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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(3)
Plague/Virus:(4)
Climate Chaos:(5)
Resource Depletion: (6)
Biology Breach:(11)
Recovery:(15)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
contamination  ~ alternative energy  ~ climate impacts  ~ toxic buildup  ~ efficiency increase  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ water issues  ~ smart policy  ~ economic myopia  ~ global warming  ~ carbon emissions  



ApocaDocuments (4) matching "water issues" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "water issues"]
Sat, Jun 6, 2009
from Alternet:
California's Water Woes Threaten the Entire Country's Food Supply
...Here are some not-so-fun facts: California's agricultural sector grows approximately one-third of the nation's food supply and is nourished by diverted rivers and streams filled yearly by runoff from its prodigious Sierra Nevada snowpack, as well as groundwater pumping and other less-reliable methods. That snowpack -- which once sparked the first, but not the last, water war that helped transform a semi-arid Los Angeles into an unsustainable oasis less populous than only New York City -- is disappearing fast...To make matters worse, a crushing drought, now well into its third year, has made simply everything problematic. In California's central valley, home to a majority of the state's agricultural output, farmers are leaving hundreds of thousands of acres fallow, and the resultant economic depression is having a domino effect that could cost California $1 billion to start and is causing residents of a one-time food powerhouse to go hungry. ...


"An unsustainable oasis"... sounds like planet Earth to me!

ApocaDoc
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Fri, Jun 5, 2009
from CBC (Canada):
How much fertilizer can a river take?
Every year, some of P.E.I.'s rivers and streams end up starved of the oxygen marine animals need. Huge blooms of sea lettuce grow and then rot, sucking the oxygen out of the water, causing fish and other creatures to die in what's called anoxic conditions. Mike van den Heuvel of the Canadian Rivers Institute at UPEI has been looking at the example of the Wilmot River near Summerside, where the equivalent of several pickup trucks full of fertilizer is going into the water every day. Van den Heuvel, who is being consulted by the government, is one of the scientists trying to find that safe level of nitrates for Island rivers. While that level has not been established, he told CBC News Thursday too much is making its way into some rivers, and if changes aren't made, the consequences could be dire. "Ultimately it could have effects on economically important industries. For example, the mussel farming industry depends on the estuaries," said van den Heuvel. "Also tourism is also a very important industry for P.E.I., and smelly anoxic estuaries are not really a big draw for tourists." ...


This one is just gasping "less, and less, and less..."

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Fri, Jun 5, 2009
from Guardian (UK):
Captured on camera: 50 years of climate change in the Himalayas
But half a century later, American mountain geographer Alton Byers returned to the precise locations of the original pictures and replicated 40 panoramas taken by explorers Müller and Schneider. Placed together, the juxtaposed images are not only visually stunning but also of significant scientific value.... "Only five decades have passed between the old and the new photographs and the changes are dramatic," says Byers. "Many small glaciers at low altitudes have disappeared entirely and many larger ones have lost around half of their volume. Some have formed huge glacial lakes at the foot of the glacier, threatening downstream communities in case of an outburst."... The effects of climate change are dramatically illustrated at the world's "third pole", so-called because the mountain range locks away the highest volume of frozen water after the north and south poles. ...


Good thing global warming has just been a theory over those 50 years.

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Wed, Jun 3, 2009
from University of Minnesota:
U of M Study says Minnesota households flushing 25 percent more pharmaceuticals, household chemicals than 30 years ago
In addition to a 25 percent overall increase in medicines and chemicals in the wastewater, researchers found caffeine in all samples; salicylic acid (the active compound in aspirin) was in 75 percent of samples, ibuprofen in 50 percent and endocrine disruptors -- typically found in birth control pills and hormone replacement products -- in nearly 85 percent. Researchers also found that water use did not vary from season to season, but was affected by the household's age, with younger households using nearly twice the amount of water per person than households with occupants 55 and older. The good news is a 33 percent decrease in the amount of oil and grease flushed down the drain. Concentrations of phosphates were also down —due to phosphate-free detergents and household cleansers—while the amount of nitrogen in household wastewater remained the same. ...


What's that? Hormones are tasty?

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