WATER VARIABILITY, OR, IT’S THE DAMN CLIMATE

I write thrillers that weave in nature concepts like climate, the environment and water. I have spent my life dealing with one subject, water. As a water attorney fortunate enough to represent some of the nation’s most prominent companies, people, and water providers, I’m constantly amazed at how little water, an element that makes up 60% of our body, and defines our planet’s existence, is understood.

Climate change impacts are most dramatically apparent when it comes to water.

When I hear people (mostly politicians and pundits) decry climate change as a hoax on the basis that last winter was cold or snowy, I know they’re really faking it for a good sound bite. Weather is the short term atmospheric condition at a given time. In contrast, climate is the long-term average of that weather. What the weather might be today or last month is not a representative picture of climate.

It's equally egregious (in my opinion) to call it global warming. The impacts of climate change may make some regions colder, wetter, and others warmer, drier. While the earth is warming, it is the effect of that warming that caused climate variability or climate change.

Remember that science class you struggled through in high school? You put water in a glass beaker, lightly put a stopper in the beaker and then put the beaker over a bunsen burner’s flame? Steam formed in the beaker above the boiling water and the black rubber top popped off (usually before the beaker shattered, sending deadly shards of glass across the classroom, as it did in my experiment).

That’s the impact of climate change. Heat equals energy. Volatility. Stronger storms, more severe droughts, more extreme precipitation events. Hence, why I use the term climate variability.

Let’s look at the current drought conditions in the Colorado River basin. 

And look at the same time last year (April 16, 2024):

If you were to develop an average of the last ten or twenty years (minimum), you would have a picture of the climate by precipitation averages. Looking at the weather or water content of an area for a single season can be useful to judge actions for that season, but not the future. As Will Rogers said, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” In contrast, man can take actions to do something about climate.