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Dust Bowl Revisited
Janet Larsen
November 16, 2012
http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2012/update109
For Farms in the West, Oil Wells Are Thirsty Rivals
Bob Bellis filled his tanker at a hydrant in Greeley, Colo., in August to supply a drilling site. Lease deals with oil companies are important revenue sources for cities
By JACK HEALY
Published: September 5, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/us/struggle-for-water-in-colorado-with-rise-in-fracking.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
Gray water: from the washer to the garden
http://www.latimes.com/features/la-hm-graywater27-2008sep27,0,6396110.story
The U.S. drought is hitting harder than most realize
by Chris Martenson
Published Aug 30 2012 by Peak Prosperity, Archived Aug 30 2012
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-08-30/us-drought-hitting-harder-most-realize
World Food Prices Jump 10% in July!http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-19431890
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Our Oversized Groundwater Footprint
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater
Initiative in Water Currents on August 13, 2012
We don’t see it, smell it or hear it, but the tragedy unfolding underground is nonetheless real – and it spells big trouble.
I’m talking about the depletion of groundwater, the stores of H2O contained in geologic formations called aquifers, which billions of people depend upon to supply their drinking water and grow their food.
continue reading at:
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/08/13/our-oversized-groundwater-footprint/
Demand for water outstrips supply
Groundwater use is unsustainable in many of the world's major agricultural zones.
Amanda Mascarelli
08 August 2012
Degree to which aquifers important for farming are under stress.
Gleeson, T. et al.
Almost one-quarter of the world’s population lives in regions where groundwater is being used up faster than it can be replenished, concludes a comprehensive global analysis of groundwater depletion, published this week in Nature1.
Across the world, human civilizations depend largely on tapping vast reservoirs of water that have been stored for up to thousands of years in sand, clay and rock deep underground. These massive aquifers — which in some cases stretch across multiple states and country borders — provide water for drinking and crop irrigation, as well as to support ecosystems such as forests and fisheries.
Yet in most of the world’s major agricultural regions, including the Central Valley in California, the Nile delta region of Egypt, and the Upper Ganges in India and Pakistan, demand exceeds these reservoirs' capacity for renewal.
“This overuse can lead to decreased groundwater availability for both drinking water and growing food,” says Tom Gleeson, a hydrogeologist at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and lead author of the study. Eventually, he adds, it “can lead to dried up streams and ecological impacts”.
Gleeson and his colleagues combined a global hydrological model and a data set of groundwater use to estimate how much groundwater is being extracted by countries around the world. They also estimated each aquifer's rate of ‘recharge’ — the speed at which groundwater is being replenished. Using this approach, the researchers were able to determine the groundwater ‘footprint’ for nearly 800 aquifers worldwide (see map above).
In calculating how much stress each source of groundwater is under, Gleeson and colleagues also looked in detail at the water flows needed to sustain the health of ecosystems such as grasses, trees and streams.
“To my knowledge, this is the first water-stress index that actually accounts for preserving the health of the environment,” says Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the study. “That’s a critical step.”
Overexploitation
The authors found that 20% of the world’s aquifers are being overexploited, some massively so. For example, the groundwater footprint for the Upper Ganges aquifer is more than 50 times the size of its aquifer, “so the rate of extraction is quite unsustainable there”, says Gleeson.
Yet Famiglietti notes that the study, which focuses on quantifying the rate of groundwater tapping versus recharging, underscores the lack of data we have on the amount of water currently in the world's aquifers. “The only way to answer the sustainability question is to answer how much water we actually have,” he says.
He predicts that a comprehensive picture would reveal that many more of the world’s aquifers are being tapped unsustainably. As certain regions face more frequent droughts and population growth, full characterization of aquifers worldwide, although expensive, will be necessary, adds Famiglietti.
But Gleeson adds that there is at least one significant source of hope. As much as 99% of the fresh, unfrozen water on the planet is groundwater. “It’s this huge reservoir that we have the potential to manage sustainably,” he says. “If we choose to.”
By similar logic...
Lets not worry about pollution as there will be an endless supply of gasmasks!!
LMFAO!!!
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Dan, thanks for the timely post.
Spring is in the air today and I will put out seven 55-gallon rain containers to harvest the rain water.
I try to Garden with Less Water
http://www.bhg.com/gardening/design/styles/garden-with-less-water/?page=1
sumi
The World Is Running Out of Water ... Again
The Daily Bell
Friday, March 16, 2012
by Staff Report
Climate, food pressures require rethink on water: U.N. ...The world's water supply is being strained by climate change and the growing food, energy and sanitary needs of a fast- growing population, according to a United Nations study that calls for a radical rethink of policies to manage competing claims. "Freshwater is not being used sustainably," UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said in a statement. "Accurate information remains disparate, and management is fragmented ... the future is increasingly uncertain and risks are set to deepen." It says that demand from agriculture, which already sucks up around 70 percent of freshwater used globally, is likely to rise by at least 19 percent by 2050 as the world's population swells an estimated 2 billion people to 9 billion. – Reuters
Dominant Social Theme: Let's just kill ourselves now. We've got almost nothing and whatever we do have is just going away.
Free-Market Analysis: Another day, another elite scarcity meme. Once you know how the elites are operating, it becomes almost ludicrously easy to spot the propaganda.
We do it all the time ... as a kind of public service, though goodness knows there are plenty of others within the alternative media – an even outside of it – that can do the same thing.
But it is our brief. What we are dedicated to reporting. We just pointed out a "rare earth" scam the other day, and we've regularly pointed out the nonsense regarding the "Peak Oil" dominant social theme. When it comes to water scarcity themes, you can see one of our articles here: Water Scarcity Promotion Begins? http://tiny.cc/6qvbbw
The mechanism itself is drearily familiar by now. The UN – perhaps the most monstrously corrupt institution in the world – musters spokespeople to declaim on this, that or the other "crisis." Then a "forum" is announced. attended by big thinkers from around the world. In this case, the world's imminent lack of water will be "debated at the World Water Forum, which starts in the French city of Marseille on Monday."
Sheesh. We didn't even know there WAS a World Water Forum. And why bother to debate it? We know what the outcome will be. The "nations of the world" shall solemnly agree about this crisis and authorize the UN to "do something " about it.
This is a bit like authorizing a stone to compete in a marathon, but never mind. The press releases shall go out, the articles shall be distributed. People shall be informed that they have yet one more thing to worry about. And that the UN ... is on the case! Thank goodness. Here's some more from the Reuters article, excerpted above:
A "silent revolution" has taken place underground, the report warns, as the amount of water sucked from below the surface has tripled in the past 50 years, removing a buffer against drought. And just as demand increases, supply in many regions is likely to shrink because of changed rainfall patterns, greater droughts, melting glaciers and altered river flows, it says.
"Climate change will drastically affect food production in South Asia and Southern Africa between now and 2030," the report says. "By 2070, water stress will also be felt in central and southern Europe."
Asia is home to 60 percent of the world's population but only around a third of water resources, it points out. A separate water study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released last week forecast world water demand would rise by 55 percent by 2050, with more than 40 percent of the global population likely to live in water basins facing water stress.
Are you scared yet? The UN is nothing if not consistent. You are scheduled to die in the dark of starvation and dehydration. This is your future. There is no option unless the big brains at the UN figure out a way to save you.
And thank goodness for them! The article informs us that, "With limited supply, policymakers will have to better manage the competing demands of farmers, energy producers and humans demanding drinking water and sanitation."
Thank goodness for the bureaucrats. They are on the case, or getting there anyway. Their absence has made things difficult. "The lack of interaction between the diverse communities of users, decision makers and isolated water managers has caused serious degradation of the water resource."
We didn't realize this! The problem is not water per se but COORDINATION between "users and decision makers." So ... even if you FIND water, apparently you won't know how to drink it without the help of a "water manager." This is what the power elites think of you.
For make no mistake, all of these scarcity memes are likely organized by a tiny cabal of elite families (so it seems) that want to run the world via global governance. These scarcity memes are designed to frighten middle classes into giving up power and wealth to global utilities like the UN. Their hugely capitalized, dedicated (propagandistic) facilities such as Tavistock churn them out.
Yes, it's OBVIOUSLY propaganda. One reason we know is that it is always absurdly easy to find countervailing trends. It took us about a minute of Internet searching to find this recent PR.com press release: "Desalination Set to Become an Integral Part of South Africa's Water Resources Says TechSci Research." Here's an excerpt:
According to a recently published report by TechSci Research "South Africa Desalination Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2017" South Africa water desalination market is all set to grow at CAGR of 28% for next five years. Recent developments in the market are taking place in the form of new plants being set up by the municipalities and this trend will follow for a long time as the Desalination market in South Africa is still a niche market. Moreover the technological advances in the Desalination industry is forecasted to give a much awaited thrust to this market in South Africa.
"South Africa desalination market is at its nascent stage where the government has recently started encouraging it for meeting fresh water demand in the country. It is forecasted that number of plants in South Africa will triple by 2017," said Karan Chechi, Research Director at TechSci Research a global research based management consulting firm.
Characterized by periodical and ongoing droughts coupled with the growing water needs of the inhabitants and the other industrial and agricultural consumers, South Africa has very little to further leverage on its existing water resources and more so when they too are limited ...
"South Africa Desalination Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2017" gives a detailed and unprejudiced overview on the Desalination market in South Africa. The report has critically evaluated all the aspects related to water market and helps the reader to get a complete overview on the latest trends and the market potential of the technology of Desalination in South Africa.
Now, we are not claiming that desalinization is the absolute cure for water shortages, such as they may be. The point is that human ingenuity is as boundless as the "problems" that the elites and the UN constantly discover.
As we have often pointed out, Thomas Malthus became aware that Britain was due to starve in the latter 1700s as a result of eroding farm land and exploding population. It never happened, of course. As people discovered there was too little food, they grew more of it.
This is, in fact, one reason why Austrian, free-market economics has been suppressed by the elites in the 20th century and why the mainstream STILL doesn't mention it. The concept of human action, wonderfully presented by Ludwig von Mises, makes us aware that the "human action" of the INDIVIDUAL is the determinant for successful living.
Conclusion: You are NOT dependent on UN bureaucrats – or even on your local government – for your survival. You CAN make your own way, in concert with your family and like-minded individuals. And you'll never find a press release from the UN about THAT.
http://www.thedailybell.com/3709/The-World-Is-Running-Out-of-Water-Again
Evelyn Browning Garriss: Increasing Drought Conditions In Parts Of US and China
The La Niña Phenomenon Expected to Fade by Spring
http://www.financialsense.com/financial-sense-newshour/guest-expert/2012/02/14/evelyn-browning-garriss/increasing-drought-conditions-in-parts-of-us-and-china
Interesting perspective on fracking and democratic disregard for it's impact on water resources:
http://ecoshock.blogspot.com
Rainwater Harvesting
Friday, January 6, 2012, 5:21 pm, by BSV
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/water-supply-through-rainwater-harvesting/69128
Sounds like a wet dream to me... :)
Harvesting Water from the atmosphere even in a Desert-
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/global-observer/airdrop-extracts-water-from-air-inspired-by-beetle/1304?tag=nl.e662
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Cistern and shallow well pump next to sink. I saw some expensive deep well hand pumps also. Do not know how well they work. Up to 200 feet down they claim..
Who Should Pay for Aging Water Infrastructure?
