SEVENTEEN

WATER AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Where least expected, water breaks forth. (Dove non si crede, l’acqua rompe.)

ITALIAN PROVERB

CLIMATE CHANGE IS SYMPTOM, NOT CAUSE

Human society is in crisis not from the catastrophic effects of climate change but because we don’t yet acknowledge how we got into this situation. Climate change is not the issue; it is a symptom of our disconnection from the environment. Nature will always have the last word, and unless we are willing to learn from her, future prospects for Man are poor. Humility is a rare quality and there is, as yet, almost no sign of a change of heart; we still think we can reduce the effects of global warming through our clever technology. I believe, however, that water can show us how to reconnect with our source (see chapter 19).

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL INSTABILITY

In 1820 the world population hit one billion. The growth of population since then to 6.8 billion (2009) has been possible only with the exploitation of fossil fuels. Oil, the most versatile fuel ever discovered, has brought about an unprecedented revolution in methods of transport and has spawned a raft of technologies, from industrial farming to the chemical industry, to computers, medicine and health, myriad consumer goods, world trade, and tourism. Our livelihoods are dependent on it.

The creation of enormous wealth has always destabilized human societies. The prodigious wealth conferred by fossil fuels, particularly oil, in the past 190 years has been absorbed by the economically developed nations, with disproportionate excess going into the hands of a few, including multinational corporations that are beyond national laws or regulation. Political institutions collude with these centers of power, and the losers are the organic health and well-being of human society and the environment.

As increased demand for oil begins to overtake decreasing supply, oil production will start to run down—by 2035, it is predicted to be about 60 percent of the present peak level—and will no longer be a reliable source of energy; countries that still have oil reserves will want to hold on to them or use them for strategic bargaining. Undoubtedly, wars to control oil supplies will become more numerous, and the countries that have depended on fast economic growth will be most vulnerable to economic decline. The web of world trade is now so interdependent that the failure of its transport system could be catastrophic.

THE POPULATION BOMB

This is often referred to as the elephant in the room, because many people don’t want to talk about it. Earth’s resources would have difficulty supporting a global population predicted to rise to 9.5 billion well before the end of this century, particularly since food production is likely to be seriously disrupted by the effects of climate change. This will affect all countries and may dampen the rate of population growth in developing countries.

As we have seen, Nature’s main priority is balance, and if any species becomes too dominant or grows too fast, Nature will find a way to adjust it. Why should Man be exempt from this? The adjustment could take the form of anything from serious climate change and economic collapse to decimating wars and global pandemics. The main threat to global stability will come from the billion or more people migrating from countries most affected by climate change to wealthier countries that feel less impact. The potential for violence will be great. It is likely that by the end of this century, Earth may not have the capacity to support our entire anticipated population, but perhaps only half our current numbers of 6.8 billion.

WATER UNDER STRESS

It would be difficult to overstate the seriousness of the prospects for fresh water all over our planet during the rest of this century. News reports are being phrased in increasingly apocalyptic terms.

Climate change: Freshwater supplies will be endangered by change in the distribution and intensity of rainfall. Global warming will greatly increase the amount of water that the air can hold. This will result in more frequent downpours, similar to the monsoons of the tropics, in temperate latitudes, such as the British Isles and northern U.S. regions. Some areas that used to have rain may experience drought; increased desertification will spread, especially in Africa, southern Europe, and the American Southwest.

Effects of Global Warming: The atmosphere and the oceans together behave as a single organic whole, changes in one part of which can affect the opposite side of the globe. So a hotter tropical climate can result in increased desertification in the center of continents (e.g., central Asia), as well as bringing more extreme precipitation nearer the coasts. And the destruction and dieback of the tropical rain forests will result in more extreme atmospheric conditions, with more violent hurricanes, typhoons, deluges, and floods, and less rain in continental interiors.

