But, the vast reservoir was built for far more than recreation. In fact, the massive Hoover Dam, which was completed in 1935, provides this desert region and surrounding states with a reliable water supply from the Colorado River as well as an excellent and inexpensive source of electricity.

Covering the state lines of Arizona and Nevada, Lake Mead stores water from the vast Colorado River, which runs through a whopping seven states – Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. So, to say that Lake Mead and the irreplaceable Colorado River are important to the citizens of the western states, would be a huge understatement.

However, for the past decade Lake Mead has been battling the worst 10-year drought in recorded history along the Colorado River, which feeds the 110-mile-long reservoir.

Since 1999, Lake Mead has dropped about 1 percent a year. It is estimated that by 2012, the lake’s surface could fall below the existing pipe that delivers 40 percent of Las Vegas’s water.

In 2000, the water level at Lake Mead was 1,214 feet, close to its all-time high, but it has been dropping ever since. When Lake Mead was built during the 1920s and 1930s, the western United States was experiencing one of the wettest periods of the past 1,200 years.

Even today, our so-called drought is still wetter than the average precipitation for the area averaged over centuries. In other words, for the past 75 years, we’ve had more moisture than we ever realized. And, we definitely took it for granted.

Farmers have been growing rice by flooding arid farmland with water from Lake Mead,  desert community residents have been maintaining lush front lawns, and avid golfers depend on green, healthy courses in areas where temperatures typically exceeds 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the summer.

A combination of a solid demand for Lake Mead’s thirst-quenching water and an ever-changing climate has resulted in a 100 foot drop in Mead’s water level since 2000. While that might not look like a great deal of water loss because it is just 10 percent under the lake’s 1983 high water mark, we have to remember that Lake Mead is like a martini glass.

The vast reservoir is wide at the top but narrow at the bottom. So that 10 percent loss of water actually represents a loss of half of Lake Mead’s water supply. This huge loss happened in just nine years – The lake went form 96 percent capacity to roughly 43 percent.

Amazingly, when full, Lake Mead can hold an astonishing 9.3 trillion gallons of water. This is an amount equal to the water that flows through the Colorado River in a two-year period.

And, this is water that is put to good use. Lake Mead’s life-sustaining water is used for many things. It irrigates a million acres of crops throughout the western United States and Mexico, and the reservoir supplies water to tens of millions of people.

The massive and mighty Hoover Dam generates enough electricity to power approximately a half-million homes. But that’s not all. The power from Hoover Dam is also used to transport water up and across the Sierra Nevada Mountains on its way to Southern California.

But, however, the lake continues to shrink. Lake Mead’s water level fell 14 feet last year, and the Bureau of Reclamation has projected the level will drop 14 more feet this summer. That will bring it perilously close to 1,075 feet, the point at which the federal government can step in and declare a drought condition, forcing a reduction of 400,000 acre-feet drawn from Lake Mead per year.

A typical Las Vegas home uses a half acre-foot of water per year, so such a reduction would be equal to turning the tap off for 800,000 households.
Going beyond the implications for residents living in areas supplied by Lake Mead, the water loss has ramifications for the local economy too. It was recently estimated that Lake Mead National Recreation Area, along with affiliated marine operators, were losing some where in the neighborhood of three million dollars for every ten foot of lake lost to this devastating drought.

Currently, Lake Mead’s water level is hanging close to 1095.26 feet above sea level. The end-of-year projection is now predicting that Lake Mead will drop several more feet below its current level. This is a huge loss considering the lake is considered full at 1,219 feet.

The year 2009 started out well as officials projected that Lake Mead could receive an additional one million acre-feet of water based on the snowpack in the Rocky Mountains. Unfortunatly, however, the thaw did not translate into the expected runoff, and Lake Mead and the Colorado River’s water shortage problem marched on.

In 2008, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography issued their “When Will Lake Mead Go Dry?” report. The report said there is a 50 percent chance that Lake Mead will dry up by the year 2021. If this happens, it could mean no more water, no more pumping and no more electricity for many, many people.

