Population // Current TV

Chinese Census shows 1 Billion, and counting...

What does it take to count more than one billion people in China? Six-and-a-half... more

CarolineS
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Analysis: Despite a Drying and Flooding Planet, Cancun Climate Negotiators Anticipate Scant Progress

On November 29 representatives from 190 countries will be in Cancun, Mexico for the 16th Conference of the Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Late last week, following a two-day Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate in Washington, the Obama administration’s chief climate negotiator told reporters not to expect too much.

More than 125,000 demonstrators convened in the streets of Copenhagen last year, hoping their cheers and compelling testimonies would encourage swifter, more comprehensive action from negotiators.“I would describe myself right now as neither an optimist nor a pessimist,” said Todd Stern, the State Department’s special envoy on climate, adding that there won’t be any “enormous leaps forward” in Cancun but “real and concrete steps” can be made.

Exactly what those could be has not come into focus, though Stern and other negotiators also noted that unless something tangible occurs at the Cancun meeting, the credibility of the UN process will weaken. “The process can’t continually stalemate and remain the locus of activity,” Stern said.

A year ago, of course, global anticipation of a diplomatic breakthrough was high enough to attract the American president, the Chinese premier, and over 100 other heads of state to the Copenhagen climate summit. More than 125,000 people from all over the world marched for climate action on a cold and sunny Saturday afternoon. Thousands of journalists and producers filed reports from a crowded media room at the Bella Center, itself so full that security forces limited access.

Yet what was clear in Copenhagen, just as it was plain in the two other international climate conferences I’ve attended — in Barcelona in 2009 and in Tianjin last month — is this: The very same governments that produced a near stalemate on a climate treaty are simultaneously supporting global alliances of powerful energy companies to develop and consume the planet’s remaining reserves of fossil fuels.

Let’s just put it this way. The executives of those companies are perfectly content with the grudging pace of climate negotiations. Nobody else should be. The equatorial regions of east Africa are drying up as fast as the tinderbox hills and water-scarce fields of Australia’s Murray Darling Basin. Both poles are melting along with the glaciers of Greenland and the Himalayas. South Dakota this year experienced floods and hail and fierce storms that formed the most erratic and dangerous weather in its recorded history.

The damage to freshwater supplies is the most personal consequence of climate change around the world. Climate change, in fact, is producing an emergency, except in the front offices of the world’s major fossil fuel companies and the legions of elected and appointed officials they’ve helped to install in public office. And as Circle of Blue reports in its Choke Point: U.S. series this year, and in its other projects, there is no more visible evidence than the effect climate change is having on the planet’s reserves of fresh water. In the U.S., persistent drought on the Colorado Plateau has so significantly lowered water levels in the Colorado River and Lake Mead that Hoover Dam is fast approaching the day when it will no longer produce any power. In Myanmar and Bangladesh, record floods this year displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

The damage to freshwater supplies is the most personal consequence of climate change around the world. It’s true that a number of nations have initiated important industrial programs to lower carbon emissions by fostering the switch to cleaner energy sources. China, for instance, has gained international renown for the speed at which it’s developed an alternative fuels manufacturing and power-generating sector.

It’s not nearly enough, though, to slow the planet’s warming. That’s because the bigger money in the industrialized world involves producing and consuming carbon-emitting coal, oil, and natural gas.

cont.On November 29 representatives from 190 countries will be in Cancun, Mexico for the... more

JanforGore
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1 year ago
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Article: Causes of Growth

population growth reaching 10.7 billion in 2050 and over 18 billion by 2150.

frankpatton
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Bill Gates: Register Every Birth by Cellphone to Ensure Vaccination, Control Population

On the tails of a recent TED conference where Bill Gates stated that vaccines need to... more

rodstradamus
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1 year ago
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Harvard Study: "Half of US Population will be Obese by 2050"

By 2050, 40 per cent of the US population will be obese, according to a new prediction... more

eva2
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1 year ago
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Article: Anglicans: We have to acknowledge and respond to population issues in order to care for life

The Anglican General Synod of Australia recently held its three-yearly meeting, at... more

frankpatton
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1 year ago
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9 comments

Article: What Is True Sustainability?

Every day we hear about topics like sustainable growth and sustainable building, but... more

frankpatton
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1 year ago
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Peak Energy, Climate Change, and the Collapse of Global Civilization

A New Report: Peak Energy, Climate Change, and the Collapse of Global... more

gcchsd
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1 year ago
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1 comment

World Population Growth Infographic

Just how much is the world's population expected to grow over the next 40 years?... more

dryeraser
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1 year ago
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Article: Infallibility and the Population Problem

"I have been asked to speak about what the Catholic Church has been saying and... more

frankpatton
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1 year ago
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Article: Infallibility and the Population Problem

INTRODUCTION I have been asked to speak about what the Catholic Church has been... more

frankpatton
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1 year ago
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Russian bears treat graveyards as 'giant refrigerators'

It is said the bear population is stable with mixed opinion on if they had enough food... more

Mcellie
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1 year ago
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The Colorado River runs dry

From its source high in the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado River channels water south nearly 1,500 miles, over falls, through deserts and canyons, to the lush wetlands of a vast delta in Mexico and into the Gulf of California.