Oceans: The effects of ocean warming are presently poorly understood. One of the more alarming concerns is the effect this has on phytoplankton that are not only the base of the food chain but also one of the principal absorbers of CO₂, which is stored in their bodies on the ocean floor. They are very sensitive to ocean temperature, preferring a cooler range. The collapse of their populations would affect not only a wide range of ocean creatures (and fish supply) but also the viability of the oceans as a carbon sink.

Deforestation: Forests, especially tropical, create and recycle rain. The failure of the Amazon rain forest will reduce rainfall north and south of Amazonia, and the Atlantic shores are likely to lose the moderating influence of the Gulf Stream.

Melting glaciers: The river systems of India, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia depend on Himalayan meltwater, and there will be acute summer water shortages when the glaciers disappear. Europe’s largest rivers are presently fed by Alpine melt and may well start to run dry in hot summers. Rivers beyond 50° latitude are likely to be less affected.

Exhaustion of aquifers: Agriculture in the continental interior of North America has, for the past century, been dependent on immense stores of ancient water in deep aquifers below the plains. These have been drained far beyond the point at which natural replenishment can take place. The Australian basin’s aquifer is also dangerously low (see “Regional Problems”).

Increasing population: Population increase and rise in living standards has put a great strain on water supplies. This is particularly evident in northern China, parts of India, Indonesia, Mexico, and California. Economic immigrants can also strain local resources, and dwindling dependable water supplies could spell famine in many parts of the world, especially in Africa.

Competition for water resources is likely to bring even more conflict between nations than that caused by the exhaustion of oil reserves, because there are no alternatives to water.

Some nations are in a position to control their neighbors’ sources of water (for example, China could regulate water in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia through its control of the Tibetan plateau). This will happen on a local scale throughout the world.*58

WATER SCARCITY

The map of water scarcity in currently populated regions shows five areas under severe stress (in rising order): the American Southwest and Mexico, the North African coast (especially Algeria), Palestine and the Nile Delta, Pakistan and South India, and northern China (see plate 24). The causes vary from population pressure and economic growth to inappropriate irrigation technologies and change in rainfall patterns.

The American Southwest has experienced substantial immigration from Mexico into both Southern California and Texas, putting a strain on the infrastructure and on the demand for fresh water. Northern California has one-third of the state’s population, but 75 percent of the state’s water resources. Aqueducts and canals, begun in the 1930s, bring surplus water from the north to the farming regions of the Central Valley and to the Los Angeles conurbation, which also receives water from the Colorado River.

Agriculture consumes 80 percent of captured freshwater, leaving domestic, industrial, and environmental needs to compete for the remainder. Much of the irrigation effort is wasteful. There have been efforts to recycle “brown” wastewater for irrigation, but there is resistance to its use for domestic purposes. The main problem here, as in every area of water stress in the world, is the excessive pumping of groundwater; this is nonsustainable, because these resources are irreplaceable.

Mexico City is one of the largest and fastest-growing cities in the world, yet it has exhausted its underground aquifer and there is no infrastructure to bring in adequate supplies of fresh water from the mountains.

Coastal North Africa has seen much higher temperatures in recent years, as well as a decrease in rainfall. Urbanization has compounded the water problem.

The highly populated Nile Delta, which is threatened by sea level rise, is the main source of Egypt’s food. Cairo’s population has greatly increased, and along with the rest of the Mediterranean region, it suffers from the effect of warming.

Israel is a pioneer in soil irrigation that goes directly to plants’ roots, but the water table has dropped seriously throughout the region.

LAND UNDER STRESS

As a result of climate change, the prognosis for the latter part of the century is that land suitable for growing crops will be limited to higher latitudes. Parts of western Russia might still be able to grow crops, but areas such as Siberia, Canada, parts of northern Europe, and southern South America will become the breadbaskets of a much-reduced world population. Presumably the taiga pine forests of Siberia would be sacrificed for agriculture. The equatorial rain forests will die out if global warming accelerates.

