“River piracy” may seem like a term that invokes paddle-wheeler boats and men with eye patches, but it’s a term familiar to geologists. It’s what happens when the flow of a stream is captured and directed along a new course. Often, such piracy occurs over a long period of time as erosion and the slow movement of the earth’s surface carve out new paths for taking water to the sea, but occasionally water can take a new path in a hurry as landslides or earthquakes make sudden, rapid changes to the landscape.
Now you can add a new factor to that list.
In the blink of a geological eye, climate change has helped reverse the flow of water melting from a glacier in Canada’s Yukon, a hijacking that scientists call “river piracy.” …
Last year’s unusually warm spring produced melting waters that cut a canyon through the ice, diverting more water into the Alsek River, which flows to the south and on into Pacific, robbing the headwaters to the north.
This specific type of change is unlikely to be widespread. After all, glaciers are already restricted to northern and mountainous regions, and even then events like that in the Yukon won’t be that common. However, what happened there is just one of a class of possible events—ways in which a rapidly warming world can result in changes that no one may expect.
Changes in the flow of rivers can have enormous consequences for the landscape and ecosystems of the affected areas, as well as water supplies. When the shift abruptly reduced water levels in Kluane Lake, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported, it left docks for lakeside vacation cabins — which can be reached only by water — high and dry.
Changes can go far beyond the recreational use of land. Losses for agriculture and for the water supplies that simply make an area livable can, and will, happen as rising seas and differing weather patterns revise maps that have for so long been taken as static.
The loss of value and the cost of addressing these changes could be enormous—far in excess of the cost of addressing emissions to reduce the effect of climate change. However, one the industries that emits carbon is well protected by lobbying groups that have the ear of the Republicans. The cost of future damage that affects everyone is never figured into the values those industries report when explaining why it’s just too expensive to deal with climate change.