30 times that much is underground in water tables. Further the DISTRIBUTION of water is bad given the POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY of the land surface on Earth. I can't imagine India and Pakistan going to war on the water coming down the Himalayan glacier in 20 years time, because science and technology are advancing so rapidly that what seems unsolvable now will be a piece of cake then. What Dwyer is making is a LINEAR EXTRAPOLATION, everything else remaining constant, a standard practice among political economists, but laughable given the speed with science has advanced in the last 20 years in all fields. Mr. Dwyer you really need to study some science and mathematics before you venture out on a limb.
I am not saying there is no Climate Change disaster waiting for us if we do not do anything. But that entire problem is the result of global warming from manmade carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide equivalents spewing into the air. The industrialized world of the West is responsible for 70% of that and is still responsible for nearly 60% spewing out daily. Sub-Saharan Africa, where the population pressure is the highest and deforestation is rapid, is only responsible for less than 1% of global warming.
Speaking of "facts" - who the hell is Mr. Dwyer? Send me some of that stuff you are smoking!
What is this fixation on "brown skinned" and "colored" people. Dwyer does not classify people by color in this article and in his book.
The Himalayan glaciers are but one part of a larger problem. China may be facing massive climate shifts. There may be mass starvation in China if problems are not resolved. China, like India and Pakistan, will take care of its own people first. Since China ""owns" Tibet and the Himalayas, India and Pakistan better get working on their "cake" sooner rather than later.
I spend many years in Ethiopia, working on the problems of drought and famine. I am not a scientist. I do know, however that Ethiopia has gone from periodic drought to continuous drought. Ethiopia has a rapidly increasing population, that cannot be supported by a declining agricultural base. One solution (piece of cake) - cut off the Blue Nile and starve the Sudan and Egypt.
Ethiopia will do what it has to do to save its people.
Dwyer offers one interpretation of a very complex problem. We would be foolish to view him as the sole source of information
We would be foolish, however, to dismiss him without reading his book (free at the library)
>>Again, this is not the official position of the Chinese Academy since they were as vociferous at Copenhagen as the Indians were. Please provide official reference.
What is not the "Official position of the CAS" ?
The CAS has in fact reported Glaciers are in retreat
http://www.china.org.cn/english/environment/236964.htm
What the Scientists say and what the "Official GOVERNMENT position" is are often in conflict.
See as example the claim that 75 percent of the Oil from the Gulf spill is Gone.
>>I can't imagine India and Pakistan going to war on the water coming down the Himalayan glacier in 20 years time, because science and technology are advancing so rapidly that what seems unsolvable now will be a piece of cake then.
This is typical of the "Science will save us crowd'. The consequences of Warming were warned about more then 20 years ago with one of those consequences being more extreme weather events.
So why did Science not "save us" ? Why the extreme weather events in Pakistan and Russia? The issue with distribution of water was known 20 years ago. Where did science step in to save us?
Nations are in conflict the all over the World over resources. How is it that science did not stave off the Conflict in the Congo , or Afghanistan, Or Iraq over resources of Oil and Coltan? Should it not have saved us? We can have resource wars over Oil because "science" has not kept up with our need for it but can not over water because "science" will step in?
>>Also saying "some of the glaciers are melting and will be gone in 20 years" is logically saying nothing substantial at all. It is a truism to say "some Antarctic glaciers" will melt away in 20 years. Same holds for any ice anywhere on Earth. "Some" means you are waffling and have no scientific fact. The conclusion from a truism that you assert with such glee: "Then the River levels will drop ...begin" does not follow from your premises
Some is very material. Not all Glaciers are the sources of every river system. Only SOME Glaciers feed the Ganges. Only some glaciers feed the yellow river. If the glaciers that are in retreat feed a particular river system then the water levels of those systems will drop. The Glaciers not in retreat or that might be growing do not send word to the Glacier shrinking that they will make up the difference by sending extra water over.
Entire River systems have dried up in the past as the geological record shows. This even in times when Glaciers worldwide in advance. The difference THEN is people Migrated. The migration of people due to Climate Change in the past is an Historical fact. This with populations of people much smaller then today. How can anyone suggest that with the population of Earth at some 7 billion Climate change will not force migrations of people today or in the future. It already happens in Chad and African nations.
