Global warming can’t be blamed for Georgia’s water woes

Sometime this week, Gov. Sonny Perdue is expected to name several dozen people to a committee that will be tasked with drawing up a legislative package to respond to Georgia’s water crisis by December.

One bit of required reading should the Journal of Climate, which last week published a research paper by a group of Columbia University researchers who sought a cause for the drought in the Southeast that began in 2005 and just ended.

Global warming – “anthropogenic climate change” is now the preferred term — can’t be blamed for the drought that hit Georgia and several other states, the researchers said. It was, in fact, “typical” of dry periods that have historically hit the area. Which means it could happen again.

Instead, the researchers pointed to development:

At the root of the water supply problem in the Southeast is a growing population, driven in large party by in-migration, over the last few decades. For example, Georgia’s population grew from 6,478,216 in 1990 to 8,186,453 in 2000 and an estimated 9,544,750 in 2007 – that is an almost 50 percent increase in 17 years. Almost a quarter of total water use in Georgia, for example, is for public water supply…and these these population increases have placed notable stress on the available water resources.

But back to anthropogenic climate change. The academics said “models project that, in the near future, precipitation will increase year around in the Southeast north of southern Florida.”

But atmospheric warming is also likely to cause greater evaporation. “Climate change should not be counted on to solve the Southeast’s water woes, and is, in fact, as likely to make matters worse as better,” the paper concludes.

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