ian - The strange thing about the East Coast of the U.S. is that inbetween these "mini droughts", we have Tropical Storms and Hurricaines and Blizzards and general "Nor'easter" weather events, that can put a big dent in, or completely wipe out the water deficit... quick, fast, and in a hurry. The presence or absense of these events are significant. Most Hurricaines approaching the East Coast originate off the coast of West Africa and make their way as depressions across the Atlantic to take up residence in the Caribbean. There they either grow or die. Those weather systems are natural (not artificial) events that have a major impact on the climate here.

There is another factor along with what you're saying and I think it was a study that was recently published in either Nature or Science magazine about the microclimates of urban areas (as heat sinks) and how there is evidence of these heat sinks triggering more severe weather than surrounding areas. A most recent fascinating study on con (condensation) trails of aircraft describes how their absence over the U.S. for 4 days after 9/11, played a major role in raising the average surface temperatures over 1 F during that period when compared to the identical period in the past. These are "artificial" weather/climate changers.

But... you have to add to this the fact that people talk about or recall or archives show events like "The Drought of xxxx" or "The Great Flood of xxxx", and those events happened during early periods of the 20th century. This was well before mass industrialization and urbanization, and means that what we're doing now is only one factor in the overall world-wide climate variation. If anything, there was an interesting study that mentions how much volcanic erruptions (and their particle cover) can trigger climate change, and how in recent history, the number of errupting volcanos has suddenly dropped off. So natural events still have a big influence.

However, despite all this, there is a growing phenomena of people moving to rural or "ex burbia" areas where there was once farmland and now developments on wells. These homes are completely independent of typical municipal water supplies where resevoirs, creeks, rivers, and other aquifers are available... and thus these folks are on their own and are naturally more vocal about their lack of water. To me, a well is risky business because you are totally dependent on the ground water levels. But that is a trade-off decision that many people have made in exchange for a more rural living environment. You will not see city dwellers complaining here about a lack of water other than what you indicate about the nuisance of when and how to water - but that is because drinking and bathing water for the city dwellers is not an issue (I speak only for this area). They may experience lowered water pressure during severe shortages, but since most cities and larger towns are situated by rivers and/or large creeks, the immediate problem is not as severe. Many of these water sources are being fed upstream from areas that are not experiencing drought. But again, these are above ground water sources, not below-ground sources.

I think though, the tendency has been to blame the average joe or jane home-owner and not many of the businesses (including recreational facilities - golf courses being only one of the obvious ones) that also use water. Urban dwellers and dwellers of communities immediately surrounding urban centers might whine, but then they don't have the amount of land needing irrigation as others. They might have a few trees here and a few shrubs there (and like me, have a ton of things in containers that they are trying to maintain to green up their worlds. But overall, there are many many things that are affecting our climate other than our watering habits and it's a matter of adjusting to that and making some hard decisions.

For the most part, the US refuses to ackowledge that the drought may have been caused by global warming, which we have a huge part in creating. In fact, Bush has said global warming is good because it extends the growing season. Which would be fine except that everything is dead. All the US govt wants is whatever the largest corporations want, which is to keep doing what they are doing without paying attention to the long-term consequences of their actions. The US is extremely short-sighted and I doubt that will change any time soon. We'll just keep burning our fossil fuels because it's "good for the economy." Which is a crock of you-know-what. What we should be doing is developing renewable energy like solar in the Southeast and West, wind in the MidWest, and conserving our fossil fuels for those areas that cannot use these other resources. Also, we insist on driving the most fuel-inefficient behemouths of automobiles and SUVs. We should raise the tax on gasoline to compare to what you pay, and people will stop buying these monsters and insist on alternate fuel vehicles or at least much more fuel-efficient ones. Just this year a bill to increase the fuel efficiency standards was defeated because "soccer moms" like their SUVs. I'm sure the "soccer moms" would also like their kids to have clean air and water in the future, but that's too far off for most people to think about. The conservatives in charge are always talking about responsibility, but when it comes to our responsibility to the Earth, it's all about the economy and "freedom" instead.

I applaud you Meghane, you took the words right out of my mouth! Now what can we do?