There is, however, some good news. Strong conservation efforts are helping this serious condition. For example, Southern Nevada has significantly reduced its water draw from 325,000 acre-feet a year in 2000 to 265,000 acre-feet in 2009. Even with this reduction, the grand Colorado River still remains over utilized.

This is easy to see when you consider that millions of acre-feet of H20 are rushed to California, Nevada, and Mexico each year. This continually drains and strains both Lake Mead and neighboring Lake Powell faster than either lake can be replenished.

Some of the conservation solutions and suggestions include “grass buyback” programs to convince residents of the benefits of installing drought-tolerant landscaping, tax incentives for swimming pool-covers as well as the inevitable water rate hikes.

One of the more radical ideas involves pumping water from the eastern United States, where many regions’ rivers have been inundated with extensive flooding, over the Rockies to the western, sweltering states. Another interesting proposal lies beyond the shores of California, where there is a vast, open ocean of water available for desalinization.
While these are possibly viable alternatives, the power and financial requirements for either proposal would be enormous.

Whatever the solution to the Lake Mead water crisis is, it is likely not going to be a simple one. If the drought-like conditions continue, action will likely need to be taken sooner rather than later in order to save the reservoir.

It might be discovered that the money and time it will take to quench the western United States’ thirst are like the water supply. They are all running short.

In the 1920s, farmers succeeded in conquering The Great Prairie Plains of the Midwest. The plains were then transformed into the “amber waves of grain” we know today. However, this transformation came with a heavy price.

In fact, the agricultural triumph over The Plains was the tipping point that changed a typical La Nina-type drought cycle into an enormous environmental disaster that we now know as the Dust Bowl.

Depending on where you are in the world, a drought can have different meanings. According to the United States Weather Bureau, a drought is a period of 21 or more days during which rainfall is no more than 30 percent of the average rainfall for a specific geographical area at a designated time of year. 

The Dust Bowl was an area in the United States that experienced an extended and intense period of drought, which lasted from 1931 until 1939. The states that made up the Dust Bowl were Kansas, southeastern Colorado, northeastern and southeastern New Mexico, and the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma. 

Throughout the Dust Bowl, soil from roughly 150,000 square miles of farmland was blown by the wind into huge dust storms. Immense clouds of dust filled the sky as far east as New York City, New York and Baltimore, Maryland.

While the Dust Bowl occurred during a period of drought, researchers know that the Dust Bowl drought, while much hotter and drier than a typical drought, did not fit the profile of the periodic droughts that generally hit farther to the south. Actually, while regular climate oscillations may have triggered the initial drying, the contribution of human land degradation played a big part in this atypical disaster.

In the absence of modern agricultural techniques, large-scale crop failures at the drought’s onset reduced vegetation cover, which only exacerbated the heat. Then, the resulting dust storms brought on by the badly eroded croplands also affected the atmospheric moisture content enough to further intensify drought conditions.

In 1931, dust from the seriously over-plowed and over-grazed prairie lands began to blow. And, it continued to blow for eight long, dry years.

As the storms blew across the plains, it came in a yellowish-brown haze from the South and in rolling walls of black from the North. This just wasn’t any wind, this dust-filled wind made even the simplest acts of life difficult. Taking a walk, eating a meal and breathing were no longer easy and they couldn’t be taken for granted.

Most children wore dust masks to and from school, people started hanging damp sheets over windows in feeble attempts at stopping the dirt and farmers could only watch as their valuable crops were blown away. The agricultural devastation that resulted from the Dust Bowl windstorms helped to lengthen The Great Depression, whose effects were already being felt worldwide. 

During the years of normal rainfall, the grasslands in the Dust Bowl states had been deeply plowed and the land had produced bountiful crops of wheat. However, as the drought of the early 1930s worsened, farmers continued plowing and planting, even thought very little could thrive in the parched soil.

The ground cover that once held the soil in place was now gone. The winds had whipped across the fields pulling billowing clouds of dust and dirt into the skies often reducing visibility to just a few feet. The skies would be darkened for days, and it became common for even the most well-sealed homes to have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some of the hardest hit areas, dust drifted like snow and covered whatever was in its path, including farmsteads, cars and city streets.

