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Executive Order B-29-15
April 1, 2015
http://gov.ca.gov/docs/4.1.15_Executive_Order.pdf
We heard yesterday that Brown had banned fracking in California, but I have yet to find a link to that information. Our source was unusually mistaken it seems.
Gov. Brown orders California to become a water police state as region begins reverting to uninhabitable desert
Thursday, April 02, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/049220_California_water_police_state_uninhabitable_desert.html#ixzz3WBZmVIVr
Sad but true... CNN reporting California is running dry...
NASA: The US Faces a "Mega-Drought" Not Seen in 1,000 Years
Jordan Valinsky's avatar image
By Jordan Valinsky February 13, 2015
http://mic.com/articles/110574/nasa-the-us-faces-a-mega-drought-not-seen-in-1-000-years
California's water supply headed for collapse in just one year; state has "no contingency plan" - NASA scientist
Saturday, March 14, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/049008_California_drought_water_supply_ecological_collapse.html#ixzz3UYD5jZEF
World has not woken up to water crisis caused by climate change: IPCC head
By Nita Bhalla
Tue Feb 3, 2015 11:23am EST
Labourers walk through a parched land of a dried lake on the outskirts of Agartala, capital of India's northeastern state of Tripura in this file photo taken on April 23, 2013. REUTERS/Jayanta Dey
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/03/us-india-climatechange-water-idUSKBN0L71A420150203
Brazil is facing its worst drought in a century
The Atibainha River dam is part of the Sao Paulo's Cantareira system of dams, which supplies water to 45% of the metropolitan region of Sao Paulo and its 20 million people.
Miguel Schincariol/AFP/Getty Images
Interview by Kai Ryssdal
Thursday, February 12, 2015 - 17:08
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/water-high-price-cheap/brazil-facing-its-worst-drought-century
California drought: authorities struggle to impose water conservation measures
Topography, diverse cultures and unmetered supply making it difficult for state and local agencies to make people save water
California's Drought Becomes Critical in Cloverdale, Sonoma county: Lake Mendocino on Russian River, upstream to Cloverdale, is nearly empty on January 24, 2014, Sonoma county, California. Photograph: George Rose/Getty Images
Tuesday 11 March 2014 09.00 EDT
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/11/california-drought-water-conservation
A Thirsty, Violent World
By Michael Specter
2/24/2015
http://tinyurl.com/p4c7luj
Credit Photograph by Mauricio Lima/The New York Times/Redux
Angry protesters filled the streets of Karachi last week, clogging traffic lanes and public squares until police and paratroopers were forced to intervene. That’s not rare in Pakistan, which is often a site of political and religious violence.
But last week’s protests had nothing to do with freedom of expression, drone wars, or Americans. They were about access to water. When Khawaja Muhammad Asif, the Minister of Defense, Power, and Water (yes, that is one ministry), warned that the country’s chronic water shortages could soon become uncontrollable, he was looking on the bright side. The meagre allotment of water available to each Pakistani is a third of what it was in 1950. As the country’s population rises, that amount is falling fast.
Dozens of other countries face similar situations—not someday, or soon, but now. Rapid climate change, population growth, and a growing demand for meat (and, thus, for the water required to grow feed for livestock) have propelled them into a state of emergency. Millions of words have been written, and scores of urgent meetings have been held, since I last wrote about this issue for the magazine, nearly a decade ago; in that time, things have only grown worse.
The various physical calamities that confront the world are hard to separate, but growing hunger and the struggle to find clean water for billions of people are clearly connected. Each problem fuels others, particularly in the developing world—where the harshest impact of natural catastrophes has always been felt. Yet the water crisis challenges even the richest among us.
California is now in its fourth year of drought, staggering through its worst dry spell in twelve hundred years; farmers have sold their herds, and some have abandoned crops. Cities have begun rationing water. According to the London-based organization Wateraid, water shortages are responsible for more deaths in Nigeria than Boko Haram; there are places in India where hospitals have trouble finding the water required to sterilize surgical tools.
Nowhere, however, is the situation more acute than in Brazil, particularly for the twenty million residents of São Paulo. “You have all the elements for a perfect storm, except that we don’t have water,” a former environmental minister told Lizzie O’Leary, in a recent interview for the syndicated radio show “Marketplace.” The country is bracing for riots. “There is a real risk of social convulsion,” José Galizia Tundisi, a hydrologist with the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, warned in a press conference last week. He said that officials have failed to act with appropriate urgency. “Authorities need to act immediately to avoid the worst.” But people rarely act until the crisis is directly affecting them, and at that point it will be too late.
It is not that we are actually running out of water, because water never technically disappears. When it leaves one place, it goes somewhere else, and the amount of freshwater on earth has not changed significantly for millions of years. But the number of people on the planet has grown exponentially; in just the past century, the population has tripled, and water use has grown sixfold. More than that, we have polluted much of what remains readily available—and climate change has made it significantly more difficult to plan for floods and droughts.
Success is part of the problem, just as it is with the pollution caused by our industrial growth. The standard of living has improved for hundreds of millions of people, and the pace of improvement will quicken. As populations grow more prosperous, vegetarian life styles often yield to a Western diet, with all the disasters that implies. The new middle classes, particularly in India and China, eat more protein than they once did, and that, again, requires more water use. (On average, hundreds of gallons of water are required to produce a single hamburger.)