Yeah, I guess I'm close to Meghane's postiton. We refuse to sudsidize Amtrak, but have no problem paying taxes to pave another lane of interstate. We point to natural fluctuations of temp/rainfall and refuse to acknowledge that 7 of the 10 warmest years on record happened after 1980, that more and more extremes are happening now. We've come to depend on hurricanes to fill resevoirs, never mind that those who work the land cannot use "yearly average rainfalls", that large rain events in late summer are useless unless one is an urban resident. We think that paying 1.45/gal. for gasoline is paying the bill for fossil fuels, and ignore the devastation it wreaks on the environment. The Swedes have a carbon tax that pays for some the degradation that comes from burning fossil fuels, we have a gas tax that pays for more roads. Coal burning plants were supposed to clean up their stacks when they were substantially renovated, or expanded. The current adminstration has interpreted the agreement so loosely that some plants have been almost completely rebuilt and not improved their emmisions. Cleaner coal and diesel technology is available, but the rules are so arcane and shot full of holes that most regulations are meaningless. One for instance, the very popular PT Cruiser from Chrysler Corp. It has absolutely no target mpg to meet because it is classified as a truck. Therefore, the lousy gas mileage it gets compared to other cars in that class doesn't count against the fleet average for Chrysler. So the agreement made (the so-called CAFE standards) that calls for improved efficiency in automobile fleets from car makers has some holes big enough to drive a truck through it.

Well, I did really want a PT Cruiser...but I think I'll just stick with my old '84 VW Golf. :)

And I used to want to move somewhere warmer, but now I think I'll just stay put in OH and let the warmth come to me. I think it already has.

Here's what I think the problem is: we're all Spoiled Rotten. Everyone wants humongous gas guzzling cars so we can drive that hour commute in comfort from our brand new homes on what used to be farmland a year ago into the city, where the jobs are. We want golf courses, air conditioning (that most people don't turn off even when temps are bearable with open windows), fast food on demand, everything on demand, instant gratification, because we can afford the minimum monthly payment on all of it.

My choice of vehicle notwithstanding, I'm guilty too. I live in one of those outlying suburbs (though neither DH nor I commute to the city), and though it's a nice 73 degrees outside I just had to go turn the AC down 'cause I was cold. We're trying to do what we can, though, learning as we go, and I think in many ways our family is pretty typical. We'll get it eventually. I just hope it's not too late when we do.

On the other hand, we had it all over the news in Portugal, President George W. Bush saying the way to go to prevent the fires that have devastated significant parts of the US was ... to fell the trees! Specially the big, old ones. On top, this would create additional 100 000 job posts. What an impecable and irrepreensible logic - no trees, no fires and more jobs! I´m sure the arsoners working hard in Portugal every year to accomodate the interests of real estate *developers* and paper paste industries were afraid our government goes the same way...

Eduarda

The short answer; No.

We Yanks have this terrible propensity to wait until things become a crisis before we act.

Cheers.
--Jim

Weather goes in cycles. I've read that back in the mid-60's this area went through several years of severe drought. Before that, there was the Dust Bowl in the 1930's, which was made worse by the poor farming practices of the time.

Climatologists have predicted a 100 year dry cycle in this area. It has been wetter the last 100 years and the 100 years before that were dry and so on. It will be interesting. That means the cities in the SW will not support the massive growth that they have enjoyed in the last 50 years. The Governor of New Mexico is paying attention ... that is somewhat hopeful.

Fireraven9
Fairest of the months! Ripe summer's queen
The hey-day of the year
With robes that gleam with sunny sheen
Sweet August doth appear. - R. Combe Miller

Along the lines of pkock and Jim Michaels, we are too impatient and proud to admit that we don't know. We are nevertheless so sure of what needs to be done - based on suspicions combined with the intensity of our feelings in immediate reaction to what we are experiencing here and now - that we will listen to anyone who agrees with us, follow them to hell and back, but kill anyone who disagrees.

We are just now getting to the point where we can spot a few of the big rocks that pass by earth inside the moon's orbit. Any one of those rocks hitting the earth would make irrelevant anything we are talking about here. Any one of them could have just as easily wiped us out before we even knew it was coming.