In 1932, there were 14 reported dust storms, also referred to as “black blizzards” or “black rollers.” As conditions worsened, in 1933, the number of black blizzards jumped to 38. These devastating dust storms spread from the Dust Bowl area and affected the entire country. The extensive drought that accompanied the dust storms is said to be the worst drought in United States history because it covered over 75 percent of the country and severely affected 27 states.

The Yearbook of Agriculture for 1934 says, Approximately 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land have essentially been destroyed for crop production; 100 million acres now in crops have lost all or most of the topsoil; 125 million acres of land now in crops are rapidly losing topsoil.

Because this ecological and human disaster caused millions of acres of farmland to become useless, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes. These people became known as “Okies” because so many of them came from Oklahoma. Countless Okies migrated to California and other states in hopes of better living conditions and jobs.

However, what they found were economic conditions little better than those they had left behind in the Dust Bowl. Because they didn’t own land and had no home, many people traveled from farm to farm picking fruit and working in the fields for only starvation wages.

With no rain clouds in sight, the drought continued and so did the Dust Bowl storms. On Sunday, April 14, 1935, the worst black blizzard occurred, causing extensive devastation and turning the day to night.

Shortly after Black Sunday, the United States Congress declared soil erosion “a national menace” and established the Soil Conservation Service in the Department of Agriculture. The SCS developed extensive conservation programs, which helped to retain topsoil and prevent irreparable damage to the land.

Farming techniques, including strip cropping, terracing, contour plowing, crop rotation and cover crops were promoted. Farmers were now paid to practice soil-conserving farming techniques.

The SCS and these new land-friendly farming techniques was a great step in the right direction, but the storm was not over yet. By the end the year, experts estimated that about 850,000,000 tons of topsoil had blown off the Southern Plains during 1935 alone. The fear was that if the drought continued, the total area affected would increase from 4,350,000 acres to 5,350,000 acres by the spring of 1936.

Because the Dust Bowl black blizzards raged on and the drought continued, President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated the Shelterbelt Project in 1937, which called for large-scale planting of trees across The Great Plains, stretching in a 100-mile wide zone from Canada to northern Texas. The goal was to protect and preserve the land from erosion.

Native trees, including green ash and red cedar, were planted along fence rows separating properties, and the farmers were paid by the government to plant and cultivate these trees. Ultimately, the project cost roughly 75 million dollars over 12 years, and had somewhat limited success.

However, as time passed, even thought the drought continued, further land conservation efforts began to make progress. The extensive work re-plowing the land into furrows, planting trees in shelterbelts and other conservation methods had finally resulted in a 65 percent reduction for soil blowing.

In the fall of 1939, after nearly a decade of drought, the rain finally came. This brought an end to the black blizzards of the Dust Bowl and allowed The Plains to recover and once again become golden with wheat.

In today’s ever-changing world, in areas where vegetation loss often leads to increased wind erosion, it appears that history could repeat itself and we could experience Dust Bowl-type droughts again in the future.

Researchers with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center report that, although it is not possible to predict the exact time, history suggests that another great drought could certainly occur in the future.

The first step for anyone wanting to predict the risk of a future catastrophic climate event is to look at past occurrences. Unfortunately, however, good rainfall records only go back about 100 years, and accurate atmospheric records only exist for the last 50 years.

With that said, historical measurements do suggest that droughts have been a fairly regular event in this country. North America experienced a dry spell during the 1950s and another in the late 1980s. NASA’s research suggests that there was almost a drought in the 1970s, but for some reason it did not happen.

On a much longer timetable, sediment records, tree rings and other alternative evidence of climate change suggest that The Great Plains has actually weathered multiple droughts, which lasted significantly longer than the Dust Bowl.

These severe droughts appear to have happened once or twice a century over the last 400 years. Some evidence even points to droughts lasting over a decade during the late 13th and 16th centuries, which were much more devastating than the droughts of the 20th century.