Feeding a planet with nine billion residents will require at least fifty per cent more water in 2050 than we use today. It is hard to see where that water will come from. Half of the planet already lives in urban areas, and that number will increase along with the pressure to supply clean water.
“Unfortunately, the world has not really woken up to the reality of what we are going to face, in terms of the crises, as far as water is concerned,” Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the International Panel on Climate Change, said at a conference on water security earlier this month. “If you look at agricultural products, if you look at animal protein, the demand for which is growing—that’s highly water intensive. At the same time, on the supply side, there are going to be several constraints. Firstly because there are going to be profound changes in the water cycle due to climate change.”
Floods will become more common, and so will droughts, according to most assessments of the warming earth. “The twenty-first-century projections make the [previous] mega-droughts seem like quaint walks through the garden of Eden,” Jason Smerdon, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said recently. At the same time, demands for economic growth in India and other developing nations will necessarily increase pollution of rivers and lakes. That will force people to dig deeper than ever before into the earth for water.
There are ways to replace oil, gas, and coal, though we won’t do that unless economic necessity demands it. But there isn’t a tidy and synthetic invention to replace water. Conservation would help immensely, as would a more rational use of agricultural land—irrigation today consumes seventy per cent of all freshwater.
The result of continued inaction is clear. Development experts, who rarely agree on much, all agree that water wars are on the horizon. That would be nothing new for humanity. After all, the word “rivals” has its roots in battles over water—coming from the Latin, rivalis, for “one taking from the same stream as another.” It would be nice to think that, with our complete knowledge of the physical world, we have moved beyond the limitations our ancestors faced two thousand years ago. But the truth is otherwise; rivals we remain, and the evidence suggests that, until we start dying of thirst, we will stay that way.
Are We on the Path to Peak Water?
Jeff Desjardins
May 30, 2014 at 4:49 pm
http://www.visualcapitalist.com/path-peak-water/
Water is the lifeblood of humanity; it turns out it is in short supply. Like any other commodity high in demand, you should keep an eye on it for investment purposes as we get closer and closer to “peak water.”
The overwhelming majority of global fresh water is locked up as ice or permanent snow cover, making it inaccessible and severely limiting our readily available supply. The average American uses 65 to 78 gallons of water per day, while the average person in the Republic of Gambia, Africa, uses just 1.17 gallons, barely above the minimum amount needed to survive.
Not only do we consume a lot of water per day, we also use huge amounts of “virtual water.” Virtual water is defined as water we consume indirectly from goods we use, food we eat, etc. Look down at your shirt, did you know that it took 650 gallons of water to make it? If you love beef, we have some bad news for you. It takes 2,036 gallons of water to produce just one pound of beef!
With all that said, there are major investment opportunities in the water supply industry. Our friends at Sprott Global have outlined three distinct areas that water investors should consider: adaption to water systems to handle changing weather patterns, improving water safety and managing storm water in urban areas. There is a need of investment in infrastructure to the tune of $45 billion in New Jersey alone over the next 20 years. Check out the article they posted that further details investment opportunities by clicking here. You should definitely keep an eye on this clear liquid gold.
A Watershed Moment for Los Angeles
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater
Initiative in Water Currents on November 12, 2014
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/11/12/a-watershed-moment-for-los-angeles/
This vegetated depression, or swale, helps storm water infiltrate into the earth rather than running rapidly off sidewalks and streets. While helping prevent damaging floods, bioswales can recharge local groundwater, beautify urban landscapes, and purify water all at the same time. This particular swale is in Seattle, but more may soon grace the streets of Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of US Environmental Protection Agency
The timing might seem odd, even self-destructive.
Last month, in the midst of one of the most severe droughts in California’s historical record, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti issued an executive order calling for his southern California city to cut its water imports by half within a decade.
Water transferred hundreds of miles from northern California and the Colorado River currently accounts for about 80 percent of LA’s water use, so the goal is ambitious, to say the least.
It’s also a historic turn-around. Ever since the early 20th century, when Los Angeles diverted water from the Owen’s Valley a couple hundred miles to the East – a deal made famous by the classic Roman Polanski film, Chinatown – Los Angeles has done what just about every growing western city has done: reach further and further out for more water as demands outpace supplies.
But with his bold new directive, Garcetti is writing a new script for LA’s water future.
Instead of relying on distant supplies brought in by big engineering projects, he’s banking on the idea that local supplies can meet most of the city’s water needs if they are used more efficiently and managed with more ingenuity.
Ultimately it’s about smarter water management and greater resiliency. Transferring water long distances, and especially over mountain ranges, is energy-intensive and costly. Moreover, those distant supplies are becoming less reliable. Most of LA’s imported water originates as snow in the Sierra Nevada and Colorado Rockies, and climate scientists expect those snowpacks to diminish in the coming decades.
Due to the ongoing drought, the Metropolitan Water District, which supplies Los Angeles with most of its imported water, expects to curtail supplies during the coming year.
Garcetti’s directive puts forth two other goals, as well: to reduce water use per person by 20 percent within three years, and to create an “integrated water strategy” that boosts local water supplies and improves water security. Achieving these goals is critical to meeting the water-import reduction target.