So a FACT.
A River system greater then the Ganges once existed in India. This some 8000 years ago. This river system was sourced from glacial melt in the Himalayas that have since disappeared. As those ancient Glaciers vanished the river in question dried up or shifted its course significantly. The towns along that old river then vanished. Where do YOu think those people went? Do you think there might have been conflict as they moved elsewhere?
>>I am not saying there is no Climate Change disaster waiting for us if we do not do anything. But that entire problem is the result of global warming from manmade carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide equivalents spewing into the air. The industrialized world of the West is responsible for 70% of that and is still responsible for nearly 60% spewing out daily. Sub-Saharan Africa, where the population pressure is the highest and deforestation is rapid, is only responsible for less than 1% of global warming.
Global warming does not check a nations Borders or which nation most responsible before it affects a given enviroment. The Gulf Oil spill will affect nations the world over. Global warming will affect nations the World over. Those already having problems with water supply will be affected the most. You admit India and Pakistan already have problems with water supply, and then dismiss this as having any consequences.
reasonisreligion writes:
"I can't imagine India and Pakistan going to war on the water coming down the Himalayan glacier in 20 years time, because science and technology are advancing so rapidly that what seems unsolvable now will be a piece of cake then."
India and Pakistant have already more than once lined up troops against each other over Kashmir. Do you think water has nothing to do with that? (And although they would be insane to use them, they have nuclear weapons...)
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GwNorth replies reasonisreligion, in part:
"This is typical of the "Science will save us crowd'."
Absolutely.
Example: We've been promised "clean coal" technology for at least 30 years. Millions of taxpayer dollars have gone into this "technology." A small example: back in the early 1980s Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste, a Democrat, floated $100 million in Ohio bonds to underwrite fluidized bed technology ('clean coal'). The money disappeared down a spider hole.
Example: Corn ethanol was going to help prevent our dependence on foreign oil, and the government not only subsidized the technology but required inclusion of ethanol in auto fuels. Turns out it requires more (oil and methane) energy to produce a gallon of corn ethanol than the energy produced by that gallon of ethanol. Ethanol plants all over the country are sitting idle.
Example: Carbon sequestration. CO2 waste from electric power plants could be pumped underground or some other technique could be found, to justify continued use of coal. Hasn't happened. Instead atmospheric CO2 is being absorbed by the oceans, causing a massive change in the balance of the diversity of living things, mostly detrimental (such as destruction of choral).
Example: Water desalinization (or desalination). This is being done on a small basis, and using solar power it can be quite efficient. But it can never replace a glacier.
Example: Fuel cells to power cars, using electrolytic osmosis, with the primary waste product being WATER. Studied for decades, millions invested. Too expensive.
Historic example: Remember when nuclear power generation was going to make electricity "too cheap to meter"? Talk about delusional!
The list goes on. It is similar to the evening news announcements that a "scientific breakthrough" has been found to cure a given cancer (but actual use in humans is several years away...). It is the "Lie of 'Progress'" to instill hope where in fact there is none. All it does is maintain the corporate status quo. The status quo is a cycle of death. For example, most cancers are caused by pollution. Pollution is caused by human activity, mostly corporate, at considerable profit. Many interlocked corporations then make millions, even billions, selling expensive drugs to "cure" the cancers their corporate cousins produce. The solution is to stop polluting. Another major solution would be to learn to conserve, which requires no "scientific breakthrough" at all, but rather collective political will.
Wind and solar power can be used more and more efficiently to produce electricity, but they cannot produce water.
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reasonisreligion seems intelligent and proficient in some math, but belligerent, young, and naive.
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Response to above posts that want to engage me in, hopefully, reasoned discussion.
To "Ole Man River". I am not sure whether the “-30-“ you end with is your age or some other important characteristic about your mind you that you want to inform us about. But I assure you that I am neither young nor naive, nor am I belligerent. It is standard practice in knowledgeable discussions that the person writing an article on a topic that has quantifiable facts and a huge amount of science involved in it such as climate change, global warming, water shortages, oil shortages, population growth, arable land available etc. be at least informed enough about both the science and the quantitative (i.e., mathematical) reasoning involved. As I have pointed out in my post, Mr. DYER has failed in this test (apologies for typos that added a W --"dubya" to it, though it seems apropos in retrospect given our experience with another innumerate "dubya" ).
