- Dahr Jamail - The World Is on the Brink of Widespread Water Wars Archived Message
Posted by johnhol
on February 16, 2019, 6:52 pm
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Begins: My friend Mark Oats, a farmer in Australia, recently sent this note to me: 'Last night I looked through the Bureau of Meteorology App at the monthly rainfall figures for January, and temperatures. The region around Byron Lismore has had 1.6 percent of average rainfall for January and is 2.6C degrees warmer than average. 98.4 percent less rain than normal. Virtually nothing and hence the people, plant, animal and food pressures growing. Then looking further afield across all capital cities and major regions. Everywhere is down on average rainfall, except just one area North Queensland and that is only due to some late January flooding rains. Melbourne 9.7 percent of normal rainfall. Adelaide 0 percent. Perth 43.1 percent. Hobart 0.8 percent. Sydney 47.7 percent. Brisbane 17.9 percent of normal rainfall. After North Queensland, the next best is Western Sydney and Wollongong at around 70 percent of average normal rainfall all of them well over average heat / temperatures, in many cases around 2C degrees[.] Canberra is 6.3C degrees above average for January. Hobart is 4.2 C degrees above normal and is at less than 1 percent of normal rainfall. Armidale, the region where we are, is about 80 percent of normal rainfall (70mm of 88mm average) but is a whopping 5.4C degrees above normal temperatures, averaging 32.2 for Jan with 26.8 normal average. Even the average minimum is 2C degrees higher than normal. So there you go stats and figures to show how extreme it is all over the country right now, and why fish, bats, chickens and insects are dying, vegetable growers are ploughing crops into the ground unable to afford to buy water any more, and cattle and sheep farmers are de-stocking, unable to feed them. Now as we move into February the hottest month of the year and no real rain forecast anywhere south of tropics. Given the Arctic realities and the looming Blue Ocean Event (once the Arctic loses its summer sea ice, at which point global climate and weather patterns become profoundly destabilized) possibly as soon as 2022, things are really going to amplify. Likely we will look back on January 2019 as when it was moderate and easy compared to the challenging heat and drought on the way.' Marks words should be a call to attention, and a call to action. The plight of farmers in Australia illustrates a larger reality: As planetary temperatures continue to increase and rainfall patterns shift due to human-caused climate disruption, our ability to grow crops and have enough drinking water will become increasingly challenged, and the outlook is only going to worsen. Continues https://truthout.org/articles/the-world-is-on-the-brink-of-widespread-water-wars/ |
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