Apart from drought, the main problem of food security will be our dependence on the monoculture of grain types. Because they are not protected by diversity of species, monoculture crops are vulnerable to the types of global disease that caused the Irish potato famine and problems with wheat rust. There is an urgent need for crop breeders to develop a wide range of alternative species, using the wild plant bank.1 Industrial agriculture chooses to be blind to this predictable situation.

SALINE AGRONOMY

It is most likely that climate change will render fresh water supplies in many parts of the world insufficient to grow the food we’ll need for future populations. Currently, less than 1 percent of the world’s available water is fresh, and most of this is locked in the polar icecaps, which are melting without benefit to humanity. Another 1 percent is brackish (less salty than the oceans), and then there are the unlimited oceans. Many plants can be grown in saline water, for food, for minerals, and for energy.2

WATER IN THE LANDSCAPE

Water creates vibrant life appropriate to each climatic landscape. Whether this is driven by the intelligence of Nature, cosmic design, or even some inherent intelligence of water may be beside the point. Man has irreparably damaged water’s natural role of optimizing the fertility and biodiversity of the landscape.

When we leave water to its own devices, as Peter Andrews did in Australia (see chapter 18), apparent miracles can happen. But when we interfere, as when the mangrove swamps defending the tropical coasts of Africa and Southeast Asia were removed to make way for monocultured shrimp farms, disaster often ensues; those coastal communities were devastated by the tsunami of 2004.

The most prolific natural environment is the equatorial tropical forest. Temperate climates cannot sustain such complex biological wealth, but temperate latitudes are more sought after for human settlement and agriculture.

People have always chosen rivers as their main focus for settlement, as they provide fresh water and easier connection to the rest of the world. But when population density increases, water features are sometimes crowded out of the landscape. Apart from increasing biodiversity and ecological richness, water features absorb high levels of precipitation. Rising temperatures increase evaporation from the oceans, resulting in higher atmospheric humidity, which produces more torrential and unpredictable rainfall. Where will this go if we remove the sponges that allow slow release of water? Woodland and forest, especially on watersheds and in tropical environments, have a primary importance in preventing flooding and develop absorbent biological richness.

Permaculture, an organic form of cultivation with minimal input, optimizes biodiversity via a variety of perennial plants and the recycling of water. This system makes a good sponge and often uses water features.

Swamps, marshes, ponds, bogs, and wetlands all encourage the richest diversity of fauna and flora, starting with the tiniest forms of life at the base of the food chain—bacteria, bugs, insects, and microscopic invertebrates. They are essential in a system of water purification and recycling but have been disappearing from Europe as demand for commercial use of the land increases. With their return, septic tanks and human effluent can be treated by horizontal or vertical flow reed beds, wherein plants take oxygen down to the roots to aerate the water. Toxic farm effluent can be treated by serpentine channels of ditches planted with willow. A staircase of flowforms can oxygenate and energize the cleaned water.*59

We have all heard that Earth is warming at an alarming rate, unprecedented for many thousands of years. The increase in CO₂ emissions is the main contributor, but this is exacerbated by secondary negative feedback mechanisms that act like a row of dominoes pushing each other over. For example, warming in the Arctic tundra melts the permafrost, which releases vast stores of methane (the most powerful greenhouse gas) that have been safely locked up for millennia, which accelerates global warming, and so on in a relentless cycle.

REGIONAL PROBLEMS

The need for fresh water is as universal as the obstacles to a sufficient supply, the difference being that Man creates most of the obstacles.

Australia

The early colonists destroyed the land’s water balance and soil fertility by draining wetlands to create pasture and cropland, then exacerbated the problem with artificial fertilizers. Victoria’s rivers were systematically cleared of debris, which affected the biological balance of the region, encouraging invasive species. Without logs and other materials that create turbulence and deep holes, which are important for fish to thrive, the Murray/Darling river system has been overwhelmed by invasive carp, destroying the biodiversity of the water species.3

The Australian subcontinent has been experiencing a warming trend for thirty to forty years, the past eleven of which have brought severe drought conditions to the south and parts of the eastern coast (see plate 25). Significantly, the per capita consumption of water is the highest in the world, yet Australia is also the driest continent.