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2011/12/who-should-pay-aging-water-infrastructure/622/
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Sears is a one stop shopper for rain barrels
http://www.sears.com/shc/s/search_10153_12605?vName=Lawn+%26+Garden&keyword=rain+barrel&adCell=WF
The six natural resources most drained by our 7 billion people
For how long can we realistically expect to have oil? And which dwindling element is essential to plant growth?
A woman collects freshwater from a public well in San Cayetano, west Nicuragua. Photograph: Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/oct/31/six-natural-resources-population?newsfeed=true
The Stream, September 8: Peak Water in Saudi Arabia
Thursday, 08 September 2011 08:00
http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2011/the-stream/the-stream-september-8-peak-water-in-saudi-arabia/
Peak water looms more ominously than peak oil for Saudi Arabia, as water use in the desert kingdom is rapidly growing while available supplies are steadily diminishing, Reuters reported. The looming water crisis is also forcing the country into drastic measures in its agriculture sector.
Blue-green algae and invasive species are choking Lake Erie and pushing it toward ecological collapse with potentially grave consequences for the region’s tourism, sport fishing industry, drinking water supply, wildlife and human health, according to OnEarth Magazine.
Poyang Lake, China’s largest fresh water lake, has decreased dramatically amid a lingering drought, Xinhua reported.
Meanwhile, China plans to increase the fees for both residential and industrial water use in an effort to address chronic water shortages, Caixin reported, citing a top official at the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s major economic planning agency.
How did water become a weapon in the Qaddafi regime’s last, desperate attempt to hold on to power? In violation of international law, pro-Qaddafi forces reportedly cut off water to Tripoli and other cities dependent on a massive water engineering project that pumps water from an underground aquifer in southern Libya, according to Peter Gleick.
The Stream is a daily digest spotting global water trends. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.
Type the two words:
Wello Water Wheel Helps Ensure Safe Potable Water for Rural Indians
By Akhila Vijayaraghavan | August 19th, 2011
http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/08/wello-helps-ensure-safe-potable-water-rural-indians/
Water shortages possible in 12 Oklahoma watersheds
BY RANDY ELLIS
Published: June 5, 2011
http://newsok.com/hot-spots-could-be-concerning-study-finds/article/3574317
This ranch in the Oklahoma Panhandle is in one of 12 Oklahoma watershed basins where experts say significant surface water shortages may occur.
Experts have identified 12 of Oklahoma’s 82 watershed basins as being the most likely to experience significant surface water shortages or groundwater depletions within the next 10 years.
Shortages less significant than those in the 12 “hot spot” basins are possible in the majority of the other 70 basins within the next 50 years, according to a draft study by the Oklahoma Water Resources Board and CDM, a national engineering and consulting firm.
“We are not saying that any particular area will absolutely be out of water, but rather we are identifying those areas where that could be much more likely or greater stresses put on our water supplies,” said Kyle Arthur of the Oklahoma Water Resources Board.
The 12 hot spot basins all are west of Interstate 35.
They include:
•Two basins that take up most of the western three-fourths of the Panhandle.
•Six basins that adjoin each other and stretch from Elk City to the southwestern Oklahoma border.
•A basin west of Ardmore that includes large portions of Love and Carter counties.
•A basin that extends from Duncan to Waurika.
•A basin west of Woodward.
•A 20-mile wide basin that straddles the North Canadian River and stretches from El Reno to Canton Lake northwest of Watonga.
The latter basin’s inclusion on the list might surprise people, since it straddles a major Oklahoma river, but the water in the river “is fully appropriated, primarily to Oklahoma City,” Arthur said.
The hot spots and future water challenges, primarily driven by surface water issues, were identified as part of a draft 50-year statewide Oklahoma Comprehensive Water Plan recently circulated for comment at public meetings held throughout the state.
“Oklahoma is blessed with a tremendous volume of water resources, to be sure,” Arthur said. “However, we don’t all obtain our water from one giant statewide bucket. Localized supply gaps or depletions are likely to occur in several areas.”
Conservation measures
Researchers analyzed each of the 12 hot spots and commented on the feasibility of potential water supply expansion projects and conservation measures that could be done to prevent or lessen anticipated shortages.
Because of a shortage of good rivers and streams, increased reliance on surface water or construction of reservoirs within the 12 basins was not considered a feasible option for any of the hot spots.
Increased use of groundwater was considered to be at least a short-term solution for each of the basins, but in many of the basins researchers questioned whether increased reliance on groundwater would provide a consistent and cost-effective water supply.
“We don’t project running out of groundwater, but we thought it important to flag any areas where such use beyond the rate of recharge may create future challenges such as the need for deeper wells, higher pumping costs, etcetera,” Arthur said.
As longer term solutions, researchers suggested pumping in water from existing lakes or potential new reservoirs in other basins, having farmers and ranchers shift from crops that have high water demands to crops with lower water demands, increasing irrigation efficiency, and having municipalities and industrial water users institute conservation measures.
For example, researchers indicated a reservoir could be built at a viable site near Mangum that could supply water to four southwestern Oklahoma hot spot basins.
Presenting options
Arthur said the report is designed to present options, not dictate what should be done.
“We are not going to mandate any such measure be employed,” Arthur said. “We strongly believe in local decision making and, for example, aren’t going to tell an irrigator what crops to plant.”
The draft study indicates a statewide water conveyance system could be built that would provide water to some of the hot spot basins, but mentions the high cost and complexity of such a system as deterrents.
A statewide water conveyance system, initially proposed in 1980, would involve developing an elaborate system of lakes, pumps, pipes and other devices to move large volumes of water from eastern Oklahoma, where water is relatively plentiful, to western Oklahoma, where water is scarcer.
“We do not believe it is feasible or appropriate at this time,” Arthur said. “That is not to say that a trans-basin project wouldn’t be a viable option for some areas. Clearly it could be. But a large-scale statewide network? No.”
10 Perspectives on the Future of Water
By Tilde Herrera
Published June 08, 2011
https://www.greenbiz.com/news/2011/06/08/10-perspectives-future-water
Europe prays for Easter rain in worst drought for a century
Friday, April 22 05:25 pm
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20110422/tsc-europe-prays-for-easter-rain-in-wors-4de741d.html
Public water supply in India becomes a World Health concern-
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-06/delhi-belly-isn-t-only-india-water-risk-as-resistant-bugs-found.html
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Looming water wars in South Asia
Dr Raja Muhammad Khan
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
On the assertion of Indian Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1948, Pakistan showed a flexibility to discuss the water issues separately from the Kashmir dispute. This act of Pakistan was the biggest blunder in our history.
Earlier, India stopped the flow of water to Pakistan, as all the head works, regulating the water flow were situated in the areas located under Indian control. Keeping these head works on Indian side was part of the same strategy, through which Muslim majority areas of Gurdaspur and Pathankot were given to India, providing it geographical contiguity with the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Starting from April 1948, India intermittently stopped the flow of water to Pakistan, until the finalization of the IWT-1960. With lot of reservations about completely handing over of the eastern rivers to India, Pakistan accepted IWT, considering it as the best arrangement to avoid a conflict over water between India and Pakistan.
From early 1980s, India started manipulating the water of the Western rivers. Pakistan kept a policy of silence, until the construction of the Baghliar Dam, once it resorted to a futile effort of the international arbitration. In a recent report, entitled, "Avoiding Water Wars" in South and Central Asia, the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations projected likely wars between Pakistan and India. The Senate report reveals that, each water dam or water storage by India on the Western rivers; exclusively dedicated for Pakistan would have long-term affects on Pakistani agrarian economy. The report absolutely clarifies that; "The cumulative effect of these projects could give India the ability to store enough water to limit the supply to Pakistan at crucial moments in the sowing season."
Apart from the 33 projects, nearing completion, India is planning to construct over sixty water dams and reservoirs, on the western rivers. These would cause serious water shortages for Pakistan, a lower riparian country. Effects of some of these are already visible on the agricultural sector of Pakistan.
This huge number of dams has seriously threatened Pakistan's agrarian economy and its potential capacity for the production of hydroelectricity. Due to the sensitivity of the issue and its impact on Pakistan, the issue if not resolved could lead to a confrontation between these nuclear armed countries.
Pakistan's inability to preserve its water by constructing dams and water reserviours, cannot give India an excuse to stop or divert the water of Pakistani rivers. While betraying the international community on this excuse, India is planning to permanently deprive Pakistan from its share of water, thus converting the agricultural fields of Pakistan into the barren land.
Besides, the current electricity requirements of the people of Occupied Kashmir is 5000 megawatts, whereas, India is planning to produce over 43,000 megawatts of electricity, through these dams and hydroelectric projects.
This additional electricity in turn would be used to sustain the heavy industrialization of the India, otherwise, causing environmental degradation in the region. It is because of the growing industrialization of India, which is causing a rapid meltdown of the Himalayan glaciers.
As per Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "Water security is vital in achieving our foreign policy and national security goals and provides recommendations to foster regional cooperation and long-term stability."
The provisions of the treaty do not allow India with unconstrained space to manipulate with the water of the Western rivers. India therefore, is adamant to violate the treaty or else, it would not hesitate to abrogate it, to exercise its hegemony over the region. The US Senate, however feels that, "breakdown in the treaty's utility in resolving water conflicts could have serious ramifications for regional stability." US Senate Committee report on the likely future wars in South Asia over the water resources should be an eye opener for all South Asians. Pakistan would appreciate if US could play a role for bringing India to a negotiating table for the result oriented talks between both countries on all the disputes, water being one of them.
The writer is an analyst of international relations. Email: drmk_edu@yahoo.com
How Peru's wells are being sucked dry by British love of asparagus
Felicity Lawrence The Guardian, Wednesday 15 September 2010
Industrial-scale production risks water tragedy, charity warns
• UK relies on 'virtual' water from drought-prone countries, says report
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/19/uk-virtual-water
• Basic countries to absorb 42% of water demand by 2030
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/24/basic-countries-water
A worker weighs asparagus at a processing plant in the Peruvian city of Ica. Photograph: Pilar Olivares/Reuters
Asparagus grown in Peru and sold in the UK is commonly held up as a symbol of unacceptable food miles, but a report has raised an even more urgent problem: its water footprint.
The study, by the development charity Progressio, has found that industrial production of asparagus in Peru's Ica valley is depleting the area's water resources so fast that smaller farmers and local families are finding wells running dry. Water to the main city in the valley is also under threat, it says. It warns that the export of the luxury vegetable, much of it to British supermarkets, is unsustainable in its current form.
The Ica Valley is a desert area in the Andes and one of the driest places on earth. The asparagus beds developed in the last decade require constant irrigation, with the result that the local water table has plummeted since 2002 when extraction overtook replenishment. In some places it has fallen by eight metres each year, one of the fastest rates of aquifer depletion in the world.
The UK is the world's sixth largest importer of "virtual water", that is water needed to produce the goods it buys from other countries, according to WWF. Much of the UK's thirst is directly related to the boom in high-value food imports in recent years. The market in fresh asparagus is typical; it barely existed before the end of the 1990s. Now the UK is the third largest importer of fresh Peruvian asparagus, consuming 6.5 million kilos a year.
Peru meanwhile has become the largest exporter of asparagus in the world, earning more than $450m a year from the trade. Around 95% of that asparagus comes from the Ica valley.
