Saturday March 22, 2008, 10:43 am
Greetings Brad,

Thank you for posting this story as this issue of glbal warming truly is global, and will impact the entire world, regardless of where it occurs. "Resource Wars" (Klare, Michael T., 2004) are the future, and water shortages have always been predicted as the first of these types of war. Naturally, given the warming planet, it's totally logical! =(

"The dry season is precisely when water is needed most to irrigate the rice and wheat crops on which hundreds of millions of people depend for their staple calories. But the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported last year that many Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. According to Brown, Chinese glaciologists now estimate that two-thirds of the glaciers on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau could be gone by 2060." (Ibid)

When one considers how quickly 2035 will be upon us, it becomes even more imperative that actions are taken NOW! (Emphasis) The environmental issues we face globally need be taken into consideration from a wholistic perspective and nothing else. We are far beyond the point when one can point to a single species and its endangerment (the top predator of the ocean, the orca, has now been declared endangered uner ESA in the one place on the globe with the highest concentration of the specie), or the deforestation of a particular area, or the release of contaminants into our air or water, are LONG PAST!

If we don't have the courage to step up to the plate and make the changes--regardless of casualties that will still occur amongst all species as they already have--the final days of a warming planet will be even more horrendous. The "Tipping Point" (Malcolm, 2004) is also just passed and action has to be now!

"The warning echoes another issued earlier this month by a former agriculture minister of Pakistan, Amir Mohammad, who warned that 60% of Pakistan's people depend on grain irrigated by the Indus river, which is also dependent on meltwater from Himalayan glaciers. "Melting of glaciers has already started affecting the water flow into Indus river system," he told local newpapers." (Ibid)

What else can one say that recognizing it's real, and people demanding of their governments that they take this issue seriously. Again, thanks for the story!

Cheers,

Maureen

Sunday March 30, 2008, 5:16 pm
Thanks for the interesting article, Brad! Remembering to conserve water,
to treat water as the precious commodity it is regardless of where we
live, is all important!!