A campaign for stringent water conservation and rainwater harvesting for use in cooking, washing, and cleaning has been implemented in the cities. When properly filtered, this water is also used for drinking. The national norm is a three-minute maximum for showering, and no car washing. Many people have installed septic tank systems with aerobic digesters and filters that recycle toilet water many times over.

Some authorities are experimenting with solar power desalination plants to convert seawater into drinking water. Australian climatologists believe that drought conditions will persist and worsen. When Ross Young, executive director of the Water Services Association, was asked what can be learned from the Australian experience, he wrote in The Australian: “When climate change begins to have an impact on water supplies, it does so in a far more rapid and dramatic manner than any of the experts ever predicted. That’s why everyone must be proactive.”

The El Niño phenomenon, when the temperature of the Pacific tropical ocean current becomes much warmer (see box), is usually identified as the cause of Australia’s drought in the north and east in the past forty years. The Murray-Darling basin, which accounts for 41 percent of the nation’s food production, has been particularly badly affected. The basin covers an area of more than one million square kilometers, with a catchment from Queensland’s tropical north to the Darling River and from the Murray’s source in the Snowy Mountains in the east down to South Australia near Adelaide.

El Niño

The phenomenon of El Niño is caused by an oscillation in air pressure and ocean temperature between the eastern and western sides of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Normally pressure and ocean temperature are low off the coast of South America and high in the western Pacific.

The tropical trade winds drive the ocean currents westward across the Pacific Ocean, bringing rainfall to Indonesia and eastern Australia and helping to create the monsoon in the Bay of Bengal.

With El Niño the trade winds weaken or switch to westerly, and the ocean temperature in the eastern part of the tropical Pacific can be 6°C (10°F) higher. This changes rainfall patterns so that in general, westernfacing coasts receive more rain and eastern-facing coasts can experience drought. Previously El Niño occurred every five or so years. Now it can occur several years running, with increasing severity.

Deforestation weakens the evapotranspiration cycle of the tropical rain forest that pulls in the trade winds from the Atlantic. As a result of rising ocean temperatures and deforestation, El Niño more frequently brings drought to eastern Australia and Brazil, warmer winters in the Pacific northwest and northern midwestern states of the United States, winter downpours in central and southern California, and disruption of the vital Indian monsoon. Climate scientists warn that the increasing frequency of El Niño in the 2010s will exacerbate global warming.

La Niña is the opposite oscillation in air pressure and ocean temperature to El Niño. During La Niña the eastern Pacific Ocean temperatures may be 6°C (10°F) lower than average. Its effects on rainfall across the world are the opposite to those of El Niño.

In 1949 the federal government created the Snowy hydro scheme to generate hydroelectric power and capture water from the spring snowmelt in two large lakes in order to regulate the flow of the Murray River so that farmers downstream could draw water for irrigation in their dry summers. For a time this worked well, but the allocations were not scaled down as the drought began to set in, and a combination of overextraction and decreasing winter rainfall has reduced the Murray to a trickle that often does not reach the ocean.

Australia’s experience of such a prolonged dry spell may be a foretaste of what is to come. Tim Flannery, the Australian climate change guru, believes that crippling drought could now happen in other parts of the world, including northern India, northern China or western America, precipitating widespread water crises.

Asia

Pakistan’s Indus Valley has been dry for centuries, and with increasing industrialization, underground water sources are becoming seriously overexploited. In both Pakistan and southern India, the introduction of industrialized agriculture and water-hungry industries (such as Coca-Cola) have increased water stress in a region where rainfall is becoming more unpredictable.