In some ways, LA’s past conservation successes make achieving these goals more difficult. Thanks to tried-and-true conservation efforts, the city’s water use today is back to where it was 40 years ago, when a million fewer people lived there.
But the Mayor’s directive acknowledges an important truth: that the city has barely scratched the surface of water conservation’s potential to meet future water needs cost-effectively and sustainably.
For one, Angelenos can reap substantial water savings by choosing more sensible, climate-appropriate vegetation. Landscape irrigation accounts for more than half of LA’s residential water use.
The mayor’s plan calls for increasing rebates for residential turf removal, giving property owners an incentive to switch from thirsty lawns to drought-tolerant vegetation. It also calls for 85% of public golf course acreage to be irrigated with recycled water by 2017, saving higher-quality potable water for drinking, showering and other household uses.
To increase local supplies, Los Angeles will look toward rainwater harvesting, stormwater capture and other techniques that prevent precipitation from running off impervious streets and pavement instead of recharging groundwater, increasing soil moisture, or being stored for other uses. A one-inch rain event in Los Angeles County can generate more than 10 billion gallons of stormwater runoff – most of which will flow, along with the urban trash and pollution it is carrying, into the Pacific Ocean.
Gardens on rooftops, vegetated swales in parking lots, and other types of “green infrastructure” help turn storm water into an asset rather than a problem.
A study of urbanized southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area, conducted by the Natural Resources Development Council and the University of California at Santa Barbara, found that rooftop rainwater capture combined with increased stormwater infiltration to recharge groundwater could increase water supplies by up to 405,000 acre-feet (132 billion gallons) within two decades.
There’s no big silver bullet in the Mayor’s plan. It’s a portfolio of actions to build water security, self-reliance and long-term sustainability. It’s also the look of urban water management in the 21st century.
Much of the world will be watching.
Sandra Postel is director of the Global Water Policy Project, Freshwater Fellow of the National Geographic Society, and author of several books and numerous articles on global water issues. She is co-creator of Change the Course, the national freshwater conservation and restoration campaign being piloted in the Colorado River Basin.
We haven't even received a notice about it yet. I guess they're just going to surprise us when we get the bill.
Water rationing hits California: limit of 50 gallons per person per day or face fines of $500
Monday, September 29, 2014
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/047061_water_rationing_California_drought.html#ixzz3Ehl9nbhl
Gov. Brown signs groundwater pumping laws
By Matt Weiser
The Sacramento BeeSeptember 15, 2014
Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/09/15/4123987/california-poised-to-restrict.html#storylink=cpy
Amid Drought, New California Law Will Limit Groundwater Pumping for First Time
But it won't help right away: The limits on pumping won't kick in before the 2020s.
A tractor kicks up dust as it moves through an unplanted field in Los Banos, California, in September. The state's third straight year of drought has brought reservoirs to record lows.
Photograph by Justin Sullivan, Getty
By Michelle Nijhuis
for National Geographic
Published September 17, 2014
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140917-california-groundwater-law-drought-central-valley-environment-science/?google_editors_picks=true
WIRED SCIENCE | Peak Water | PBS
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3d52r
[repost]
Photos: Before and after images show impact of Calif. drought
USA Today Network Jessica Durando, USA TODAY Network
10:27 a.m. EDT August 29, 2014
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/08/28/drought-california-photos-impact/14773961/?csp=fbfanpage
Lake Tahoe heads for one of its lowest levels in years
Popular lake will soon stop draining into Truckee River
UPDATED 6:32 PM PDT Sep 11, 2014
By David Bienick
Read more: http://www.kcra.com/news/tahoe-headed-for-one-of-its-lowest-levels-in-years/28020172#ixzz3DP4fsWWW
Yep. It will start becoming ugly for water conservation, and expensive! I didn't have such a plush garden this year.
Drought apocalypse begins in California as wells run dry
Thursday, September 04, 2014
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/046734_extreme_drought_California_water_collapse.html#ixzz3CS8Fw2X1
U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook: July 17, 2014 - October 31, 2014
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/sdo_summary.html
Even though I'm planning on moving north of San Francisco, rainfall is grim.
California’s Exceptional Drought Just Keeps Getting Worse
By Tom Randall Jul 31, 2014 4:43 PM ET
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-31/california-s-exceptional-drought-spreads-north-as-water-supplies-drop.html
Tattletales Use Twitter to Shame California Water-Wasters
By James Nash Aug 7, 2014 12:01 AM ET
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-07/tattletales-use-twitter-to-shame-california-water-wasters.html
Water: A Lake with a Thousand Faces -
Blogpost by Rex Weyler - June 16, 2014 at 20:16
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/water-a-lake-with-a-thousand-faces/blog/49589/
Preserving Earth’s Water -
The alternative to turning water into a commodity is for communities
to protect and preserve their scarce water cycles.
Turning water into a commodity, the corporate response, is not going
to save lakes, replenish drained aquifers, or reverse global warming.
Communities will have to limit their own water use and protect water
sources.
Meanwhile, to stabilize Earth’s climate we need to phase out fossil
fuels quickly.
http://beforeitsnews.com/environment/2014/06/water-a-lake-with-a-thousand-faces-2503284.html
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=103355049
God Bless
Greeat news, John. When my water barrels begin to empty after use, I become uncomfortable.