It seems that history indicates that we can expect much worse than the 1930s Dust Bowl in the future, but knowing when and where remains anyone’s guess.

In this NASA Imagery you can see the ice bridge, in fragments.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf, on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, used to have an ice bridge connecting it to nearby Charcot Island, until that ice bridge collapsed in early April, 2009.

Fred Clark over at Slacktivist had this to say about the mounting documentation of the world’s shifting climate:

My point here is not that this ice bridge is thought to have been the stabilizing factor keeping the entire, massive Wilkins ice shelf in place, and that the ice shelf is, in turn, considered to be the stabilizing factor keeping in place an even larger mass of ice in Antarctic glaciers and thus that the collapse of this ice bridge may therefore be a sign that we’re going to be Even More Screwed by climate change and rising sea levels. That’s all true, but that’s not my point here.

My point here is that these are photographs. Visual evidence. One need only look at those photographs to see that something is happening — to see it happening and thus to have to acknowledge that it is, in fact, happening.

But a great many people seem deeply invested in believing — photographs be damned — that nothing is happening. They insist that nothing is getting warmer, that ice is not melting.

In this ESA image dated April 28, 2009, you can see Charcot Island in the upper left and the Wilkins Ice Shelf in the lower right.

The Associated Press reported this story as “Huge ice chunks break away from Antarctic shelf”

“There is little doubt that these changes are the result of atmospheric warming,” said David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey.

Researchers said the quality and frequency of the ESA satellite images have allowed them to analyze the Wilkins shelf breakup far more effectively than any previous event.

“For the first time, I think, we can really begin to see the processes that have brought about the demise of the ice shelf,” Vaughan said.

Annotations by A. Humbert, Münster University

One might be tempted to think that’s a good thing. After all, who wouldn’t enjoy a leisurely swim in bathtub-warm water? But there is a significant downside to the hot weather in this particular part of the globe, one that both tourists and natives alike will find hard to warm up to: the beautiful coral reefs that give the region’s Great Barrier Reef its fame, and its beauty, are losing their color.


The Great Barrier Reef from the air. Photo: charlton_b

It’s a fairly straightforward process: when the weather gets warmer, the ocean water heats up. Among other causes, it is this unusually hot water which causes the vibrant colors to, physically, leave the coral.

This is because the color is due to the presence of zooxanthellae, tiny algae that live in healthy coral. Under cooler temperatures, these algae thrive in their symbiotic relationship with their coral hosts. But when the temperature rises, these sensitive life forms literally can’t take the heat.

Close up of coral polyps, one of which has bleached. Photo: amell

When the water temperatures reach a certain point, the zooxanthellae are expelled from the coral, leaving a white, or bleached coral where there once was vibrant color. This not only leaves the coral bereft of its spectacular beauty, but causes a reduction in nutrients that would normally be created via photosynthesis.

In addition to diminishing the colorful nature of the reef’s coral gardens, which have historically made the Great Barrier Reef a prime destination for tourists, warming ocean waters have other deleterious effects. When the temperature of ocean water gets too high, it causes a decrease in the phytoplankton that grows in the top layer of the ocean. This is particularly problematic because phytoplankton are the “foundation of the marine food chain.” When they decrease in volume, the fish that live on them must eat less or go elsewhere.

The reason warmer temperatures cause a decrease in phytoplankton has to do with a mineral we are all familiar with: iron. It takes a certain amount of iron to feed the phytoplankton. But, when ocean waters become too warm, the colder water that typically pulls the iron up into the surface of the water (referred to as “upwelling”) does not occur. This prevents the phytoplankton from getting the iron they need, causing them to die off; which, in turn, leaves too little food for the fish that feed on it. Too little fish food, leads to fewer fish, which leads to fewer birds (who feed on fish) and so on.

It’s an endless chain of cause and effect. And it’s not just a theory. In 2002, 50 percent of the seabird chicks hatched on Heron Island, which is located in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef, starved to death because there were not enough fish to feed them.

