Blue is better

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychology, water

People are so incredibly variable that no generalization holds absolutely. An old riddle points this up: What is the average number of legs? The answer: A little bit less than two. And if you think about it, that's not just because of amputations.

But one thing is pretty close to universal. We like water. Not just to drink, that's a life requirement. But we like to be near it, or in or on or under water. Thus the title of a refreshing (pun intended) book by Wallace J. Nichols, Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows how Being Near, In, On or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do. And I do believe that's the longest subtitle in my experience.

The opening image in the most beloved Psalm, #23, is "He leads me beside the still waters; He restores my soul." I don't care what denomination you belong to, if you went to church as a child, you probably memorized Psalm 23. The placement of this Psalm between 22 and 24 indicates that God intended it to evoke the experience of Jesus between his crucifixion and his resurrection. If ever a soul needed a rest beside still waters, it was His, then and there! The green pasture and still water restoring the soul are an image of paradise.

Traditional "earth tones" are a bunch of browns. As this photo shows, those "earth tones" are really "desert tones". Only the Sahara at right center is any color besides blue, green or white. The browns that grade into red are the "dryest" colors of all.

Dr. Nichols, universally known as "J" to his friends, as Céline Costeau writes in her introduction, sets out to back up with science what we know from experience. Being by the water is nicer. And that "nicer" is worth a lot even in monetary terms. As he tells us in his chapter "The Water Premium", a tiny bungalow on the oceanfront in Del Mar, California was priced at more than $6 million in 2003 and had risen to about $9 million ten years later.

I just looked up Del Mar on Zillow.com. It is strung out along the coast north of Torrey Pines near San Diego. None of the town is further than a mile from the ocean, and none of the houses is valued at less than a million or so. But the ones on that last block next to the Pacific Ocean are priced twice as high as the others, and quite a few are $10-20 million. Out of curiosity I looked further up the coast, to Seal Beach southwest of Los Angeles. It is not quite as pricey as Del Mar, with homes a "mere" half million or so inland, but along the beach, most range around $2 million. The premium is definitely in effect there also.

Darn few of us can afford to live in view of the ocean, or even a lake, stream or river. And, as Hurricane Sandy showed us, that view comes with certain risks. I live a block from a nice little creek. The few houses that are right along it do tend to cost more than those a street back, by 30% or so. But they also pay rather incredible premiums for flood insurance, if they have it at all. But where we live, a close walk from the creek, it is easy for my wife and me to take a walk with the gurgle of the stream to backdrop our conversation, and views of the creek where it loops nearer the path.

The book contains a great deal of science, but told very readably. The results of MRI and other kinds of mind and brain tests are discussed, but J's writing is not off-putting like so many "science writers". And he tells of other findings that don't require big, noisy machines: how a picture of a mountain brook in a room where students take a test improves their scores; how teaching an autistic kid to surf can radically improve his communication skills; or how muted surf sounds really do make it easier for an insomniac to sleep (well known to merchants of "white noise" and "ocean noise" machines).

I don't recall anything in the book about the theory that we evolved from water apes, that is, apes that got lots of their sustenance by fishing and shelling. The various books and articles that make this contention are a further indication just how we are tied to water, not just to slake our thirst, but to slake the thirst of our souls for peace and comfort.

Now that my father lives near San Diego, and my brother has a condo a block from the beach, when I visit them, I make sure to spend some time beachcombing. Whether I keep the shells I find or not; whether I take any pictures or just enjoy the stroll, it makes the cross-country trip even more worth it. It really does restore my soul.

The author closes by telling us of his Blue Marbles. Some years ago, thinking about this photo of Earthrise from Apollo 8, often called the "Blue Marble Image", he handed out clear, blue marbles to everyone who came to one of his speaking engagements. At the end, he asked them all to look at the marble, to look through it, and to think about all the pleasant things about being with water. Then he asked them to give the marble to someone later on, with a similar explanation. Since then, the marbles have traveled everywhere, and others have obtained blue marbles on their own, and hand them out.

As I said at the beginning, people are incredibly variable. Some hate to swim, whether they can or not, and many refuse to learn. Some remain affected by some early trauma and cannot abide the sight of open water. I've known (and smelled) one or two folks who won't bathe or shower, and at best will just do a sponge bath every week or two. Aside from such rare cases, humans like water. Water we can walk beside, swim in, boat on, or just a good soak or shower to start or end the day. We didn't need science to tell us that. But it's interesting just how consistent the science findings are. Guess what my current screen saver slide show is? The fifty best waterfall pictures I could find.

Water as the next fuel – for War

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, textbooks, water, hydrology

I have been saying since the 1980s that the wars of the 21^st Century will be fought over water. Similar, and quite definite statements are found in the last chapter of a 634-page text, Groundwater for the 21st Century: A Primer for Citizens of Planet Earth by John A. Conners. But water wars are not his focus, knowledge is. The aim of Dr. Conners is to educate the populace, the "Citizens" of his title. 'Tis a pity none can similarly educate national and business leaders whose focus is the next election or quarterly profit/loss statement.

Though the author claims the book was not written as a textbook, it is one. In fourteen chapters it covers the field of groundwater science quite thoroughly at a layman's level, if you don't mind an occasional equation and a little chemistry here and there. Though I spent the past week reading the book, I'd have taken twice as long had I not been able to skim much of the material.

What is groundwater? Simply put, it is all the water beneath our feet. In most parts of America, particularly the rainy East and Southeast, you can dig a foot or two down and see water seep into the hole. That is groundwater trickling out into view.