The expansion of the agricultural frontier in the region was made possible thanks to multimillion dollar investments by the World Bank from the late 1990s on. In just 10 years asparagus cultivation has exploded to cover nearly 100sq km of reclaimed desert. Some of the largest producers have received loans from the World Bank's commercial investment arm totalling $20m (£12m) or more over that period. The trade has created around 10,000 new jobs in a very poor area, contributing significantly to Peru's growth, but it has already provoked conflict. When a World Bank executive went to investigate complaints about the water shortages in April he was shot at.
"The water tragedy unfolding in this region of Peru should set alarms bells ringing for government, agribusiness and retailers involved in Ica's asparagus industry," said report author Nick Hepworth.
The report accuses supermarkets and investors, including the World Bank, of failing to take proper responsibility for the impact of their decisions on poorer countries' water resources. "We need action now to ensure water is used sustainably in Ica and beyond," said Hepworth .
Two wells serving up to 18,500 people in the valley have already dried up. Traditional small- and medium-scale farmers have also found their water supplies severely diminished.
Juan Alvarez's experience is typical. His family has farmed the Ica valley for four generations. He employs 10 people through the year, with up to 40 jobs for workers in peak asparagus season, but he says those livelihoods are under threat.
The wells on his farm used to hit water at 55 metres and he could pump 60 litres of water a second from them. Now some have dried out and where there is still water he has to drill down to 108 metres and can extract only 22 litres a second even at that depth.
Alvarez told researchers: "Agroexporters came with new government policies and tax exemptions. They bought water rights and started buying wells very far away. They have created jobs and that's important, but the reality is they are depleting the water resources and when the water is gone they will leave. But what future is there for us? We will never leave."
For smaller farmers the crisis is even more acute. Elisa Gomez and her family own a small farm next to one of the largest asparagus exporters and have to buy water for irrigation from the local canal, but the industrial production has made it hard to survive. "We pay for water for 15 days twice a year. But the soil is not as productive as before and dries out in just three days. Now the land is so dry the water drains away much faster."
The rights to the wells in their part of the valley have all been sold to the exporter. "Those of us who didn't sell land suffered water shortages, so many people were forced to sell anyway. The exporters just wait for people to get tired and sell them cheap dry land," she said.
The large-scale exporting companies are not immune from the crisis of overextraction either. They are facing rising costs for their water. They have been deepening existing wells, buying up old ones from neighbouring land and piping water across huge distances. Some are also alleged to have got round a ban on new wells by paying off officials.
One of the largest and most modern of Peru's fresh asparagus producers, which supplies 18% of exports to the UK, spoke to Progressio researchers anonymously. It has received loans from the World Bank's lending arm. Its chief executive said that the water levels in some wells were falling by as much as two metres a year. All its wells are licensed and legal but he said regulation was weak and there was no inspection of what people extracted.
"Peru provides the world with the best example of how to mismanage water. We desperately need to rationalise water use in the Ica. We are spending huge sums just to survive."
He argued that big businesses such as his were at the forefront of science to use water efficiently but traditional farmers used water carelessly.
Competition for diminishing global water resources is emerging as one of the most pressing concerns for business as well as development organisations. Leading retailers have told the Guardian privately water shortages in the areas where they source fresh fruit and vegetables out of season is top of their list of priorities when they check how sustainable their businesses are.
The water shortages on Peru's Pacific coast are expected to get worse as climate change shrinks the glaciers that feed the Ica river system.
Promoting food for export has been a key plank in World Bank policy for developing countries. Its investment arm, the International Finance Corporation, said in a statement that it aims to promote sustainable development through investment in private sector companies, which it requires to commit to minimising their water use: "We define sustainability as providing economic growth opportunities for the poor and protecting the environment and the rights of vulnerable communities."
How far the policy helps the poorest in those countries remains a subject of fierce debate among international development experts. Progressio is not calling for an end to the asparagus export business. "The area relies on asparagus for employment. We are not saying the trade itself is wrong but supermarkets and investors have to take responsibility for finding more of a balance," said Petra Kjell, an environmental policy officer.
We asked the leading UK retailers to comment but only two were able to do so in the time available. M&S said: "We have a range of responsible water use projects under way and have strengthened our farming standards to include greater focus on water efficiency."
Tesco said: "We are pleased that Progressio has highlighted Tesco's role in raising industry standards in water management in areas such as the Ica Valley.
"We have a strong record in this area and our Nurture standard is regularly reviewed and improved. We acknowledge there is more to do and so we are continually working with our suppliers to help them minimise their environmental impact, including water use."
Names of farmers have been changed.
Case study
Alicia Flores and her family live in the village of Callejón de los Espinos in Peru's Ica Valley. Each house in the village normally receives water for about one hour, three times a week.
They used to get two hours' water four times a week, but about four years ago the water pressure dropped off dramatically, as agricultural exporters extracted more and more groundwater. Then the 2007 earthquake exacerbated the problem by damaging infrastructure. Now, when the water is on, the family is only able to collect half the amount of water they used to, so they are reduced to 10 litres of water per person, per day. The World Health Organisation says a person needs five times that amount to maintain health.
Like most people in the village, Alicia's husband works for the asparagus exporters. They say the working conditions are good but pay and benefits have been cut since the global economic crisis.
"We have seen water pressure dropping in the past years since the agro-exporters came, but if the water runs out and they leave, we will have no work and no water. What will happen to our children then?" asked one villager.
Names have been changed
How Close Are We to Peak Water?
By RP Siegel
March 16th, 2011
http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/03/peak-water/
Earth’s limits: Why growth won’t return - water
by Richard Heinberg
Published Mar 4 2011 by Post Carbon Institute, Archived Mar 4 2011
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-03-04/earth%E2%80%99s-limits-why-growth-won%E2%80%99t-return-water
Peter Gleick: Peak Water
Saturday, 22 January 2011 16:17
Peak water is coming. In some places, peak water is here.
http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2011/world/peter-gleick-peak-water/?utm_source=Circle+of+Blue+WaterNews+%26+Alerts&utm_campaign=c6766a9689-Weekly_Water_News_February_1_20111_31_2011&utm_medium=email
We’re never going to run out of water — water is a renewable natural resource (mostly). But increasingly, around the world, in the U.S., and locally, we are running up against peak water limits. The concept is so important and relevant that The New York Times chose the term “peak water” as one of its 33 “Words of the Year” for 2010 (along with “refudiate,” “top kill,” and “vuvuzela”), a term that a colleague and I defined in a new research paper in May in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (available here).
Water Number: Three (3) definitions of “peak water.”
Peak Renewable Water: This is the limit reached when humans take the entire renewable flow of a river or stream for our use. Water is renewable, but there is a limit to how much can be used. Humans have already reached “peak renewable water” limits on the Colorado River. We use it all and can’t take any more. In fact, of course, we probably shouldn’t even take as much as we do, for ecological reasons (see “Peak Ecological Water” below).
Increasingly, we are reaching peak renewable limits on many of our rivers and streams. The Yellow River in China no longer reaches the sea much of the year. The Aral Sea has been devastated because the entire flows of the Amu and Syr Darya rivers have been consumed. The Nile Delta is typically dry much of the year.
Peak Non-Renewable Water: While much of our water supply is renewable, there are “non-renewable” water sources as well, where our use of water depletes or degrades the source. This most typically takes the form of groundwater aquifers that we pump out faster than nature recharges them — exactly like the concept of “peak oil.” Over time, groundwater becomes depleted, more expensive to tap, or effectively exhausted. Central Valley aquifers are overpumped, unsustainably, to the tune of 1-to-2 million acre-feet a year. So are groundwater aquifers in India, China, the Great Plains, and other places. This cannot continue indefinitely — it runs into peak non-renewable water limits.
Peak Ecological Water: The third definition, and perhaps the most important (and difficult) one, is peak “ecological” water — the point where any additional human uses cause more harm (economic, ecological, or social) than benefit. We’re good at measuring the “benefits” of more human use of water (semiconductors manufactured, or food produced, or economic value generated), but we’re bad at measuring on an equal footing, the ecological “costs” or harm caused by that same use of water. As a result, species are driven to extinction, habitat is destroyed, water purification capabilities of marshes and wetlands are lost. For many watersheds around the world, we are reaching, or exceeding, the point of “peak ecological water.”
California as a whole may not have quite reached peak water, but parts of California and some of our water systems are long past the point of peak water, in all three definitions of the term. We’ve done a great job in this state at capturing, storing, moving, and using water. But there are limits — an idea still lost on some of our policymakers, such as those who recently lamented our inability to capture and use every drop of water that fell in the recent extreme storms — a 19th century notion long ago overwhelmed and overtaken by physical, economic, and environmental realities. Large new surface water storage is simply not going to happen (though California could do far more with smarter flood-control projects and improved groundwater storage, as I described in a recent Sacramento Bee op-ed. This is a topic for another post).
Many of our groundwater basins are past the point of peak ecological water. The Sacramento-San Joaquin river systems, at some times of the year, are past the point of peak renewable water and peak ecological water because of the devastating ecological impacts of our water use on wetlands, migrating birds, fisheries, aquatic flora, and more. Our water rights allocations from the State and Federal projects exceed peak water limits because they promise more water to users than can ever be delivered.
We struggle from one year to the next, hoping for rain. We refuse to measure and monitor all of our water uses in a system with limits. We shy away from needed conversations about water use priorities and rights. As a result, we’re racing toward peak water limits and we can no longer afford to pretend all the water we want will be available, when we want it, at a cheap price, without consequences. A wet December and January doesn’t change that reality.
EUROPE & America TO GO INTO A MINI ICE AGE -
Nile River Use Debate close to Breaking Point-
http://blogs.reuters.com/africanews/2010/07/07/nile-river-row-could-it-turn-violent/
futr
Lake Mead &last 80 year History of Colorado River flows-
highlighted in the following-
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=45945
futr
In Era of Climate Change and Water Scarcity, Meeting National Energy Demand Confronts Major Impediments
September 22, 2010
Plan to increase production, especially in drier regions of the U.S., reveals weakness in strategy
http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/in-era-of-climate-change-and-water-scarcity-meeting-national-energy-demand-confronts-major-impediments/
The All-American Canal, the main water conduit from the Colorado River into the Imperial Dam, flows through the Imperial Valley, Calif. The U.S. consumes about 100 billion gallons of water a day. Nearly 85 percent is used for crop and livestock production. Of the 16.1 billion gallons that remain, half is devoted to producing energy.
By Keith Schneider
Circle of Blue
In November 2009, in pursuit of a cleaner energy development strategy that also reduced carbon and other climate changing gases, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that his agency had identified 23 million acres of public lands in six southwestern states as prime locations for new solar electrical generating plants. Salazar also said that the Bureau of Land Management, an Interior Department unit that owns and oversees much of the western public domain, was encouraging new solar plant construction with a “fast track” permitting process. The process would make some plants eligible for federal grants and loans under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which included nearly $100 billion for clean energy investment.
The dual announcement was anticipated by executives in the solar generating industry, who responded with an avalanche of applications to federal and state agencies to build more than 180 new solar plants in California, Nevada and Arizona. But senior leaders of other Interior Department units, most notably the U.S. National Park Service, also responded to the agency’s promotion of solar energy with unusually sharp critiques of the potential consequences to the Southwest’s natural resources, especially the region’s scarce water supplies.
