People are composed of 80% water

And this is the world we live in

First a WTF:

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers does not deny that they accidentally dug a hole in the bottom of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron in the early 1960s when they dredged a shipping channel in the St. Clair River. -UPI 2007

Could somebody explain to me what this means? Where did the hole they dug lead to? Are we cooling off the center of the earth by pouring one of the world's largest lakes into it? I keep getting a visual of the chinese guy who digs a hole all the way to the USA, which can't possibly be correct. I hope.

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This first section of links concerns some of the largest lakes in the U.S. and in the world. An hour of putting lake names into Google leads me to believe that most of the lakes in the world are drying up. I know by visual observance that most of the freshwater bodies in the Southeastern U.S. are going or already gone.

http://www.lre.usace.army.mil/_kd/go.cfm?destination=ShowItem&Item_ID=5524
http://www.ultimatechase.com/Chase_Accounts/Lake_Okeechobee_Extreme_Drought.htm
http://www.sjrwmd.com/publications/pdfs/fs_keystoneheightslakellevels.pdf
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Victoria/
http://earthshots.usgs.gov/LakeChad/LakeChad
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=6673668
http://www.pol.ac.uk/psmsl/gb2/tolkatchev.html


Okay, so the lakes are drying up. No big deal, right? The glaciers could be melted to replace the loss, right? Ain't gonna happen, my friends. This next section concerns loss of icecaps and glaciers the world around.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/himalayan-glacial-melt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=157
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/28/climatechange.internationalnews?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0923_030923_kilimanjaroglaciers.html

Okay, but if the ice packs are melting and the lakes are still drying up, that means that we don't have to worry about rises in sea levels, right? I mean, God is gonna cut us some slack somewhere along the line, because he loves us, isn't she? Magic Eight Ball says "The answer appears bleak."


http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/ResourceCenterPublicationsSeaLevelRiseIndex.html
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0420_040420_earthday.html


Now then. If you even looked at some of the links, you noticed that all this bad news comes from all over the world. It comes from U.S. government studies performed by USGS, NASA and other government agencies. National Geographic, National Public Radio, and Greenpeace. I provided enough references from a broad enough spectrum of agencies both here and abroad to hopefully rule out general bias immediately.

And these are SAMPLE links, chosen because they got straight to the point, and taken from only a few variations of a search on "water level". For instance, water level, glacial retreat, snow melt. With each variation on the search I picked a few of the first 10 results from Google. The exception is that the first section, concerning lakes, was a look at some of the top 20 largest lakes in the world (which accounts for a little more than 75% or so of ALL the surface fresh water on the whole planet), plus a few local to Florida (for a personal reference). But the point is, there are literally thousands of examples just like these that I never even took a look at.

So.. tell me I'm jumping at phantom noises, tell me it's all in my head, tell me that you already knew, tell me that YOU are doing something to stop it. By golly geezums, folks. This is rapidly becoming a worldwide emergency, and my local TV stations are worried about some woman who stole a purse at the grocery store. Film at 11.

I'm tired of hearing the various news agencies being deliberately unclear about the use of words like "Taliban", "Al Qaeda", and "terrorist". I cannot fault a people for fighting off foreign invaders, using whatever tools available, regardless whether or not MY country is the invader in question. Being my country doing the invading doesn't make it right. If my country were invaded, I would use anything I could make a weapon out of in order to drive them away... any good patriot of any country would. "Don't tread on me" is an american phrase, but not an american sentiment. But I digress.
When are the major news agencies going to start spending hours telling us about drastically low water levels, unhealthy contaminant levels, fading or lost icecaps, billions of dollars in projects to hold back encroaching sea levels, or any of a hundred other vitally important conditions that threaten our whole species?

When are our nation's leaders going to stop stabbing each other in the back, trying to get stabbed in the butt, molesting children, raising taxes, and sending our children off to die, and start trying to fix or least lessen global catastrophes which grow closer exponentially every year little or nothing is done?

When are the masons and the shriners and all those people who are the real movers and shakers behind every major decision being made the world over going to make some decisions that count? Hasn't anyone told them that there is a time limit involved?

We've established the 'what', we are the only 'who' available, 'where' is the whole planet, 'why' is because our species depends on it, and that only leaves the most important question to ever face humanity....

When? When?? WHEN????????

Do we wait for Florida to sink, or Paris to flood? Shall we hold off until the antarctic is a tropical prairie? Can we stall until the cost of a liter of fresh water is more than the average american earns in a day? Are we collectively hopeful that we will be called to rapture before the end of times? Have we all lost our minds?

Yes, I am trying to be at least marginally sensationalist. Yes, I am trying to be overly sarcastic and cynical. But I want to hit you, dear reader, in the gut. I want you to get mad, sad, bitter and determined. I want you to show me that I am wrong. I want you to make me look like a fool. Because, simply put, if you don't then we are all going to look like fools, and it's going to happen sooner than we think.

I used to plan on being dead when the feces hit the oscillating device, but that is a hope that fades with each passing month. All the indicators across the whole board seem to point towards some major things happening not fifty years from now, but more like 5 or 10, and I just don't foresee anything short of personal calamity taking me out of the picture that soon.

Get involved. Do some Google/Lycos/Yahoo/whoevertheheckyouwant searches of your own. Visit local watersheds in your area. Teach your children. Teach your children. Teach your children. Teach your children. Teach your-- it really is the ONLY solution.

End of rant, back to your regularly scheduled mindlessly soothing primetime programming.