Climate & water - Nov 5
by Staff
Click on the headline (link) for the full text. energybulletin.net
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Tibetans wake up to nosebleeds in super-dry autumn
Reuters
Moisture has become a luxury in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa where many locals are waking up to nosebleeds in the dry autumn, state media said on Monday as the Himalayan region faces growing threat of global warming.
"As it stands, there is little water component in the air in the Sunlight City which sits at 3,700 meters above sea level, making the weather extremely dry and things flammable," Xinhua news agency quoted the Lhasa Observatory as saying.
"The weather has also caused many Tibetans to wake up to nosebleeds."
The observatory has reported record low humidity in Lhasa since October while most of China's south had rainfall.
Tibet, long regarded as sensitive to the effects of global warming, is heating up faster than anywhere else in the world, state media has said.
Scientists have warned that the warming Qinghai-Tibet plateau will melt glaciers, dry up major Chinese rivers and trigger drought, sandstorms and desertification.
(5 November 2007)
Dry weather forcing bobcats into Las Vegas
UPI
Dry weather has driven a growing number of bobcats into populated Las Vegas neighborhoods in search of water.
Nevada Department of Wildlife game warden Victor Gamboa said he even recently attempted to catch one of the parched animals at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the city's main strip, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Sunday.
...Nevada Department of Wildlife Law Enforcement spokesman Nick Duhe said the recent influx of bobcat sightings in such populated area is a direct result of two years of dramatically warmer weather.
(4 November 2007)
Farewell to "Flush and Forget"
Lester Brown, TreeHugger
The toilet. What a remarkably civilized invention. But it is flawed, as I discuss in Plan B 2.0 (free online).
The current engineering concept for dealing with human waste is to use vast quantities of water to wash it away, preferably into a sewer system where it will be treated before being discharged into the local river. This “flush and forget” system is expensive and water-intensive, disrupts the nutrient cycle, and is a major source of disease in developing countries.
Water-based sewage systems take nutrients originating in the soil and typically dump them into rivers, lakes, or the sea. Not only are the nutrients lost from agriculture, but the nutrient overload has led to the death of many rivers and to the formation of some 200 dead zones in ocean coastal regions.
Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment in India argues convincingly that a water-based disposal system with sewage treatment facilities is neither environmentally nor economically viable for India. She notes that an Indian family of five, producing 250 liters of excrement in a year and using a water flush toilet, requires 150,000 liters of water to wash away its wastes.
As currently designed, India’s sewer system is actually a pathogen-dispersal system. It takes a small quantity of contaminated material and uses it to make vast quantities of water unfit for human use, often simply discharging it into nearby rivers or streams.
India’s government, like that of many other developing countries, is hopelessly chasing the goal of universal water-based sewage systems and sewage treatment facilities-unable to close the huge gap between services needed and provided, but unwilling to admit that it is not an economically viable option.
(29 October 2007)
Cars, coal and the flush toilet... one could make a case that these are the three greatest enemies of the human race. Lester Brown doesn't emphasize it much, but perhaps the biggest sin of flush toilets is the waste of nutrients. For example, everyone agrees that phosphorus is critical for agriculture, that there is no substitute, and that we will run out (not "peak," but "run out") within 100 years. Yet we merrily p*ss away this critical nutrient, to be irretrievably dispersed in the oceans. -BA
Increasingly Acidified Waters Could Prompt Mass Shellfish Dissolution
Jeremy Elton Jacquot, TreeuHugger
If present acidification trends in the world's oceans continue unabated, mussels, oysters and other shellfish could become extinct as early as 2100. Carol Turley, a researcher at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, is warning that these mass casualties could have severe repercussions for humans and the health of ocean ecosystems. "A lot of shellfish are an important food source for fish as well as humans. The impacts of shellfish disappearing could be massive," she explained in a recent address.
Increasing levels of dissolved carbon dioxide hinder the ability of shellfish to build their protective shells by significantly reducing the amount of free carbonate in the water. Shellfish typically absorb calcium carbonate from their surroundings and deposit it around their bodies to make their shells; higher levels of carbon dioxide, however, limit the amount of available carbonate - which otherwise could bind to free calcium ions - by forming more bicarbonate ions.
(4 November 2007)
Out West, a Falling Lake Lowers All Boats
Dan Barry, New York Times
... [Lake Mead]'s water level has risen and fallen, like a sleeping man’s chest, but never has the drop been quite like this.
“Lake Mead is at 49 percent of capacity,” says Scott Huntley, spokesman for the Southern Nevada Water Authority. In other words: half empty.
True, the lake’s water level was this low 45 years ago, though Mr. Huntley attributes much of that to the filling of Lake Powell, 490 miles upriver in Utah. And true, the water level fluctuates naturally; that is why the Desert Princess’s onboard narration never utters the word “drought,” a spokeswoman explains.
But the lake was lapping at the top of Hoover Dam just two decades ago, making this drought all the more unnerving. For years its “normal” elevation ranged between 1,180 and 1,220 feet above sea level; today it is at 1,111 feet, and predicted to drop below 1,100 feet within two years.
Now there are tense meetings among several states that rely on the Colorado for drinking water, power production and crop irrigation. Now the head of the water authority here attributes the drought’s length and severity to climate change. Now the operative word is “conserve.”
Roxanne Dey, a National Park Service spokeswoman for the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, says that believe it or not, the drought has had at least one positive impact: “It reminds people here that we live in a desert.”
(4 November 2007)
Contributor Devlin Bucklin writes:
A tour of Lake Mead in audio and photos is online .
As U.S. water worries emerge, all eyes are on the Great Lakes
Larry Oakes, Minneapolis Star Tribune
When Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson suggested last month that states "awash in water" could share, it rocked a lot of boats in Great Lakes states.
"I believe that Western states and Eastern states have not been talking to each other when it comes to proper use of our water resources," Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, told the Las Vegas Sun. "I want a national water policy. ... States like Wisconsin are awash in water."
Environmental groups and politicians up and down the lakes blasted the idea, and Richardson later backed down, saying though a press secretary that he "in no way proposes federal transfers of water."
But the episode created a buzz that still could be heard here last week at a large conference about the future of Lake Superior, and it has fueled speculation about the "water wars" some predict for America as dry regions such as Richardson's run short.
Georgia and other southeastern states already are restricting water and battling over usage amid drought.
With Lake Superior reaching record-low levels for late summer and new evidence that climate change might be aggravating the trend, Richardson's salvo also has renewed calls for the eight Great Lakes states to finish ratifying a compact that would block any new diversions to other parts of the country.
"Those arid states are going to be very water hungry," said Allison Wolf, legislative director for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, which has pushed to protect Lake Superior. "The notion that the next century is the one where water scarcity will really come to the fore is not science fiction."
(4 November 2007)
Related from the Detroit Free Press: :
Sharply higher water temperatures and an increase of up to 30% in wind speeds over Lake Superior appear to be coconspirators in the relatively rapid decline in water levels on the world's largest freshwater lake, a scientist told a Great Lakes conference Friday.
Water temperatures on Lake Superior, now at near-record low levels, have risen twice as fast as air temperatures in the last 25 years, said Jay Austin, a researcher at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.: |