Solar generating plants that use conventional cooling technology use two to three times as much water as coal-fired power plants, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Newer technology that relies on air for cooling uses much less water, but also is less efficient in generating power, thus requiring more land. The Congressional Research Service recently estimated that solar power plants cooled with water could generate 53,000 megawatts of electricity in the Southwest, equal to more than 50 large coal-fired utilities, but also would require 164 billion gallons of water annually, an enormous amount in the driest region in the country.
In February 2009, Jon Jarvis, then the head of the Park Service’s Pacific West Region, and now the Park Service director, took the unusual step of warning his Interior Department colleagues that a solar construction boom in the desert, which results in dozens of conventional wet-cooled solar plants, could tilt the already fierce competition for water in the Southwest the wrong way.
“In arid settings, the increased water demand from concentrating solar energy systems employing water-cooled technology could strain limited water resources already under development pressure from urbanization, irrigation expansion, commercial interests and mining,” Jarvis wrote in the internal memorandum.
Confrontation Unlike Any Other
In almost every way imaginable, Jarvis’ warning is emblematic of the critical choke points emerging in the United States as rising demand for new sources of energy confronts the nation’s diminishing supplies of fresh water. Four months ago, in Choke Point: U.S., Circle of Blue set out to better understand what was happening around the country as communities, businesses, and residents confronted the increasingly intense competition between water and energy. Our reporting from the coal fields of southern Virginia, the high plains of the Dakotas, California’s Central Valley, the Midwest’s farm fields, Northern Alberta, Canada, and elsewhere identified urgent contests between energy development and water supply that can be resolved. But taming the conflict between energy and water also poses extraordinarily difficult challenges to regional economies, governing practices, technological development and the quality of natural resources.
Most importantly, though, Choke Point: U.S. raises significant concerns about the values and principles that form the basic foundation of national energy policy in the era of rapid population growth, rising energy demand and climate change. The DOE has prepared a number of studies, accepted largely without question, that predict that as the nation’s population reaches more than 440 million in 2050, energy demand will increase by 40 percent. Federal authorities, along with technical specialists in private industry and academia, insist that such demand can be met by producing more energy sources from fossil fuels and nuclear power, and by developing cleaner energy sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels and wave energy, which also have the benefit of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide that are warming the climate.
ROCHELLE, ILLINOIS, AUGUST 2010: The Illinois River Energy biofuels plant in Rochelle releases plumes of steam at sunrise. The ethanol plant processes over 40 million bushels of corn into 115 million gallons of fuel grade ethanol annually. The plant is one of hundreds around the country transforming corn into ethanol. It takes nearly 1,000 gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol from irrigated corn: four gallons from unirrigated corn.
Underlying the nation’s strategy is the principle that the nation can meet its rising energy demands by applying technology and characteristic American innovation to the job of generating more energy.
But in Choke Point: U.S., Circle of Blue found that without significant changes in approach, meeting the demand for 40 percent more energy by mid-century –if it’s even possible – will come at an extraordinary price to the nation’s air, water, land and quality of life. Rising energy demand and diminishing fresh water reserves are two trends in dramatic collision across the country. Moreover, the speed and force of the collision is occurring in the places where growth is highest and water resources are under the most stress: California, the Southwest, the Rocky Mountain West and the Southeast.
“What’s missing in our national energy discussion is efficiency and conservation,” said Sandra Postel, an author and director of the Global Water Policy Project. “You save energy and you save water. We need a coherent policy and practices to emerge, and they haven’t yet, that drives water conservation and energy conservation. Every gallon of gas you don’t put in a car saves 13 gallons of water. But we aren’t talking about that nearly enough right now.”
Water Supply Confronts Energy Demand
Indeed, Choke Point: U.S. found that while federal energy experts, and their colleagues in academia and industry pursue an energy development strategy strongly devoted to more production, they are not paying sufficient attention to addressing the water supply, the primary impediment.
Scientists define water consumption by two basic measurements. One is how much water is withdrawn from America’s rivers, lakes and aquifers for domestic, farm, business and industrial use, most of which is returned to those same sources. The second is how much water is actually consumed in products, by livestock, plants and people, or evaporates in industrial processes.
In both measurements of withdrawal and consumption, energy is at the top of the charts. The United States withdraws 410 billion gallons of water a day from its rivers, lakes, aquifers and the sea. About half is used to cool thermoelectric power plants, and most of that is used to cool coal-powered plants, according to the most recent assessment by the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
Similarly, the country consumes about 100 billion gallons of water a day. Nearly 85 percent is used for crop and livestock production. Of the 16.1 billion gallons that remain, half is devoted to producing energy.
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In just three years, North Dakota has established itself as the number four oil producing state in the nation—but at what cost to its water supply?
Federal and state regulators, and even coal industry executives grudgingy acknowledge the ropes of ecology, economy and efficiency that are tightening around the nation’s energy sector. Climate change is leading to decreased supplies of rain, snowmelt and fresh water. But as the contest between energy and water grows steadily more fierce, the United States seems intent on bypassing the conflict.
In one of the most startling findings of Choke Point: U.S., Circle of Blue reporters discovered that a far-reaching federal program of research and analysis, funded by Congress and designed to help the nation anticipate and temper the mounting conflict between rising energy demand and diminishing supplies of fresh water, has been brought to a standstill by the DOE.
The research program, known as the National Energy-Water Roadmap and ordered up by Congress as part of the 2005 Energy Security Act, was meant to provide lawmakers and the executive branch two studies of the impending conflict between energy and water. The program also explains what to do about the collision. The first, completed by a team of federal scientists in December 2006 and made public a month later, described the serious consequences the nation is already encountering, as the United States encourages more energy production, which is the second largest water-using sector, but gives scant consideration to water supplies, which are in retreat in most regions of the country.
Meanwhile, the second and final report that Congress commissioned—a comprehensive research agenda to better understand the nation’s energy—water choke points and begin developing real world solutions – has been held out of public view for more than four years. The DOE declined repeated requests for interviews about the reasons for keeping the report from publication.
STANLEY, NORTH DAKOTA, SEPTEMBER 2009: An oil drilling rig on the Bakken Shale formation at sunset.
Other Major Findings
Choke Point: U.S. also found:
¦Unless the United States plans more carefully, generating energy from clean alternatives is almost certain to consume much more water than the fossil fuels they are meant to replace. Generating one gallon of fuel from irrigated corn, for instance, takes 650 gallons of water. Generating one gallon of gas from oil takes one gallon. Solar thermal power that is conventionally cooled consumes more water than a coal-fired and nuclear-powered plant. Of all the available green energy technologies, only wind and solar photovoltaics consume less water than fossil-fueled energy. Geothermal can save water or consume more depending on the technology used and the location.
¦The region that is confronting the energy water choke point first and most dramatically is the Southwest, as climate change steadily diminishes snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains. The Colorado River transports less water than it did a decade ago. Lake Mead, which stores water from the Colorado River and is one of the largest reservoirs in the country, is 41 percent full. The lake’s water level has fallen 135 feet since it was last full in 1999. Declining water levels have prompted federal managers to reduce the Hoover Dam’s hydroelectric generating capacity 33 percent. Federal authorities say if the lake falls 25 more feet, the dam’s generators will be pushed to operate beyond their designed capacity, threatening to shut down one of the largest power plants in the West.
¦The next era of hydrocarbon development is well underway in the United States as energy companies tap the “unconventional” oil sands of Canada, the oil shales of the northern Great Plains, and the gas shales of the Northeast, Texas, Oklahoma and the Upper Midwest. But tapping each of these carbon-rich reserves is producing more damage to the land, generating more carbon emissions, and using three to four times as much water than the conventional oil and gas reserves they are replacing. Essentially, the energy industry is becoming a mining industry, turning carbon-rich sands into fuel and using water shot into the ground under super high pressure to shatter deep shales to release oil and gas. The scale of the industrial enterprise is immense and moving with amazing speed. In tar sands production alone, oil companies and pipeline developers are spending $15 billion to develop the tar sands; $30 billion to build a new network of pipelines from Canada to U.S. refineries (including one that has produced a dispute between state and the EPA), $20 billion to modernize refineries in the Great Lakes, Illinois, Oklahoma and the Texas Gulf. Earlier this year, Exxon Mobil paid $41 billion for XTO Energy, which has big reserves in tar sands, deep gas shale and oil shales in the United States.
¦Developers in North Dakota are spending roughly $7 billion annually to drill 1,000 wells a year now into the Bakken Shale formation and are reaping a bonanza—100 million barrels of oil and 100 billion cubic feet of gas this year. The state is the nation’s fourth largest producer of oil now, behind Texas, Alaska and California. Three years ago, it was barely in the top ten. And the industry also is using billions of gallons of North Dakota’s scarce groundwater to fracture the shale, and generating a civic pushback from farmers and rural residents concerned about the supply of groundwater.
¦The source of more than half of the natural gas produced in the United States is deep shale reserves underlying the Northeast, Gulf Coast states, the West and Midwest. But each of the thousands of wells drilled each year into the unconventional gas shales requires three million to six million gallons of water injected under high pressure to fracture the rock and enable gas to flow out of the rock. Accidents involving so called “fracking” have caused contamination and interruptions in water supply in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, Colorado and other states. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is studying the safety of the practice.
¦The political influence of the energy industry has no equal in the U.S. In Kern County, Calif., where the agriculture industry and the oil industry compete for diminished supplies of water for irrigation and energy production, the big winner is the oil industry. While a severe drought wracked the state, and agricultural and environmental groups wrangled over sharply reduced water shipments to irrigate the arid San Joaquin Valley, the oil industry received 8.4 billion gallons a year—as much water as it needed—from the web of aqueducts and canals that carry water from rivers and reservoirs high in the Sierra Nevada.
¦The energy vector in the United States points strongly to more fossil fuel consumption, not less. That means much more climate changing emissions and tighter fresh water reserves. For instance, the utility industry has opened or begun construction on 32 new coal-fired plants since 2008, according to the DOE. Those plants represent 17.9 gigawatts of new energy and 125 million more tons of carbon dioxide each year. They also represent the sharpest increase in coal-fired power in a generation and will consume billions of gallons of water a year. Unconventional tar sands and shale oil reserves in the country (North Dakota, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado) contain two trillion barrels of oil—enough to supply America at the current level of demand (7 billion barrels a year) for hundreds of years. The deep gas-bearing shales contain millions of trillions of cubic feet of gas—also enough to supply the country for centuries.
¦Carbon capture and storage technology, which is the favored tool to reduce carbon emissions from fossil-fueled electric generating plants, is undergoing a handful of tests, including at a new electric-generating plant just permitted and partially financed by the DOE in arid Kern County. But the technology also increases water consumption at coal-fired utilities 40 percent to 90 percent, according to the DOE.
These findings, the first in a multi-media reporting project that Circle of Blue intends to pursue for the remainder of this year and through the next, represent a new way to look at the economically essential and ecologically damaging accord between energy and water. Choke Point: U.S. is among the first comprehensive assessments that bring that conflict into sharp national focus.
It is not just that energy production could not occur without using vast amounts of water. It’s also that it’s occurring in the era of climate change, population growth and steadily increasing demand for energy. The result is that the competition for water at every stage of the mining, processing, production, shipping and use of energy is growing more fierce, more complex and much more difficult to resolve.