Climate change is particularly worrying in northern India. Across the country, from Gujarat to Hyderabad, and in Andhra Pradesh, “the rice bowl of India,” the monsoon season figures fell 43 percent.4 There are reports of communities at war, and of some who were drawing water being “hacked to death by angry neighbors accusing them of stealing water.”5 In Bhopal, where 100,000 people depend on water tankers, fights break out regularly.

Northern China suffers from the most serious water stress situation, especially around Beijing, which has seen enormous population growth and industrialization. The water table in the region has been shrinking alarmingly, about a foot a year for the past ten years.

An ambitious plan to bring water from the moist Yangtze basin in the south to the dry lands above the Yellow River was envisioned by Mao Zedong in 1962. Plans included building three channels, each more than six-hundred-miles long. These would be twice the cost of the Three Gorges dam, and three times the length of the railway to Tibet. Ecological, political, and financial pressures have delayed the project. One reason is that the pollution of the Yellow River is very serious, and regional political authorities feel their needs are greater than those of the northern cities.6 China’s great push toward record economic growth could become stalled for want of sufficient water for its people and its industry.

India has a particular problem, as its traditional sustainable farming has been the target for the water-hungry “green revolution” chemical technologies in the West (see box). Add to this genetically engineered monoculture planting, and there is a serious water shortage.

The Case for Biodiversity

The chemical monocultures of the Green Revolution use ten times more water than biodiverse ecological farming systems. World Bank funding to mine groundwater resources has exacerbated the water famine. Indian governments are continually in collusion with multinational companies that would like to industrialize Indian food production. There remains congenital skepticism in international agricultural agencies regarding maximizing biodiversity and organic matter in the soil (destroyed by chemicals), which simultaneously increases climate resilience and both food and water security. The effect of the 2009 monsoon pointed up the dangers of this intransigence.7

Europe

The Mediterranean countries will become hotter and even drier. Spain in particular has been feeling the change already. In 2007 the country suffered its worst drought in sixty years. Catalonia, of which Barcelona is the capital, has been worst hit, with its reservoirs almost empty. In May 2005 this city chartered six huge tankers to bring fresh water to alleviate the shortage. Spaniards must become better water misers.8

In Greece, Athens experienced frightening fires in 2009. There is danger that the damaged land could degrade into desert unless it is quickly reforested. Tree planting is always the best protection against climate change in warm climates.

Britain is predicted to have wetter winters and hotter summers. It will certainly be subjected to more violent weather, with floods, storm surges, coastal erosion, and flooding. If the Gulf Stream slows down much more than it already has, the British Isles may lose some of the warmth it has taken for granted for several millennia. The position of these islands at the boundaries of several climate systems makes the changes they face more unpredictable.

North America

Most climatologists agree that the interior of the United States will receive less rain, creating serious problems for food production. Southern California and the Southwest, and states west of the Rockies, are already experiencing droughts. There is likely to be an increase in the number and severity of typhoons and hurricanes.

In 2009 the first hearing of the world’s top scientists to the U.S. Congress warned of severe droughts throughout the west, searing heat in the cities, dropping water levels on the Great Lakes, and increasing heat-related health problems. Big battles are foreseen between the Democratic leadership alerted by concerned scientists and climatechange-denying politicians.9, *60

One consequence of these droughts, exacerbated by population increase and poor land management, is an increase in dust storms. When dust settles on mountain snowpack that normally reflects the sun’s heat back into space, premature melting of the snow takes place, which changes the blossoming and growing times of vegetation.10

Many coastal cities, such as New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland, will be at risk from rising sea levels. Much of Florida is low lying and will gradually be flooded by a rising sea level. In addition, the coast between New York and South Carolina is falling at about fifteen centimeters (about six inches) a century, due to isostatic adjustment after the last ice age, which means greater loss of coastlands here.11

Reduction in the Polar Ice Caps

How could the optimum climate be designed to encourage maximum biodiversity (the evolutionary imperative) and favor the emergence of Homo sapiens? And while we’re at it, one that is self-correcting in the event of variation in the sun’s radiation? By creating polar ice caps!