You have not answered on his behalf any of the points of fact that I disputed from his article in clear quantitative terms. Consequently there is no substance in your defence of your hero. The key point I raised was that the at the Copenhagen Conference, the melting of the Himalayan Glacier was rejected by the Indian Scientists and the IPCC admitted that it made a goof in saying the glaciers will melt away by 2035. Furthermore, IPCC was told by the science members of the large group that wrote the 3,000 page report that that goof was made by the social science group that compiled part of the report. It was that that group who picked up a tidbit about melting glaciers from an obscure newspaper interview with some student researcher working in one of the western countries on the Tibetan Glacier system. If you care to investigate the respected and Brit and European newspapers and Internet data from December 2009 to April 2010 during which time this controversy and others about the lack of scientific scrutiny by the IPCC head Pachauri were in full swing, you will get an idea how serious and damaging to the entire international effort against Climate Change this wanton exaggeration was. This stupidity of the innumerate and non-hard science, talkie-talkie "literati" of the social science group put the entire hard science on climate change and global warming in doubt among the masses as the right wing press and rightwing pundits such as that Lord Moncton and such made hay on BBC and elsewhere.
I see from your writing and argument style "Ole Man" that you have only a vague idea that something is drastically wrong with the climate, but have no taste for hard data but only for generic statements that the "end is near" so that you can join the chorus of the "let’s do something right now" crowd of literary progressives without having any idea what. Consequently such egregious errors as in this Dyer article escape you.
The rest of your arguments are generic and really directed against capitalism which is not funding investments in appropriate technology to reduce CO2 and other Anthropogenic emissions, which also includes farting by the huge herds of meat cattle in America that are spewing a lot of CO2 equivalents about the same size as the motor vehicle traffic in N America. It would do the world a lot of good if fat Americans stop eating 20-30 times more meat than the poor in the 3rd world. That may reduce global warming somewhat so that the Himalayan Glaciers don't melt.
Response to GWNORTH
GW says: "What is not the "Official position of the CAS" ?
The CAS has in fact reported Glaciers are in retreat"
Reply: I presume you did not catch the essence of my critique of Dyer on his logic when I said that using the quantifier "some" or saying a "glacier melts" are saying nothing at all. They are tautologies. It’s like saying bees buzz. Your statement that "Glaciers are in retreat" is of the same kind of vacuous truism. A glacier may retreat 1 centimetre, one metre, or one kilometre and so on. In each of these cases one can use your statement and it would be true. But reasonable people will take action if the expectation is for 1 km rather than 1 cm, don't you agree?
GW says:
"This is typical of the "Science will save us crowd”. The consequences of Warming were warned about more then 20 years ago with one of those consequences being more extreme weather events.
So why did Science not "save us" ? Why the extreme weather events in Pakistan and Russia? The issue with distribution of water was known 20 years ago. Where did science step in to save us?"
REPLY: This diversion from the Himalayan glacier to a whole sale attack on science per se is a rant that is so typical of the language literate but anti-science crowd, which apparently includes you. Not having enough facts and reasoning to counter the points I made, you indulge in the standard technique to change the subject. But you did not do even that with finesse and thus your broadside on science. It is clear you do not understand as Science and Mathematics as THE major contributors of useful knowledge to humankind over the last 300 years since Newton.
Science is NOT a single, monolithic POLITICAL institution. It is the main method by which a systematic study of Nature can be made if one wants to get away from shamanism and medieval superstition. If in the same time period from Newton to now you have any other EPISTEMIC process that can produce more knowledge than science and mathematics, with which we now have life expectancies of 80 or more compared to the Hobbesian "brutish and short" 25 years, I would be interested in knowing that. The USE of science (i.e. "technology" arising from science) is always a POLITICAL decision. That these decisions have been crap for the last 300 years, such weaponization technologies, coal fired technologies to save money and so forth are made by the Aristocracy/Plutocracy and their sycophants and mandarins in corporations and government. Most of the latter come from the elite high schools of Britain and US, and then read for law, literature history or poli-science degree from elite universities ( science" being uncouth and too Boffin class, not hardnosed "real world" art of governance as is commonly known from the lives of political and business "leaders"). So if they have made stupid decisions about technology, often in direct opposition to the collective wisdom of scientists, then it is rather stupid to blame science for the mess that we are in.
