water

The World Economic Forum warns that in less than 20 years the world may face water bankruptcy caused by mismanagement and over-leveraging of our water supplies in a manner that is as "unsustainable and fragile as that which precipitated the collapse in global financial markets."

One systemic problem is the failure of governments to recognize that water is the resource that links economic growth, food, energy and national security challenges that will be faced by the world over the next few decades. Policies for these key issues tend to ignore consideration of water availability or sustainability under the mistaken view that a renewable resource is infinite.

At the Barcelona climate negotiations this week, the Stockholm International Water Institute, environmental groups and United Nations agencies urged world leaders to recognize water's critical role in climate change adaptation.

So far, though, their pleas have gone unanswered, says WWF International. The negotiating text mentions the dangers to water resources but offers no solution for water management as a tool for adaptation.

“It is imperative that negotiators recognize the crucial importance of wetlands and freshwater as key factors in any climate adaptation plan,” said Denis Landenbergue, manger of wetlands conservation for WWF International. “To ignore the role of water is to cripple any climate change adaptation plans.”

Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency is launching a nationwide “smart water” program to monitor one of the world's most important resources. Powered by IBM, the program will use a network of smart sensors, wireless transmitters, and analytic software to continuously monitor and manage water quality along the country’s coastline and in swimmable lakes and rivers.

It’s all part of the European Union’s Bathing Water Directive, which on its face may seem like a simple move to preserve beaches for tourists, but is actually a huge first step in the world’s next big climate-change-related resource battle.

The directive — part of the EU’s Water Framework Directive, which calls for the protection of all water sources — mandates that the water quality in “bathing areas,” that is beaches, lakes, and rivers where people swim, be not only constantly monitored but also managed.

These things were being monitored before, but, much in the same way as it is in other countries that monitor such things, that monitoring was traditionally conducted by teams of scientists who would go to the water source, take samples, analyze it and eventually produce water quality reports.

Using IBM’s technology, the Irish EPA is able to continuously monitor and, more importantly, quickly respond to changes in tides, bacteria counts and weather throughout the country.

“Everything from where rain falls to the chemical makeup of the oceans is in flux, and it continues to change in real time,” explains Sharon Nunes, vice president of Big Green Innovations at IBM. “By providing near-real-time access to water conditions, we’re enabling environmental agencies and citizens alike to make smarter decisions.”

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• Amy Westervelt's blog
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As anthropogenic climate change gets more serious and more harmful, something happens to the earth’s fresh-water: there’s quite a lot less of it available for human consumption.

Climate change leads to higher temperatures. Higher temperatures lead to melting glaciers, so snow-melt-based water supplies decrease. Climate change also leads to more irregular rainfalls. Under most climate models, rainfall is predicted to occur more frequently in brief, furious bursts rather than the more sustained and regularized patterns that make it easy to store and irrigate crops.

A recently-released World Bank study notes that there is now strong reason to believe that rainfall variability will increase substantially in Sub-Saharan Africa, reducing GDP and heightening poverty. Previous evidence from Ethiopia, for example, showed that just one season of sharply reduced rainfall “depressed consumption” up to five years later.

And in the Middle East and North Africa, the world’s most water-stressed region, per capita water supplies were expected to halve by 2050 even in the absence of global climate change, the effects of a swelling population. The effects on agriculture will be unpredictable but unpleasant—agriculture amounts to 85 percent of the region’s water use.

Water is basic. When there’s not enough of it, people die. When there’s not enough to keep crops properly irrigated, there’s famine. So it’s not a big shock that when water decreases, conflict over it increases. Or to put it more simply, a lack of water leads to war.

An in-depth review of monitoring data from coal ash ponds located next to 13 coal-burning power plants in North Carolina has revealed that all of them are contaminating groundwater with toxic metals and other pollutants — in some cases at levels exceeding 380 times state groundwater standards.

The contaminants reported include arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead — metals known to cause cancer, neurological problems and other serious illnesses.

