February 22, 2007 11:39 AM PST
Global warming could make faucets run dry, expert says
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The rising temperature of Earth is causing water sources such as glaciers and lakes to rapidly retreat, according to, among others, Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and one of the leading scientific figures trying to get more research funding for alternative energy.
Steven Chu
The effects of declining water supplies will be noticeable and harsh, according to Chu, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997. Some effects can already be seen, he said.
"The Yellow River is now running dry in summertime," Chu said during a speech at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco this week.
The Yellow River is fed by glacier and snowmelt from the Himalayas, which is declining. A huge portion of the world's population gets water from the Himalayas, so this is not a good sign for other areas as well.
In the United States, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California and Nevada is expected to decline by 30 percent to 70 percent by 2100, he said.
If it declines by 20 percent, people will be told to stop watering their lawns or flushing toilets often. A decline of about 50 percent or greater could rewrite the demographics of California. And a massive decline in the snowpack could cause a collapse of the agriculture industry, prompting a migration out of the state, Chu said.
Snow may actually increase in some mountain ranges and parts of the world. Many expect that dry regions will become drier, while wet regions will become rainier. Warming, however, will prevent this extra rain and snow from getting stored in mountains, he said. Thus, a lot of it will run off before it can be used.
"(Water) is probably the first thing that will hit home," he said. "The water storage problem is becoming a mess."
Several start-ups and established companies like General Electric have begun to increase their investments in systems that can purify seawater or wastewater for human consumption.
"The water issue is going to get much more prominence," predicted Nicholas Parker, chairman of the Cleantech Venture Network.
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to get more funding from the government. I don't believe a word of
it. Please stop trying to scare us , will you? I know my plea will fall
on deaf ears...
insignificant. The data shows that our contribution to GHG is
0.28%
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
This is all Bull***t..
Anything to advance the fud.
...does someone up at Scaremonger Central care to explain that one?
/P
The models used to support it are nothing more than academic toys.
The data used to support it is riddled with assumptions making it meaningless and heavily slanted to prop up the theories.
It is mathematically impossible to predict the climate with any meaningful margin of error.
They can't even predict the behavior of the primary input; THE SUN.
They simply refuse to admit that solar variability
is an utterly unpredictable variable.
This is the only fact needed to blow all their models out of the water.
Personally, I think it's all three.
Quote: "The mountain behind my grandma house was always
white on top, and it was this way for all the time."
I'm currently living in northern Japan.
This year has been a very mild winter.
Last year though . . .
Akita City had the most snow fall ever recorded in a single
winter.
Those are weather patterns - they change yearly.
Regarding climate . . .
Climate change ALWAYS happens.
Climate is not a constant or yearly thing.
The changes take many decades, even centuries.
The fact that things look different from "pietrodelai's"
grandma's time?
Well, how did they look in HER grandma's time?
Or the grandma before HER?
Can all these changes be attributed to the automobile?
The human use of fossil fuels?
Over thousands and millions of years?
Do you know how the Great Lakes bordering Canada & the U.S.
were formed?
They used to be glaciers!
Huge chunks of ice that dug huge gaping holes onto the earth -
then they melted because of "Global Warming".
Did humans cause the Great Lakes by emiting green house
gasses?
In the main article this guy - Steven Chu - said . . .
Quote: "In the United States, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada
mountains in California and Nevada is expected to decline by 30
percent to 70 percent by 2100, he said."
Really?
Does he have any actual scientific data to back up that
assersion?
30 to 70 percent is a pretty wide margin, so, if he did have any
data, it can't be very acurate.
I don't think this guy can "accurately" predict what the "climate"
will be like 100 years from now any better than the weather
experts can "accurately" tell me what the weather will be like -
anywhere in the world - next weekend (It's Saturday here now) -
let alone 3 days from now.
Or when or where exactly the next tornado will hit.
Or where a hurricane will hit just a couple of hours before it
makes landfall - even though they've been tracking it for days.
Or even what will be a good or bad hurricane season . . . every
prediction I have ever heard about a hurricane season has been
wrong.
As has been mentioned by other posters . . .
* 30 years ago it was the "Coming Ice Age" . . .
(We should all be living in igloos right this moment)
Not mentioned by other posters . . .
* Almost 40 years ago (1968) it was "The Population Bomb" . . .
(100,000,000 starving to death yearly starting in the mid 70's)
* About 20 years ago (mid 1980's) "The Hole In the Ozone". . .
(Right now <2007> it should be impossible for anyone to go
outside without a protective suit)
* 1990's to now and then on to the future "Global Warming". . .
Does anyone else see a pattern here?
And people ask - "How can you doubt the (so called) experts?"
(or the media)
I ask - "How can you not?"
Go figure hes trying to get more research dollars.........
Go figure hes trying to get more research dollars.........
Is it the policy statements of the world's scientific bodies?
I know it's not. So those are rhetorical questions.
Heck, even current administration policy isn't your source.
(They've recently claimed to agree that CO2 is a significant
factor in warming the earth.)
Is it James Inhofe?
Maybe. That guy's a die-hard fanatic.
But I don't get it. You're so adamant, but unwilling to REALLY
educate yourself by actually using refereed sources.
Lock yourself in your garage and run your car - That is the equivalent of what we're doing to ourselves!
Morons!
Absolute Morons!
controlled experiment with atmosphere, and that's impossible.
2. Obsevations don't happen in a vaccuum, true. But you greatly
underestimate how transparent the process of inference is. Data
ARE published. That lets everyone evaluate whether the
speculative conclusions in the paper actually fall out from the
data. Agendas become immediately obvious. Replication,
converging evidence, independence, and redundancy prevent
poorly supported conclusions from gaining traction.
3. The notion that the multitudes of researchers around the
globe regularly pumping out data consistent with global
warming via CO2 are simply seeking funding is...
illogical, insulting, and baseless.
You apparently don't understand that funding is allocated not
based on the character of the expected results but on the import
of the results, regardless of the outcome. People woud never be
funded to try to demonstrate global warming; they would be
funded to examine to what degree certain factors do or do not
change the climate.
4. No one is running from the solar radiation data. Instead,
they're being responsible adults and carefully evaluating it. The
recent IPCC statement, among others, suggests that radiation is
a factor but not as impactful as CO2.
- explain how thats
-
by cobydark
February 23, 2007 3:30 PM PST
- With glaciers melting it means more water not less water. Glaciers are made up of what? Water, whos with me. I think we have more chance of water poisoning,(aka:Drowning), then running out.
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See all 217 Comments >>Anyone who has actouly read a book would Know that the world is just covered in water. Unless we are sending the water to outerspace. You think We would of got the memo. Last time the glaicers melted. We where just swimming in water. What people fail to relize is that, the earth has been destroying things for ever so long. Brobably has expierened I dont know one or 2 ice age's and global warming. Actouly if it haddnt been for the global warming we would be.......Not around to think about.