While many of the consequences of warming ocean waters are known, one can’t help but wonder what additional, and as yet unknown, dangers may await us if the current global warming trend continues. With over 1500 species of marine animals living in the Great Barrier Reef, which covers over 2000 km of the northeastern Australian coast, there’s a lot to keep track of. But one thing is certain: if we suffer a significant loss of one life form, we are pretty much guaranteed the death, relocation, or perhaps even mutation, of another.

For this reason scientists at NASA are studying the Great Barrier Reef with increased intensity, now that climate change is upon us. Gene Carl Feldman of the Ocean Biology Processing Group put it this way: “Coral, which can only live within a very narrow range of environmental conditions, are extremely sensitive to small shifts in the environment. Like the ‘canary in the coalmine,’ coral can provide an early warning of potentially dangerous things to come.”

In order to process such environmental changes more closely, NASA has installed an instrument known as a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The MODIS system allows NASA to gather data from the region, via satellite, and make that data available for internet access within hours of the satellite’s passing over the area. This gives scientists an extraordinary “real time” view of what’s happening in the region.

Yet, despite the state-of-the-art data collection equipment NASA is using to transmit information across the globe, it appears that any real response to this troubling trend is in the future. While a recent editorial in the New York Times hailed the addition of two forms of Caribbean coral to the endangered species list (elkhorn and staghorn), the article failed to mention how labeling their destruction as bad will actually prevent the conditions that are destroying them.

If careless scuba divers, poachers and toxic waste were the sole contributors to the problem, the solution might be simpler. But the reality is that unless we control global warming, the main cause of coral bleaching will remain unchecked. And if that continues for long, we may not be able to predict the exact nature of the consequences that will follow, but there is little question that they will be tragic, indeed.

Lately the U.S. Federal Government has been making a lot of noise about green fuel. It started with President Bush’s comment about “switch grass” in his State of the Union Address. He got a few chuckles out of that. While we’ve all heard of using corn to make ethanol, and the importance of trading our SUVs for hybrids, I don’t know anybody who is talking about using switch grass.

Since January, the photo-ops broadcast on television networks have been touting Bush’s concern for the environment. Since this is the administration that turned the Clean Air Act into the Clear Skies Initiative, while lowering the standards of environmental safety that energy companies are required to uphold, we should probably ask: how green is green anyway?

Take ethanol, for example. There is a refinery in Goldfield Iowa that has been making ethanol since late last year. It’s been hailed as the “clean, renewable fuel of the future.” But it uses fossil fuel to power the ethanol refinery, so just exactly what are we gaining from this experiment in so-called green energy?

According to a report from the Christian Science Monitor, Carbon Cloud Hangs Over Green Fuel, while other ethanol plants use natural gas, the Goldfield plant burns 300 tons of coal a day to make this clean, renewable fuel. In fact, Goldfield is the first of its kind to use coal. In Nevada, Iowa, just south of Goldfield, another coal-burning ethanol plant is currently under construction and there are, reportedly, plans to build at least three more in the mid-west.

There are now an estimated 200 similar plants under construction. So, environmentalists are getting a little worried. As well they should. According to the climate director for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, the coal producing ethanol plants may undo the environmental benefits of using ethanol in the first place.

So why would the industry deliberately build plants that feed on coal? The answer: the almighty dollar. It costs too much to use natural gas and it’s relatively cheap to retrofit plants to burn coal instead.

They’re calling it “clean coal” technology, but plants using it produce twice the environmental toxins that plants run on natural gas would create. This was substantiated by a group of scientists at the University of California at Berkeley, who concluded that running the almost 200 ethanol plants now under construction on “clean coal” would mean that all the benefits of running vehicles on ethanol would be eliminated by virtue of the CO2 emitted during the ethanol production process.

So what are the alternatives? According to a spokesperson for the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) it is possible to use methane from cattle dung to fire up the ethanol plants. Apparently, it is also possible to use a variety of plant material as well — which is likely where the switch grass reference came from — meaning it is possible to create ethanol without burning either coal or wood. But even if ethanol is produced by boiling switch grass, you can’t run a vehicle on straight ethanol.