The analysis was conducted by Appalachian Voices' Upper Watauga Riverkeeper team based on data submitted to state regulators by Duke Energy and Progress Energy, the state's two largest investor-owned electric utilities. The companies conducted the tests as part of a self-monitoring agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"The results of this data are very alarming, and we now know that some of these ponds have been leaking into the groundwater for years," said Upper Watauga Riverkeeper Donna Lisenby.

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Just about every agency in Canada has expressed alarm about water use in the tar sands.

The Petroleum Technology Alliance of Canada, a Calgary-based nonprofit research group, declares water use and reuse to be the region’s biggest issue, because “bitumen production can be much more fresh water intensive than other oil production operations.”

The National Energy Board, no radical group, has questioned the sustainability of water withdrawals for bitumen mining.

The World Wildlife Fund warns that warming temperatures “will significantly reduce both water quality and water quantity in the region.”

Downstream users are already sounding alarm bells about water quality.

“Everybody is convinced that the oil sands is having an impact on the basin,” says Michael Miltenberger, minister of environment and natural resources for the government of the Northwest Territories. “We have tremendous concerns in terms of the pace of development and contamination issues. What happens on the Athabasca affects people as far away as Inuvik.”

The open-pit mines that scar the banks of the Athabasca River north of Fort McMurray are water consumers as formidable as California irrigation projects.

"Water Shortage Threatens China." "California Faces Water Rationing." "Drought in Australia Food Bowl Continues."

Water scarcity is becoming eerily prominent in recent newspaper headlines — and for good reason.

With global temperatures increasing, scientists have told us to expect water scarcity problems like those California and China are now experiencing to increase and become even more severe. The consequences for an already reeling global economy will be profound. Numerous industry sectors should expect decreased water allotments, shifts towards full-cost water pricing and ever-more stringent water quality regulations.

Already, China, India, and the western U.S. are seeing growth limited by reduced water supplies from shrinking glaciers and melting snowcaps that sustain key rivers. Meanwhile, power plant production has been cut back due to more frequent and more intense heat waves and droughts in Australia, Europe, and the southeast United States.

A new report from Ceres and the Pacific Institute evaluates water-related risks to eight water-intensive sectors: technology, beverage, food, electric power/energy, apparel, biotechnology/pharmaceuticals, forest products and mining. Our conclusion is that each of these sectors faces serious near- and long-term economic risks related to their water dependence.

For example,

On October 1st a long-standing ban on the commercial development of oil shale on federal lands expired. That means America is now on the edge of an abyss, about to take the plunge into an endless fossil future. The steady march toward this awful future of extended oil addiction is a fact hidden in plain view.

It is a march being aided and abetted by half a billion dollars of oil and coal lobby money, by the recent votes of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and by a media more lap dog than watchdog. Though unintended, even all the campaign talk about a clean energy economy is serving to obscure this clear and present danger.

Oil shale is one of the dirtiest fossil fuels known to man. Its extraction releases two to five times more greenhouse gases than conventional crude oil, and uses vast amounts of water. In Western lands where oil shale deposits are abundant, water is already in scarce supply.

America's energy and climate future will be determined by what the nation decides to do with its deposits of oil shale. There are as much as 1.8 trillion barrels of oil locked up in shale deposits in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. There's more oil in the shale than there ever was in Saudi Arabia. It's value? More than half a trillion dollars over a 25-year period. It's the most important energy issue there is, and almost no one is talking about it.

Here's what you have to do to extract oil shale. Oil workers start by constructing a five foot thick wall around a 1000-foot square foot cube of the Earth. They drill deep holes into the cube at 25 foot intervals and insert massive electric heating coils. The coils are turned on and left on continuously for two or more years at 650 degrees F. Finally, the oil slides out of the shale. You've heard of electric cars? This is electric oil.

If oil shale gets developed, the nation and the globe will be sent on a path to an endless fossil future and a steep acceleration of global warming pollution. Forget clean energy. It will be lights out, game over.