GW: Your other two points about the dried up river system 8000 years ago and the Gulf oil spill are non sequiturs.
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DUCK SAWCE says: "I spend many years in Ethiopia, working on the problems of drought and famine. I am not a scientist. I do know, however that Ethiopia has gone from periodic drought to continuous drought. Ethiopia has a rapidly increasing population, that cannot be supported by a declining agricultural base. One solution (piece of cake) - cut off the Blue Nile and starve the Sudan and Egypt.
Ethiopia will do what it has to do to save its people. "
REPLY: First off, you may have visited that area for some years as a US Peace Corps person or something. I lived in East Africa for 24 years of my life, next door to Ethiopia. Ethiopia has some 10 million hectares of arable land now with rich alluvial Blue-Nile soil and also mineral rich volcanic soil that at present are not used or underused by subsistence farmers. The population of Ethiopia is about 45 million hardy people (they produce the best marathon runners at the Olympics). They are an ancient people with recorded civilization dating back to the time of the Pharaohs. Ethiopian coffee, which grows in abundance, is among the world’s finest. Its mineral riches have not even been explored. Do you know how large a country Ethiopia is? There would no land pressure and more economically non-subsistence farming would be easily possible if there is diversification of opportunity in the cities such a Addis Ababa. Right now, Ethiopia is overrun with Arab corporations form Saudi and the Emirates who want to grow food on agribusiness scale. And the corrupt government has given them the go ahead.
Corruption of half or uneducated thug politicians and leaders of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, supported by brutal, genocidal armies of gunslingers, and Western and Arab corrupters with their huge wads of cash is the main problem for the lousy distribution of farmland. These problems are not because of science but DESPITE the science.
At any rate, the Ethiopia digression is not germane to the discussion on Dyer's article.
>>Your statement that "Glaciers are in retreat" is of the same kind of vacuous truism. A glacier may retreat 1 centimetre, one metre, or one kilometre and so on. In each of these cases one can use your statement and it would be true. But reasonable people will take action if the expectation is for 1 km rather than 1 cm, don't you agree?
You obviously did not read the article I linked to. The retreat of the Glaciers in question was QUANTIFIED . You would rather nitpick over the words that are chosen and because the word SOME chosen leap to conclusion that the premise of the article wrong. This is chicanery.
>>This diversion from the Himalayan glacier to a whole sale attack on science per se is a rant that is so typical of the language literate but anti-science crowd, which apparently includes you. Not having enough facts and reasoning to counter the points I made, you indulge in the standard technique to change the subject
Another poor rebuttal. You provided NO FACTS as to the "leaps in science" that are going to solve the Global water problems. None at all. All you said is "science makes tremendous leaps" . Please detail those "tremendous leaps" and explain why they are not happening today. Detail how they will address the water problems India and Pakistan experience now and then elaborate as to why it not being done today and what science will appear 20 years from now to address this that not here today. To turn your own arguement back against you. QUANTIFY your claims. Dyers is not a scientific article. It is a journalists article. Do you understand the difference?
You then go into a long spiel on POlitical decisions and how they inhibit scientific decisions yet fail to make the obvious link that we are dealing with GOVERNMENTS that must make Political decisions .
See your meeting in Copenhagen to see the results. Nothing accomplished.
The rest of your rebuttal is ad hominen lacking any substance. I point out the failings of science to address such issues in the past and you immediately conclude it an "anti-science" attack. It was not that at all. The Science will save us crowd is really no different then the "Jesus will come back and set all things right crowd". IT blind faith leading to nothing being done.
>>Your other two points about the dried up river system 8000 years ago and the Gulf oil spill are non sequiturs.
They are pertinent to the discussion at hand. The only reason you dismiss them as non-sequitors is your arguement fails that test.
It demonstrates people relocate when sources of fresh water diminish. This is indisputable. There are farms in South Alberta that are testament to that. The Science could not find them more "fresh water" when the groundwater reservoirs that took thousands of years to accumulate were consumed.