Currently, E85, which uses 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, is being touted as the fuel of the future. According to the RFA web site, there is growing interest in E85 and the “flexible fuel vehicles” or FFVs that can run on it. But current ethanol/gasoline mixtures are using a much smaller percentage of ethanol–more like 10%.

Still according to a study done by Smog Reyes in 2004, even a 10% ethanol mix will reduce tailpipe fine particulate matter by 50%, and carbon monoxide emissions by up to 30%. So if we can push the industry to use cleaner fuel for firing up the ethanol plants, rather than relying on coal, as the newest plants appear set to do, we may actually see some progress.

The recently enacted Energy Policy Act (EPACT), which was signed into law by President Bush in August 2005, includes a Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) which some believe will considerably impact our dependence on foreign oil and our ability to create jobs, thus strengthening our economy while simultaneously improving our environment.

In a study conducted by LECG, LLC in May 2005, analysts project that adherence to the RFS will, by the year 2012, allow us to reduce crude oil imports by $2 billion and save $64 billion in payments to foreign oil producers. In addition, they are predicting that ethanol production will add $200 billion to the GDP between 2005 and 2012, create close to $240,000 jobs and increase household income by 43 million. All of which sounds great, but it doesn’t appear as if their study took into account just how the growing number of ethanol plants are going to be fueled. And if coal is used in the majority of the new plants being planned for construction in the coming years, who knows how valid any of these predictions will actually turn out to be?

In the meantime, while we struggle to reduce our dependence on foreign oil for powering cars and other gas guzzling vehicles, we mustn’t fail to consider all the other things we use oil for. Here’s a short list of things you might not think to connect to oil consumption. For the full list you can check out the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) web site:

clothing ink, heart valves, crayons, parachutes, telephones, deodorant, pantyhose, rubbing alcohol, hearing aids, motorcycle helmets, electrical tape, candles, denture adhesive, refrigerator linings, hair coloring, toilet seats, loudspeakers, movie film, tires, floor wax, electric blankets, lipstick, eyeglasses, life jackets, insect repellent. . . and the list goes on

This is not to say we aren’t making progress. After all, we can’t expect to rid ourselves of dependence on foreign oil overnight, despite the newest legislation and increasingly frequent lectures by the President about America’s shameful “addiction” to oil.

But I can’t help but wonder, in all the hoopla over green energy–just how green is green, anyway?

Photography By Bastian, Robenalt, Automatt via Creative Commons

Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, is an inactive stratovolcano, which peaks at 19,340 feet. It is located on the edge of the great Rift Valley, in the nation of Tanzania. The ice on the mountain has been there for about 11,000 years, but the quantity has been reduced by 82% in the last century. According to Ohio State University Professor Lonnie Thompson, who published his findings four years ago, in the journal Science, this is a particularly troubling fact; given that several prior global climate changes failed to cause a significant reduction in the quantity of ice on the mountain. In other words, something has changed. That something, according to scientists, is called global warming — and not the kind nature occasionally bestows upon us.

The evidence of glacial retreat, documented over the past several decades, is causing scientists to become more and more concerned about the global warming they attribute to manmade causes: specifically, the release of heat trapping gases into the atmosphere by corporate polluters, gas guzzling vehicles and the generation of electricity. In 2001, scientists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, projected that if the current rate of ice deterioration were to continue, most of Kilimanjaro’s glaciers would disappear within just 15 years and the summit would be completely free of ice by the year 2020.

The dwindling quantity of ice on Kilimanjaro may be an abstract issue for most of us, but experts believe that tropical glaciers like those on Kilimanjaro are highly sensitive to climate change and, therefore, are good indicators of more serious global warming trends. If they’re correct, the melting ice on Kilimanjaro is just one in a series of events that will be triggered by climate change–and they’re not all taking place in Africa. In Peru, “the rate of glacier shrinkage is increasing exponentially — one glacier is racing uphill at 155 metres each year, 33 times the rate between 1963 and 1978.”

