Rambling Rhodes

Bill Boyne Has Water on the Brain

One nice thing about having a blog. . . er. . . ThunderJournal, is when your comment on a news article is deemed uncivil and hence deleted, you can just port the whole lame article to your site and mock it directly.

Scientists have predicted a worldwide water shortage that eventually could take the lives of billions of people.

EVENTUALLY! COULD!

Eventually, I could have a chance of scoring with Salma Hayek and Sarah Chalke in an epic threesome, on the same day 12 asteroids collide with the earth. Hey, it COULD happen EVENTUALLY.

I love how it COULD EVENTUALLY take the lives of BILLIONS of people. Seeing as the global population is estimated at just shy of 7 billion, old Boyne is claiming a good chunk of the world population is destined to go down to a non-watery grave. That's some top-notch Chicken Little writing there, Boyne.

The shortage is one of the most damaging effects of global warming, according to an Associated Press report in 2007.

Apparently, Bill lives in the "World of Two Years Ago," which must be convenient, since locally we're undergoing one of the coolest summers on record.

Parts of the world already are experiencing water shortages, but a United Nations agency has predicted increasingly dangerous consequences.

Parts of the world have ALWAYS experienced water shortages; it's hardly a new phenomenon. I wonder if the ancient Egyption equivalent of Bill Boyne (Tutankamboyne?) scrawled doomsday reporting on the pyramid walls any time the Nile didn't adequately inundate the delta.

The report -- by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- includes the following predictions:

Ah, yes, the IPCC. Like Sex Panther, 60 percent of the time, it works EVERY TIME.

• "By 2050, more than 1 billion people in Asia COULD face water shortages. By 2080, water shortages COULD threaten 1.2 billion to 3.2 billion people, depending on the level of greenhouse gases that cars and industry spew into the air ...

Monkeys COULD fly out of my butt, which itself is spewing greenhouse gases into the air on a daily basis.

• "By 2080, between 200 million and 600 million people COULD be hungry because of global warming effects.

I COULD fall down a manhole after work and discover a river of slime flowing beneath the city; slime that is adversely affected by people's mood. We COULD have to call in the Ghostbusters.

• "About 100 million people each year COULD be flooded by 2080 by rising seas."

Wait a minute. . . I thought there was going to be a water SHORTAGE. I'm so confused.

Other scientists have made similar observations.

And still other scientists have, you know, NOT made similar observations.

Mike Hightower and Suzanne Pierce, water experts at Sandia National Laboratories, have suggested a number of steps that society COULD take to reduce the danger of water shortages.

The following water shortage reduction tips are brought to you by healthy grants and donations from concerned groups and citizens that want to make sure you worry yourself into the ground.

They have said that it is possible to clean and make use of nontraditional water sources such as wastewater, brackish groundwater, seawater and extracted mine water. They say that the reuse of wastewater is growing by 15 percent per year.

Mmmmm. Serve me up a nice smoldering glass of that brackish groundwater. And, wait a minute again here. If wastewater reuse is growing by 15 percent per year, isn't that a positive sign that maybe the sky-is-falling rhetoric from the opening paragraph may be a bit. . . hyperbolic?

For example, they said, electric power plants COULD use wastewater, sea water and brackish ground water instead of fresh water for cooling and processing.

In fact, Toowoomba, a city in Australia, has applied that policy in a way that many would oppose: Residents have been drinking recycled sewage water. People in parts of Australia have become desperate because of recurring droughts in the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

Take a swig from an Aussie's cantine, and you could end up with a severe case of the Toowoomba trots, apparently. And, gosh, droughts have been recurring going back to the 18th century, eh? It's almost as if parts of Australia have difficult-to-predict longterm weather patterns or something.

According to a report by the Australian National Climate Centre, "For the 24-month period from July 2007 to June 2009, serious to severe rainfall deficiencies are evident over most of central, southern and eastern Victoria as well as the lower South East district."

Bill Boyne: throwing together crap and hoping it's somehow coherent for, well, for far too long, really.

Most of the agricultural areas in southern Australia, southeastern Australia and parts of central Australia have been affected.

Soooo, parts of Australia have been affected by Australian droughts. Noted.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel report includes a bit of good news: Many -- but not all -- of the effects of the global water shortage COULD be prevented if the world slows carbon dioxide emissions within a generation and the level of greenhouse gases stabilizes.

You kind of have to sit back and really admire the way this guy deals out the "coulds." By my count, he's whipped out that qualifier eight times in a single column.

That is hardly an optimistic view, but it gives support to the global effort to attack the causes of global warming.

There's really no way to adaquately wrap up this stinker than with the good old "The Price Is Right" FAIL horns.

By the way, the comment that was deleted for being uncivil?

"I'm just glad I don't live in Boyne-World. It is a silly place."

Uncivil? REALLY? I've engaged in online comment sparring that makes that thing look like a toddler and puppy playing in a sandbox.

Posted by Ryan at August 5, 2009 06:30 PM | TrackBack