Climate Change Drying Up World's Rivers

The corporations and their right-wing friends are still denying that we are in the midst of a significant global climactic change (sometimes characterized as global warming). But as they deny it, we keep getting more and more bad news about how it is affecting the earth. The latest news concerns the world's rivers.

A new study has appeared in the Journal of Climate, published by the American Meteorological Society. Researchers have been studying 900 rivers over the last 50 years, and they have found that almost all of the world's rivers are drying up. There is less water flowing in the rivers, and they are emptying less water into the world's oceans.

The only rivers that are not showing significantly less flow are the Brahmaputra in South Asia and theYangtze in China. Scientists believe this is because they are being fed by the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas, and once the glaciers are gone they will show significantly less flow also.

In the past, most of the discussion of global climactic change was centered on what it was doing to the poles and to the oceans, but this drying up of the world's rivers is even more frightening. Many millions of people depend on these rivers for everything from drinking water to agriculture.

Some of the reduced flow is due to agriculture and the building of dams, but the scientists are convinced that now the global climactic change is significantly affecting the amount of water these rivers have. This is because the global climactic change has affected the world's rainfall patterns, and therefore, nature is feeding less water into the rivers.

How bad is it going to have to get before the world takes action to save its human population? The earth will be fine. The question is will its human population be able to survive.