01-01 Cottage Life
The basics of how climate change is impacting water was learned as a boy at our summer cottage. Lake water evaporating and warming during the summer months. Walking 200 yards to get fresh water from a well. Viscous storms following heat waves. Six feet of shoreline disappearing. It was 1943, and my parents bought a…
01-02 The Water Cycle
It is water or snow becoming water vapour becoming clouds becoming rain or snow. This is the water cycle. But change the water cycle and you get more precipitation or not enough. Now it’s the world of floods and drought. Then we have more water to evaporate when snow and glaciers melt. Complex. It was…
01-03 Rain or Snow
Rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain or even pellets. It is just part of living in a northern climate. But increasingly with climate change it is mostly about rain. In the Arctic more rain and less snow means less white stuff to reflect the sun. So everything gets hotter. Tough for people and wildlife. Living in…
01-04 River Flows
River flows are impacted by human activity and climate change. Tough to measure which is which. But river systems are critical for fresh water, transportation, agriculture and tourism. The big story is Israel sending desalinated water into the Sea of Galilee to improve the river flow of the Jordan River. Interesting living on Lake Simcoe…
01-05 Water Quality
Living on Lake Simcoe over a period of 60 years was an exercise in watching water quality deteriorate. Water that was drinkable, then polluted with agricultural run off. Then algae blooms, then infestation from zebra mussels. Warmer climates mean more precipitation and run-offs everywhere and a decline in water quality. Here is a fun story…
01-06 Sea Levels
The official predictions are the oceans of the world rising by 23 inches in the next 100 years. No need to wait to see the implications of rising sea levels linked to climate change. Extreme weather today is sending salt water into coastline communities and contaminating soil and fresh water aquifers. It was 2009 and…
01-07 Opportunities
One person’s disaster can be another person’s opportunity. This is what is happening in a world facing water shortages, flooding and all kinds of water disasters. It means new forms of desalination and irrigation. New ways of producing food. And a world of opportunity for hydraulic engineers. .During my teaching days in the 1960s, one…
01-08 Politics
Water politics is the future. Today it is the conflict created by the dam at Ethiopia that limits the flow of water down the Nile that provides fresh water for Sudan and Egypt. Tomorrow it will be water conflict between Canada and the USA because the USA will need it and we have it. If…