The polar ice sheets have existed for the past ten million years and have coincided with the development of unprecedented biodiversity. Tropical and temperate forests have flourished, with great fertility and soil depth in the temperate latitudes. The balance between hot, humid tropical latitudes and polar ice has allowed temperate climates to develop in the middle latitudes. This period has also seen the emergence of higher mammals and hominids. Will they have a future if the ice caps disappear?

The climate of the past few thousand years has been very kind to humanity, allowing us to spread to almost every corner of the globe. With the availability of fossil fuels, we have enjoyed optimum conditions. This will all soon change. A shift in global temperatures reduces the range of environments that can sustain human life. During the past ice age when the average world temperature was 4°C (39°F), humans were restricted to the warmer lower latitudes. Global warming will have the opposite effect, driving people to cooler higher latitudes.

The initial cause of climate change is generally acknowledged to be an increase in greenhouse emissions. When the average increase in global temperature exceeds 3°C (5°F), the remains of the equatorial rain forests are likely to die off, completing the process we have initiated through mindless deforestation. The forests’ destruction may turn out to be a more potent cause of world climate change than CO₂ emissions and will make the equatorial climate more extreme and all climates less predictable.

The warming effect of climate change has been most marked in the Arctic, where it has been three times the rate of Earth as a whole.*61 The sea ice has been shrinking in the summer months at an unprecedented rate.12 The Northwest Passage linking the North Atlantic to the Bering Strait, and onward by the Northeast Passage to Europe, is predicted to be navigable within a few years.†62

The sea ice shelf reflects most of the sun’s radiation (once again, the albedo effect). Its melting allows the Arctic Ocean to absorb the sun’s heat, a positive feedback effect that cumulatively, year by year, accelerates the rate of warming in the Arctic and releases methane from the sea bottom (see box). Greenland’s glaciers and ice cap are melting at an ever-increasing rate, causing enormous pools of fresh water that could close down the Gulf Stream if they escaped from the Arctic basin, south of the Spitzbergen ridge. The melting of all of Greenland’s ice would raise world sea levels by more than seven meters (twenty-three feet), inundating most coastal cities and fertile agricultural land. The Antarctic ice cap is melting at the edges, its rate currently predicted to be much slower than that of Greenland’s ice.

The Methane Threat

Crystalline methane hydrides are also deposited on the continental shelves, especially off the eastern coasts of North and South America. They are stable within a limited temperature range, but it is believed they could be suddenly released if the sea temperature rose to a critical level. No one knows just what that tipping point might be, but when it comes, the release of methane would be fast and catastrophic to global warming levels, as methane is a twenty times more powerful greenhouse gas than CO₂.

The IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change), which revises its predictions regularly, now looks toward an earlier dramatic rise in sea level. Their reports look optimistic because they are usually already out of date when published. Warming of the ocean also increases its volume. The IPCC estimates that, by midcentury, significant flooding of centers of population will have started. Minute changes in ocean temperatures have a dramatic effect (see plate 26).

PORTENT OF THE SIXTH MASS EXTINCTION?*63

We understand very little about the oceans, which contain 90 percent of Earth’s biomass. Barely 1 percent of their life-forms have been identified and studied. Only recently we have learned that they absorb more CO₂ than land vegetation, especially in colder waters. The oceans’ ability to absorb CO₂ will be compromised by temperature rise. New research indicates that the Arctic Ocean is becoming more acidic as the CO₂ discharged from the water is turning into carbonic acid, posing a threat to the important base of the oceanic food chain, the phytoplankton, which thrive in cold water (see the following box).

