Future US-Canada Water disputes due to Global Warming?

[Mike Baker]

Isn't London Ontario quite a ways away from the Thames? Or am I missing something? 

You know I thought it was far away from it too 

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

Isn't London Ontario quite a ways away from the Thames? Or am I missing something? 

Best get out an atlas....you are missing something.

 

[vonGarvin]

Just as there is more than one London on this planet, so too is there more than one Thames.  London Ontario, named after the capital of the Empire way back when, also had the river running through it named after the river running through "Londres".  Trust me, I know.  I lived within 100 metres of the North Branch of the Thames along Adelaide Street from 1992-1998.

Trivia: London (England) in French is "Londres", while London (Ontario) is "London" in French.  I brought it up to the Air Canada "steward" upon landing at London a few years back, after he said "Bievenue a Londres".  I said "J'ai pense que Londres est en Angleterre, et London est en Ontario".  He just looked at me and smiled....

 

[p_imbeault]

Oops my mistake, they don't teach us kids Canadian Geography as well as they used to apparently.  ;D

 

[Mike Baker]

Oops my mistake, they don't teach us kids Canadian Geography as well as they used to apparently.  ;D

No, they don't, and I am a geography wiz 

 

[a_majoor]

What ship should we send?  DISCOVERY went there in 2001 (alternate universe), but didn't land.  Of course, later expeditions were turned away after Jupiter morphed into Lucifer!    THOSE expeditions didn't turn out that well.....;D

To fit with the general mindset of the "Greens", I was thinking of the good ship "Lollypop". ;D ;D ;D

I'm glad the geography debate was settled. On the other hand, If I was to do a pub night in London there would be a few rounds I wouldn't have to buy........ >

(Back to being serious)

The simple solution to all this is to set municipal water prices according to the market (and looking at bottled water, H2O is more expensive than gasoline!). Public behaviour regarding consumption would change pretty quick, and it would not result in social or economic devastation. Israel has a GDP/person similar to California, yet uses aprox 1/5 the water the Californians do. The fact that water costs about 5 times as much in Isreal than California may have something to do with it.

 

[TCBF]

Ask any homeowner in SoCal if there water rates have skyrocketed, and you may get a shock:

"What water rates?  I pay taxes for that!"

Free water being a right and all....

:

Never thought we would be preaching "The Market Never Lies" to the experts...

 

[Benny]

I can't help but wonder what happens when all that water heats up due to global warming, evaporates and creates one giant cloud that blocks out the sun.  Do you suppose it might rain?

Oddly enough, the opposite is likely to take place.
Water evaporation (at temperatures well below boiling point) is due primarily to light intensity, not heat. The same polluters that have increased CO2 levels, have greatly increased airborne particulate matter (aka, dust). This allows water droplets to form more smaller drops resulting in vapor clouds, rather than fewer heavier droplets resulting in rain. This effect is known as 'Global Dimming'. No, Michael Moore's fanbase isn't breeding, the smaller sized droplets increase the earths albedo, reflecting sunlight back into space, thus dimming the surface light level. Estimates vary, but roughly 2-4% less sunlight is hitting the ground each decade.
Less light -> less evaporation -> less rain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming

 

[LakeSup]

"Let em come, I hope they like the taste of blood in there water. 

But seriously, there are lots of other solutions to water shortages, you can boil or evaporate sea water and then recolect it, it would sooner become economic (or at least combined with moral reasons) to build large filtering plants like that then go to war"

Can be done , and desalination is done in Israel ,but is expensive relative to getting water , as we do now, freely in the ground or surface.  Even more expensive as it would come at a time where energy costs will be higher.  A perfect storm of resource shortages and high population rates.  One of the problems is overuse of underground aquifers, especially in very arid reagions....water there is like oil,,,once it's gone, its gone and its being used , rather friviously, irrigating water intensive crops in hot, dry climates (S US and Calif) where it is maily lost due to evap.  Whatever happens in the US, I think the Great Lakes bordering states would be on the Canadian side.

 

[Kirkhill]

WarmandVertical:

Those same hot,dry places supply three other critical components to supply food -

Space - desert land is cheap land
Heat - plants don't grow in the cold
Light - plants don't grow in the dark

Also the ground is relatively pest free compared to wet, humid climates where everything grows uncontrollably demanding more controls.

So your choices are - cover vast acreages in Canada with expensive greenhouses that require heating, augmented lighting and CO2 to be manufactured to make the plants grow, or you can continue to ship water to places where the space, heat and light are free.

Cheers.

 

[JackD]

or you can invest in an industry, do some breeding work, grow appropriate crops - The University of Saskatchewan had for decades an apple/ sour cherry/ strawberry breeding program and in the 90's got it out to the farmers - nothing but profit for them - people want apples that taste like apples - not some product that has been dumped in an area after 2 years of storage. With some knowledge in crop production, some breeding for hardiness, good and unconventional crops can be grown on the prairies - its advantage being it's a pest-free growing area and the product is safe - unlike what's come from California lately...

