Water use growing twice as fast as population!
Like oil in the 20th century, water could well be the essential commodity on which the 21st century will turn.
Human beings have depended on access to water since the earliest days of civilization, but with 7 billion people on the planet as of October 31, exponentially expanding urbanization and development are driving demand like never before.
Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, said Kirsty Jenkinson of the World Resources Institute, a Washington think tank.
Water use is predicted to increase by 50 percent between 2007 and 2025 in developing countries and 18 percent in developed ones, with much of the increased use in the poorest countries with more and more people moving from rural areas to cities, Jenkinson said in a telephone interview.
In the News: Javan rhino driven to extinction in Vietnam
WWF and the International Rhino Foundation (IRF) have confirmed that the Javan rhinoceros has been driven to extinction in Vietnam. The last known Javan rhino was found dead in the Cat Tien National Park in April 2010.
Life on the Moons of the Solar System
Earth has plenty of life. Where else may it lie in the solar system? Some hope for Mars which is on the edge of the solar system Goldilocks zone. Others believe it lies on on of the other moons such as Titan, Enceladus or Europa. Ten times thicker than Earth’s, Titan’s atmosphere extends nearly 370 miles above its frigid surface. It’s a literal chemical factory, where nitrogen and methane are zapped by the sun’s ultraviolet rays and transformed into organic molecules, some of which descend to the moon’s surface while others rise up above the clouds, creating a bluish high-level haze of hydrocarbons. Strange lakes and rivers of methane have been found on its surface.
Hundreds Feared Dead in Turkey Quake
An earthquake of 7.2 magnitude rocked eastern Turkey Sunday, the strongest to hit the country in years. “500 to 1,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the quake,” Professor Mustafa Erdik, director of the Kandilli seismological institute in Istanbul, told a news conference. Earlier reports did not speak of casualties but many were feared trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings and officials warned they were struggling to assess the extent of the damage.
How Drowned Plants Survive
Your front lawn is under water. Your farm landscape cannot be seen except as an expanse of water. How can plants not drown? As countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam and parts of the United States and United Kingdom have fallen victim to catastrophic flooding in recent years, tolerance of crops to partial or complete submergence is a key target for global food security. Starved of oxygen, crops cannot survive a flood for long periods of time, leading to drastic reductions in yields for farmers.
Iceland’s Top 5 Natural Wonders
Iceland’s Top 5 Natural Wonders
Iceland is full natural beauty from hot springs to glaciers. Here are our top 5 natural wonders of Iceland.
1. Northern Lights
Or the Aurora Borealis if you prefer a more scientific term for the colours that light up the sky like a neon sign. The colours we see are reflected off gas particles with gases at high altitudes resulting in reddish tones and gases lower down producing blues and purples. Science aside it really is other worldly and one of nature’s most impressive and surreal performances.
The Northern lights happen all year round but can only be seen between September and April in the dark winter skies. Whether or not you see them depends very much on weather conditions but it’s worth a bit of camping out. You’ll never be impressed by a firework display ever again.
2. Glaciers
The glaciers and ice caps cover over 10% of Iceland’s surface area and these great frozen rivers have carved out a unique landscape. Vatnajökull is actually the largest ice cap in Europe and Iceland’s South Coast is lined with countless glaciers.
In a sea of white draped with swathes of snow you can only really appreciate the magic when you have immersed yourself in the landscape through hiking or ice climbing. Awe inspiring and so, so peaceful. Magical.
In the News: Scientists raise estimate of humpback whale numbers
Scientists have increased their estimate of the number of humpback whales in the North Pacific Ocean, according to a report published in the journal Marine Mammal Science. The revised estimate follows analysis of data compiled in 2008 as part of the largest survey ever undertaken to assess humpback whale populations in the North Pacific.
Hunger Due To Biofuel
1 in 6 people do not have enough to eat. That’s more people than the US, Canada and the EU combined. Not only that, hunger kills 3.5 million children every year, or one every 10 seconds. Women are particularly at risk – the UN estimates that 60% of the 1 billion people currently suffering from hunger are women and girls.
Today, a huge amount of food is being burnt as biofuels. This is pushing up global food prices making it harder for the world’s poorest people to survive.
Biofuel companies are grabbing agricultural land from small-scale farmers all over the developing world stopping them from growing food.
There has been a long term lack of support for small farmers, especially women, and a lack of investment in sustainable agriculture over the last 20 years. Women produce 80% of the world’s food but often do not have the right to own land, leaving them vulnerable to hunger.
Climate change is already harming food production – crop yields in some African countries could be reduced by as much as 50% by 2020 as a result of climate change.
There are many organizations trying to better the situation for hungry people. One of them is ActionAid which tries to tackle the driving force behind the biofuels rush – government targets aimed at increasing the amount of biofuel used in transport.
All honor to all organizations that have worked for several decades to try to better the world situation. In spite of this effort, there are more hungry people now than at any time in history. The causes of hunger aren’t natural, they’re manmade – and we can fix them.
The problem is that it can’t be fixed with the same mindset that created them, just like Einstein said. The mindset that created the problems in the world today, is the monetary mindset, and it is this mindset that keeps on creating new and even more devastating problems.
Unless we start to look away from money, and instead concentrate directly on the resources and solutions, the world situation will only worsen.
There is a suggestion about a resource based economy, which is both a mindset and a system that abandons money and ownership, but instead focusses on resources and usership, what we really need. After all, we can’t eat money.