Raindrops & Tears

This post is the second in a series based upon the Four Elements of Matter: Earth, Water, Air, and Fire

Modern physics teaches us that all matter is present in two forms mass and energy and at the subatomic level it is very difficult to distinguish one form from the other.

Mind the Weather

Manage the Water

A downpour on Junk Road

Central Ohio is presently a wonderful place to live and we consider Merry Mount our slice of paradise. Twice a day, I feed and water the farm animals in the barn, and as I watch them drink, I am also aware that 60% of my body is made up of water. (According to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. The skin contains 64% water, muscles and kidneys are 79%, and even the bones are watery: 31%.) I am blessed that I can, at anytime, go to the sink and draw a glass of well water that has been "purified" through a filtering system.

But I am concerned that by the time my granddaughters reach my age, there may be a water crisis even greater than the present one. Presently, more than half of the Western United States faces “extreme” drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, including wide areas of California and Oregon. Scientists have said the region may be going through the worst drought period in centuries.

From the NYT 7/4/21

…amid a historic drought parching much of the American West, a grower of premium sushi rice has concluded that it makes better business sense to sell the water he would have used to grow rice than to actually grow rice…a melon farmer has left a third of his fields fallow… a large landholder farther south is thinking of planting a solar array on his fields rather than the thirsty almonds that delivered steady profit for years.

By 2040, the San Joaquin Valley is projected to lose at least 535,000 acres of agricultural production. That’s more than a tenth of the area farmed. And if the drought perseveres and no new water can be found, nearly double that amount of land is projected to go idle, with potentially dire consequences for the nation’s food supply. California’s $50 billion agricultural sector supplies two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts and more than a third of America’s vegetables — the tomatoes, pistachios, grapes and strawberries that line grocery store shelves from coast to coast.

From the NYT 2/15/22

...exceptional conditions in the summer of 2021, when about two-thirds of the West was in extreme drought, “really pushed it over the top,” said A. Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who led an analysis using tree ring data to gauge drought. As a result, 2000-21 is the driest 22-year period since 800 A.D., which is as far back as the data goes.

In Oregon, conservationists, Native American tribes, government agencies and irrigators are squaring off, and local leaders fear that generations of tensions could escalate in volatile new ways.

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — Through the marshlands along the Oregon-California border, the federal government a century ago carved a whole new landscape, draining lakes and channeling rivers to build a farming economy that now supplies alfalfa for dairy cows and potatoes for Frito-Lay chips.

The drawdowns needed to cover the croplands and the impacts on local fish nearing extinction have long been a point of conflict at the Klamath Project, but this year’s historic drought has heightened the stakes, with salmon dying en masse and Oregon’s largest lake draining below critical thresholds for managing fish survival. Hoping to limit the carnage, federal officials have shut the gates that feed the project’s sprawling irrigation system, telling farmers the water that has flowed every year since 1907 will not be available.

Some farmers, furious about water rights and fearing financial ruin, are already organizing a resistance. “Tell Pharaoh let our water feed the Earth,” said a sign erected near the nearly dry irrigation canal that would usually be flowing with water from Upper Klamath Lake in southern Oregon.

The brewing battle over the century-old Klamath Project is an early window into the water shortfalls that are likely to spread across the West as a widespread drought associated with a warming climate, parches watersheds throughout the region.

NYT 7/18/21

Last September, a wildfire tore through one of Dario Sattui’s Napa Valley wineries, destroying millions of dollars in property and equipment, along with 9,000 cases of wine. November brought a second disaster: Mr. Sattui realized the precious crop of cabernet grapes that survived the fire had been ruined by the smoke. There would be no 2020 vintage. A freakishly dry winter led to a third calamity: By spring, the reservoir at another of Mr. Sattui’s vineyards was all but empty, meaning little water to irrigate the new crop. Finally, in March, came a fourth blow: Mr. Sattui’s insurers said they would no longer cover the winery that had burned down. Neither would any other company. In the patois of insurance, the winery will go bare into this year’s burning season, which experts predict to be especially fierce.

In Napa Valley, the lush heartland of America’s high-end wine industry, climate change is spelling calamity. Not outwardly: On the main road running through the small town of St. Helena, tourists still stream into wineries with exquisitely appointed tasting rooms. At the Goose & Gander, where the lamb chops are $63, the line for a table still tumbles out onto the sidewalk.

But drive off the main road, and the vineyards that made this valley famous — where the mix of soil, temperature patterns and rainfall used to be just right — are now surrounded by burned-out landscapes, dwindling water supplies and increasingly nervous winemakers, bracing for things to get worse.

Conversely, the Earth's ice sheets are melting at an alarming rate. Hal Wanless, a research scientist at the University of Miami, suggests that accelerated melt of polar ice sheets could increase sea level rise beyond government projections. “We could well be two or three feet by mid-century,” Wanless says, noting those rises will occur within a 30-year mortgage cycle. And yet, a construction boom rages on along the Florida coastline.

An even more alarming prediction was made by scientists at National Geographic in September 2013 when they speculated that if all the ice melted, the oceans would rise 216 feet! The image below projects what the eastern and southern U.S. coastlines would look like if that occurred. Notice the regions/cities that would be underwater.

From the NYT 7/8/21

Chicago is far away from rising oceans and melting glaciers. It does not sit in the path of hurricanes, nor is it vulnerable to the rising number of forest fires in the American West.

But Chicago has a problem, one that’s almost certainly caused by the forces that climate change has released. A balance has long existed between the city’s two great bodies of water, Lake Michigan and the Chicago River. And the changing climate is upending that balance on both ends, putting the city at risk of both surging and falling water levels.

Flooding has become more common...and yet increased rates of evaporation — from hot weather — have also left Lake Michigan at risk of falling so low at times that it would no longer flow into the Chicago River. [Only] the river would flow into the lake, [but lake water would not enter the river]. That would be a problem, given that the river carries away the city’s wastewater — and the lake is the source of the city’s drinking water.

On a more positive note, I offer words from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Raindrops on an elephant ear at Merry Mount

The reflecting surface of the pool is textured with the signature of raindrops. Each one different in pace and resonance. Every drop it seems is changed by its relationship to life...I can see my face reflecting in a dangling drop. The fish-eye lens gives me a giant forehead and tiny ears. I suppose that's the way we humans are, thinking too much and listening too little. Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own. Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve in a raindrop. The drop swells on the tip of a cedar and I catch it on my tongue like a blessing (pgs.299 & 300).

7/29/21 NYT

Summer 2021

Wildfires roared across the West, threatening the electric grid, the smoke so thick it could be seen from space, pluming into the jet stream, delaying planes in Denver, turning the sun red in Manhattan, creating its own weather. Health authorities warned that recent Death Valley-style heat waves had contaminated shellfish from Washington State. Monsoons swept cars from the road in Arizona. Pennsylvania songbirds were dying.

This is the summer we saw climate change merge from the abstract to the now, the summer we realized that every summer from now on will be more like this than any quaint memory of past summers.

As we mourn what we have done to the Earth and to our water, may our tears turn from sorrow to tears of joy for the gift of uncontaminated raindrops.

CPW