Skip to main content

Clay Burell's Library tagged water →  View Popular

12 Jul 09

Water scarcity 'now bigger threat than financial crisis' - Climate Change, Environment - The Independent

  • Humanity is facing "water bankruptcy" as a result of a crisis even greater than the financial meltdown now destabilising the global economy, two authoritative new reports show. They add that it is already beginning to take effect, and there will be no way of bailing the earth out of water scarcity.
  • half the world's population will be affected by water shortages in just 20 years' time, with millions dying and increasing conflicts over dwindling resources.
  • 9 more annotations...

Health, food and water | Greenpeace International

  • Disappearing
    glaciers, increasing droughts and salt-water intrusion will greatly
    worsen our world's current fresh water shortage. The IPCC estimates 3
    billion or more additional people will be at risk of water shortage due
    to climate change.  The Stockholm Environment Institute estimates
    that, using only a moderate projection of climate change, 63 percent of
    the global population will live in countries of significant water
    stress by 2025. 

Climate change, water shortages conspire to create 21st century Dust Bowl - NYTimes.com

  • Other options, including those aimed more directly at water supply, are to seed clouds with the hopes of increasing snow volumes in the high-elevation mountains. Local governments and power companies spend tens of millions of dollars a year on such seeding projects that have been shown to increase snowpack.


    But, experts say, such efforts are increasingly undermined by dust and soot accumulations that increase the melt rate of snowpacks, regardless of their depth.


    And the problems will persist as long as the Western climate continues to warm, perhaps by as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 90 years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.


    If such conditions persist, Painter said this year's dust storm intensity and early snowmelt could become the norm across the region.


    Belnap, the USGS research ecologist, said focused attention could help reverse the trend, but it will take more effort on the part of government and landowners.


    "We do not manage for dust. We don't even think about it," she said. "I think the time is coming where we are going to have to decide we need to think about dust."

1 - 5 of 5
Showing 20▼ items per page

Selected Tags

Related Tags

Highlighter, Sticky notes, Tagging, Groups and Network: integrated suite dramatically boosting research productivity. Learn more »

Join Diigo