I was thinking of adding more water barrels, but decided to add lots of rotted straw repeatedly in the future.
One of my gardening friends has a 2500 square foot garden that is 3 feet deep in leaf mulch. When walking on it, it feels like a sponge, one could use their hand to plant a large tree, and it required one watering during last summer's long dry period. He has been adding this leaf mulch for 33 years.
Good luck!
Last night it started raining about midnight here. at 4:00 AM, all of my water collecters were full. That was supposed to be the 'light rain' before the real onslaught which is supposed to move in tonight. I guess I'll be leaving early from work today so I can empty the water containers into the gardens to give them a nice deep soak, so the containers can collect some more. Good times!
Believe me, John, I'm praying for rain big time.
I tell people back east about the California drought and many have no clue what I'm speaking about.
It is really sad about the lack of knowledge concerning our environment.
Good luck!
We're supposed to get a nice bit of rain this weekend. I'm ready to sit and enjoy it!
NASA Responds to California's Evolving Drought
February 25, 2014
http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/news/california-drought-20140225/index.html#.Uw0sDUJdV7G
California almond farmers face tough choices
Some California almond farmers decide to rip out high-value trees in face of record dry year
By Scott Smith, Associated Press
18 hours ago
http://news.yahoo.com/california-almond-farmers-face-tough-154734857.html?vp=1
Fantasizing About California, or Already Here: 5 Shocking Drought Facts to Make You Rethink the Golden State
Droughts aren’t new to California, but this one is for the ages and comes with a distinct set of troubles.
AlterNet / By Tara Lohan
http://www.alternet.org/5-crucial-things-you-should-know-about-californias-epic-drought
Drought Preparations and Actions
Jan 19, 2014
by Dave7
http://preparingwithdave.com/drought-preparations-and-actions/#.UvVjg3SYYY1
Water Levels of the Great Lakes Are Declining
Normally rising and falling on a 13-year cycle, the lakes are at historically-low levels
Feb 3, 2014 |By Becky Oskin and LiveScience
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/water-levels-of-the-great-lakes-are-declining/
A pier that no longer reaches the lake due to dropping water levels at Big Muskellunge Lake, Wisc.
Carl Watras
The Great Lakes share a surprising connection with Wisconsin's small lakes and aquifers — their water levels all rise and fall on a 13-year cycle, according to a new study. But that cycle is now mysteriously out of whack, researchers have found.
"The last two decades have been kind of exceptional," said Carl Watras, a climate scientist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Water levels have been declining since 1998, Watras told Live Science. "Our lakes have never been lower than they are."
The research was published Jan. 21 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
According to 70 years of lake and aquifer records from northern Wisconsin, the states' small lakes usually rise and fall on a regular cycle — about six years up, and six years down. But since 1998, there has been only one brief uptick in levels, in 2002 through 2003).
Both the normal 13-year cycle and unusual recent downward trend are mirrored in the world's biggest freshwater water body, the linked Great Lakes of Michigan and Huron, Watras said.
"What that tells us is some hydrologic driver is operating on all of these lakes, and groundwater in the region, and controlling the water levels," Watras said.
Earlier research uncovered a 12-year cycle of rising and falling lake levels in the Michigan-Huron lakes, as well as a shorter 8-year cycle. [The Great Lakes: North America's 'Third Coast']
"It is likely the same signal," said Janel Hanrahan, a climate scientist at Lyndon College in Vermont and lead author of the earlier studies, who was not involved in the new research. Hanrahan attributed the 8-year cycle to changes in precipitation during the winter months, and the 12-year cycle to precipitation changes during the summer.
Watras and his co-authors similarly link the long-term rise and fall in Wisconsin's lakes to an cyclic atmospheric pattern called the circumglobal teleconnection (CGT), a narrow, high-altitude wind similar to the jet stream. The pattern flows about 16,500 feet (5,000 meters) above the Midwest, bringing in moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.
Since the lake levels started their downward plunge in the late 1990s, the CGT's pattern has been stuck in a position that means less rainfall for Wisconsin, the study found. But evaporation also plays a role. Warmer-than-average winters since 1998 kept smaller lakes free of ice for longer time spans, allowing more water to escape through evaporation.
"The balance between precipitation and evaporation is key," Watras said.
The good news is that with this year's polar vortex icing the Great Lakes, combined with an early freeze in November that put a lid on small lakes, 2014 could be a better year overall for Wisconsin's lakes, Watras said.
"Our crystal ball is foggy," he said. "Things may return to normal, but we don't know. This year we are seeing lake levels and groundwater levels rise a little bit, but we don't know whether the uptick will be sustained or everything will continue to crash. At least now we have a history to look back on, and make comparisons."
17 California Communities In Danger Of Running Out Of Water In 4 Months
January 29, 2014 8:02 AM
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/01/29/report-some-bay-area-communities-could-run-out-of-water-within-4-months/
Greening the desert using permaculture
Geoff Lawton | Saturday, 16th February 2013
http://www.permaculture.co.uk/videos/greening-desert-using-permaculture
Thanks for the update, John; good luck in this terrible situation.
I have to increase my posts to all of my boards this year.