“As a nation we really are not willing to understand the issues around controlling energy supply so that it doesn’t lead to water conflict,” said Mike Hightower, an energy systems analyst at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and one of the nation’s top experts on the water-energy choke point. “The issues are interdependent. But not enough people are willing to connect the dots. And there are real issues at play. Will water scarcity limit natural gas production from the gas-bearing shales, for instance? Will water limit construction of new power plants? Will energy production be limited by the water supply?”
“Politicians don’t like to look at the big picture,” Hightower added. “They want to focus on one thing. And right now that is meeting the energy demand, and to some extent reducing greenhouse gases. But it has to be managed differently so we don’t damage our water resources.”
Keith Schneider is Circle of Blue’s senior editor. Reach Schneider at keith@circleofblue.orgs
Peak Oil? Why not Peak Water
by Willliam Bowles
Global Research, September 25, 2010
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21180
Peak Oil? Why not Peak Water, after all, water is much more crucial to life than oil ever will be and it's being consumed in vast quantities by the same economic system that chows oil?
In fact, water is a far more potent and relevant symbol of the way capitalism chows the planet than is oil. Although it too is a finite resource, it also a renewable resource through the process of recycling, something that is done by nature in another of its amazing cycles that keep (kept?) the biosphere stable; what we call homeostasis where life, chemistry, physics and geology all meet. Water is thus far more symbolic of the irrationality of capitalist production than is oil, where even a renewable resource is consumed by capitalism.
This is why I just cannot get my head around the fact some on the left (who I think should know better) are buying into the 'peak oil' BS. 'Running out of oil' is essentially a problem for capitalism, but not for you and me. In fact, 'running out of oil' maybe a blessing in disguise. Just think, we could once again be living in a world without plastic bags![1]
Clearly, oil and gas are non-renewable resources[2] but then so is every other element, mixture and compound present on Earth.[3] What makes oil so important is its centrality to capitalist production and especially its ability to wage war, that's why there's all the fuss about it[4]. But why has the left bought into this 'peak oil' BS?
I suspect that part of the problem lies with the ideological position on the left that on the one hand rightly opposes consumerism, a way of life that ultimately consumes everything, with the much more difficult problem of posing an alternative. Oil has become symbolic of the capitalist way of life, yet it's ridiculous to advocate that we stop using oil, at least in the short term. The real question is how it should be consumed and critically who decides?
It also has to be accepted that we who live in the West have adsorbed the ideology of Empire and this includes those of us on the left, who assume that the nature and quantity of their consumption is non-negotiable, unless of course capitalism does it for them.
Sure, we could 'run out of oil', but so what? We're also 'running out' of helium. But let me rephrase this: we're running out of economically viable sources of oil. And by economically viable, they mean profitable to extract, not that there's a shortage.
Then there's the issue of global warming/climate change to which undoubtedly burning fossil fuels is major contributor in the form of carbon dioxide. But an even more inflammable contribution to global warming is the gas methane (ten times more heat retaining than is carbon dioxide), produced in vast quantities by beef cattle for all those billions of burgers. Once again, the problem is not production per se but the quantities and the inevitable distortions and inequalites that monocultures create and perpetuate.
Thus consumption of oil, in order to satisfy the demands of shareholders, is but one aspect of an all-consuming capitalism. To single out oil, to make a special case out of it, seems pointless and just like the 'over-population problem', a gigantic red herring, pointing away from the real solution to our crisis.
The bottom line is that capitalist economies do not want to change the way they 'do business' just as companies often resist the introduction of new ways of doing things because they deem them not to be profitable or too expensive to implement. If pursuit of profit is the only driving force then clearly we're going to 'run out of oil' and a bunch of other things. And let us not forget that the single biggest consumer of oil on the planet is the US military machine.
Undoubtedly because oil is so central to capitalist economies and as it gets more expensive to extract it, it becomes (yet another, if major) source of conflict but no more so than other strategically critical materials are, especially the so-called rare earth elements so necessary to electronics sector.
So why has oil been singled out and not initially by the left but by the oil industry itself?
For the past one hundred years the major western powers have had a lock on petroleum resources. Two world wars and uncounted 'minor' ones fought over access to, and ownership of, oil. The question therefore is not its abundance or lack thereof but who controls it and who determines how it is used?
Media commentary in the West should be our guide as to the role of oil in our economies where it is assumed that access to oil is our God-given right, therefore we constantly hear the refrain 'energy security' and now closely followed by the refrain 'peak oil'.
There are new reserves of oil and gas being discovered all the time but they are no longer concentrated in a few locations. So it's not that the world is 'running out of oil' but the West's access to the world's supplies are now not only constrained by the cost of extracting it[5] but that it entails the West, principally the US need to control more and more locations, necessitating the expansion of its military bases. It becomes a vicious cycle of consumption, production, expansion and war.
Oil, along with many other resources (including people) fuels the endless expansion of capitalist production. Forget 'peak oil', instead let's get rid of capitalism and then we can decide how we can best we can share and maintain the Earth's resources between all of its inhabitants, present and future.
Notes
1. Apparently, we 'consume' 600 million tons of plastic products each year, and all of it is made from oil.
2. Unless you subscribe to the theory of abiogenesis, or the non-organic origins of oil. But even if this hypothesis is correct, the raw materials that oil is made of are also finite just like everything else. See also this for some background on 'peak oil'.
3. Actually, the Earth is a net importer of energy and materials, it's what makes planets so special as they operate anti-entropically unlike practically everything else in the universe. All the energy sources on Earth originate from the sun (it's energy production is scheduled to 'peak' in 5 billion years time). And we also get millions of tons of elements entering the Earth's atmosphere from outer space every year in the form of meteorites and other space debris.
4. Although competition between economies was one of the essential causes of the two World Wars, in both cases oil acted as a catalyst. In the First world War it was Germany's push Eastward where it threatened the British Empire's possessions and access to resources. In the second, Hitler's invasions, also Eastward, was essential to fuel his armies and later, it was the US embargo on Japan's access to oil, also in the East, that signaled the attack on Pearl Harbor.
5. In any case, the 'cost' is determined not by the actual cost of extracting it, but by what price it commands on the world market. Were oil to become so expensive, whether through actual shortages or like now, through economic downturn, that its consumption dropped radically, wouldn't that be good thing? We might then be forced to turn to alternative sources, like gas or any number of alternatives. Were there the will to do so.
Willliam Bowles is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Willliam Bowles
Energy Department Blocks Disclosure of Road Map to Relieve Critical U.S. Energy-Water Choke Points
September 7, 2010
Withheld report was requested and funded by Congress.
http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/energy-department-blocks-disclosure-of-road-map-to-relieve-critical-u-s-energy-water-choke-points/?utm_source=Circle+of+Blue+WaterNews+%26+Alerts&utm_campaign=7be68f3fdc-Weekly_Water_News_September_8_2010&utm_medium=email
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ROCHELLE, ILLINOIS, AUGUST 2010: The Illinois River Energy biofuels plant in Rochelle releases plumes of steam at sunrise. The ethanol plant processes over 40 million bushels of corn into 115 million gallons of fuel grade ethanol annually. The plant is one of hundreds around the country transforming corn into ethanol. It takes nearly 1,000 gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol from irrigated corn: four gallons from unirrigated corn.
By Keith Schneider
Circle of Blue
A far-reaching federal program of research and analysis, funded by Congress and designed to help the nation anticipate and temper the mounting conflict between rising energy demand and diminishing supplies of fresh water, has been brought to a standstill by the Department of Energy, according to government researchers involved in the project.
The research program, known as the National Energy-Water Roadmap and ordered up by Congress as part of the 2005 Energy Security Act, was meant to provide lawmakers and the executive branch two studies of the impending collision between energy and water, and what to do about it.
The first, completed by a team of federal scientists in December 2006 and made public a month later, described the serious consequences the nation is already encountering as the United States encourages more energy production, the second largest user of water, but gives scant consideration to water supplies, which are in retreat in most regions of the country.
Meanwhile the second and final report that Congress commissioned, a comprehensive research agenda to better understand the nation’s energy-water choke points and begin developing real world solutions, has been held out of public view for more than four years.
22 Rewrites
Michael Hightower, an energy systems analyst at Sandia National Laboratories and a co-author of the report, said the first draft of the study on research needs was delivered to the Energy Department in July 2006. Energy Department reviewers have since called for 22 rewrites, the last of which was delivered in May 2009, Hightower said.
Since then the five-member team that co-authored the study has not had any communication about the report with the two primary reviewers, Samuel F. Baldwin, chief technology officer in the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and Nicholas B. Woodward in the DOE Office of Science.
“I don’t know why they are holding up the report,” said Hightower in an interview with Circle of Blue. “I can only conclude we don’t know how to write or they don’t like the report. I think we have done a nice job in collecting the data. Maybe the quality is in question.”
Neither Baldwin nor Woodward responded to email messages from Circle of Blue. Ebony Meeks, an assistant press secretary, offered this explanation by email and did not respond to follow-up questions: “When developing a comprehensive technological road map it is imperative that all the data is thoroughly reviewed for accuracy and concurred upon by the multiple participating programs. We plan to release the road map as soon as possible.”
A National Water-Energy Conference Without Key Research
The report’s release couldn’t come soon enough for the agency, and the nation. Over the last five weeks, in its Choke Point: U.S. series, Circle of Blue has thoroughly explored the ever more fierce contest between the nation’s insatiable demand for energy, and the tightening supplies of fresh water.
Among the primary conclusions reached in Choke Point: U.S. is that the nation has not yet recognized the significance of the collision between energy demand and water supply to the economy or the environment. The Road Map report was intended to be a vital step toward closing that information gap.
The Energy Department’s decision to prevent the report’s public release could also prove embarrassing. September 26 is the start of the four-day Water/Energy Sustainability Symposium in Pittsburgh, the second annual national conference co-hosted by the Energy Department to “highlight proven and innovative solutions to complex water/energy challenges.” The Pittsburgh conference is the second in a row that could occur without the principal national study that outlines the research priorities. Last year’s conference took place in Salt Lake City.
It is not at all clear why the Energy Department has apparently iced the Road Map. Calls last week to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which played an important role in securing funding for the Road Map, received no response.
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TAFT, CALIFORNIA, AUGUST 2010: Covering a stretch of the Central Valley as large as New Jersey, arid Kern County is one of the nation’s most important agricultural and oil producing regions. Oil producers inject 1.3 billion barrels of water into the ground to produce 162 million barrels of of oil a year. During a severe drought in the region, the oil industry received 8.4 billion gallons of water a year – as much as it needed – from the network of aqueducts and canals that carry water from Sierra Nevada rivers and reservoirs.
But a number of clues are contained in a March 2007 Sandia National Laboratories paper that summarized the Road Map’s contents. The paper, prepared by Hightower and three colleagues—Ron Pate, Chris Cameron, and Wayne Einfeld—makes clear that any number of executives in the coal, nuclear, oil, solar thermal, and biofuels industries, and their allies in Congress, could be unhappy about the report’s conclusions. The Sandia paper essentially asserts that the United States quickly needs to reconsider and realign much of its energy production policy and water management practices in order to avoid dire shortages of water and potential shortfalls in energy. None of the big energy production or large water use sectors will be left untouched, the paper indicates.
Few Energy and Water Use Sectors Untouched
“The U.S. energy infrastructure depends heavily on the availability of water, and there is cause for concern about the availability of that water as we look toward future demands on limited water resources,” the authors wrote. “As future demands for energy and water continue to increase, competition for water between the energy, domestic, agricultural, and industrial sectors could significantly impact the reliability and security of future energy production and electric power generation,” they added: “It may not be possible in many areas of the country to meet the country’s growing energy and water needs by following the current U.S. path of largely managing water and energy separately while making small improvements in freshwater supply and small changes in energy and water-use efficiency.”
