This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Water Roulette: Wash, Rinse, Repeat
Courtesy of Russ Winter of Winter Watch at Wall Street Examiner
This is Part II of a three part series at Actionables on finite resources.
Good quality water sources in the right locations are the key to basic civilization, let alone even minimal economic growth. Like hydrocarbons, water is now the weak link to the maintenance of 7 billion people on the planet. Once abundant aquifers worldwide are being rapidly depleted, and resolving this is expensive and requires growth controls and sacrifice. Growth at any price strategies such as used in China completely fracture in this kind of environment. There is plenty to write on this topic but I will warm up with a little on two trainwrecks: North China and the American Southwest.
China has 2220 cubic feet of usable water per capita, which is one fourth the world average. They use 2/3 of water consumption for crops and livestock. The North China Plain (home of 42% of China’s population) has seen massive water table drop on the order of 120 billion cubic feet since 1970 [Water Shortage Looms]. There are now 700,000 powered wells. This year weather conspired to bring about a perfect storm, a severe drought in the south on the Yangtze River, the most important watershed in China supporting 400 million people [China Faces Worst Drought in 50 years]. In the last few weeks reports are popping up of large scale drinking water shortages. Central and Southwest China are being blasted by continual heat waves. Here is what grain production looks like when a major aquifer id depleted.
Located in the north, Beijing suffers from water shortages [Bejing Suffers from Severe Water Shortages]. It sits on a plain without large rivers and receives little rain fall. The water supplied by reservoirs isn’t enough to meet demand and much of that is diverted to irrigate farmland and provide water for factories. After another year of drought, Beijing Water Authority revealed that the city’s per capita water resources has declined to 100 cubic meters, far lower than the international warning line for water shortage — 1,000 cubic meters. Incredibly the plutocrats and goons that run the country respond (like the Romans) by putting on luxurious snow entertainment performances. Government has tried expensive engineering projects such as canal diversion of water from the south, but now admits that will fall far short. Only recently have they even bother with wide scale well monitoring.
Think the US is much better? The handwriting is on the wall although for the winter 2010-2011 Lake Mead dodged the serious bullet because of decent mountain snow run off and water from Lake Powell which is now down to 57% full versus 43% for Mead. The Lake Mead roulette wheel can be tracked here. The last time the lake reached low drought levels was 1965 when ten million people depended on this water source versus 28 million now. As Lake Mead’s level drops, Hoover Dam’s capacity to generate electricity, which, like the Colorado River water, is sent around the Southwest, diminishes. If Lake Mead levels fall to 1,050 feet, it may be impossible to use the dam’s turbines, and the flow of electricity could cease. The American Southwest is one dry winter away ( La Nina) from an epic water crisis.
Yes, there is water desalination, and that is being developed in Australia and the Middle East. This process is very expensive and requires large energy inputs.
Lake Mead 1985 and 2011
Natural gas fracking is often touted as the answer to US energy. The Texas Water Development Board estimates the total amount of water used for fracking statewide in 2010 was 13.5 billion gallons. That’s likely to more than double by 2020, wash, rinse, repeat.
This post is reprinted from Russ's premium service, Russ Winter's Actionable. Click here for information.
»
- ilene's blog
- 6919 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Water also prevails in a live view screen condition near hydrophilic materials.Under nomenclature used to name substances, Dihydrogen monoxide is the technological name for water,Water Testing though it is almost never used.Water protects 70.9% of the Global exterior,and is important for all known types of life
Wholesale Clap Hands Wholesale USB Products
Wholesale Cup
Wholesale Banner
Arts Crafts Promotional Items
Safety Products
Wholesale Apron
Name Card Holder Wholesale Scissors
Wholesale Knife
Wholesale Lanyard
Hair Products Automotive Products
Wholesale Glove
Wholesale Wallet
Wholesale First Aid Kit Wholesale Scarf
Wholesale Lanyard
Wholesale Glass
Wholesale Whistle Wholesale Scale
Wholesale Pen
Wholesale Clothes Rack
Tape Measure Wholesale Sticker
Wholesale Halloween Gift
Wholesale Lighter
Wholesale Mobile Phone Consumer Electronics
Wholesale Raincoat
Men Beauty Care
Pet Supplies Wholesale Bedding
Crystal Gifts
Wholesale Candle
Wholesale Cooler Wholesale Fan
Wholesale Tableware
Personal Safety Products
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WwjyY3F1a4&feature=player_embedded
Nikola Aleksic - english subtitles
.
