Water water
Chapter 16, "Not a Drop to Drink?" of Michael Sanera and Jane S. Shaw's Facts not Fear (Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1996) is fairly typical "brownlash" denial. They report some anecdotal good news, while ignoring the bad news, even when it comes from the same reference (an example of stacking the deck). In this case I will contrast the coverage of water issues in Facts not Fear and Terry L. Anderson's "Water Options for the Blue Planet" (Chapter 8 in The True State of the Planet), the main reference for "Not a Drop to Drink?"
Facts not Fear, criticising a text book, (page 188): "The Earth 'has a short supply of water suitable for drinking,' says a D. C. Heath science text."
Anderson (page 275):
When measured in terms of quality instead of quantity, water scarcity is much worse. Half of the world's population is estimated to suffer from infectious diseases such as yellow fever, malaria, and river blindness. Diseases in associated with water kill 5 million people per year, and four of five child deaths in developing countries result from waterborne disease.
Note: Anderson is wrong about one thing, yellow fever and malaria are carried by mosquitoes, and although they are related to water issues they are not waterborne diseases.
Facts not Fear, writing about the decline in the level of the Ogallala aquifer (page 191): "Since 1980, the rate of decline has slowed in many areas, stopped in some, and, in a few, the water table is actually rising." This is based on an article in the March 1993 National Geographic. What Sanera and Shaw failed to point out is that this was partly the result of increased snow and rain, and that serious decline continued in parts of Kansas and Texas (Zwingle page 85). Facts not Fear ignores the problems in other aquifers.
Anderson:
The famous Ogallala aquifer in the south-central United sates . . . is also feeling the pressure of pumping. . . . Overdraft (withdrawals in excess of recharge) occurred in 95 percent of the Ogallala, sparking forecasts that the aquifer would be 23 percent depleted by 2020. The water tables beneath Dallas-Fort Worth have dropped 492 feet since 1960. A similar situation exists in Arizona, where the water tables around Phoenix have dropped 400 feet in the past fifty years. According to an estimate by the American Institute of Professional Geologists, Americans pumped 100 bgd [billions of gallons per day] of groundwater in 1985, a 12 percent increase over 1980 figures. In China, the water tables near two major manufacturing cities, Beijing and Tianjin, are decreasing by 3 to 12 feet annually, and in southern India, water tables have dropped 80 to 96 feet in ten years. In Mexico City, groundwater pumping exceeds recharge by 50 to 80 percent.
Facts not Fear (page 189): "The Earth 'has more than enough water to meet human demands,' says Terry L. Anderson of Montana State University. The problem, he explains, is that 'water is often found in the wrong place at the wrong time.'" Water shortages, like floods, are regional problems. The problem, of course, is moving water from areas of excess to areas of shortage. As Anderson (pages 270-272): points out: "Water may not be scarce globally, but it is scarce at specific times and places around the world. . . . With about half of the world's land mass in arid or semiarid regions, twenty-five countries are especially water stressed."
Finally, some of the problems brought up in "Water Options" are totally ignored in Facts not Fear. These include the pollution of the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge by selenium and other chemicals, salinisation, and the disastrous effects of water projects on wildlife.
References
Zwingle, Erla, "Wellspring of the High Plains", National Geographic, March 1993, pages 80 to 109.
Written by Jim Norton
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