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24 April 2015

This Week in Water

A quick thanks and tip of the cap to BDR and Thunder for contributing links to this belated TWIW!

A severe lack of clean water is killing indigenous children in Colombia.

Residents near Duke Energy's ash ponds have been warned not to use their well water.

Yes. It's been confirmed. Hydraulic fracking has been causing all those earthquakes in Oklahoma. But readers of WoW's 'This Week in Water' knew that already, didn't we!

Don't kid yourself: U.S. politics plays an important role in water regulation and distribution.

Sanitation workers in Rio de Janeiro have cleared 32 tons of dead fish from the lagoon where Olympic rowing events are scheduled to take place next year.

Scientists at Ohio State University have developed a mesh with enormous potential for cleaning up oil spills. It captures oil while allowing water to pass through.

Brazil, which has been experiencing severe drought, wants to build a 350MW floating solar power plant.

Mining concerns want to build floating nuclear power plants in the Arctic Ocean to power the developing mining industries there. Eh? What could go wrong?

With all the melting ice, giant waves have been observed forming in open Arctic waters for the first time.

Will oceans continue to rise? Will this rise become exponential in the near future? Some think so.

Evidence strongly indicates that the Gulf of Maine is warming.

The Gulf Stream which, among other things keeps Britain from freezing over, is slowing down faster than ever. This is due, in part, to melting ice cap in Greenland.

A Monster Kelvin Wave, a warming of sub-surface temperatures stretching along equatorial Pacific waters, is raising concerns about a potential Super El Nino.

A rare Easter typhoon struck the Philippines. Flooding in Chile killed 107.

A mysterious blob of warm water, 2000 km wide and 100 meters deep stretching from Juneau, Alaska, to the Baja Peninsula, has changed water circulation patterns and weather patterns and is contributing to California's lingering drought.

California Gov. Jerry Brown has called for a mandatory 25% reduction in consumer water usage.

Due to drought, entire cities in California are sinking as the underground aquifers dry up.

To deal with the on-going historic drought, Los Angeles and other cities in California are developing technologies for capturing rainwater runoff, restoring the L.A. River, and curbing excess demand.

William Shatner wants to build a $30 billion pipeline to bring water to Southern California from Washington State and plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise the cash. Better that than tar sands oil from Canada.

The four-year-old California drought is only a symptom in a larger, global water crisis.

Here's a survey of the primary obstacles to desalination of seawater.

Much of this country's fruits and vegetables are grown in California. But, due to its arid nature, the U.S. West may not be the most propitious place to concentrate the country's agricultural food production. The South, e.g., which has a surplus of rainfall traditionally, could convert a portion of its cotton-growing land.

1 comment:

  1. Bottom line: we can't or won't stop doing stupid stuff because the money's too good.
    ~

    ReplyDelete