That is, it did so for six million years.

Then, beginning in the 1920s, Western states began divvying up the Colorado’s water, building dams and diverting the flow hundreds of miles, to Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and other fast-growing cities. The river now serves 30 million people in seven U.S. states and Mexico, with 70 percent or more of its water siphoned off to irrigate 3.5 million acres of cropland.

The damming and diverting of the Colorado, the nation’s seventh-longest river, may be seen by some as a triumph of engineering and by others as a crime against nature, but there are ominous new twists. The river has been running especially low for the past decade, as drought has gripped the Southwest. It still tumbles through the Grand Canyon, much to the delight of rafters and other visitors. And boaters still roar across Nevada and Arizona’s Lake Mead, 110 miles long and formed by the Hoover Dam. But at the lake’s edge they can see lines in the rock walls, distinct as bathtub rings, showing the water level far lower than it once was—some 130 feet lower, as it happens, since 2000. Water resource officials say some of the reservoirs fed by the river will never be full again.

Climate change will likely decrease the river’s flow by 5 to 20 percent in the next 40 years, says geoscientist Brad Udall, director of the University of Colorado Western Water Assessment. Less precipitation in the Rocky Mountains will yield less water to begin with. Droughts will last longer. Higher overall air temperatures will mean more water lost to evaporation. “You’re going to see earlier runoff and lower flows later in the year,” so water will be more scarce during the growing season, says Udall.

Other regions—the Mediterranean, southern Africa, parts of South America and Asia—also face fresh-water shortages, perhaps outright crises. In the Andes Mountains of South America, glaciers are melting so quickly that millions of people in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador are expected to lose a major source of fresh water by 2020. In southwestern Australia, which is in the midst of its worst drought in 750 years, fresh water is so scarce the city of Perth is building plants to remove the salt from seawater. More than one billion people around the world now live in water-stressed regions, according to the World Health Organization, a number that is expected to double by 2050, when an estimated nine billion people will inhabit the planet.

“There’s not enough fresh water to handle nine billion people at current consumption levels,” says Patricia Mulroy, a board member of the Colorado-based Water Research Foundation, which promotes the development of safe, affordable drinking water worldwide. People need a “fundamental, cultural attitude change about water supply in the Southwest,” she adds. “It’s not abundant, it’s not reliable, it’s not going to always be there.”

Mulroy is also general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which serves two million people in greater Las Vegas. The city is one of the largest in the Colorado River basin, but its share of the river is relatively small; when officials allocated the Colorado’s water to different states in 1922, no one expected so many people to be living in the Nevada desert. So Nevadans have gotten used to coping with limitations. They can’t water their yards or wash their cars whenever they like; communities follow strict watering schedules. The water authority pays homeowners to replace water-gulping lawns with rocks and drought-tolerant plants. Golf courses adhere to water restrictions. Almost all wastewater is reused or returned to the Colorado River.From its source high in the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado River channels water south... more

JanforGore
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1 year ago
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Low Water May Halt Hoover Dam’s Power

What happens if Lake Mead drops too low to generate electricity at Hoover Dam?

The shutdown of one of the largest electrical power plants in the Southwest will begin with air bubbles on a turbine inside the Hoover Dam. The bubbles form when low water levels in Lake Mead, the reservoir behind the dam, create pressure differentials in the water flowing into the generators. As they move from areas of low pressure to high, the bubbles collapse and explode, scouring the turbine blades. The generating unit will then start to buck and vibrate, the blades will become pocked and pitted, and the whole thing will eventually need to be shuttered, eliminating the power source that supplies 29 million people in the Southwest with a portion of their electricity.

For the last eight weeks, Choke Point: U.S. has explored vivid examples of the collision between rising energy demand and diminishing reserves of fresh water. What clearly appears to be an unavoidable day of reckoning at Hoover Dam is, arguably, the most striking example in the country of the confrontation between the two resources.

A prolonged dry spell, lasting over a decade, is steadily draining the water sources that power Hoover Dam’s giant turbines and has left Lake Mead at only 41 percent full. The lake has dropped 130 feet since 1999 and is now at 1,084 feet, depths not seen since 1956. The Bureau of Reclamation projects it will shrink another two feet by next month, reaching its lowest elevation since the reservoir was filled in the 1930s.