How much is there? A lot, but the rub is, there are a lot of us and we use a lot of water. At this point, I'll take a brief aside: Units are used quite inconsistently throughout the book. Sometimes we find square miles or cubic miles, and at others square or cubic kilometers. Sometimes a volume is in gallons, then in liters, and larger amounts may be in acre-feet or cubic whatever. Sometimes a conversion between Metric and (mainly) English units is given, sometimes not. Here I will use SI (the "official" Metric set of units, out of 3 flavors of Metric), and convert when necessary. So again, there is a lot of water, but there are billions of us, and the more affluent we are, the more water we use. On average, and American wastes an amount of water weekly that is equal to the entire water budget of a person in a Third World country, for a year.

How is it being used? From quite well to quite abominably. In the rich West we take it for granted unless it is our job to worry about it. This is not always wise. I once lived on a hill high above a flood plain. On this flood plain there were several mobile home communities. The typical setup was this: each trailer/manufactured home sat on about a half acre of ground. In the front yard near each house was a water well. On a flood plain the water table, which is the upper limit of groundwater connected to the nearby river, is at a depth of several feet, so the wells were shallow. Guess what was in every back yard? A septic tank and outflow field. The tank and piping were typically set shallower than the water table, meaning that whatever came out the pipes tricked down into the groundwater. I wonder if anyone living there ever considered that they were drinking their own slightly filtered toilet waste...and their neighbors'!

Most groundwater is extracted for agricultural use. At one point, we find that the minimum requirement of water needed to produce one day's food is about 3,000 liters. You only need a few liters to drink, and a few more to sponge bathe and to clean eating utensils. Depending on what we eat, our agricultural water use can be even higher. It takes 200 liters to produce one hen's egg, more than 15,000 l per kg of beef and 1/3 of that per kg of chicken meat. On the herbivory side, an apple tree consumes 125 l per apple, it takes more than 1,800 l to grow 1 kg of wheat, and once the wheat is milled and made into bread, each slice has 60 l of water use hidden within.

In addition to overt and semi-overt water consumption, a hidden "consumption" of water is contamination and pollution. To pollute water is to render it unusable, or at the very least, risky to use. I once heard a European water policy expert discuss laws—I don't know if they are on the books or only proposed—that mandate every manufacturing plant that wishes to release "used" water into a waterway, must put the outfall upstream of its own inlet. That supposedly gives them incentive to clean the water up before releasing it. But it doesn't address whether a company might do only partial cleanup of effluent, and more thorough cleanup of water it is using, only as needed on a process-by-process basis. A clever enough company might still pollute, but at lower cost than thoroughly cleaning their effluent. So I'd go further. I favor a law requiring that every executive and manager and salaried employee be required to live in a dwelling that has its water supply hooked up directly to the outflow from the plant: to drink the water, to cook with it, to shower or bathe with it, to wash their clothes and water their lawns and gardens with it.

OK, you say, "Dream on, dude!" Yeah, I know. The powerful always find ways to circumvent everything. That's why we need occasional revolutions.

Back to the book. In it we find that we are not using groundwater as fast as it is formed. The trouble is, groundwater varies in its purity and accessibility and in the cost to retrieve and transport it. The "cheapest" groundwater is mainly in underground formations, called aquifers, that are not being replenished very fast. In most of the world, we are extracting water that won't be replaced. It is called water mining. Only once it is gone will we turn to more costly water, and maybe one day we'll learn to use the water that is being replaced the most rapidly. But, give us time, and we'll find a way to outstrip even that supply. We need, not more water, but wiser water use. In the usual case, we do only what we are forced to do. This will most likely continue.

The book has no call to action. It is entirely educational. People need to understand what is actually out there, and what is actually going on. The learning itself will trigger action. That is the author's hope.

Watch water

kw: observations, water, shortages

This chunk of the Texas panhandle (near the so-named town) is green for one reason: the Ogallala Aquifer. The left quarter of the image is December imaging, the rest is June. Irrigation using Ogallala groundwater is what keeps the area from being a howling desert.

This huge underground mass of water-laden sedimentary rock has supported the agricultural miracle of the West for most of a century. It is mined water, though, and it is running out. Water is being removed throughout the eight states in which the aquifer occurs, but is replenished only by rainfall on small exposures in South Dakota's Badlands, a semi-arid area (less than 16 inches yearly moisture).

The aquifer is one reason the nation seems to have enough water to go around. When it runs out, in the lifetime of today's high school and college youngsters, the U.S. will follow Yemen and other countries in rationing water.

The U.S. is lucky. Few aquifers around the world are so large, and a couple of those that do are in areas with plenty of rainfall already. Nearly all the world's people have to rely on rainfall and its derived waters in rivers and lakes for all their water needs. As world population grows, more and more areas will suffer water shortages. Take a look at this map, showing where shortages occurred into the late 1990s (click for a larger version):

This is one of four maps to be found in this BBC article. The map that follows is the third one, showing expected water stress in the 2050s. By then my son will be in his 70s, but what of his children? We are about fifteen years into World War III already, and it is primarily motivated by cultural and religious extremism. WWIV, or a morphed WWIII, will be fought over water. You can see in the 2050s map that China and India, where one-third of humanity resides, will be in serious trouble long before 2050. And by then Africa could be home to another one-sixth, making half of the human race desperate for water.

Will climate change help, or harm the situation? A major interpretation of a warmer climate is that global total rainfall will increase. However, some areas could experience less instead of more. It is certain that wars will be fought over access to water; their location is also pretty easy to predict in general terms: between Russia and the water-poor areas south of Siberia, and between the equatorial African countries and their neighbors to both the north and south.

I expect the Water Wars to begin in my lifetime; nobody will wait for 2050. Plan accordingly.