 

[a_majoor]

Sometimes I wonder about people. Crop research has suffered due to the backlash engineered against GM crops, yet it takes 1000 tonnes of water to grow one tonne of corn. It also takes outlandish amoounts of water to make and process other products like steel or silicon chips (despite these items being "dry")

Solutions do exist, but until counterproductive behaviour like subsidizing water, or subsidizing crops and processes which use large amounts of water are dropped, there will be little or no incentive to curb waterr usage until the crunch comes 9at which point only panic driven solutions will be considered and implimented). Withdrawing subsidies and allowing market pricing mechanisms to control water usage will work without panic and only a few tears......

 

[JackD]

In regard to water use - there are all sorts of conserving solutions - trickle irrigation... appropriate choices of land cover - native prairie grasses for example - instead of water-intensive imports, snow cover conservation, appropriate cultivars and crops - or even ranching instead of cultivation (the bison is making a comeback) - many tricks out there.... Actually when it comes to 'green' , one of the 'greenest'  in Canada - and no pun intended - is the Canadian Armed Forces - the land management practices of the CAF should be lauded.

 

[TCBF]

Actually when it comes to 'green' , one of the 'greenest'  in Canada - and no pun intended - is the Canadian Armed Forces - the land management practices of the CAF should be lauded.

Nope.  Ban on lead shot on DND trap and skeet ranges while we fill our impact areas with lead cored IVI Ball?

Politics.

How about the pollution created by moving a seacan village to a new hunk of trg area because an EA was not done before the 'ville was put in place?  How about doing the damn EA and saving the deisel oil?  How about firing all of our Environmental sections and hiring the guys at the Canada's Wonderland environmental section instead?  Then we can terra-form our training areas into Combat Maneouvre Theme Parks instead of second tier game preserves.

 

[Greymatters]

You'd think these people would have heard about desalination plants...   

 

[nowhere_man]

Nope.  Ban on lead shot on DND trap and skeet ranges while we fill our impact areas with lead cored IVI Ball?

You're joking right, Their is no way that the led balls from skeet shot is going to kill the environment. 
So you guys have to use Steel Shot for skeet shooting? Steel is garbage stuff,
I've seen a Duck take a full shot of #2 steel and go on, Do that with led and see how far that duck goes.

 

[Greymatters]

Then we can terra-form our training areas into Combat Maneouvre Theme Parks instead of second tier game preserves.

What kind of rides and games did you have in mind for this...?

 

[foresterab]

Okay....hot topic for me but I'll try to add some more insight.

Kirkhill...While canadian temperatures limit many types of crops we've also got an advantage that many southern growers would love.  Durainal Day or Growing Degree Days means that the lack of "night" in the more northern latitudes actually produce a more effective growing season than areas with long periods of darkness.  Only a small portion of the time during the photosynthesis process requires darkness and as a result long days with warm temperatures are very effective.  We also have the advantage of relatively low evapo-transpiration rates due to the cool (20-25 degree) days compared to the California 30+...more effective water use is the result.  Given the large amounts of forested land and muskeg in these climates you also have a constant natural source of oxgen and carbon dioxide.

Add it all together and you end up with agriculture settlement in northern alberta all along the Peace River and as far north as High Level.  For comparison sake local climate up there supports grain crops even though you're further north than Churchill, Manitoba.  Downside is frost sensitive crops such as fruits and vegtables offer much fewer growing options.

JackD...Excellent comment on the university of Saskatchewan.  The northern fruit program has been going on since at least the 1960's but in the last 15 years or so turned over the Universities while the federal gov't got out of many of the programs.  The work with shelterbelt tree species in Indian Head, Sask. is also worth mentioning as we're starting to see the results of that reseach showing up accross Canada, the northern US states and some work in China.  This is due to the high growth rate of the hybrid tree species and thier potential use as wood fiber for the forestry industry...currently only allowed on private land though.

In regards to the DND sites and training facilites.  CFB Petewawa is also the location of the Canadian Forest Service experimental farm...over 100 years of forest research on management of public lands.  CFB Suffield has been cited numerous times for its state of preservation of native prairie grasses.  CFB Wainwright and Cold Lake I know are often referred to as excellent conservation/multiple use lands due to their wildlife population.  While live weapons ranges/drop zones do suffer culmative contamination issues I think the bigger issue is how much good work is being done in the less used areas of these lands.  CFB's represent very large tracts of land which are fairly undistrubed and work as a good complement to the Parks and Protected Areas of Canada. 

Lots more to say but less is more for now.

 

[SiG_22_Qc]

They can get as much water in Lag Vegas that in the bottom of lake Ontario. I'm not too worried bout that.

2nd. Who drinks water from the great lakes? Isnt it polluted like hell....?

 

[Kirkhill]

good points foresterab - I remember seeing some reports on ginormous vegetables being grown up a Fairbanks Alaska because of the combination of soil (volcanic?), long days and very hot continental temperatures in the summer time. (Fairbank swings from something like -50C to +40C).