We all need to take precautions for the future.
Thanks,
sumi
It is getting bleak for the moment. We do still have nighttime dew, and I'm going to do something besides the bottle trees I have to collect more of it.
California drought: Water officials look to rules of '70s
Peter Fimrite
Updated 8:47 am, Sunday, January 19, 2014
Due to the ongoing drought, receding waters at the Almaden Reservoir have revealed a car that was illegally dumped years ago and is now stuck in the lake bed, in San Jose, CA, Thursday, January 16, 2014. Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/California-drought-Water-officials-look-to-rules-5156261.php
‘The Era Of The Lawn In The West Is Over’ As Drought-Weary Cities Urge Residents To Save Water
By Katie Valentine on August 12, 2013 at 5:34 pm
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/08/12/2276111/era-of-the-lawn-in-the-west-is-over/
13 Reasons To Be Worried About Water—And What To Do About It
By Jan Wellmann, HoneyColony Original
http://www.honeycolony.com/article/13-reasons-why-you-should-be-worried-about-water-and-what-to-do-about-it/
Peru bores tunnel through Andes to irrigate parched west coast-
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/04/us-peru-water-idUSBRE9330QT20130404
futr
Lockheed's Better, Faster Way to Desalinate Water
by Rachel Feltman
March 14, 2013 at 1:07:00 PM
Pentagon weapons-maker finds method for cheap, clean water
By David Alexander
Wed Mar 13, 2013 5:15am GMT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A defense contractor better known for building jet fighters and lethal missiles says it has found a way to slash the amount of energy needed to remove salt from seawater, potentially making it vastly cheaper to produce clean water at a time when scarcity has become a global security issue.
The process, officials and engineers at Lockheed Martin Corp say, would enable filter manufacturers to produce thin carbon membranes with regular holes about a nanometer in size that are large enough to allow water to pass through but small enough to block the molecules of salt in seawater. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.
Because the sheets of pure carbon known as graphene are so thin - just one atom in thickness - it takes much less energy to push the seawater through the filter with the force required to separate the salt from the water, they said.
The development could spare underdeveloped countries from having to build exotic, expensive pumping stations needed in plants that use a desalination process called reverse osmosis.
"It's 500 times thinner than the best filter on the market today and a thousand times stronger," said John Stetson, the engineer who has been working on the idea. "The energy that's required and the pressure that's required to filter salt is approximately 100 times less."
Access to clean drinking water is increasingly seen as a major global security issue. Competition for water is likely to lead to instability and potential state failure in countries important to the United States, according to a U.S. intelligence community report last year.
"Between now and 2040, fresh water availability will not keep up with demand absent more effective management of water resources," the report said. "Water problems will hinder the ability of key countries to produce food and generate electricity."
About 780 million people around the world do not have access to clean drinking water, the United Nations reported last year.
"One of the areas that we're very concerned about in terms of global security is the access to clean and affordable drinking water," said Tom Notaro, Lockheed business manager for advanced materials. "As more and more countries become more developed ... access to that water for their daily lives is becoming more and more critical."
PRODUCTION CHALLENGE
Lockheed still faces a number of challenges in moving to production of filters made of graphene, a substance similar to the lead in pencils. Working with the thin material without tearing it is difficult, as is ramping up production to the size and scale needed. Engineers are still refining the process for making the holes.
It is not known whether Lockheed faces commercial competition in this area. But it is not the only one working on the technology.
Jeffrey Grossman, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has done research on graphene membranes for filtration, said he was not familiar with details of Lockheed's work. But he said finding a way to produce graphene sheets with nanometer-sized holes could produce a major advancement in desalination efficiency.
"If you can design a membrane that's completely different than what we use today, then there's a chance for more than two orders of magnitude (100 times) increase in the permeability of the membrane," Grossman said.
Stetson, who began working on the issue in 2007, said if the new filter material, known as Perforene, was compared to the thickness of a piece of paper, the nearest comparable filter for extracting salt from seawater would be the thickness of three reams of paper - more than half a foot thick.
"It looks like chicken wire under a microscope, if you could get an electron microscope picture of it," he said. "It's all little carbon atoms tied together in a diaphanous, smooth film that's beautiful and continuous. But it's one atom thick and it's a thousand time stronger than steel."
Thickness is one of the main factors that determines how much energy has to be used to force saltwater through a filter in the reverse osmosis process used for desalination today.
"The amount of work it takes to squeeze that water through the torturous path of today's best membranes is gone for Perforene," Stetson said. "It just literally pops right through because the membrane is thinner than the atoms it's filtering."
Notaro said Lockheed expects to have a prototype by the end of the year for a filter that could be used as a drop-in replacement for filters now used in reverse osmosis plants.
The company is looking for partners in the filter manufacturing arena to help it commercialize Perforene as a filter in the 2014-2015 time frame, he said.
Lockheed officials see other applications for Perforene as well, from dialysis in healthcare to cleaning chemicals from the water used in hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," of oil and gas wells.
