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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS Water is life. Water depletion is . . . ?
“As the planet gets hotter and its reservoirs shrink and its glaciers melt, people have increasingly drilled into a largely ungoverned, invisible cache of fresh water — the vast, hidden pools found deep underground. Now, a new study that examines the world’s total supply of fresh water warns that Earth’s most essential resource is quickly disappearing, signaling what the paper’s authors describe as ‘a critical, emerging threat to humanity’. “The landmasses of the planet are drying. Earth is being slowly dehydrated by the unmitigated mining of groundwater. A net decline in water supply portends enormous challenges for food production and a heightening risk of conflict and instability. “The research confirms not just that droughts and precipitation are growing more extreme but reports that drying regions are fast expanding. It also found that while parts of the planet are getting wetter, those areas are shrinking. “The loss of water on the continents has grown so dramatically that it has become one of the largest causes of global sea level rise. Moisture lost to evaporation and drought, plus runoff from pumped groundwater, now outpaces the melting of glaciers and the ice sheets of either Antarctica or Greenland as the largest contributor of water to the oceans.” More at: Storms dumping extreme rain on smaller and smaller areas
“On July 4, a powerful tropical storm wobbled and its clouds tipped, waterboarding south central Texas with an extraordinary 20 inches of rain. The Guadalupe River rose by more than 26 vertical feet in just 45 minutes. “Climate change doesn’t chart a linear path. We’re now in an age of discontinuity, with heat one day and hail the next and with more dramatic extremes. Across the planet, dry places are getting drier while wet places are getting wetter. “Meanwhile the heat is sucking moisture from the drought-plagued plains of Kansas only to dump it over Spain, contributing to last year’s cataclysmic floods. Warmer oceans evaporate faster, and warmer air holds more water, transporting it in the form of humidity across the atmosphere, until it can’t hold it any longer and it falls. “There is no longer much debate that climate change is making many of these events demonstrably worse. Given the abandonment of policy that might forestall more severe events, in an era of what researchers are calling ‘mega rain’ events, a flood plain should now be off-limits.” More at: Agricultural nitrate levels in rivers a health concern
“For nearly a month, hundreds of thousands of Iowans have not been allowed to water their lawns — even though there’s no drought. Rather, the water in and around Des Moines contains too much nitrate, a natural component of soil and a byproduct of commercial fertilizer and livestock manure. Persistent rainfall has flushed nutrients out of fertilized fields into streams and rivers. “While Iowa’s problems are uniquely severe, nitrate levels are a rising concern in other regions. And climate change is expected to worsen the problem as more intense cycles of drought and severe storms increase farm runoff. Iowa’s concentration of fertilized row crops and massive livestock confinements have caused concerns over increased nitrate levels for years. “Researchers found that central Iowa rivers have some of the nation’s highest nitrate levels, routinely exceeding the federal drinking water standard. Water restrictions may become more common as more cities confront high nitrate levels.” More at: Hyperscale data center impacts: water, electricity, health, ecology
“The developer behind the $14.5 billion, 4.5 million square foot data center project in Alabama has suggested residents’ concerns are based on misinformation. So far, officials in the city of 25,000 have shown little interest in publicly digging into the details of a project that would require the clearcutting of more than 100 acres of land, threaten endangered species and lead to large increases in water and electricity usage. “To find the facts, Inside Climate News interviewed the developer’s representative, public officials and residents. “Warrior River Water Authority, a local utility, said that the developer requested a supply of 2 million gallons per day, an amount the utility said it would not be able to provide without ‘significant upgrades’ to the water distribution system. That would amount to a third of the utility’s water supply capacity. “The proposed data center campus would consume around 1,200 megawatts of energy. That’s more than 90 times the amount of energy used by all residences in Bessemer, and would amount to a 10% rise in Alabama Power’s total electricity demand statewide. “Estimates suggest that the proposed Bessemer data center campus would need between 300 and 500 diesel generators to provide a reliable backup source of electricity for the facility. The testing of the generators for three hours per day would produce a significant amount of emission that can likely to be carcinogenic to humans. “Multiple experts interviewed by Inside Climate News have said the project will have significant, potentially irreversible [environmental] impacts, including putting an already imperiled, newly identified species of fish — the Birmingham darter — at risk of extinction.” More at: Barbara Damrosch — on growing your own food
“On a sunny day in late April, Barbara Damrosch, 83, stepped into boots and out the back door into the stone courtyard of her home in Brooksville, Maine. She pointed out hardy perennials — thick green lances of sorrel and stalks of celery-like lovage. “Damrosch has been gardening for close to eight decades and has established a career as one of America’s foremost writers about gardening. For her, gardening is inclusive of a wholistic approach to life. “The urge to take control of our food supply is a sane one in times of insecurity, especially if we can do it in our own backyards. Damrosch married fellow author and farmer Eliot Coleman in 1991, and the two began collaborating in their Four Season Farm, as well as on the page — similar to another iconic gardener-author duo, Helen and Scott Nearing, whose Living the Good Life is credited with launching the back-to-the-land movement. “On the political side, gardening is a way of controlling your life — of getting our own food supply. For a lot of people it could be an economic necessity or improvement. It’s hard for some people to find time, but just grow some of your favorite crops. “What it will take to create a more consistent culture of gardening, in one answer, I would say education. We need to teach children to garden when they’re young. And we used to, long ago. But the ideal city would have a space that any school could use, even if it’s just a small plot.” More at: Trump, utilities, local permits, squelching rooftop solar
