It's Friday, September 16th, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds.

I'm Indrae Viscontas.

And I'm Kishorahari.

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It seems like water makes the news pretty much all the time these days, whether it's flooding in Louisiana, France or Greece, drought in California or Zambia, the melting of ice caps,

the pollution in our oceans, or the scarcity of drinking water in developing countries, on and on and

on. And scientists, of course, are warning that this is just the new normal as climate change

quickens. So speaking of climate change, we also seem to be bombarded with evidence, but not so much

potential solutions. Policy change seems to be next to impossible to implement globally.

Individual practices like recycling or biking to work seem good, but also a little futile.

And many of the definitive answers seem more like science fiction than science fact, like

sending mirrors into space to reflect the sun's rays or other geoengineering

solutions. So when I heard about science journalist Judith Schwartz, whose recent book, Water in

Plain Sight, suggests that water might not just be an effect of climate change, but also a potential solution. I was intrigued.

Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, though. So you highlighted flooding in Louisiana, drought in California.

By the way, drought in California, it fixed, right? We had a really big rain year last year.

Yeah, but there's not, the solution isn't quite so simple as you'll hear Judith and I talk about.

But I also hear a lot of skepticism that some of the flooding events that we see are very hard to tie to climate change, that they're just seasonal weather patterns.

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