(Editing by Warren Strobel and Jackie Frank)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/03/13/us-usa-desalination-idUKBRE92C05720130313
In Praise of Snow...the Source of 75% of North America's Water-
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1995/01/in-praise-of-snow/305654/
futr
WOW!!! Low-water rivers offering up glimpse of history
By By JIM SALTER | Associated Press – 2 hrs 48 mins ago (12/22/2012)
http://news.yahoo.com/low-water-rivers-offering-glimpse-history-181848393.html
ST. LOUIS (AP) — From sunken steamboats to a millennium-old map engraved in rock, the drought-drained rivers of the nation's midsection are offering a rare and fleeting glimpse into years gone by.
Lack of rain has left many rivers at low levels unseen for decades, creating problems for river commerce and recreation and raising concerns about water supplies and hydropower if the drought persists into next year, as many fear.
But for the curious, the receding water is offering an occasional treasure trove of history.
An old steamboat is now visible on the Missouri River near St. Charles, Mo., and other old boats nestled on river bottoms are showing up elsewhere. A World War II minesweeper, once moored along the Mississippi River as a museum at St. Louis before it was torn away by floodwaters two decades ago, has become visible — rusted but intact.
Perhaps most interesting, a rock containing what is believed to be an ancient map has emerged in the Mississippi River in southeast Missouri.
The rock contains etchings believed to be up to 1,200 years old. It was not in the river a millennium ago, but the changing course of the waterway now normally puts it under water — exposed only in periods of extreme drought. Experts are wary of giving a specific location out of fear that looters will take a chunk of the rock or scribble graffiti on it.
"It appears to be a map of prehistoric Indian villages," said Steve Dasovich, an anthropology professor at Lindenwood University in St. Charles. "What's really fascinating is that it shows village sites we don't yet know about."
Old boats are turning up in several locations, including sunken steamboats dating to the 19th century.
That's not surprising considering the volume of steamboat traffic that once traversed the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Dasovich said it wasn't uncommon in the 1800s to have hundreds of steamboats pass by St. Louis each day, given the fact that St. Louis was once among the world's busiest inland ports. The boats, sometimes lined up two miles deep and four boats wide in both directions, carried not only people from town to town but goods and supplies up and down the rivers.
Sinkings were common among the wooden vessels, which often were poorly constructed.
"The average lifespan of a steamboat on the Missouri River was five years," Dasovich said. "They were made quickly. If you could make one run from St. Louis to Fort Benton, Mont., and back, you've paid for your boat and probably made a profit. After that, it's almost like they didn't care what happened."
What often happened, at least on the Missouri River, was the boat would strike an underwater tree that had been uprooted and become lodged in the river bottom, tearing a hole that would sink the ship.
Dasovich estimated that the remains of 500 to 700 steamboats sit at the bottom of the Missouri River, scattered from its mouth in Montana to its convergence with the Mississippi near St. Louis.
The number of sunken steamboats on the Mississippi River is likely about the same, Dasovich said. Steamboat traffic was far heavier on the Mississippi, but traffic there was and is less susceptible to river debris.
Boiler explosions, lightning strikes and accidents also sunk many a steamboat. One of the grander ones, the Montana, turned up this fall on the Missouri River near St. Charles. The elaborate steamer was as long as a football field with lavish touches aimed at pleasing its mostly wealthy clientele. It went to its watery grave after striking a tree below the surface in 1884.
The U.S. Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers urge sightseers to stay away from any shipwreck sites. Sandbars leading to them can be unstable and dangerous, and the rusted hulks can pose dangers for those sifting through them.
Plus, taking anything from them is illegal. By law, sunken ships and their goods belong to the state where they went down.
While unusual, it's not unprecedented for low water levels to reveal historic artifacts.
Last year, an officer who patrols an East Texas lake discovered a piece of the space shuttle Columbia, which broke apart and burned on re-entry in 2003, killing all seven astronauts aboard. And the remains of a wooden steamer built 125 years ago recently were uncovered in a Michigan waterway because of low levels in the Great Lakes.
But treasure hunters expecting to find Titanic-like souvenirs in rivers will likely be disappointed if they risk exploring the lost boats.
"It's not like these wrecks are full of bottles, dishes, things like that," said Mark Wagner, an archaeologist at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. "If there was anything on there in the first place, the river current pretty much stripped things out of these wrecks."
Such was the case with the USS Inaugural, a World War II minesweeper that for years served as a docked museum on the Mississippi River at St. Louis. The Great Flood of 1993 ripped the Inaugural from its mooring near the Gateway Arch. It crashed into the Poplar Street bridge, and then sank.
In September, the rusted Inaugural became visible again, though now nothing more than an empty, orange-rusted hulk lying on its side not far from a south St. Louis casino.
Drought expands in many farm states
By Carey Gillam | Reuters – Thu, Dec 13, 2012 11:19 AM EST.. .
http://weather.yahoo.com/drought-expands-many-farm-states-161917592.html
(Reuters) - Drought continued to expand through many key farming states within the central United States in the past week, as scattered rainfall failed to replenish parched soils, according to a report issued Thursday by state and federal climatology experts.
Drought conditions were most pervasive in the Plains states, including in top wheat producer Kansas, according to the Drought Monitor report.
Fully 100 percent of Kansas was in at least "severe" drought as of Tuesday, up from 99.34 percent a week earlier, according to the Drought Monitor, and almost 78 percent remained in at least "extreme drought," the second-worst level of drought.