For instance, the authors raised concerns about U.S. energy policy that is encouraging construction of more coal-fired and nuclear power plants, which use millions of gallons of water an hour, without consideration for where they would be built. The thermo-electric generating sector currently accounts for half of the 400 billion gallons of water withdrawn daily from the nation’s rivers and lakes, principally to cool the plants. The same power plants consume more than 3 billion gallons of water a day, principally through evaporation.
Infographic: Water Use Per Mile Driven, Biofuels vs. Fossil Fuels
......................................
Water Use by Transportation Fuels: Gallons of H20 per Mile Driven.
The Energy Information Administration, a unit of the Department of Energy, forecast a nearly 50 percent increase in the demand for electricity between 2005 and 2030. A portion will be filled with energy from the wind and solar photovoltaics, which use virtually no water. Most of the rest will come from new thermoelectric plants.
The Sandia authors noted that new technologies are needed to enable the plants to use coolants other than fresh water, including wastewater from municipal treatment systems, seawater, produced water from mining and drilling operations, and agricultural runoff. In addition, the authors said, U.S. policy encouraging the development of pollution control systems that capture climate-changing emissions and store it deep underground–so-called carbon capture and sequestration–increases water consumption at plants 40 percent to 90 percent.
Advanced Energy Initiative Did Not Consider Water Use
The paper recommends integrating into Congressional and federal policymaking for energy production new requirements for taking into account whether enough water is available for new thermoelectric plants. “The large growth in certain regions of the country of electric power demand and alternative transportation fuel feedstock and refining demands,” the Sandia authors wrote, “suggests that water availability regionally or locally may not be able to support the high growth rate in energy development expected without significant improvements in both energy and fresh water use efficiency.”
The Sandia authors raise similar concerns about rising demand for water to satisfy the nation’s appetite for transportation fuels. In January 2006, President George W. Bush introduced the Advanced Energy Initiative to reduce oil imports and increase national security. One facet of the initiative is to replace 30 percent of the nation’s current gasoline needs with domestically grown and refined biofuels by 2030. This will require production of about 60 billion gallons of ethanol per year by 2030, with over two-thirds needing to come from cellulosic-based feedstocks like switchgrass and wood wastes.
......................................
IMPERIAL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA, AUGUST 2009: The All American Canal, the main water conduit from the Colorado River into the Imperial Dam, flows through the Imperial Valley, Calif. The desert area uses most of its allocated river water for agricultural purposes.
Another facet of the initiative is to encourage production of biodiesel and transportation fuels from tar sands and oil shales in the arid West.
Very clearly, the Sandia authors indicate, the Bush administration did not consider where the water would come from to produce these alternative fuels. “Virtually every alternative transportation fuel being considered will require more water than current petroleum refining,” said the Sandia paper. “A major national scale-up of production capacity and use of nonconventional alternative transportation fuels to meet future domestic fuel demands could significantly increase water demands and impacts.”
Producing a gallon of gasoline, said the authors, takes about 1.5 gallons of water. Every one of the alternatives promoted in the Advanced Energy Initiative takes more water, from two to six times as much water as petroleum production and refining needs to produce a gallon of fuel. Producing ethanol from irrigated corn fields takes 1,000 gallons of water to produce a gallon of fuel. Producing biodiesel from irrigated soybean fields takes 6,500 gallons to produce a gallon of fuel.
Very clearly, the national alternative fuels plan that relies heavily on producing ethanol raises significant issues about water supply. “Among the issues with the future expansion of biofuel production will be to assure that the availability, use, and sustainability of water and land resources is appropriately managed,” the Sandia paper counseled, “to avoid adverse impacts while not putting undue constraints on the transition toward more biomass-based energy and products industries.”
Planning Needed
Of all the research and policy recommendations summarized in the Sandia paper, and repeated in the Road Map report, perhaps the most significant is the call for linking energy policy and production with water supply and use. The Sandia paper concluded, “As these two resources see increasing demand and growing limitations on supply, energy and water must be recognized as highly interdependent critical resources that need to be managed together in a more integrated way to provide reliable energy and water supplies and sustain future national growth and economic development while maintaining the health of ecosystems and the environment.”
“We need to come up with strategies so we have a sustainable future,” said Hightower. “As it is now in the United States, water is managed by the water group and energy is managed by energy companies. We’ve got to look at the energy infrastructure and the water infrastructure together.
“That’s what we’ve identified as a need in the Road Map report. Hopefully we’ve done something good for the country. Although we’re in trouble with the DOE.”
Keith Schneider is the senior editor of Circle of Blue. Reach him at keith@circleofblue.org. Read more about energy-water connections in Circle of Blue’s Choke Point: U.S. series.
Desalination might heat up~
Ultimately Water Concerns Become Political Concerns~
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/opinion/16solomon.html?_r=1&hp
futr
ps very controversial subject especially as world faces insolvency!
Wow! Reports on diminishing drinking water tend to contain the following common strands:
· Population pressure: demand is increasing all the time, with the global population set to pass 8 billion by 2025
· Increasing pollution: contamination that is effectively decreasing the amount of available drinking water
· Poverty: it’s incredibly expensive to tap new sources of water, and it’s the world’s poorest that are suffering water shortages
· Climate change: many parts of the world are getting dryer
· Mismanagement: much of the water tapped for irrigation leaks or is lost to evaporation.
· Conflict between domestic users: power generation, industry and agriculture – all heavy consumers. This is going to become more of an issue, with hydro being promoted as a clean power source.
Respected – and greatly missed – peak oil guru Matthew Simmons made, as ever, penetrating observations about declining global resources. His February 2010 presentation, Twin Threats to Resource Scarcity: Oil & Water, noted the “historical irony” of the intertwining of oil and water. “The two do not mix and we can not get along without both.”
Having noted the global importance of oil, the long-time energy investor notes “water is even more priceless” – as it is central to both food growing and energy generation. “For a century mankind ignored depletion of both precious resources.”
Peak predictions: mixing water and oil as global resources dwindle
Thursday, August 12, 2010
http://peakgeneration.blogspot.com/2010/08/peak-predictions-mixing-water-and-oil.html
Water Footprint
"People use lots of water for drinking, cooking and washing, but even more for producing things such as food, paper, cotton clothes, etc. The water footprint is an indicator of water use that looks at both direct and indirect water use of a consumer or producer. The water footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business."
The relation between consumption and water use is highlighted in the following link:
http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/home
sumisu
Planet Earth's Disappearing Glaciers-
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/opinion/18kristof.html?src=me&ref=general
futr
Latest on the Colorado River Water Storage Crisis -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mead
futr
Thanks for that link
link to file
http://www.postcarbon.org/Reader/PCReader-Postel-Water.pdf
futr
WATER: Adapting to a New Normal
Sandra Postel
Published Jun 22, 2010
http://www.postcarbon.org/report/109751-water-adapting-to-a-new-normal
Oil Spill DEAD burned whale COVER UP! This pic is disappearing from the web... VERY DISTURBING!!!
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1121798/pg1
Photo comes from AP on June 16. However any and all traces of it have since been removed. It is possible this is one of the few copies of this left. SHARE IT and lets make sure the truth is known.
It clearly shows burned flesh on the left side of the body. This whale was burned either alive or after it died to hide the evidence.
These various articles used to have this photo attached with it but now they do not. Hmmm I wonder why ...
[link to www.nytimes.com]
[link to www.noaanews.noaa.gov]
[link to www.nola.com]
'And The Sea Shall Turn To Blood'...
By David Icke
The David Icke Newsletter
6-27-10
http://rense.com/general91/blood.htm
... A 'BIBLICAL' CATASTROPHE THAT WILL AFFECT US ALL
THE 'SPILL' (UNCONTROLLED GUSH) WILL DEVASTATE AMERICA?
YES, BUT THAT'S THE IDEA
Hello all ...
The potential magnitude of what is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico simply cannot be overstated. It is far, far worse than is being admitted and what we are allowed to see is catastrophic enough.
When a major event happens I like to watch and wait to see what information comes to light before jumping in with 'it's this' or 'it's that'. What appears to be one thing at the start can become something quite different a few days or weeks later.
But I have long seen more than enough to shake my head at claims that this was just an 'accident' or 'incompetence'.
Beware cover stories of 'incompetence', as with 'incompetent bureaucrats', because they are so often a veil for cold calculation. The Gulf of Mexico disaster didn't just happen, it was made to happen.
Mother Jones magazine reported:
'Tony Buzbee, a lawyer representing 15 rig workers and dozens of shrimpers, seafood restaurants, and dock workers, says he has obtained a three-page signed statement from a crew member on the boat that rescued the burning rig's workers.
The sailor, who Buzbee refuses to name for fear of costing him his job, was on the ship's bridge when Deepwater Horizon installation manager Jimmy Harrell, a top employee of rig owner Transocean, was speaking with someone in Houston via satellite phone.
Buzbee told Mother Jones that, according to this witness account, Harrell was screaming, "Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen.'
Yes, and nothing was done because it was meant to happen.
Readers of my books and website will be well acquainted with the name, Halliburton, the Illuminati-to-its-fingertips corporation once headed by the truly evil Dick Cheney, the real power in the White House during the Boy Bush administration that gave us 9/11, the 'war on terror' and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The company headed by a key player behind the war on Iraq has since been awarded a stream of no bid government contracts in the country that have transferred staggering amounts of taxpayer money into the pig trough infested by Halliburton executives and shareholders.
Lawsuits claim that the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, 52 miles south-east of the Louisiana port of Venice on April 20th, was caused because Halliburton workers improperly capped the well - a process known as cementing.
Anything - anything - involving or connected to Halliburton is ultimately controlled and dictated by the Illuminati cabal orchestrated by the House of Rothschild and its associated families. They own Halliburton, lock, stock and millions of barrels.
Just eight days before the Gulf blow-out, Halliburton also announced that it had agreed to buy Boots & Coots for $240.4 million. Who are Boots & Coots?
The world's largest oil-spill clean-up company which also deals with oil and gas well fires and blowouts.
What an incredibly fortunate coincidence. What a slice of luck.
The same, too, for another Rothschild-controlled cesspit of evil and corruption, Goldman Sachs, the 'investment bank' that gave us the mortgage debt crisis and the economic collapse of Greece.
Goldman Sachs sold 44 per cent of its holdings in BP, a total of 4,680,822 shares worth the best part of $300 million, in the weeks before the Gulf disaster that sent BP shares plummeting, and Tony Hayward, BP's disgraceful chief executive, is reported to have sold his £1.4 million shares in BP a month before the explosion. The profit allowed him to pay off the mortgage on his mansion. How nice.
As with the pre-9/11 'put options' (bets) on the stocks of American airlines falling, so we have gathering evidence that some people knew what was coming in the Gulf of Mexico from an oil rig operated by one of the biggest Illuminati companies on the planet - British Petroleum.
Merely drilling where BP did, with the known pressures from within the earth, was asking for trouble - literally from the inner cabal's point of view.
But what's the deal? How does an oil-poisoned ocean and devastated coastal communities (and potentially others far inland and around the world) benefit the Illuminati cabal and their agenda for total global control?
