Undoubtedly there are readers of this column who are “climate change deniers.” Nobody said you must be a scientist to adjust claims — but it helps. What's required are common sense skills and an interest in what is going on in the world. While this column addresses the heat wave last summer, the growing risk of wildfires and the depletion of the aquifers, it could have equally been about other major catastrophes lurking in the bushes: ISIS, Brexit and the European Union, the threats on NATO (and what might happen if Russia decides to move its army into a NATO country), or North Korea. Listening to the presidential campaigns, one would suspect that the enemy is already at the door.

Well, maybe it is. The real enemy is our own failure to do anything substantial about climate change. According to Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press in a July 3, 2016 report, “Thirty-one of the country's top science organizations are telling Congress that global warming is a real problem and something needs to be done about it.” The article cites the various groups, noting that “there is strong evidence that ongoing climate change is having broad negative impacts on society, including the global economy, natural resources and human health.” The migration of the Zika virus is but one example.

Even the National Geographic (August, 2016) cites an “invisible crisis,” the “vanishing (High Plains or Ogallala) aquifer.” We're pumping it dry to grow crops and there is no way, no matter how many Midwestern rivers flood, to refill it. The water is used to grow grain (and, for drained California's aquifers, other food products); consider that the grain feeds cattle that also consume water; “a single quarter-pound hamburger requires about 460 gallons of water to raise and process the beef.” The next “dust bowl” event will make that of the 1930s look like a picnic in the park.