The Growing Acid Problem in the Arctic Ocean

Professor Jean-Pierre Gattuso of the Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique at a European Commission “Oceans of Tomorrow” international conference in Barcelona, October 6, 2009, reported research from Svalbard (Spitzbergen) projecting that the Arctic Ocean will be 10 percent corrosively acidic by 2018, 50 percent by 2050, and 100 percent by 2100. This has the most serious implications for ocean biodiversity, because the bottom of the food chain, from small mollusks to the vast numbers of zooplankton, will be particularly vulnerable and would not survive such changes. Acid dissolves the bony structure of these tiny animals. Bioengineering technology to solve this crisis was discussed at the conference but quickly dismissed as impractical. Probably the only way to slow this collapse is the immediate abandonment of fossil fuels and/or the precipitate reduction of the human population to a third of its present level. The Northern Hemisphere receives the most human-produced CO₂, but we should expect this phenomenon to spread later to the Southern Hemisphere.13

This could lead, later this century, to a collapse of the rich biodiversity of the oceans, which would affect biodiversity on the land (as part of the same biosphere), already suffering under unprecedented species loss. The implications of species loss are apocalyptic.

The Great Barrier Reef, one of the Seven Wonders of the Natural World, has one of the greatest densities of biodiversity, including many endangered species. It has already suffered bleaching from increased sea temperatures, and a number of scientists have predicted its demise as a living habitat as soon as 2020.

MAN’S IMPACT ON THE EARTH

Some geologists are now calling the past 12,000 years the “Anthropocene period” (human-influenced), because in these years humankind has completely changed the face of Earth and altered its climates, and has precipitated a species collapse. This began with the wholesale deforestation that accompanied the development of agriculture, which caused a release of CO₂ from plants and soil into the atmosphere. Geologist and television host Iain Stewart believes that this gradual increase in greenhouse gases has maintained the momentum of the present interglacial period, which otherwise would probably have ended by now.

Agriculture brings with it significant loss of topsoil and reduction in fertility, as well as, in modern times, widespread pollution of the water table. It is insatiable in its demand for water. We have disrupted the great natural water cycles, and the only major rivers that maintain their energy levels and flow naturally are in the remote tundra areas of northern Canada and Siberia.

The past 12,000 years, with the tectonic uplift of the Himalayas and other more recent Asian mountain systems (augmented by the still orogenically active older Rockies and Andes), have also seen a great increase in the amount of weathered minerals deposited on the land and in the oceans. Stewart suggested in his BBC television series, How Earth Made Us, that these deposits, by enhancing carbon sequestration, must have been helping to keep the planet cool and fit for life.

WATER AS A SOURCE OF ENERGY

Wind power has claimed the greater part of investment in renewable energy. Its main disadvantage is the intermittency of effective wind. On the other hand, water provides a much more reliable source. Small-scale hydroelectric plants were common on private estates a century ago, and larger systems came in the 1930s. The mammoth projects have had a damaging effect on the environment, from the Hoover Dam built on the Colorado River in the 1930s, to the Three Gorges hydroelectric project on the Yellow River in China.

The development of wave and tidal power projects have been slower because of necessary research in the siting of projects, and higher development cost of the machines. But there is no reason why costs will not come down for sites such as the Pentland Firth off the Orkney Isles, the Severn Estuary in the West of England, or the Bay of Fundy off Nova Scotia, all of which have tremendous potential for energy generation. We’ll need all the renewable potential we can find to replace fossil fuel sources.

Viktor Schauberger developed implosion machines that produced power multiples in excess of conventional generators. They were not very stable, and nobody has yet been able to replicate them. Both Viktor and his son Walter said the problems people encountered stemmed from trying to build these appliances without the humility to first study and learn from Nature.*64

Some have developed simple adaptations of automobile engines to run on hybrid fuels—water and gasoline, or even water alone (through hydrogen generation or “Brown’s gas”). There is even intriguing research indicating that salt water can be ignited when exposed to a radio frequency beam. I believe that when the time is right and we are ready, Nature will release some of her secrets for power generation.14