So what does all this mean? According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), it means that we are seeing the inevitable effects of our failure to curtail the introduction of harmful pollutants into our atmosphere: “With our industries billowing a relentless stream of gases into the atmosphere, trapping heat, we’re decimating our natural ecosystems, exacting an incalculable toll on our planet and future health.”

So why is it so hard to convince people to cut back on the practices that cause such disturbing trends? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the evidence to support the damage that will result from global warming includes so many hypotheticals–many of which are not expected to take place for many years. The challenge, it appears, is convincing people to act, now, on a problem that may not manifest, in undeniable and serious ways, for years to come.

But what about Hurricane Katrina, you may ask? Didn’t that prove global warming is problematic? Didn’t the entire scientific community agree that the degree of devastation left in her wake was attributable, at least in part, to global warming? Well, actually, no.

If you visit the web site for the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, you will see a collection of quotes from scientists debunking the idea that Hurricane Katrina was the result of global warming. But notice the phraseology. Even here they are not saying the intensity of the storm was unaffected by global warming; they are simply saying they can’t prove that the storm was more intense as a result of global warming — nobody can:

“. . . attribution of the 30-year trends [in hurricane intensity] to global warming would require a longer global data record and, especially, a deeper understanding of the role of hurricanes in the general circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, even in the present climate state.”

This is the essence of the current debate between those who insist global warming is already affecting our planet in adverse ways and those who insist on pointing out that we if can’t prove it, we shouldn’t legislate the pollutants that we believe cause it. If we continue to go back and forth regarding how much we know, or can’t know, or merely suppose, we will argue indefinitely and never really get to the heart of the problem; which is that we simply don’t have the renewable, clean energy technology we need to sustain our current usage. Or do we?

According to Mark Jaccard, author of Sustainable Fossil Fuels: The Unusual Suspect in the Quest for Clean and Enduring Energy, we should stop insisting on eliminating fossil fuels as a way of saving the environment and instead focus on modifying our fossil fuel use. Jaccard believes we have the technological capability to use fossil fuels without emitting climate-threatening greenhouse gases or other pollutants. In fact, several well-respected scientists have reviewed his book and agree with him.

Among them is Professor John Weyant, from the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University:

Mark Jaccard skillfully makes the case that those who leave modifying the way we use fossil fuels out of any plan to achieve ‘sustainability’ in our energy systems surely confuse means with ends. If our objectives are to improve energy security and protect the environment at reasonable cost, he makes clear that, with a little bit of ingenuity and resolve, our extensive fossil fuel resources could well be our best friend rather than our worst enemy.

In fact, NRDC’s Climate Center Director, David Hawkins agrees: “Jaccard makes a strong case that significant fossil fuel use and climate protection can co-exist, without harming economic growth.”

Let’s hope he’s right.

Pukatawagan is an Indian reservation in northern Manitoba. There is no permanent road, although the presence of a railroad does make it more accessible than many communities in northern Canada. In the winter there is an ice road, although in 2006 warm weather shortened its usefulness severely. When the road is open, the drive from Winnipeg, Manitoba’s largest city, to Pukatawagan is 835 kilometres (518 miles). The first and longest portion of that is paved, but road conditions in the winter can be questionable depending on the weather. Once a traveller reaches the ice roads, speeds slow to a crawl and the final quarter of the journey often takes as long or longer than the first three quarters.

To understand Pukatawagan and communities like it, you must first understand at least the basics of the history of Canada.

The Voyageurs opened up trade to the central and northern reaches of Canada, transporting furs back to Montreal on the lakes and rivers using large birchbark canoes. The process was expensive, with investors in each expedition having to wait 18 to 24 months for a return on their investment.

Two French explorers, Radisson and Grossielliers, came up with the idea of sailing into Hudson’s Bay and having the natives bring furs to a series of semi-permanent trading posts. They approached the French government who were not interested, so Radisson and Grossielliers took their idea to the English. The Hudson’s Bay Company was formed and the British king gave it monopoly rights over Rupertsland, a huge area encompassing much of central Canada and reaching down into what is now Minnesota, the Dakotas, and eastern Montana.