I'm all for awareness, maintaining a grip on reality and such. But even the best awareness is not a guarantee of being knowledgeable at all, let alone being knowledgeable enough to do what might be the right thing for even a foreseeable time.

That said, I am not ready yet to take on any share of guilt for conspiring ignorantly with others of my species to alter my planet's climate. I am "not guilty" of placing demands on my planet's resources in an ignorant, arrogant, short-sighted, selfish manner such that the climate has been affected to the detriment of a "sustainable, enjoyable quality" of life for me, my successors or assigns.

But if we can get the consensus together, we might be able to try some things out, like fewer (or more) SUVs; fewer (or more) 300-yr-old trees; more trains and fewer planes, or vice-versa; more tanks and fewer pipes, or vice-versa; more of some human-made chemicals and less of some others; less time-consuming, more built-in means of graywater capture and redistribution vs. less capture of natural runoff, and so on. The trying out of things might, but only might, reveal whether the guilt that so many of us feel we deserve is deserved after all - or not.

We are going to be trying things out, whether we are guilty or innocent, and no matter who rules or gets elected. And we are going to remain impatient, and proud, and ignorant, whether we make the deserts bloom or the oceans freeze.

Please excuse me, I now desire to do some stop-and-go commuting, meat-eating, Bible-studying and homeschooling...

On thing we can all do is vote. I'm proud to say I haven't missed an election since I was 18. Well, except the first primary because I registered as an independent and in MD there are closed primaries so you can only vote for your party's candidate and as an independent I didn't have a party, so I couldn't vote that one time, but that was a technicality and I fixed it immediately.

Anyway, there is no reason for us to put up with all this crap. We are millions and millions of votes, and no matter how much money someone gets from the big corporations, only the votes gets him/her into office. We can demand better candidates, we can actually get out and vote intelligently (not from watching campaign ads and reciting sound bites), we can make small changes until the big ones are more comfortable. I can switch to compact fluorescent lights. I can work closer to my home or school. I can lobby for flex-time to ease congestion and lessen fuel consumption. I can lobby for better fuel standards, and purchase the best mileage vehicle I can afford next time I need another vehicle. I can work closer to home or school. Maybe when my financial situation is better I'll install passive solar collectors onto my house (hell, I'm in NC- it's not like we don't get any sun). There's all kinds of stuff we can all do if we just think about it. Many of it will help create jobs- technology needs to be developed (research jobs), new efficient machines need to be built (factory jobs), we need to find out how to fix the mess we're in (science jobs). And so on. We are not playing a zero/sum game here. What is good for the environment can also be good for the economy if we get creative and actually think about it.

Along the lines of other posters, we are too blind to see what is before our eyes. We insist that someboby draw a line and connect the dots. We rely on the purveyors of wastefullness to tell us that there is no "proof", when in fact we are blessed with intuition and lots of examples of what our wantonness will gain us. Lots of people did spout the tobacco co. line of "There is no direct proof", when an accumulating body of evidence showed otherwise.
We are entering into a warmer climate, almost everybody agrees that the numbers collected so far do not dispute this fact. Differences remain about why, but an accumulating body of evidence points to man-made causes. Evidence collected from sources also indicate fluctuations of temp. in the past, waxing and waning over periods of decades to centuries, this warming is sudden and incontrovertible. The glaciers of the Andes are in full retreat. The meltwater from some is already diminished enough that some of the villages run out of water before the growing season ends. The permafrost in Alaska melts deeper and deeper, the Antarctic warms (except for a small area near Palmer Peninsula)and casts off sheets of ice the size of which has never been seen. El Nino oscillations which transfer some of the collected heat from west to east had been arriving in 7-11 yr. cycles since the time when only the Inca were aware of them. Now they come more often, lately in 3-5 yr. timings. CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been edging upwards since the late 1700's, this is almost certainly the result of the industrial revolution. Extinctions on the scale of when asteroids hit the Earth are going on around us, and still some ask for direct proof.
It has been said that when the climate gets out of kilter, a new stasis will come about. This means that to acheive this state, more fearsome storms will develop (necessary to balance the heat around the globe), new highs and lows will be set as weather systems try to achieve balance. The normal pattern is for warm air to rise at the tropics and the lows to form in the Arctic. The Corriolus effect shifts these winds into a spiral-type wind, generally blowing from the NW to the SE. (Mtns and bodies of water also shape these of course.) If a warmer planet tries to fast-forward this, it means the cold must reach further south, or that the winds must increase in velocity. This warming is serious enough that at least one low-lying Pacific nation is negotiating a treaty so that when their island nation is submerged the people who live there can have some dry land. (I think they are trying to get NZ to accept them.)
On re-reading the posts, I find nobody advocating killing anybody (only one person mentions killing humans and animals in the same post), some handwringing, some answers along the lines of "Greenness begins at home". And one smug-as-smug-can-be poster. Excuse me, I'm going to read the passages in the Bible where it says we are to be stewards of creation. The boss is gonna be ticked off when he comes and finds we've made a pigpen of paradise.