Oh, in so many ways.
Firstly, we need to appreciate the almost unimaginable scale of what is happening - facts that BP and the Obama-fronted American government are desperate to keep from us.
Recent reports have claimed to quote the opinions of scientists who are too fearful to be publicly named because of the consequences for their lives and careers.
They estimate the release of oil from under the Earth's crust at between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels a day. That is 4.2 million American gallons or 15.9 million litres a day potentially pouring into the Gulf.
This aligns with a leaked internal BP document that says that in a 'worst-case scenario' up to 100,000 barrels a day could be released into the ocean.
The scientists were quoted as saying that the 'sandblasting' of the oil, toxic gases, rocks and sand will be continually making a bigger hole for the oil and gas to escape. In other words, the situation is getting worse not better and it is already a catastrophe of immense proportions for those immediately affected - a number growing rapidly by the day.
The scientists predicted that the drill hole will expand beneath the wellhead and so weaken the area on which the wellhead stands until it is pushed off the hole to allow the oil to flow with no restrictions at all.
Should that happen the consequences are unthinkable.
The scientists said that billions of barrels of oil will be released before the pressure in the enormous cavity five miles below the seabed calms and finds balance and then water would pour into the cavity to replace the oil.
They said that the temperature at that depth, some 400 degrees, will turn the water to steam creating a pressure that will lift the ocean floor. They estimate that this will create a tsunami of between 20 to 80 feet, or even higher, that will bring the poisoned ocean ashore to leave great tracts of land uninhabitable and without life.
American investigative journalist, Wayne Madsen, writes that satellite imagery withheld by the Obama administration shows that 'under the gaping chasm spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be around the size of Mount Everest'. This information, he says, has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it from the public.
Now, we have heard many doomsday scenarios before in many circumstances that have not manifested, but even if such shocking predictions do not happen on that staggering scale there is no question that the world changed on April 20th 2010 when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded.
Just a look at the map of the Gulf region reveals the potential effect on enormous numbers of people in Mexico, the Caribbean and the southern states of America with so many living on or close to the coastline ...
But the scale and potential of what we are seeing goes way beyond even the Gulf. The scientists I mentioned earlier say that the oil has now reached the Gulf Stream, with a current at least four times stronger than in the Gulf of Mexico itself, and this could help to direct the oil all over the world in the next 18 months.
It is the Gulf Stream that keeps the United Kingdom and parts of Europe much warmer than they would otherwise be at their latitude, but it will also act as a oceanic conveyor belt delivering the oil from the Gulf Mexico across the Atlantic.
The toxic oil and gas are being added to by the lethal 'dispersant' used by BP to (theoretically, for public consumption only), 'disperse the oil'. They are using Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527A which are so toxic they have been banned in Europe, although Europe is likely to get them anyway via the Gulf Stream.
Corexit is manufactured by a corporation called Nalco, once part of ExxonMobil, and the current leadership includes executives from Exxon and BP. The European Union Times said of Corexit:
'A dire report prepared for President Medvedev by Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources is warning today that the British Petroleum (BP) oil and gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico is about to become the worst environmental catastrophe in all of human history threatening the entire eastern half of the North American continent with "total destruction" ...
... Russian scientists are basing their apocalyptic destruction assessment due to BP's use of millions of gallons of the chemical dispersal agent known as Corexit 9500 which is being pumped directly into the leak of this wellhead over a mile under the Gulf of Mexico waters and designed, this report says, to keep hidden from the American public the full, and tragic, extent of this leak that is now estimated to be over 2.9 million gallons a day.'
You might think at first hearing that it is blatantly crazy to use Corexit when there are some 12 other less toxic and more effective dispersants approved by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Two of those on the EPA list 'were found to be 100 percent effective on Gulf of Mexico crude, while the two Corexit products rated 56 percent and 63 percent effective'.
Well, yes, it is crazy, these people are crazy, but there is method in their madness, as I'll explain.
Killing the sea to 'save' the sea.
Corexit also causes the oil to drop below the surface so giving a false impression of how much oil is in the water.
Environmental engineer Joe Taylor has publicly warned BP to stop using Corexit immediately or everything in the sea is going to die. It is worth watching this short report on his findings before we move on, because we are getting to the prime question - why is BP doing everything it can to cause maximum destruction. Click here to watch ... Must Stop Using Toxic Dispersant Now, Says Environmental Engineer ...http://www.davidicke.com/newsletter-archive-othermenu-47/35564-and-the-sea-
shall-turn-to-blood-a-biblical-catastrophe-that-will-affect-us-all#muststopusing
The key words spoken by Joe Taylor were when he said that if he knew the information about the effect of Corexit then so did BP - 'They have a lot of chemists who are a lot smarter than I am, and they know this.'
Why would BP be knowingly causing as much environmental devastation as possible? The answer to this question is the same as the answer to these:
Why was the booming operation supposed to protect the beaches from the oil so pathetic and 'inept', as exposed here by an expert ... BP Fails Booming School 101?
Why is the BP 'clean-up' operation so disorganised, unmotivated and basically non-existent that BP employees are working for little more than two hours a day on beach cleaning, as exposed here in The Short Film BP Doesn't Want You To See ...?
http://www.davidicke.com/newsletter-archive-othermenu-47/35564-and-the-sea-
shall-turn-to-blood-a-biblical-catastrophe-that-will-affect-us-all#cleanup
The answer to all those questions and so many more is this: we are looking at an environmental 9/11 that was made to happen and those behind this carnage want it to be as extreme as possible to get maximum impact in terms of their goals of control and chaos.
Yes, BP is a 100% Illuminati company now facing fantastic costs and public condemnation, but all these corporations are just vehicles and thus expendable as necessary to the core agenda.
A vacuous, ludicrous and mendacious man called Bob Dudley, the BP managing director, said from the comfort and distance of Washington DC that 'for BP, our intent is to restore the Gulf the way it was before it happened.'
Excuse me a moment ...
AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!
Thank-you.
Meanwhile, back here on Planet Earth, life as they have known it is already over for the coastal communities of the Gulf region with the tourist and fishing industries devastated or destroyed. People are now being forced to earn a livelihood working on 'clean-ups' for the same BP that has wreaked this havoc on their lives and families.
What's more, they are told by this merciless corporation that they must work amid shocking levels of toxicity without respirators because they don't want to 'alarm the public' by seeing such pictures - the same reason why BP has basically introduced its own martial law in the region to stop the full and horrific extent of the disaster and its global potential coming to light.
The health consequences for those 'clean-up' workers already exposed to this deeply toxic environment without protection will already be horrific, as we shall see. But BP couldn't give a shit - just as the US government and the New York authorities couldn't give a shit about the rescue workers on the toxic World Trade Center site after 9/11.
Already, even the (pathetic) mainstream media has reported that 70 people in Louisiana have been admitted to hospital with symptoms of toxin poisoning. Many beaches have been closed because of toxins in the air and water and people are reporting breathing problems and skin rashes and lesions.
One report said that crops as far north as North Carolina have been damaged by toxic rain, while oil has been falling in the rain near the Louisiana coast.
This is only the beginning, too, as the oil continues to gush in ever-greater amounts to be met by the lethal Corexit in ever-greater amounts, and that whole deadly toxic cocktail is going to fall as rain on communities far from the coast.
Add to that the hurricanes, tidal surges and other weather phenomena and you can understand why those nameless scientists are writing off land up to 200 miles from the shore as becoming too toxic to support life, let alone a human society. See the story about Nigeria at the end of this article for some of the consequences that oil pollution can bring.
Two other effects of so much oil in the Gulf of Mexico could be to heat up the sea, so causing more hurricanes and super-storms, and making the process of producing rain from seawater less efficient, so affecting rainfall on the land.
The major target of this engineered horror is America and its economy - as I have been saying for years they are seeking to destroy the United States militarily and financially to bring this 'superpower' to its knees so it can be absorbed into a world government dictatorship via a North American Union.
BP has said that massive quantities of methane are leaking with the oil, along with large mounts of lethally toxic hydrogen sulfide, benzene and methylene chloride. This has the potential to trigger mass evacuations.
John Kessler, oceanography professor at Texas A&M University, discovered on a ten-day research expedition what he called 'astonishingly high' levels of methane within five miles of the stricken rig - 'an incredible amount' - and maybe as much as a million times greater than normal.
It is very sobering to look again at the towns and cities of the Gulf coast given a report by investigative journalist, Wayne Madson, that quotes 'sources' inside the US government, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers as predicting a 'dead zone' within 200 miles of the rig caused by a combination of methane and toxic rain containing Corexit.
Madsen says:
'Plans are being put in place for the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Mandeville, Hammond, Houma, Belle Chase, Chalmette, Slidell, Biloxi, Gulfport, Pensacola, Hattiesburg, Mobile, Bay Minette, Fort Walton Beach, Panama City, Crestview, and Pascagoula.'
Imagine evacuating that many people and maybe more of the tens of millions of people who live on or within 200 miles of the Gulf coast, but then that would be just the scale of disaster and compulsion that would allow FEMA, a major asset of the Control System as my books and others have detailed, to impose its long-planned martial law on enormous numbers of people.
FEMA and the military have been preparing for this for years with exercises for just such a situation involving oil pollution, but all records of this were expunged from FEMA-related websites in the weeks before the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
Anything that affects America on such a scale would have a knock-on effect economically across the world - another bonus for the cabal which is seeking to create maximum chaos on every front to instigate the global problems to which it will offer its global solutions - a world political and military dictatorship.
Watch China like a hawk, or rather like a vulture, as it begins to circle America waiting to seize its carcass as soon as it thinks it is sufficiently wounded.
While I was writing this article, I remembered that one of the 'messages' I was given through the first psychic I saw in 1990 said this:
'Taking oil from the seabed is destabilising the inner earth. The centre of the earth will move and the poles will change. The sea spirits will rise and stop men taking oil. The sea will reclaim the land and humans will see that they cannot do these terrible things. They cannot abuse the elements. They have to be treated with respect.'
We are certainly going to see increasing signs of geological instability in these 'end times' as one era ends and another begins. It is a time to be strong and strap in for a bumpy ride for a while.
There are so many levels to all this and so much more to know about what is happening. On one level the Illuminati families pursue their agenda, as with this oil disaster, but on another there are other events unfolding and what seems to be happening on one level looks very different when viewed from another.
It is also interesting that many prophecies in different cultures include a theme of the sea turning to blood which, to be fair, is what the polluted sea of Gulf now looks like.
The Biblical Book of Revelation (8:8 and 8:9) says:
'And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;
And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.'
I was talking a couple of days ago to the great Zulu high shaman, Credo Mutwa, and he said that the sea turning to blood during the run up to the 'end of the world' is a theme in his culture, too. He also said that South African sangomas (shamans) are having visions and dreams about the rain falling as blood and 'large lumps of blood rolling in the shore'.
The prophecies of the Hopi people in Arizona speak of the sea turning black as a sign that the old age is ending and new one about to begin. It says:
'This is the seventh sign, You will hear of the sea turning black, and many living things dying because of it.'
This is the theme of so many 'end of the world' legends and prophecies - a series of events that see the 'old world', cycle, yuga or epoch disappearing to be replaced by a new one.
In the Book of Revelation these events are symbolised as 'seals' while the Hopi prophecies call them 'signs'. Zulu legends and prophecies have the same themes and they are remarkably consistent with each other in many ways.
