Many people see the effects of Global Warming as ocean waves lapping up to the front doors of their ocean front homes, 100 years from now. This is a nice frightening effect that may help the media sell advertising to the left that reads their outlets, and it may help explode heads in the right wing denialist alternative universe, but it misses the many, many other problems that Global Warming is causing, not a century from now, but right now!
While we in the U.S. are very concerned about the horrible drought the people of California are going through, the people of Brazil are about to experience something that will challenge what it means to be a massive city in a Global Warming world.
From the weather channel
Just two months after São Paulo's state-run water utility Sabesp refused to implement water rationing amidst the area's worst drought in eight decades, at least one government official is warning of "dramatic water shortages" and "collapse" for the residents of South America's most populous metro area.
“If the drought continues, residents will face more dramatic water shortages in the short term,” said Vicente Andreu, president of Brazil’s National Water Agency. “If it doesn’t rain, we run the risk that the region will have a collapse like we’ve never seen before."
This is the Cantareira reservoir that supplies a large portion of the water to Sao Paulo.
Around 45 percent of São Paulo state -- home to more than 40 million people -- gets its water from a four-lake system known as the Cantareira reservoir. Back in August, a study from a federal agency predicted that São Paulo state could run completely dry in 100 days if rationing measures weren't implemented.
As Bloomberg now notes, water levels in Cantareira have dropped to just 3.3 percent of capacity -- the lowest levels ever -- after the water utility built a piping system to pump the last drops of water from the ailing reservoir. There's speculation amongst government officials that Cantareira will run completely dry in mid-November without rain, the Wall Street Journal reports. Things are not much better at the Alto Tiete reservoir, where water levels are at just 8.5 percent of capacity.
Well if misery loves company, the people of Brazil might take comfort in knowing they are not alone. From NOAA's drought monitoring people.
While we tend to think of Global Warming in terms of hotter summers and rising oceans, it's really the extremes of weather that will panic civilization into taking unanticipated actions with unanticipated results. We only need to look around to see our response to 6 Ebola patients in a country of over 300 million, or the Republican fear/hate propaganda machine cranked up over the possibility of ISIS terrorists thousands of miles away streaming across our boarders with children from central America, to see that not having a workable response now will lead to a very bad response when entire American cities need to be moved.
Brazil may be experiencing an historic drought this year, but in a few years the same area may experience biblical floods. Our climate is choking and convulsing on the noxious gasses we're shoving down it's lungs. With the right leadership, we can still save the patient from what will be a pretty nasty sickness, but if we keep allowing Right Wing anti-science denialists to make decisions, our civilization will have the same chance of survival as an Ebola patient in Liberia.
Do you still think this election isn't important?
GOTV! GOTV! GOTV!