Conditions in Nebraska were unchanged, with 96.15 percent of the state in extreme drought, while the situation worsened in Oklahoma, where the percentage of the state in at least extreme drought increased to 90.92 percent from 90.56 percent a week earlier.
Texas drought conditions also worsened over the last week, with more than 32 percent of the state in at least extreme drought, up from 27.40 percent a week earlier, and more than 65 percent in at least severe drought, up from 59.27 percent, the Drought Monitor report said.
Overall, roughly 61.87 percent of the contiguous United States was in at least "moderate" drought, a slight improvement from 62.37 percent a week earlier.
The portion of the contiguous United States under at least "severe" drought expanded, however, to 42.59 percent from 42.22 percent.
Roughly 63 percent of the new winter wheat crop that U.S. farmers planted in the fall is in drought-hit areas, with the hard red winter wheat belt - especially from South Dakota to Texas - remaining deeply entrenched in drought, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Extreme temperature fluctuations from warmer-than-normal to freezing conditions have stressed the crop, which already was in poor shape due to lack of moisture.
A developing storm over the Southwest is forecast to drift northeastward, reaching the western Corn Belt by Saturday and the Great Lakes region on Sunday, according to USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey.
Storm-total precipitation could reach 1 to 2 inches in the mountains of the Southwest, but only light rain will fall on the central and southern Plains, Rippey said. Slightly heavier precipitation, locally in excess of a half-inch, will fall during the weekend across the upper Midwest, he said.
(Reporting by Carey Gillam in Kansas City; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
..
Is It Peak Water Yet? Another Phony Meme
The Daily Bell
Monday, December 10, 2012
by Staff Report
Peak Water Debate Focuses on Asia's Water Shortage ... The concept of peak water as an overarching term for increased shortage of water supply in Asia remains contentious but it has focused attention on the growing water crisis facing many countries due, in part, to over-extraction of the precious resource. Climate change, burgeoning population growth, pollution and increased industrial and agricultural capacity put more pressure on already stretched water resources. There is a lively academic discussion on whether or not we have indeed passed a tipping point in water consumption – peak water – in the same way many experts believe we have for oil – peak oil. – WaterPolitics.com
Dominant Social Theme: The sky is falling and the Earth is drying up ...
Free-Market Analysis: As we can see from the above excerpt, another elite dominant social theme is making the rounds: Peak Water. We try to keep up with memes but we must confess we missed this one even though there are already 250,000 "Peak Water" cites on Google.
We want to take the time to document Peak Water only because it is another phony meme, no more legitimate than Peak Oil has proven to be. As we have suggested many times for over a decade, Peak Oil was an illegitimate analysis promoting one more elite scarcity theme.
There is another reason to track these memes carefully. They tell us what the power elite has in mind. In giving up, apparently, on the Peak Oil meme, the elites are signaling to us that they are moving on to a new phase of command and control propaganda.
We have an idea of what that might be. Peak Water plays into it.
But Peak Oil appears to be on the wane. The big guns are taking aim ... Here's an excerpt from a recent editorial on Peak Oil by Nigel Lawson that appeared in the UK Daily Mail.
Thought we were running out of fossil fuels? New technology means Britain and the U.S. could tap undreamed reserves of gas and oil
Thirty years ago, I was Secretary of State for Energy in Margaret Thatcher's government, and one way and another I have been a close observer of the energy scene ever since.
In all that time, I have never known a technological revolution as momentous as the breakthrough that has now made it economic to extract gas from shale.
Geologists have long known that shale — a finely grained rock created from compressed mud, which sits in layers — contains, trapped in it, massive amounts of gas, and in some cases, oil.
Dense rock: Energy companies must drill a well hundreds or thousands of feet deep to reach the layer of shale, which can be just 50ft thick.
But getting it out of the ground is a tricky business. Below the North Sea, natural gas forms in sandstone and when a drill reaches the gas, it flows out.
But shale gas is locked in dense rock. Energy companies must drill a well hundreds or thousands of feet deep to reach the layer of shale — which can be just 50ft thick — and then turn the drill sideways to bore horizontally.
Water, chemicals and sand are pumped into the hole under enormous pressure until the rock cracks, allowing gas locked up in the shale to escape and flow upwards into the well.
This process is called hydraulic fracturing — or 'fracking' for short.
Until recently, the cost of extracting the gas has been prohibitive. But the combination of two innovative technologies — horizontal drilling and fracking to release the natural resources — has changed all that ...
The dramatic news emerged a few weeks ago that the U.S. will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer in 2017.
America is already the world's largest natural gas producer, and it is estimated that, by 2035, almost 90 per cent of Middle East oil and gas exports will go to Asia, with the U.S. importing virtually none.
So what's changed? From what we can tell, two things: First, as we and others – who follow free-market economics and believe in their evident and obvious reality – have predicted, technology has caught up with oil extraction. It is hard to deny, these days, the ubiquity of energy and the ability to remove it.
Second, and perhaps even more important, what we call the Internet Reformation is making it difficult for the power elite to insist on scarcity memes or even to ban or hide new technologies that promise more generous energy availability.
As we've amply documented, oil supplies have been manipulated ever since John D. Rockefeller deliberately named oil a "fossil fuel" to illustrate its putative scarcity. But based on discovery of certain building blocks for oil off Earth, it would seem that oil has little or nothing to do directly with dying dinosaurs and a lot to do with what has been called "abiotic" production.
