Ilan:

An uncomfortably succinct commentary; a global society hardly yet 
accepting climate change as a severe hazard, yet using it as a shield 
against reduction of vulnerabilities even where they are identified?

James


On 08/04/2015 08:43, Ilan Kelman wrote:
> This message's subject comes from the article:
>
> Glantz, M.H. and R.W. Katz. 1977. When is a drought a drought? Nature, 267, 192-193.
>
> Droughts are complicated, often more human-caused than precipitation-caused, http://drought.unl.edu/DroughtBasics/TypesofDrought.aspx sourced from Wilhite, D.A. and M.H. Glantz. 1985. Understanding the Drought Phenomenon: The Role of Definitions. Water International, 10(3), 111-120 but precipitation and water certainly have a role to play by definition.
>
> In current discussions of the California drought, much of the emphasis is on industrial and agricultural water use. A few have the knee-jerk reaction that it must be climate change only. It might well be proven that climate change contributed, even contributed significantly. But it is useful to see powerful statements and imagery about how overusing water in a desert does, unsurprisingly, lead to drought. A good summary comes from Andrew Revkin at http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/californias-wasteful-water-habits-run-up-against-a-dry-future-and-past
>
> Meanwhile, Taiwan today reports water rationing due to a drought http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-32200687 Note how the article begins with the hazard "The shortage is due to reduced rainfall" connects to human use "leaving water levels in reservoirs far below capacity" and then accepts many vulnerability factors "But a leaky delivery system, silt build-up in reservoirs and wastage are also being blamed". We could speculate about climate change's role, but there seem to be enough vulnerability factors present--although we do not know the relative proportion--that invoking the hazard driver of climate change to blame the drought would not label the root causes of it.
>
> It is not good to see these droughts happening and their effects on society and the environment. It is good to see in these two droughts how prominently vulnerability factors are mentioned. Back to another ancient article from "Nature":
> O'Keefe, P., K. Westgate, and B. Wisner. 1976. Taking the naturalness out of natural disasters. Nature, 260, 566-567.
>
> Ilan
>
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James Lewis Datum International www.datum-international.eu