I don't see what killing anybody has to do with saving the environment. Yes there are too many people (another huge problem), but I don't think killing a whole bunch is going to solve the problem. Wars usually devastate the land, increase demands for fossil fuels and other nonrewable resources, put environmental causes on the backburner. Population control plans should be implemented in every place that there aren't any plans yet. Increased population increases demand and taxes the resources more. Maybe if the US taxed people on the number of children over 2 instead of getting a credit for them less people would have children. Just a thought, I don't know the answers to the population problem except that I'm not having kids (not a huge help, I know). Can't speak for everyone else on that issue.

If you don't start changes at home, where are you going to start? Does everyone else have to make changes first? Do you have to be legislated into changes? Everything that everyone does helps a little bit. Which is much better than hurting a little bit. I doubt we can get greenhouse gases under control given our (meaning USA) government's stance on the issue and corporations' unwillingness to do any thing about it unless we change the government. Which could happen in as little as 2 years.

We all have an obligation to vote. I don't care who you vote for, maybe another issue means more to you. Just do it and do it intelligently.

Saw a news article regarding this topic just today (see link).

One thing to bear in mind is that our climate and weather are very unpredictable from one year to the next; "average" temperatures or rainfalls are not necessarily "normal" temperatures or rainfalls, and most years are going to be more of one or less of another.

As has already been pointed out, in the long run drought is a normal part of our climate--"normal" in the sense that it has happened, and it will continue happen. Same with hurricanes, with floods, with blizzards, with extreme cold spells. It's just that certain events may only happen once or twice in a person's lifetime, and we tend to view everything from our own limited lifetimes. In this sense we (humans, not just Americans) are very myopic--if you look at climate and weather patterns over hundreds or thousands of years, fairly predictable patterns emerge. I'm not discounting global warming or our impact on the climate; I'm just saying that it's a complex issue. Personally, I think population growth is a more urgent issue, because more people means more water use, both directly and indirectly (e.g., to water crops to feed us all). We also don't realize that the aquifers we tap for water have been filling for thousands, if not millions, of years; the water we are taking from them is not endless, and simply not being replaced.

No point to any of this--just thinking out loud. One thing I find ironic is that we use water that is good enough to drink, to water our lawns, wash our cars, even flush our toilets! At the same time we flush large amounts of relatively uncontaminated water down the sewers. Maybe this drought will get us thinking about how we use water, and once it's over we will continue to try to conserve water--because it WILL happen again. Naaah... I doubt it.

Smug-as-smug-can-be, eh, Pete? Amazing, what similar passages we read! ;-)

No matter what we do or how we do it, climate is going to have a far, far, longer and more inexorable influence on us than we will ever have on climate. We could have perfect vision, insight and foresight, in addition to our already perfect hindsight and we would STILL screw it all up. Thats how we are and always will be.