No, it is a natural process of geology, perhaps, and is certainly all around us. That it resides in prodigious quantities in shale is not surprising to us. Nor should it be to you.
As for Peak Water, this, too, is a nonsensical concept. Water is even more ubiquitous than oil.
This does not stop a sociopathic power elite that is determined to ram its scarcity memes down our collective throat. Desalinization plants and other technologies to convert water into a drinkable state are to be ignored. The ability of humans to generate increasing resources as necessary is to remain unmentioned. Instead, we read analyses such as the one from the beginning of this article. Here's more:
According to data from the World Resources Institute, EarthTrends and the Asian Development Bank, renewable water resources in Asia (excluding the Middle East) average slightly more than 4,000 cubic meters per year, while the global average is 8,500 cubic meters per year.
The extremely water poor Middle East has only 1,500 cubic meters per year and sub-Saharan Africa with about 6,300 cubic meters per year. South America gets almost 50,000 cubic meters per year.
While a rise in global temperatures threatens further water stress in the coming years, the A.D.B. believes there are other factors aggravating water scarcity.
"Likewise, over the next few decades, changes in the drivers of demand for water, including population growth, changes in dietary patterns and patterns of urbanization and economic development are likely to have greater impacts on relative regional water scarcity than increasing temperatures," Arjun Thapan, A.D.B. special senior advisor for infrastructure and water, told Ecoseed.
Population pressures, agricultural irrigation and increased industrial use of water supply push up water use in many areas of Asia and over-extraction of groundwater in relation to recharge rates has already passed recognized tipping points.
"One way in which many regions in Asia have encountered or exceeded peak water (as defined) is in groundwater use. Many heavily populated regions, including the Gangetic Plain in India and the North China Plain, currently utilize groundwater at rates greatly exceeding long-term recharge, and in this sense have already passed peak water," Mr. Thapan said.
You see? The recipe is clear. Use apocalyptic language and don't define your terms. And then, toward the end of whatever it is you're writing, admit that it's probably all gobbledygook anyway ...
However, Mr. Thapan said there is yet to be a broadly agreed upon definition for peak water, adding that certain assumptions about the global supply of a finite resource, such as oil, cannot be made about water resource ... "Water, unlike oil, is not a finite resource, at least when viewed from the perspective of a given location such as a river basin.
The article continues beyond this startling admission but do we need to? There is, in our view, a power elite devoting an inordinate amount of time to trying to install world government. Reeling from the impact of the Internet, those that constitute it are using war, economic depression and an increasingly autocratic demos to try to sustain momentum.
Additionally, they continue to propose and propagate the idea of fear-based promotions that are intended to frighten middle classes into giving up power and wealth to specially constructed globalist institutions. But they are having more and more difficulty sustaining these scarcity memes.
As we point out regularly, this doesn't stop their continuance. One of the hallmarks of a promotion is its ubiquitousness. Like a rubber ball, elite promotions spring back even when squeezed by reality.
The top elites of necessity only use the building blocks of life to frighten people. These are the most powerful tools because the absence of water, food, energy and (even) air threatens existence itself.
Thus, the elites must come up with ways to illustrate that we are running out of all these things. Lacking Peak Oil, those generating these themes are expanding the general chaos in the Middle East, pushing harder to implement "solutions" to global warming and planning, apparently, to initiate scarcities of food and water to distract people.
There is investment opportunity here for cynics and others who follow these sorts of machinations. But what was a "sure thing" in the 20th century is not such in the 21st ...
In the Internet era it is getting harder and harder for elites to control the conversation. Over time, this will have enormous consequences, ushering in both an era of hope and an authoritarian counterattack that is already underway. (When in doubt, brute force is the preferred course.) We've predicted the former and, in retrospect, are not surprised by the latter.
Conclusion: But please remember, authoritarianism is often the last gasp of a dying regime.
http://www.thedailybell.com/28431/Is-It-Peak-Water-Yet-Another-Phony-Meme
The term Peak Water is the point when water which was once abundant is or has become more scarce. Indicators of this point will center on the cost of water and its availability. The latter indicates to users that conservation has now become imperiative to preserve this valuable commodity.
Unfortunately any commodity which once was abundant will always be treated as abundant even when the warning signs indicate a scarcity is developing and that conservation is warranted. The world is facing this predicament as population growth continues almost unabated, but commodities including water are not increasing.
The purpose of this board is to discuss the trends that are affecting the availability of pure water found deep in the ground, and in fresh water lakes, streams and rivers.
Ground water is found in aquifers. "An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock or unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, silt, or clay) from which groundwater can be usefully extracted using a water well."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer
Without adequate pure water, all you can envision of the earth is a picture of a desert void of plant growth. Simply put, life will cease to exist without pure water.
The salt water of the earth is much more plentiful and supports marine organisms, which are important food source, but cannot be readily used directly to drink or irrigate the land masses.
Pure water, on the other hand, is nesessary for every human being and animal. Compromised water will adversely affect people's health. Prolonged consumption of impure water can have dire results.
USGS Groundwater Watch
http://groundwaterwatch.usgs.gov/
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