By Samantha Zaluski
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/28/adelaide-water-drought
Global water shortages are growing around the world. In the Guardian article “Adelaide latest victim of global water shortages” (Sept 28, 2009) the authors Tori O’Loughlin and John Vidal write about the water situations in Australia and china. They claim that the water shortages in China and Australia are caused mainly by over consumption and decrease rainfall due to climate change and that the water shortages will continue to get worse in the future.
Although these claim seem true, the authors offer little evidence of how over consumption and climate change effects water availability. For on thing climate change. The low rainfalls could just be the nature cycle of the earth. Some questions that are not answered are there areas with increased rainfall and are there areas with deceased consumption.
The authors quote the water minister of China saying “Compared to 1956-79, the average rainfall has dropped 6% in three major river basins," and that there would have to be a 30% increase of water efficiency by 2015. The article does not define what water efficiency is or how it can be measured.
The authors mention that shortages will get worse in the future. There is no historical data on water consumption or rainfall mention in this article that might support this claim. Also there is no discussion of the factors that would lead to the increase of water consumption in the future, such as population growth, increase in agriculture or increasing industrialization.
Although this article is full of startling facts and the average reader may believe the situation is because of climate change and over consumption. This is a sensationalized article and that when looked at closely does not provide proper scientific evidence of what the causes are and what the future will look like.
References
O'Loughlin, Toni and Vidal, John “Adelaide latest victim of global water shortages” Guardian News and Media Limited September 28, 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/28/adelaide-water-drought
I must say that I quite enjoyed your analysis. Perhaps you could have included a few facts and numbers on to the statements you critiqued. This might bring a bit more reality to your claims. The article you found was interesting but as you mentioned none of there claims were very developed. Overall I liked how you mentioned that these issues could just be caused naturally. Not everything can be directly related to global warming.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your blog post, i think you should revise your work to avoid common mistakes. I liked how you included actual values in your critique.
ReplyDelete