For climate awareness, I have no contention with suspicions that rising atmospheric CO2 levels are from humans doings. But I have plenty of suspicion of, and contention with, some of the excuses for - and proposed ways and means of: addressing CO2; securing water supplies; coping with droughts; and responding to climate changes regardless of whether the changes are real, accountable to us, correctable, or within our adaptability.

stiches - I think that right now, you are feeling the effects of what can happen with climate with your area getting socked with the rains from both Fay and what was left of Eduord. Being near the Gulf coast means that you are in a potential path for some pretty significant rains from tropical storms/hurricaines that form or move into the Gulf. The extremes of drought/flood in your area is similar to what is experienced along the east coast, with it also being in the path of these storms later in the season.

If anything, I think the issue of GW does impact inland areas more than coastal areas.

Jenny, I don't mind thinking along with you, as long as GW doesn't raise sea levels till we live on the beach! ;-)

stitches - up here we've already assumed that Jersey was eventually going to disappear putting my state on the beach!!! LOL

I think I'm almost the same distance, give or take some miles, away from the ocean as Houston is from the Gulf.

I think some of you are being a bit harsh on Bush.

Yeah, go ahead and tax parents with over two kids. That would really help things...NOT!! Then we will have a shrinking young population and a large elderly base and guess who taxes will go sky high? The young supporting all the old. It is hard enough to raise kids, don't make it any harder. People are having less children in general. In some parts of Europe they are having negative population growth, which isn't good for their long term economy.

As far as the SUVs, that is one thing I do agree with the environmentalists about. They are wasteful, esp when you see a single person driving them. Just wait till we have an oil shortage. But the avg American must really like them, I think we are in teh minority, because look at the sales of them. They are everywhere!!

I do agree Americans could do a much better job at conservation. I turn off my sprinkler system when it rains whereas a lot of people don't do that. I turn off the A/C when it gets cool enough to open windows. I buy drought tolerant plants. I turn off the lights when I leave the room. I have sedans rather than big SUVs.

I think we are royally spoiled too. But this has been going on a long time, more time than Bush has been in office. Also, keep in mind, that environmentalist will criticize Bush no matter what he does.

Also, I am not even sure I believe some of the things the environmentalist say. I have heard that some of it is false and not true. I listened to a radio talk show and they had a Danish professor on it who used to be a member of all the big environmental groups and he set out to disprove the conservative viewpoints nad was unable. Found out that a lot of the environmentalist thoughts were wrong and false. I think sometimes, they are scare tactics.

Remember, droughts have been around forever an so have floods and terrible storms...................

Melissa, I haven't heard of anyone setting out to point by point undo Lomborgs arguments, but you won't make many friends among enviros by commenting on his work. Any scientist who promotes "heresy" (argues against an establishment "sacred cow") will soon find himself burned at the media stake. If you detect some similarities between this and other events of the past, don't be surprised, we have forgotten (not necessarily not "knowing" it, but by failing to learn from it) our history (but we know all about things we weren't there to observe) and are now doomed to repeat it.

Melissa, I don't think anybody is hard on G.W. Bush. When he held his energy summit, the only people present at the meeetings were folks associated with the coal, oil and gas industries. Not a single mainstream conservation organization was invited. No wonder then that the only recommendations were for more production to maintain present consumption.
Stiches, I don't agree that climate influences us and we can hardly affect it. How we affect it is debatable, but climate is never static, but always seeking stasis. Therefore, until we can predict the weather more than a day or 2 or 3 in advance, we are tinkering with something we don't understand and we can get burned real bad. Dumping millions of tons of pollutants into a closed system seems to me like borrowing trouble. We make nitrous oxides that are poisonous in themselves, and these break down to oxone. O3 is viewed as a minor irritant in smog by some (not those with respiratory problems, nor by plants), but it also is a precursor chemical to sulphuric acid (not a good thing) and other acids which leach metals from everywhere, including buildings, roofs and automobiles. Having the rain wash these chemicals out of the air and depositing them where they can enter the food chain is not an ideal situation.
I have read some of Lomborg, and he is persuasive, especially when many of his arguments are refuting the statements made from the extreme left, the whackos. When he attempts to refute more mainstream science however, his statistics are poorly chosen, and based upon debatable science. His arguments that overpopulation is not a problem are laughable.

The "GW" I was meaning was Global Warming - not anything to do with George W ! :-) And Pete, I did not mean what I must have sounded like.

