The billions of dollars and years of research that NASA has spent studying Mars may have finally yielded some results here on Earth.

Earlier this year, NASA scientists told the UN water conference in Egypt that they could use radar technology originally developed to search for water beneath Mars’ surface to find H2O buried up to a kilometre beneath the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East. Such equipment could help ease global water shortages and avoid future conflicts over water supply, Dr. Essam Heggy, a planetary scientist and a member of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told gathered delegates. Scans of Darfur, he added, show that the entire region sits atop a series of dried lakes and valleys that are 6,000 years old, suggesting there may be underground aquifers that could be tapped for water.

Don’t grab the straws yet, though.

“Certainly having a larger water supply could—if used wisely—reduce the level of conflict,” says Professor Dan Shrubsole, chair of the geography department at the University of Western Ontario and a specialist in water management. “But in terms of ensuring that the water is wisely and efficiently used? That’s another question.”

And it’s an important one to ask. Just digging up more water—instead of tackling the root cause of our global water shortages—is hardly the most responsible route. And as a concept, drilling miles into the earth to extract its valuable fluids—ahem, see the BP Gulf oil disaster—seems less credible by the day.

Fact is, we waste a lot of water. UNESCO estimates that up to 90 percent of water used globally is consumed by agriculture and industry, and much of it is wasted. According to the Stockholm International Water Institute, up to half of all water used to produce food worldwide is wasted through inefficient irrigation techniques, or leaking pipes and crumbling infrastructure. We’re literally pouring billions of litres of water down the drain.

Shrubsole also warns that NASA’s plan to connect surface water systems over national borders could elevate tensions between water-starved nations, leading to conflicts over who owns the rights to the water, and where. Governments need to take the initiative to establish ground water management regimes that are transprovincial, trans-state, and transnational, he stresses. Unless that happens, Shrubsole is doubtful that just drilling for more water could avert resource conflicts. “There are lots of conflicts over water now,” he says, “And there will be lots of conflict over water in the future.”

Ann Coulter's Canadian tour T-Shirt.

Last night, I wondered whether it was worth writing about Ann Coulter. When I think of her at all — which isn’t too often, actually — I think of her as being a deeply vile but mostly irrelevant self-promoter. (It would be going too far to call her an ideologue, because that would imply ideas, whereas her shtick is hollow invective.) Either way, she’s deeply unpleasant but I don’t really want to be part of the problem by adding to the attention she craves. Progressives — real, honest-to-god Socialists and Marxists, some of them! — frequently tie themselves in knots trying to come up with the most colourful denunciations of her, and I find it disappointing. People’s hatred of her is central to her business model, and I’d rather not donate my labour to her bottom line by participating.

The thing that most alarmed me in reading some of the news stories about Coulter’s appearance last night in London, Ont. (to be followed by Ottawa tonight and Calgary on Thursday) is not Coulter herself, it’s her audience. We know there’s an appetite out there for her brand of racist nonsense, which is clear from reading any major newspaper’s website comment sections. But writing a semi-anonymous web comment is different from showing up at a public venue and cheering loudly when the speaker tells a Muslim audience member to “take a camel” because she shouldn’t be allowed on airplanes. For a section of the populace that claims to be interested in espousing traditional social values, they seem to place a pretty low value on manners and civil interaction in public. “Respectable people,” as the prime minister called them in his YouTube appearance recently, don’t behave this way.

The creeping Tea-baggification of Canadian politics got a thorough writeup by Paul Wells last week in Maclean’s, and if you haven’t read it yet, it’s worth your time. I don’t actually believe that social conservatives have as much traction as they appear to think they do, but you can feel their influence in the country as Wells accurately describes it — moving the centre rightward and often successfully defining the terms of engagement for centrist and leftish parties. It’s deliberate, it’s a long-term political play, and people like Coulter are still part of the strategy, despite their court-jester shenanigans. Dropping their explosive rhetoric at the extremes softens the ground for less outlandish — but unsettlingly similar — characters with actual influence.