planetwater

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Archive for July, 2007

Glaciers in Retreat – NYT Article

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Glaciers provide an excellent example for how climate change and water supply are intricately linked. Regions, such as large parts of India, that rely on glaciers for their drinking water and for irrigation are facing a tough challenge.

Studying Indian glaciers offers a snapshot of the consequences of global warming for India and raises vital questions about how the country will respond to them. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) predicted that as these glaciers melt, they would increase the likelihood of flooding over the next three decades and then, as they recede, dry up the rivers that they feed. “In the course of the century,” it warned darkly, “water supply stored in glaciers and snow cover are projected to decline, reducing water availability in regions supplied by meltwater from major mountain ranges, where more than one-sixth of the world population currently lives.”

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Written by Patrick

July 17th, 2007 at 6:59 am

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Bottled Water even more popular than beer?

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Those eight daily glasses of water you’re supposed to drink for good health? They will cost you $0.00135 — about 49 cents a year — if you take it from a New York City tap. Or, city officials suggest, you could spend 2,900 times as much, roughly $1,400 yearly, by drinking bottled water.

I do feel like saying: “Told you so!”

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Written by Patrick

July 17th, 2007 at 6:51 am

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Recent Rantings on Bottled Water, Climate Change

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This article by Nigel Cox summarizes everything that is wrong with bottled water. On the one hand it turns into a branded status symbol – what kind of a society accepts it to FedEx a case of a certain brand of bottled water across a continent? On the other hand more and more people lack access to drinking water.

And in Fiji, a state-of-the-art factory spins out more than a million bottles a day of the hippest bottled water on the U.S. market today, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have safe, reliable drinking water. Which means it is easier for the typical American in Beverly Hills or Baltimore to get a drink of safe, pure, refreshing Fiji water than it is for most people in Fiji.

At the Peninsula hotel in Beverly Hills, where the rooms start at $500 a night and the guest next door might well be an Oscar winner, the minibar in all 196 rooms contains six bottles of Fiji Water. Before Fiji Water displaced Evian, Diet Coke was the number-one-selling minibar item. Now, says Christian Boyens, the Peninsula’s elegant director of food and beverage, “the 1 liter of Fiji Water is number one. Diet Coke is number two. And the 500-milliliter bottle of Fiji is number three.”

Some people still discuss if global warming is happening. Other people reckognize that something in fact is happening (this sometimes results in headlines as “2007 seen as second warmest year as climate shifts“) and maybe discuss how to minimize detrimental effects. Some look at the soil and how it is farmed, and come to at least interesting conclusions. Still other people think how this could be advantageous. It could be quite advantageous for professionals trained in water!

And still other people blame the gay.

On the topic of climate change, the protocol from the recent G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, is an interesting read, especially paragraphs 40 to 61.

Written by Claus

July 4th, 2007 at 1:13 pm

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