Ponce
27th February 2013, 09:51 AM
This is only a very short posting of a very (and good) article.....so that.....the next war will be over water and not oil.
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Water scarcity is, of course, not just a domestic issue. It is far more critical in other parts of the world than in the US. It will decide the fate of people and of nations.
Worldwide, we are using potable water way faster than it can be replaced. Just a few examples:
The Aral Sea was once the fourth-largest freshwater lake in the world; today, it has shrunk to 10% of its former size and is on track to disappear entirely by 2020. Watching what has happened just since the turn of the century is stunning.
The legendary Jordan River is flowing at only 2% of its historic rate.
In Africa, desertification is proceeding at an alarming rate. Much of the northern part of the continent is already desert, of course. But beyond that, a US Department of Agriculture study places about 2.5 million km2 of African land at low risk of desertification, 3.6 million km2 at moderate risk, 4.6 million km2 at high risk, and 2.9 million km2 at very high risk. "The region that has the highest propensity," the report says, "is located along the desert margins and occupies about 5% of the land mass. It is estimated that about 22 million people (2.9% of the total population) live in this area."
A 2009 study published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate analyzed 925 major rivers from 1948 to 2004 and found an overall decline in total discharge. The reduction in inflow to the Pacific Ocean alone was about equal to shutting off the Mississippi River. The list of rivers that serve large human populations and experienced a significant decline in flow includes the Amazon, Congo, Chang Jiang (Yangtze), Mekong, Ganges, Irrawaddy, Amur, Mackenzie, Xijiang, Columbia, and Niger.
Supply is not the only issue. There's also potability. Right now, 40% of the global population has little to no access to clean water, and despite somewhat tepid modernization efforts, that figure is actually expected to jump to 50% by 2025. When there's no clean water, people will drink dirty water – water contaminated with human and animal waste. And that breeds illness. It's estimated that fully half of the world's hospital beds today are occupied by people with water-borne diseases.
Food production is also a major contributor to water pollution. To take two examples:
The "green revolution" has proven to have an almost magical ability to provide food for an ever-increasing global population, but at a cost. Industrial cultivation is extremely water intensive, with 80% of most US states' water usage going to agriculture – and in some, it's as high as 90%. In addition, factory farming uses copious amounts of fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides, creating serious problems for the water supply because of toxic runoff.
Modern livestock facilities – known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) – create enormous quantities of animal waste that is pumped into holding ponds. From there, some of it inevitably seeps into the groundwater, and the rest eventually has to be dumped somewhere. Safe disposal practices are often not followed, and regulatory oversight is lax. As a result, adjacent communities' drinking water can come to contain dangerously high levels of E. coli bacteria and other harmful organisms.
http://www.caseyresearch.com/articles/coming-water-wars
=============================================
Water scarcity is, of course, not just a domestic issue. It is far more critical in other parts of the world than in the US. It will decide the fate of people and of nations.
Worldwide, we are using potable water way faster than it can be replaced. Just a few examples:
The Aral Sea was once the fourth-largest freshwater lake in the world; today, it has shrunk to 10% of its former size and is on track to disappear entirely by 2020. Watching what has happened just since the turn of the century is stunning.
The legendary Jordan River is flowing at only 2% of its historic rate.
In Africa, desertification is proceeding at an alarming rate. Much of the northern part of the continent is already desert, of course. But beyond that, a US Department of Agriculture study places about 2.5 million km2 of African land at low risk of desertification, 3.6 million km2 at moderate risk, 4.6 million km2 at high risk, and 2.9 million km2 at very high risk. "The region that has the highest propensity," the report says, "is located along the desert margins and occupies about 5% of the land mass. It is estimated that about 22 million people (2.9% of the total population) live in this area."
A 2009 study published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate analyzed 925 major rivers from 1948 to 2004 and found an overall decline in total discharge. The reduction in inflow to the Pacific Ocean alone was about equal to shutting off the Mississippi River. The list of rivers that serve large human populations and experienced a significant decline in flow includes the Amazon, Congo, Chang Jiang (Yangtze), Mekong, Ganges, Irrawaddy, Amur, Mackenzie, Xijiang, Columbia, and Niger.
Supply is not the only issue. There's also potability. Right now, 40% of the global population has little to no access to clean water, and despite somewhat tepid modernization efforts, that figure is actually expected to jump to 50% by 2025. When there's no clean water, people will drink dirty water – water contaminated with human and animal waste. And that breeds illness. It's estimated that fully half of the world's hospital beds today are occupied by people with water-borne diseases.
Food production is also a major contributor to water pollution. To take two examples:
The "green revolution" has proven to have an almost magical ability to provide food for an ever-increasing global population, but at a cost. Industrial cultivation is extremely water intensive, with 80% of most US states' water usage going to agriculture – and in some, it's as high as 90%. In addition, factory farming uses copious amounts of fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides, creating serious problems for the water supply because of toxic runoff.
Modern livestock facilities – known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) – create enormous quantities of animal waste that is pumped into holding ponds. From there, some of it inevitably seeps into the groundwater, and the rest eventually has to be dumped somewhere. Safe disposal practices are often not followed, and regulatory oversight is lax. As a result, adjacent communities' drinking water can come to contain dangerously high levels of E. coli bacteria and other harmful organisms.
http://www.caseyresearch.com/articles/coming-water-wars