Several weeks ago I posted a piece on the Guaraní aquifer and commented on cooperation through Mercosur between the four South American states under which the vast underground deposit of water is found. On 2 August 2010 in the city of San Juan, Argentina (a pleasant city well outside the boundaries of the aquifer), Brasil, Paraguay, and Uruguay signed an agreement for use and management of that aquifer (the website of the Brasilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministéio das Relaçoes Exteriores) posts the text of the agreement in Portuguese and Spanish). From an outsider's perspective, this is a remarkable achievement, for the agreement has been reached before there is any serious problem with the aquifer, and the agreement has been concluded between a set of states often at odds with each other, including open warfare in the 19th century and threats of war in the 20th. Whether the agreement is truly meaningful remains to be demonstrated, and at least one commentator has raised questions about its application once ratified.
Map of the Guaraní Aquifer
Source: Guarani Project
Those who, like an antediluvian and prehensile senator from the benighted state of Oklahoma (a state with what is apparently an early stone age Kultur), like to point to the hideous cold and snow of last winter as refutation of climate change, need to be corrected. A recent piece from Scientific American online should put their pseudo-argument to rest as it clearly demonstrates the cold and snow were evidence of short-term trends and not of any longer term phenomena. Climate change can never be shown by the events of a single season, and a period of colder than normal temperature with greater than normal snowfall in one season points to nothing in a long term pattern. The same can be said for the current hideously hot summer, though it is in line with the long-term trend for ever warmer summers in the Northern Hemisphere.
Smoke over Western Russia, 9 August 2010
Source: NASA Earth Observatory
