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Imagine the Louisiana Superdome[1]: filled with water. This takes a lot of water, obviously, about 3.5 million cubic meters, in fact. In Americanized units, that’s 924,602,183 gallons. Now consider that you would have to fill the Superdome with water 57,142 times to equal the annual fresh water shortfall by 2050, according to the World Bank. That’s . . . → Read More: Water in 2050 The water footprint of humanity: Abstract This study quantifies and maps the water footprint (WF) of humanity at a high spatial resolution. It reports on consumptive use of rainwater (green WF) and ground and surface water (blue WF) and volumes of water polluted (gray WF). Water footprints are estimated per nation from both a production and consumption perspective. . . . → Read More: Doc alert: Water footprint of humanity The hardcore climate geeks (and yes, you know who you are; let us not stoop to naming names) are familiar with NASA’s GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite mission, probably in connection with its monitoring of the hair-raising ice loss in Greenland. As it turns out, GRACE’s usefulness to climate issues extends well beyond . . . → Read More: Tracking water on the move The IDFC (Infrastructure Finance Company) has released their India Infrastructure Report 2011. From the Foreword (emphasis added): It may well be true that the most bitter con?icts in the next ?fty years will not be over oil but water. Already, almost a billion people in the world live without access to clean water. h e sustainability of . . . → Read More: Doc alert: India Infrastructure Report Freshwater Use by U.S. Power Plants: Electricity’s Thirst for a Precious Resource: Take the average amount of water flowing over Niagara Falls in a minute. Now triple it. that’s almost how much water power plants in the United States take in for cooling each minute, on average. In 2005, the nation’s thermoelectric power plants-which boil water to create . . . → Read More: Doc alert: Freshwater Use by US Power Plants Water Energy Food Nexus, Bonn 2011 (emphasis added): A new report on the water-food-energy nexus from the World Resource Institute (WRI), the Coca-Cola Company and iSciences, compiles information the WRI gathered with help from its partners in the Aqueduct project, which includes General Electric, The Coca-Cola Company, Bloomberg, The Dow Chemical Company, Talisman Energy, United Technologies Corporation . . . → Read More: Energy, water, food. Any questions? “Understanding the Nexus”, Water Energy Food Nexus, Bonn 2011: Background paper for the Bonn2011 Nexus Conference is now available This paper for the Bonn 2011 Conference presents initial evidence for how a nexus approach can enhance water, energy and food security in a green economy by increasing efficiency, reducing trade-offs, and building synergies across sectors. It also underpins . . . → Read More: Doc alert: Understanding the Nexus It’s not what people don’t know that hurts them. It’s what they do know that just ain’t so. We’ve seen a relentless parade of “it’s worse than we thought” news in the last few years related to energy and climate. It’s . . . → Read More: Good news about water, for a change One of the great challenges of climate change is understanding all the knock-on effects of a “small” amount of warming, because not only are they not all immediately apparent, and not only don’t we understand each of them as fully as we’d prefer, but once you begin to consider the interactions between the effects and try . . . → Read More: Reaching the last dots Honestly, I sometimes wonder how you people do anything without my help. Take, for example, the alarming plunge in world corn stocks (emphasis added): Even a fifth consecutive year of record global corn harvests will fail to meet demand for food, fuel and livestock feed, reducing world stockpiles to the lowest in two generations. Consumption will rise 3 percent . . . → Read More: A simple little food problem |
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