“A New York state solar developer, EmPower Solar, told me a woeful tale a lot like others I’d been hearing lately. A customer tried to put solar panels on top of her home, but the first permit application to the city went back and forth with them for months. Eventually, after some negotiation, the building department staff worked on the permit for the solar panels. But not, unfortunately, the permit for the electric wiring that goes with it. Before that step could happen, Pam’s loan agreement expired. “This tale was absurd enough on its own. But in many countries, people don’t have [such red tape]. A million and a half Germans have installed ‘balcony solar’ — they simply went to the big-box store, bought a giant panel for a few hundred euros, and hung it from their apartment railing. In Australia, permits can be had in a single day using a smartphone app. “But not in America, where the Donald is pulling out all the stops to destroy renewable power. The stock price of Sunrun, the country’s biggest residential solar provider, fell 40%. PV Magazine, the industry trade journal, headlined its story ‘U.S. Residential Solar on the Brink of Collapse’. “So giving in to Trump’s attack is not an option. Instead, we need to figure out how to keep rooftop solar growing even without the federal tax credits. Doing that will require, among other things, unclogging the peculiarly American system of local permitting. “Once the panels are on the roof, utilities often drag their feet in connecting them to the grid. There’s enough wasted space up above our heads to supply a significant portion of the nation’s energy needs. One study found that we could generate 45% of our electricity this way; at the moment, we only harvest about 2%. “Often, that rooftop array supplies power to the grid and, increasingly, it also fills batteries in the basement, which not only can power the house at night or charge an EV, but also make that house far more adaptable in times of crisis.” More at: Big Renewables favored mainly to maximize profits
“Is land just another commodity which can and should be exploited in the interests of human ‘progress’? Is energy another such commodity as well? Industrialized cultures don’t put it like that, of course. They talk about ‘natural resources’, ‘environmental economics’, and ‘Green New Deals’. “The 2019 US Congress House Resolution 109, recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal, says that such goals should be accomplished. The War Below and The Price Is Wrong are two very different books which canvass why it ain’t going to happen, from two very different but complementary perspectives. “Ernest Scheyder, the author of The War Below, offers a very readable account of his visits to current and proposed mining sites (mostly in the USA) where the minerals used to make new energy technologies (such as lithium ion batteries for electric cars) are located. In these places he talks to everyone, whether they are for it as a good business proposition, or against it because of the damage to land, water, air, and to Earth Mother as a whole. “Anyone who thinks that a transition to 100% clean energy could be swift, simple and not socially and environmentally problematic needs to read this book for a reality check. All the existing ‘clean’ and ‘renewable’ energy technologies rely on the mining of finite mineral resources. That mining, and the transportation and processing of the minerals, currently requires large amounts of mainly fossil fuel energy. “Once the solar panels or wind turbines are installed, however, the energy use emissions drop to almost zero. So — clean energy problem solved? Not so fast. This is where it is also important to read Brett Christophers’ work, The Price Is Wrong on the way in which electricity markets in most countries are currently optimized to favor high returns to investors, regardless of the consequences to life on Earth.” More at: Fossil fuel growth — layered over top of renewables
“The end of June is when the Energy Institute publishes its annual Statistical Review of World Energy. In the case of the EI energy data, I have to confess I’ve found my excitement diminishing. The main reason is because the figures tell the same darned story year after year. “Despite endless talk about the purported ‘transition’ out of fossil fuels into low-carbon forms of energy, this resolutely fails to happen. Last year was no exception — the new data show that more oil, more natural gas and more coal were burned globally in 2024 than ever before in human history. Seriously, we need to stop talking about this mythical ‘transition’. “True, there was a big proportionate increase in solar and wind — up 2.4 exajoules from 14.4 to 16.8 exajoules globally. But in absolute terms, fossil fuel use increased more — up 7.6 exajoules from 505.1 to 512.7 exajoules globally. “To reduce fossil fuel use to zero by 2050, we’d have to swap out nearly 20 exajoules of fossil fuel each and every year between now and then — more than the entire global consumption of solar and wind energy. This just isn’t going to happen — and it’s not because fossil energy companies are disgracefully dragging their feet.” More at: Gilded oligarchs planned a comeback — Project 2025
“”We know how the first Gilded Age in America came to an end. The first blow came as a serious and successful effort to break up trusts which were strangling the life out of ordinary citizens. But there was another effect of trust-busting. It fractured political power of the super rich. “The final blows to the remnants of the Gilded Age came in the Great Depression when the very legitimacy of capitalism came into doubt. In addition, vast public works projects financed by higher progressive taxes increased the effective income and well-being of the lower classes. “Since 1975 some $50 trillion in income has been transferred from the bottom 90 percent of Americans to the top 1 percent. No wonder there is discontent among the electorate. Monopolies always end up exerting undue influence on government policy. And, they always make up for the low prices they charge after their predatory pricing finally eliminates the competition. “So what will bring about the end of the current Gilded Age? It is hard to imagine today the eruption of a vast social revolution such as that which transformed America in the 1930s, even in the face deep economic hardship. Other countries, namely Germany and Italy, chose fascism as a solution for governing back then. “From our perspective the first Gilded Age had a somewhat happy ending which resulted in broad improvements in the lives average Americans. But, right now I’m having a hard time imagining a happy ending for anyone living through America’s seconded Gilded Age.” More at: | 
