In North Carolina, Our water supply in the SouthEast is running dry. The obvious concern is drinking water or water for crops.
But the bigger and more immediate concern is for the electric grid on the East Coast. Projections currently indicate that many if not all of our dozen power plants near Charlotte may have to come offline when their water intakes for cooling the nuclear and coal power plants will be dry in an empty lake or river.
This is expected to happen as early as May or June of 2008.
Not so long ago, much of the Northeast was wiped out with a blackout after a minor blip in the grid caused either in Ohio or Canada depending on who you believe to identify the negligent party.
What do you think will happen when a dozen plants come offline at about the same time due to lack of water?
Note, when they come off line, its not going to be for a glitch. They can’t just fill up the lakes and rivers and bring them online. Absent a few hurricanes they would come offline and stay off line. We often tend to think of global warming from the perspective of too much water, flooding Florida and all those Condo Hotels along the beach on A1A Highway, but running out of water is an equally large problem and one that might happen much sooner.