I agree that it's for our survival's sake that we be wary about how our behavior can affect climate. I was not meaning to suggest, "What problem? Because of who - us?" or "Do nothing."

I was speaking with cynicism toward human nature. I'm just convinced that we have an unfailing knack for suffering even more as a result of our attempts at rectification than we'd ever suffer as a result of "original sin." Still, we have to do what we think is correct, that is, do something, not nothing, no matter how incomplete our data or uncertain the outcome. The closed system only magnifies the risk of unintended consquences. We could realize that we have disturbed the system, then act in some way intended to deal constructively (for our own sakes) with the disturbance, such that we stir it up even more (unbeknownst to us), and end up being worse off - even extinct - in the long run. Hope that explains a little better how I feel that climate is likely to affect us more than we could ever affect climate.

My queries in other places, and with the americans that I know, suggest that awareness of climate change has increased by a fraction more than zilch in the general population. I do sadly find plenty of relatively educated people blaming El Nino for everything up to and including the west nile virus (as if El Nino itself were anything other than a symptom used as an indicator of weather trends). Very few people are actually suffering personal hardship (difficulty obtaining drinking water, mandatory restrictions on activities such as washing, etc.), although a large number suffer the inconveniences of brown gardens, temporarily dirty cars, and self-imposed water rationing. It is also widely perceived as a political problem rather than a climate problem. I do know a number of students and most of them have quite strong views about this, but they really do fall into the radical left as far as american political views go.

I have one personal comment to make on the issue of climate change. There seems to be a strong feeling amongst many people, including a few here, that somehow fixing global warming could be more dangerous than doing nothing. Please consider that "doing nothing" actually means continuing to do something that we know is causing problems, and "fixing" is really only doing less of the thing that is causing problems (or even doing more of it, but not as much as you really wanted!). I find it distressing that the terminology and excuses of the oil lobby are cropping up in so many different places as accepted wisdom.

--ian

Ian, I don't know about Britain, but here, the media decides public opinion. They tell us one of two things: What we want to hear, or what we are afraid to hear and both are accepted uncritically by most. Tell someone something often enough and they will begin to believe it. I am all in favor in cutting emissions, not because I fear global warming, but because I don't like the smell associated with most of those emissions (and they probably aren't good for me either).
My position on the matter is that global warming is occuring, but I am skeptical of attempts to lay it all at the feet of carbon dioxide emissions. I am even more skeptical of programs supposedly designed to curb CO2 emissions that curb emissions in one place and increase them elswhere (i.e. kyoto). A great deal of resistance is political, our country is a Republic, change comes slowly, that's why our constitution has lasted for more than 200 years. Ultimately socialism will take over here as elswhere and we'll start over when that fails. "There's nothing new under the sun"

Ian, I hope you'll be encouraged to know that linguistically duped apologists for the oil lobby are surprisingly rare, even (especially) in and around Houston Texas! :-)

I have to go with alot of what frostfree says. Seems that whatever crops up as accepted wisdom, eventually, inevitably crashes and thoroughly self-discredits under the weight of its disciples' hubris. We might experience slightly better government, for awhile, maybe. But I cannot count on my government to fetch me my next drink of water, when it tells me I am a criminal for installing a rain barrel (see link).

I am more inclined to trust, and place hope in, mass numbers of self-motivated individuals and very small groups who are free to educate themselves about whatever damage their behavior might be doing - and to make their changes voluntarily and to lead by example - than to expect good changes as a result of delegating "education" to enormous, unresponsive, ham-handed institutions whose leaders and would-be leaders are motivated little if at all by actually solving global problems, but motivated primarily by self-promotion.

Seems like one of our biggest challenges is to foreknow that our actions will have the desired effects - whatever those desired effects are - and zero unintended effects. Otherwise, our hindsight (if it is accurate) will only tell us that our "awareness" was merely more of a characterization of our blindness. Right now, I believe that we are at a level of awareness which, at its best, still leaves us incapable of even coping with damage we have already done, let alone being able to recover to any undamaged state. Too bad we can't clone Earth to have a full-scale model to play with for 250, 300 years or so!