Go, GW! Couldn't have said it better (or as well), myself ....
GW North says:
" Dyers is not a scientific article. It is a journalists article. Do you understand the difference? "
GW North, my critique is on the SCIENTIFIC content of the article and the journalistic license that Dyer has taken. After two posts, if you are still defending the license to exagerate facts for journalistic sensationalism, then you should be questioning yourself whether you understand the difference between SCIENCE and JOURNALISTIC MYTH?
As to your nonsensical imputation that I implied, in a fit of Dyeristic journalistic fantasy, in my post that there ARE leaps in science going on RIGHT NOW in front of everybody's eyes that will solve the water problems, it is an unadulterated falsehood that is easily proven so by reading my post again. If you read my posts with some amount of anlytical comprehension skill, for which you may have to take a basic course in logic it seems, then you will notice that I said that many of the water problems that arise right now are the result of political geography, not physical topography. Consequently I believe that cooperation will be forced on China, India and Pakistan and all other Asian countries dependent on the Tibetan Plateau by the nature of the problem, and hence my prediction that they will not go to war over a problem that has a clear rationing and planned-use solution in the near term. Many of the water problems, say between Sudan and Egypt and Ethiopia and in Asia, as in Indo-Pak case, are essentially the legacy of British and other Western colonialism and the drawing up of arbitary borders in Africa, Asia and Latin America. They are NOT hopeless problems. There IS or WILL NEVER be billions of people dying of thirst from shortage of water that science will not be able to EVER solve. We can, even now, easily visualise solutions with such technologies such as solar-powered desalination, or thermo-nuclear FUSION powered desalination or Antartic or Himalayan glacier melt capture. The issue is not one of science but of capital investment in the technologies well ahead of anticipated shortages. Also note that THERMO-NUCLEAR, which is CLEAN FUSION energy, is not available now in any commercial qunatity, but has been achieved in laboratories at Princeton and Russsia. That technology is a matter of time, not of making the impossible possible. It will be such a tremendous leap in energy supply from just a few tons of sea-water, that the anticipated time for the breakthrough, which is about 25-40 years will occur just as some of the more horrific forecasts made by sensational, know-nothing journalists are making and frightening the hoi-polloi will be supposedly taking place.
As for the "quantification" of "glacier retreat" you are talking about, which I did not bother to read, since all such nonsensical quantifications were roundly rejected by the consensus of scientists gathered there insofar as the Himalayan glaciers are concerned. Apparently it seems you did not bother to read my first post on Dyer where I said this plainly and clearly. By your posting a source for some quantifiaction done in some place without even determining yourself first whether the quantification you supplied refutes the refutation of exactly the same alarmist nonsense, reproduced by Dyer, eight months after the fact shows that you have never done any fundamental research yourself. If the quantification you have found clearly states that the the rejection of the "quantititive evidence" at Copenhagen was in error and NOW there is a consesnsus among hard science geologists and other physical scientists that the glaciers are, IN FACT, "retreating" at an alarming rate of x kilometres per year and would definitely melt away by 2035 as originally imagined, then not only I but the whole of Asia would be jumping up and down and asking for a new CChange Protocol right away. Do you see any such thing happening in scientific circles, and in the lead science journals?
No? I rest my case. I see no point in arguing with a fatalistic person,clearly not capable of assembling scientific data and arguing a case for catastrophic melting of the Tibetan glaciers in 20 years as your hero Dyer is arguing. By the way, this is sustained response to the main point of your posts in suppoprt of Dyer. It is clearly not sentence nit picking, and I hope you understand it and stop slinging verbal missiles all over the place including how science works. By the way, to understand scientific revolutions, you should read Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions", a famous monograph from the 1960's and 1970's I used to assign my Ph.D. students in economics and finance. Otherwise,they with poor or forgotten background in science and mathematics, were not able to shake off there 17th Century Malthusian fatalism, common place among the literati, especially British and British-LSE influenced "economists", with minimal understanding of science since Malthus. Kuhn is the standard graduate text in the history and philosophy of science.
