WATER, NOT GHG

            Have you seen the latest numbers out from the U.S. Geological Survey that the Colorado River is down 20 percent since 2000 and expected to be down 25 percent by 2050 due to snow melt on the Rockies and global warming?

             Anyone with a pulse should be concerned about this decline.  It's happening all over the world.  The massive Murray-Darling river in Australia that used to carry steamboats up and down now doesn't even make it to the ocean.  That the earth is drying and warming is obvious.  In Alaska major highways now span what a scant 50 years ago were massive glaciers.  Just a cursory glance at GPS pictures shows dramatic ice melt.  The question is why?

             I'm always amazed that the general trend of a culture is to identify incorrect culprits.  This is an extension of our own personal lives; seldom do we want to identify the real culprit in our problems.  Be they relational, physical, spiritual, or mental, most of us blame something, anything, other than the real problem.  Often the real problem is that we won't forgive.  Or we won't communicate our true thoughts.  Or we refuse to invest in meditation time.  Or exercise. The point is that our individual problem shows up societally.

             So here we have an obvious planetary change, but what's the reason?  If we can't identify the reason, we can't fix it.  The orthodox position is it's greenhouse gases (GHGs) so we have to stop burning coal and shut down internal combustion engines.  But what if this isn't the problem?

             An alternative and in my view, far more sensible, culprit is water.  Perhaps the world's greatest proponent of this is Walter Jehne, the Australian.  I challenge you GHG folks to spend some time with him.  I'll give you the short version.  GHG accounts for only 4 percent of global temperature; 96 percent is atmospheric water.  You can get the calories of cooling per gram of condensation from him, but the basic idea is that cloud formation and the overall hydrology cycle is the radiator system maintaining planetary temperature equilibrium.

             Clouds form as water condenses on three kinds of particles:

             1.  Ice

            2.  Salt

            3.  Bacteria

             The first two are the basis of cloud seeding efforts, but they are extremely expensive and energy-intensive.  The last one, bacteria, is by far and away the most important.  It comes from plants.  Plants exude bacteria into the atmosphere; they also offer massive leaf area for evapotranspiration.  If we want to attack global warming, we must revegetate the earth's surface.   That requires perennials, not annuals.  It's also the beginning of organic matter in the soil, which is the sponge that holds moisture. 

             This is why the massive prairies and herds, including herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores, were the key to planetary health.  The predator-prey relationship and migratory patterns stimulated perennial plants, which stimulated leaf cover, which stimulated the hydrologic cycle.  It's actually extremely simple.  Ever since grain and annuals became the holy grail rather than carefully managed nomadic herds, humanity has been chipping away at organic matter and vegetative cover.

             It's catching up to us.  The herds overgraze; the annuals expose the soil; desertification now marches across the globe, accelerating and destroying.  All deserts can be revegetated.  All dry areas can be rehydrated.  But if the entire planet is focused on the wrong culprit, we will continue apace, heating and howling our way toward unhappiness.  Folks, it's not GHG; IT'S WATER.

             Are you prepared to vehemently disagree with ANYONE who espouses GHG as the cause of global warming?