Alex McMurray "I Am In Hell"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv5D7neh5iM
And how about that FRACKING? Certain to remove even more drinking water from the currently available sources.
The U.S. had a feasible plan submitted back in the early 70's to run a pipeline or aquaduct from
a fresh water sound in Alaska to bring enough water to the western part of the country to
literally enable the U.S. to grow enough food to feed most of the world population. But the
oil industry used its control over the government to get an oil pipeline instead. It is even more
feasible now to build it and would create many new jobs and solve the water shortage problem
for the western half of the country not alone the food shortages the world is now facing.
That sounds like a very good idea. Thx.
Cut income taxes to zero, abrogate common law water rights and auction off every well to the highest bidder.
I'm pretty sure Ayn Rand, Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry would agree that this would usher in heaven on earth. What ZHer would disagree?
Lucky I just bought my Katadyn portable desalinator.
5 years ago I told my friends they were crazy to relocate to Las Vegas, due to oncoming housing bubble and future water shortages. Now they have three houses, two of which are underwater...no contra pun intended.
Have you ken of Libya's huge aquifer of ancient fresh water? A worthy target indeed for plunder by the corporatists.
See: Nubian Sandstone Aquifier System, the WORLDS LARGEST.
Muammar Gaddafi began and financed the Great Man-Made River Project...entirely funded with oil revenues for the benefit of the entire population. See it here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Manmade_River
Repeat after me ---> MAN is BAD, MAN is BAD. We are all doomed, we are all doomed. We need groth controls, we need growth controls.
Whew. I feel better. Gonna go get my whale oil, light up and beat my laundry on some rocks by a creek to clean them.....
Arithmetic Population & Energy
By Dr. Albert A. Bartlett
Professor Emeritus
Department Of Physics
University of Colorado At Boulder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5iFESMAU58
The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See Part 1 of 8
Thanks for the videos/inks, JW.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClqUcScwnn8
David Rockefeller gives a speech about over population. In this video, you will hear and see him discussing how the U.N. should sustain the population.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYuLjGQQ-jg
Jeff Rubin, the former Chief Economist of CIBC World Markets and the author of Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller built his reputation as one of Canada's top economists based on a number of successful predictions including the housing bust of the early 90s and the rise of oil prices. In his recent book, Mr. Rubin predicts $225 per barrel oil by 2012 and with it the end of globalization, a movement towards local sourcing and a need for massive scaling up of energy efficiency.
Where fresh water is concerned one need only look to the Golan Heights for a long-simmering flashpoint.
Desalination in Florida: Technology, Implementation, and ...
www.dep.state.fl.us/water/docs/desalination-in-florida-report.pdfSimilar File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
Desalination in Florida: A Brief Review of the Technology, ... alternative water supplies and specifically desalination in Florida. It is an ...
Saudi Arabia and Desalination — Becoming Green as the Flag ...
hir.harvard.edu/pressing-change/saudi-arabia-and-desalination-0 - Cached Dec 23, 2010 – The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which already produces 24 million cubic meters of water per day from desalination, about half the world's total ...
1. Introduction
All modern agricultural systems are dependent on continual inputs of phosphate fertilizers derived from phosphate rock. Yet this is relying on a finite resource and current reserves could be depleted this century. More concerning is that before that point is reached, we will see a global peak in phosphate rock reserves, estimated to occur in the next 30 years.