Power generation has declined in tandem. The falling water levels have prompted federal managers to reduce the Hoover Dam’s hydroelectric generating capacity by 33 percent. If drought conditions continue in the Colorado River Basin; if climate change brings the hydrologic strictures predicted; and if water allocations to the basin states aren’t reduced in line with anticipated lower flows, what was once (and for some, still is) unthinkable might happen. There won’t be enough water to power the dam’s generators, thus shutting down the plant and creating energy uncertainty for millions of people in the region.

It is an outcome that would destabilize energy markets in the Southwest, send retail customers that serve millions of residents to the spot market to buy power at up to five times the cost and dissolve the illusion that rivers are infinitely malleable to our own purposes.

Rough Zones

A dam’s electrical output is partly a function of the height of its reservoir. More water equals more pressure, which equals more energy. The total capacity at Hoover is now 1,617 megawatts—a 20 percent decrease from its designed capacity of 2,080 megawatts. Every foot of elevation loss reduces the power potential by 5.7 megawatts.

Experts don’t know what will happen if the water drops below 1,050 feet, which represents the bottom of the efficiency curve for the current turbines, where more water is needed to produce an equivalent amount of electricity. Such low depths increase the rough zones for the turbines—the generating range in which vibration and cavitation threaten to damage the unit. At extremely low lake levels, like the ones Mead is fast approaching, those rough zones — which usually occur in a narrow production band at medium capacity — could expand to fill the entire generating range, making the turbines vulnerable at any speed. But this unprecedented scenario would be a mystery even to the staff of the Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the dam.

“Honestly, we’ve never been that low, so we don’t know what it will look like,” said Hoover Facility Manager Pete DiDonato. “A lot depends on what the rough zones look like as the lake drops. We’re getting into uncharted territory.”

cont.What happens if Lake Mead drops too low to generate electricity at Hoover Dam?... more

JanforGore
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1 year ago
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20 comments

UK gay, lesbian and bisexual population revealed

Almost three-quarters of a million UK adults say they are gay, lesbian or bisexual -... more

CarolineS
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1 year ago
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10 comments

Vertical Farming

By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban... more

heroinandcornflakes
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1 year ago
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Plan Bee And The Billboard Of Bees

A clever use of bees and advertising to highlight the issue over a decline bee... more

Mcellie
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1 year ago
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Genome breakthrough heralds new dawn for agriculture

The decoding of the wheat genome means breeders can take shortcuts when it comes to... more

Mcellie
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1 year ago
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Water Scarcity Facing 1/3 of US Counties

One out of three U.S. counties is facing a greater risk of water shortages by mid-century due to global warming, finds a new report by Tetra Tech for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

For 412 of these counties the risk of water shortages will be "extremely high," according to the report, a 14-fold increase from previous estimates.

In the Great Plains and Southwest United States, water sustainability is at extreme risk finds the report, which is based on publicly available water use data from across the United States.

"This analysis shows climate change will take a serious toll on water supplies throughout the country in the coming decades, with over one out of three U.S. counties facing greater risks of water shortages," said Dan Lashof, director of the Climate Center at NRDC. "Water shortages can strangle economic development and agricultural production and affected communities."

"As a result," he said, "cities and states will bear real and significant costs if Congress fails to take the steps necessary to slow down and reverse the warming trend."

Counties shown in dark red are at greatest risk of water shortage by 2050. (Map courtesy Tetra Tech)

The report, issued Tuesday, finds that 14 states face an extreme or high risk to water sustainability, or are likely to see limitations on water availability as demand exceeds supply by 2050.

These areas include parts of Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Sujoy Roy, principal engineer and lead report author, Tetra Tech, said, "The goal of the analysis is to identify regions where potential stresses, and the need to do something about them, may be the greatest."

"We used publicly available data on current water withdrawals for different sectors of the economy, such as irrigation, cooling for power generation, and municipal supply, and estimated future demands using business-as-usual scenarios of growth," Roy explained.

"We then compared these future withdrawals to a measure of renewable water supply in 2050, based on a set of 16 global climate model projections of temperature and precipitation, to identify regions that may be stressed by water availability," Roy said. "These future stresses are related to changes in precipitation as well as the likelihood of increased demand in some regions."

The report also is based on climate projections from a set of models used in recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change work to evaluate withdrawals related to renewable water supply.

Water withdrawal will grow by 25 percent in many areas of the United States, including the arid Arizona-New Mexico area, the populated areas in the South Atlantic region, Florida, the Mississippi River basin, and Washington, D.C. and surrounding regions, the analysis projects.One out of three U.S. counties is facing a greater risk of water shortages by... more

JanforGore
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1 year ago
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95 comments

David Icke: Elite Moves To Lobotomize, Zombify Global Population into Lifetime of Servitude 1/3

! TheAlexJonesChannel | August 10, 2010 Alex welcomes back to the show former... more

rodstradamus
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1 year ago
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