I stress that the 'end of the world' doesn't mean the end of life, only the end of an epoch, an age, and that is what we are experiencing now with many serious challenges to come. But if the old 'world' does not break down, the new cannot emerge because the old, through its Control System, will seek to stifle and suffocate that change.
So it has to go and it is in the process of doing so. How current events in the Gulf of Mexico fit into that we can only wait and see, but I am sure we are witnessing something of potentially enormous significance on so many levels.
Gassed In The Gulf - Benzene,
New Gulf War Syndrome
Click here to read ...
.http://rense.com/general91/spin.htm .
Raining Oil in Louisiana?
Click here to watch ...
http://www.davidicke.com/newsletter-archive-othermenu-47/35564-and-the-sea-
shall-turn-to-blood-a-biblical-catastrophe-that-will-affect-us-all#rainingoil
Pensacola Beach Surf Still Boiling - Strange Color
Click here to watch ...
http://www.davidicke.com/newsletter-archive-othermenu-47/35564-and-the-sea-
shall-turn-to-blood-a-biblical-catastrophe-that-will-affect-us-all#beachsurf
And it is not the only oil disaster ...
Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill [But give it time]. The US and Europe ignore it
Read more ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell
Hopi Prophecies
http://www.welcomehome.org/rainbow/prophecy/hopi1.html
The Price of Water: A Comparison of Water Rates, Usage in 30 U.S. Cities
April 26, 2010
Across the country there is wide variation in use and price for water consumption in major urban areas, with residential rates being lowest in the Great Lakes region, according to a Circle of Blue survey.
http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/the-price-of-water-a-comparison-of-water-rates-usage-in-30-u-s-cities/
By Brett Walton
Circle of Blue
A first of its kind survey of residential water use and prices in 30 metropolitan regions in the United States has found that some cities in rain-scarce regions have the lowest residential water rates and the highest level of water use. A family of four using 100 gallons per person each day will pay on average $34.29 a month in Phoenix compared to $65.47 for the same amount in Boston.
The survey, conducted by Circle of Blue over the last several months, also found that average daily residential water use ranged from a low of 41 gallons per person in Boston to a high of 211 gallons per person in Fresno, Calif.
The Circle of Blue survey includes data on water rates and water usage from the 20 largest U.S. cities, according to the 2000 Census, and ten regionally representative cities to gain a broad view of urban water pricing. The survey comes as municipal water departments and their customers across the country contend with the ironic and unintended consequence of the economic recession and water conservation. In most major cities water use is declining while rates charged to residential customers are rising.
The effect of the crossing trends is less severe in Chicago, Detroit and Milwaukee, where municipal water is supplied by the lakes and prices range from $24.12 to $28.36.
“The reason why rates are so low in the Great Lakes region is proximity to abundant water,” said Nick Schroeck, executive director of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center in Detroit. “Moving water takes an extraordinary amount of energy. Energy costs are higher in arid regions where water has to be brought from far away. For us, you look at the larger cities, and they are right on one of the lakes. It’s easy to get water to the population centers.”
Even though prices are comparatively low, rates in the Great Lakes region have increased in recent years because of declining consumption. Most of that decrease is attributed to the loss of industrial activity, though shrinking urban populations and personal frugality are also factors.
Falling demand is a concern for Carrie Lewis, the superintendent of Milwaukee Water Works, because the utility’s revenue comes from water sales, so less use means higher rates. In an interview, Lewis described a downward-sloping graph showing the decrease in water sales over the last three decades. Sales in Milwaukee dropped 41 percent from 1976 to 2008, primarily because water-intensive breweries and tanneries went out of business or left town.
“That’s a frightening graph if you make money selling water,” Lewis said.
As a result, water conservation is not a big part of Milwaukee’s agenda. Milwaukee Water Works (MWW) rejected a suggestion from the state public service commission to institute a block tariff rate structure, which would have raised prices for high-volume users to encourage using less water. The city is actually looking to increase water use because of its spare infrastructure capacity and ample supply.
“MWW could double its customer base without having to build new facilities,” Lewis said. “There’s no capital cost to avoid by increasing water use.”
To that end, some Milwaukee businesses want the city to fish for industry with the lure of cheap water, according to an article from the American Water Works Association. Business owner Richard Meeusen started the group Water Attracting Valued Employers (WAVE) to lobby for a discounted industrial water rate.
“For more than 20 years industry has been moving south looking for cheaper labor, I’m hoping that now they’ll start coming back looking for cheaper water,” Meeusen told the AWWA.
Water demand in Milwaukee is similar to urban areas across the United States. Per capita water use is dropping in nearly every city surveyed, and total water use has fallen or remains steady in some cities despite population bulges.
Infographic: Water Use Comparison of 5 U.S. Cities
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This comparison shows that due to utility pricing structures certain urban areas, such as Boston, which has high rainfall and low consumption, can have pay higher water rates than in cities like Phoenix, where rainfall is low and consumption is high.Water in the Southwest
Declines in demand are especially notable in arid cities of the Southwest and southern California. These regions binged in the 20th century on relatively abundant supplies brought from afar, using water to leverage growth. But as populations have disproportionately grown in comparison to the available supply, cities are cutting back to avoid building costly desalination plants, investing in diversion schemes or buying expensive water through market exchanges.
Per capita use in Santa Fe has dropped 42 percent since 1995 and total use is down nearly 30 percent, while Phoenix consumes the same amount of water now as it did 10 years ago despite adding roughly 400,000 residents. Figures released two weeks ago from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power show that it supplied less water in February than any time in the last three decades, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Las Vegas has significantly cut outdoor water use by prohibiting front lawns for new houses since 2003. As a result, water deliveries from the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies Las Vegas, dropped by 20 billion gallons from 2002 to 2003–enough water to cover the annual residential needs of a city of 150,000.
People living in the Southwest are often excoriated for their water use, but critics neglect the necessity for water, argues Stephanie Duer, water conservation program coordinator for Salt Lake City Public Utilities.
“I never hear people complain about Alaska or Connecticut using too much heating oil,” Duer said in an interview. “It seems to me that since we’re in a dry region we will be using more water.”
Water use needs to be weighed against the other benefits it provides, Duer added. “I hear people say ‘Why don’t you plant native species’ Well, We don’t have a single shade tree that would grow at this elevation. Do you want to live in a city without trees? We want to keep the urban forest for quality of life and keeping shade helps to reduce energy use in the summer. We’re working hard to find that balance in water use.”
Though water supplies are precious in these places, the price of water for residential customers is relatively cheap. A family of four using 100 gallons per person each day will pay on average $32.93 a month in Las Vegas compared to $72.95 for the same amount in Atlanta, which has more than ten times the amount of average annual rainfall as Las Vegas, according to National Weather Service statistics. While many factors contribute to water pricing, such as the energy used to pump water, the price of chemicals for treatment costs, recent infrastructure projects and operations efficiency–the difference in several Western cities can partly be explained by government subsidy.
“In the West there was massive federal investment in major water infrastructure,” said Heather Cooley, a researcher for the Pacific Institute’s water program. “Those states and cities didn’t have to pay the capital cost. California’s Central Valley Project is an example of that. The capital cost not including interest still hasn’t been paid, and that was built over 50 years ago. The subsidies create an artificial price.”
Water delivered via the Central Valley Project, a federal initiative led by the Bureau of Reclamation, is primarily directed toward agriculture. The same federal support helped build the Central Arizona Project, a canal that connects water from the Colorado River to Phoenix, Tucson and other cities in three Arizona counties.
Residents of those cities who benefit from this lifeline channeled through the Sonoran Desert are paying only 45 percent of the project’s $3.6 billion cost. The difference is a national burden.
The Central Arizona Project, Hoover Dam, California’s State Water Project, Colorado’s Big Thompson Project are all water supply diversions paid for in part by federal or state tax funds. But when new supply projects are financed by customers directly, higher water rates are the consequence.
Take Santa Fe, for example.
The city has the highest overall rates in the survey and the highest rates for high-volume users. Because water is scarce and current groundwater use is unsustainable, the city is building the $217 million Buckman Direct Diversion to tap water from the San Juan-Chama diversion. It is a non-federal project, and the $187 million after-grant cost is being jointly paid by the city and the county.
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While Santa Fe’s supply project meets current needs, high-growth areas typically levy a one-time connection fee on new development to place the burden on newcomers for acquiring anticipated supplies or building treatment. In Las Vegas, for example, residents buying new houses would pay $1,440 to the Las Vegas Valley Water District and $4,870 to the regional supplier, the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
“Most of the infrastructure is paid for by new customers,” said Doug Bennett, SNWA’s conservation manager. “There’s not a lot of infrastructure dollars in the water rate.”
Growth in Las Vegas has slowed in the last few years because of the economic crisis and the housing bubble implosion. Water utilities are not getting many connection fees-–down to 1,139 in 2008 from a high of just over 24,000 in 2005. Slower expansion means the city does not have to worry about meeting constantly rising demand.
“Instead of worrying about meeting next year’s capacity, now there’s plenty,” said Matt Thorley, principal financial manager for LVVWD.
The Future of Water Prices
In many cities, residents lean on infrastructure investments made in the years following World War II. The strain shows. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 240,000 water main breaks occur each year. Leaky pipes lose billions of dollars of treated water annually, and sewer overflows cause outbreaks of disease.
Last year the EPA estimated that $335 billion would be needed to fix the country’s aging water supply system in the next few decades, according to the New York Times. But where that money will come from is unknown.
According to Jack Moss, an advisor to Aquafed, the international water industry association, cities have to decide whether to make improvements through taxes or tariffs. The problem is that neither government spending nor higher water bills gather much voting support.
Despite the hand wringing over prices, water in the U.S. remains cheap. In most cities surveyed by Circle of Blue a family of four can buy enough water for its indoor needs–50 gallons per person per day for washing, drinking, cooking and flushing–for less than $25 per month, which is a relatively small portion of a family budget.
“Water is very reasonably priced,” said Doug Bennett, conservation manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority. “[As a result], it’s not a major expense on people’s radar screen.”
Meanwhile when prices come up for discussion there are always social justice concerns about access for the poor. However, with a few exceptions such as Detroit, most cities have adequate financial assistance programs to ensure in-home access for all.
One barrier to better water management is communication between utilities and customers–a common chorus amongst water rate researchers interviewed for this article.
“Water use is generally not publicized much outside of droughts,” said Drew Beckwith, a water specialist with Western Resource Advocates. “Water sort of has a technical side that often doesn’t get communicated well to the public.”
Another problem may be habit. Water has generally been so cheap for so long, that people have become anchored to the past price, not realizing that sustainability costs money to achieve.
Prices will undoubtedly rise in the near future. But the question of whether the increase comes via higher taxes or tariffs remains because bearing the price of doing nothing would be much worse.
Note: Water rate information was gathered from the website of each city’s water utility and based on single-family residential rates. It is current as of April 1. Average prices for cities with seasonal rates were calculated using seasonal weighting. For water use information, Circle of Blue asked water departments directly the daily per capita usage for single- and multi-family residential customers.
Brett Walton is a reporter for Circle of Blue. This is the second part of his investigation on U.S. urban water rates–read the first installment here as well as a profile on water pricing issues in Detroit here. Reach Walton at brett@circleofblue.org. All graphics were created by Trevor Seela. Reach Seela at trevor@circleofblue.org.
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/
Peak Oil #board-6609
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