The Hudson’s Bay Company set up trading posts and began trade. Although the monopoly granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company was unenforceable and the Voyageurs continued trading in the area for some time, they could not compete in the long run because of the high overhead required for their canoe trips from Montreal. Meanwhile, the Hudson’s Bay Company sailed leased ships from England directly to their trading posts then back to England.

The Mathias Colomb Indian band which makes up most of Pukatawagan’s population was established in 1910 on the Prayer Indian Reserve. Additional lands were granted in the 1920′s, but the band still has land claims with the Canadian government that have not been settled. Before 1910 the Mathias Colomb band was bounced among several other bands that are part of Treaty Number 6 and was attached to several bands that were far away from them.

The imperialism of the fur trade and the paternalism of the Canadian government lead, predictably, to the morass of social problems so prevalent in societies with such histories. Substance abuse, crime and violence are rampant. A lack of industry and the remoteness of Pukatawagan cause widespread unemployment. Living conditions, while improving, are still more closely comparable to the third world than the first world conditions prevalent in the rest of Canada.

The northern location of communities like Pukatawagan make for many challenges. The weather can be extreme, with blizzards blowing in and winter temperatures often dipping dangerously low. The area can sometimes be cut off from the outside world for days at time, with air travel not possible and the winter roads closed. Supplies cannot get in and people cannot get out under such conditions.

A lack of cold weather can present similar problems. Warm winters like the one that Manitoba has had this year can delay the opening of the winter roads. When the roads are closed, the residents of Pukatawagan can’t get to larger centres to shop. The price of shipping in staples also rises considerably because they have to be flown in. When the ice road closes, the price of 4 litres (about 1 gallon) of milk can easily reach $9.00.

While prices rise with the temperature, the price that trappers get for furs sinks. Warm weather causes animals to produce lower quality furs. In a fur market already depressed by both changes in fashion and increasing concern for the humane treatment of animals, a warm winter pushes the prices down even further. Meanwhile, the cost of trapping increases because gasoline, needed for the snowmobiles used to get out on the trap lines, can double as it becomes more scarce. Trapping wild forest animals for their warm, furry goodness is one of the few sources of hard currency available to many people in remote communities.

Climate change is not the only problem facing Pukatawagan and other northern communities. Education has been sorely lacking. According to the 2001 Canadian Census, almost half of twenty-five year olds had not completed high school. Those who wish to take post-secondary education must move to a major city to do so. The culture shock of moving to a modern city from a remote northern community is a major obstacle for many, and many of those who do complete post-secondary education must remain in the south if they wish to work, discouraging a culture of education from developing.

As in so many northern communities, there is a housing shortage. The houses that are there are often substandard. Poorly insulated, often with types of insulation known to be carcinogenic, over-crowding can be extreme, sometimes with as many as 20 people living in 900 square foot house.

A diesel fuel spill dating back to the 1950′s has contaminated the ground and the water, causing ongoing health problems. In 1987, the contamination of the school grounds and water supply caused the evacuation of children to surrounding communities. Drug and alcohol abuse and teen suicide spiked upwards as the children tried to cope with being removed from their families. Gangs began both to recruit and prey on the community’s young people.

While community leaders and band elders have been working consistently to improve things in Canada’s northern communities, and the last Canadian government had signed the Kelowna agreement with First Nations leaders to attempt to address the problems Canada’s aboriginal people face, even the recent progress that had been made in addressing the many issues is now in question. Canada has recently elected the Conservative Party as its national government. This party has a poor record on issues like land claims, having voted against them while in opposition. Senior party members have stated that the Kelowna Agreement was, “written on the back of a napkin,” and have said that they will change it.

While it is not clear what changes the new government will seek to make, their less than stellar record on dealing with northern communities and aboriginal issues in the past does not bode well for those seeking to bring better living conditions, more education, and better employment opportunities to Pukatawagan and hundreds of other remote Canadian communities.