Cheers
Your tendency to direct ad hominem attacks at those who "dare" to disagree with your postings belies your stated intention to deal with these issues "scientifically" - the implication, nay assertion, being that if one doesn't immediately bow before your impeccable logic then one must be ignorant or misinformed or incapable of understanding. I would humbly suggest that if your intent is to inform or educate instead of just bully by hitting people over the head with your credentials and "superior" knowledge, you might take a different approach ...
As to "scientific revolutions" - well how about the "Green Revolution" that increased crop yields and made population explosions possible, until it became apparent that these new wonder crops were more water intensive and the amounts of water required resulted in more dams being built and more wells being dug which in turn resulted, in some areas, in deep arsenic containing waters being tapped. Or how about the "GMO Revolution" where disease resistant crops required more chemicals and fertilizers resulting in more bankrupt farmers and poisoned soils and water supplies.
Every time I hear about a new "scientific breakthrough" or "revolution" that offers "unlimited" opportunities for growth and plenty, I shudder because 9 times out of 10 it is coming out of either a commercially motivated outfit or a well meaning but terribly narrowed focus on one particular aspect of an issue without adequate consideration given to, or even a dismissal of, it's implications for the system at large - The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness runs rampant in modern science, aided and abetted by the computer modeling of life.
I suspect even Einstein may have had some second thoughts about publishing his E=mc2 discovery. Even Dow, I think, has dropped it's "better living through chemistry" motto. Many of our "scientific breakthroughs" are now killing us and each time we discover another "cure" we soon have to add more "cures" for the side effects the first "cure" produces. What our scientists need is not more boldness in pursuit of solutions but more humility in admitting that the more we know the more we know we don't know. Now THAT would be a truly useful scientific discovery .....
As to this controversy over exactly when the glaciers would disappear - a tempest in a teacup because the important point seems to be that they are and it is my understanding that with regard to many other predictions regarding certain events predicted by the global warming models, the updates often reveal that those events are happening at a faster rate than predicted. So one can adopt an "Oh, we've got a 100 years before that happens" approach, in which case we will think we have 99 years to continue on with business as usual, relying on the deus ex machina of science to save us, or we can adopt the much more prudent approach of reacting as if it were going to happen next year ...
"I believe that cooperation will be forced on China, India and Pakistan and all other Asian countries dependent on the Tibetan Plateau by the nature of the problem,"
Is this belief based on science? Who or what will do the forcing? Logic? Reason? And what will such "cooperation" consist of - another World Bank mediated treaty?
I am afraid, my friend, that for all your scientific expertise, you may be a bit naive when it comes to how problems like this are actually "solved".
"They are NOT hopeless problems. There IS or WILL NEVER be billions of people dying of thirst from shortage of water that science will not be able to EVER solve."
They may not be hopeless problems, but it is, indeed, a leap of faith to suggest not only that science will solve them but that science can solve them. Perhaps science's greatest contribution will be to demonstrate that the answer lies not in finding new ways to manipulate our environment but in rediscovering ancient ways of living within its limits ......
It has been known for sometime that control of water resources has been a powerful underlying basis for conflicts dressed up as religious or ethnic disputes. That these conflicts are reaching a head as such a fundamental human need becomes more scarce is something we not only need to acknowledge, lickety-split, if we have ANY hope of dealing with them, but need to address openly, honestly and - politically. To argue that "science can save us" without acknowledging the fact that science, as applied, has never been apolitical and never will be, is simply whistling in the wind ....
Reason as religion will serve us no better than any other organized religion has done over the millennia ....
We have all too often used science to manipulate and control, not simply to understand, unless of course "science" has changed since I majored in it .....
If India and Pakistan ever got into a water war, I wonder which side the United States would intervene on behalf of?
FYI reasonisreligion...
The -30- tag goes back to long before my early time as a journalist. It was used by reporters (AP/UPI) sending stories on the Teletype machines. -30- meant "end of story," meaning anything following was not part of the text, but might be back-story or a status report such as on expected followup.
Also, I know the difference between SCIENTIFIC MYTH and JOURNALISM.
You are just too confrontational, bombastic, and bloated with self-certitude for my taste.
Over and out.
-30-
Characteristics not to uncommon, unfortunately, in those whose religion is reason ....