As highlighted by Hubbert first in 1949 (Hubbert, 1949), production of oil resources will eventually reach a maximum rate or ‘peak’ based on the finite nature of non-renewable resources, after which production will decline. Hubbert and later others contest that the important period is not when 100% of the resource is depleted, but rather when it reaches a production maximum, which occurs when 50% of the resource is still in the ground. After this point, production decreases, placing upward pressure on prices and increasing international tensions (Campbell, 1997). While the exact timing may be disputed, it is clear that already the quality of remaining phosphate rock reserves is decreasing and cheap fertilizers will be a thing of the past. Like oil in the 1970’s, phosphate rock is experiencing it’s first significant price shock – a 700% increase from US$50/tonne to US$350/tonne in just 14 months (Lewis, 2008).
Yet there are no alternatives to phosphate rock currently on the market that could replace it at any significant scale. While various small-scale trials are being undertaken, commercialization and implementation on a global scale could take decades to develop.
http://phosphorusfutures.net/peak-phosphorus
Sorry but this is a red herring. If the price of P becomes too high, folks will return to bone meal. Companies like Miracle Gro will need to change their formulations or lose consumers. Commercial growers will adapt because P is in no short supply in regular old soil.
Barnaby,
Your flippant reply made me feel much worse than the article itself. Annual P production approx. 160 million metric tonnes. Bone meal approx. 39% of slaughterhouse waste. Meaning we`d need approx. 410 million metric tonnes of slaughterhouse waste to offset the loss of P production(if bonemeal is as effective per unit mass as P). You are doing your intellectual opponent a favour by being a smartass who doesn`t actually take 5 minutes to look into their counter-argument.
Do your own research. Study the phosphorus consumption chain. Note the two major industries at the top that consume more than two-thirds of your (unknown cite) 160mm tonne figure. They are military and alternative energy. Personally, I'm not long on the current military spending levels, so I'm betting their consumption is going to continue to taper off. And anybody with half a brain knows turning fuel into maize into fuel again is simply not sustainable. So P will appear to peak whilst the New Energy Economy goes through paroxysms of stupidity.
As a commercial grower and farmer, I understand the role phosphorus plays in the chain of vegetative growth. Further, real farmers I know who've worked for 50+ years at a stretch know P is not needed when your land is healthy. In an alluvial growing region the river carries our nutrients to us and we are blessed with deep, strong roots.
Remove or curtail the two burdens mentioned above and industry could make up for shortfalls with nothing more intricate than humble kitty cremains. (I've done the math.)
http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/phosphate_rock.html
meanwhile various plans are in place for the annexation of Canada should they make unwise choices on sharing of our common North American resources
Clean, easily assessable water aka one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms is the next gold of second half of this century.
there are two ways to analyze the problem; similarly to the "un-employment problem; in both cases the difficulty is the ratio of human meat to jobs, or water. the problem is over-population. Hopefully nature will come up with something that kills off more than half the global human over-breeding result. This is extremely obvious, but it's not politically correct, therefore it becomes "invisible".
"the problem is over-population."
Good I am the last one in my family tree. One "useless eater" less. I am making more room "lebensraum" for the Chinese!
PS IQ 145. The problem is not, that there is too many people on this Planet. The problem is there is too many stupid and irresponsible people! Besides the fractional reserves systems, requires new souls to support itself. The less intelligent the better. Just keep on taking more loans from student loans to mortgage loans until you drop dead!
Btw. What does Libya have besides 41.5 billion barrels of oil in large amounts? H2O!
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=libya+water&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1246l2807l0l2898l6l4l0l0l0l0l320l855l0.3.0.1l4l0&biw=1280&bih=877&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi
answer; five times as many human beings as they have any use for, or who could usefully self-support themselves in Libya; plus, of course relentless immigration pressure from the rest of the continent which is so over-populated as to be a sick joke of a comment on "human intelligence".
China taking the water from the US Great Lakes...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIQ-HuCOfS4
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K2T1UemfpeE/TSbzAgyvi3I/AAAAAAAAAQU/Lyee_dm2ntk/s640/Bladders+968