https://www.europesays.com/1984542/ Nuclear Energy Expansion Faces Water Resource Challenges #EnergyPolicy #EnergyProduction #nuclear #NUCLEARENERGY #NuclearPower #NuclearWaste #RenewableEnergy #SmallModularReactors #SMRs #WaterResources #WaterScarcity
https://www.europesays.com/1968701/ The Dying Land: Iraq’s Environmental Emergency #baghdad #deforestation #desertification #Environment #HighTemperatures #Iraq #pollution #TheDyingLand:Iraq'sEnvironmentalEmergency #WaterScarcity
From #Himalaya to #Arctic - #GlaciersAtRisk: A Wake-Up Call on #WorldWaterDay
Story by Namrata Dadwal, March 21, 2025
"This year on World Water Day on March 22, the UN is highlighting '#GlacierPreservation'. Why? Because these frozen reservoirs that supply freshwater to nearly two billion people are disappearing at an alarming rate due to #ClimateChange.
"According to the #Copernicus Climate Change Service (#C3S), Earth's #glaciers have lost over 8,200 gigatonnes of ice since 1976, leading to #RisingSeaLevels and #WaterScarcity concerns. Nearly 6,000 gigatonnes were lost between 2000 and 2023, with the 2010s being the worst decade on record for glaciers almost the annual ice loss was more than double that of the 1980s, with an average of 370 gigatonnes of ice vanishing each year."
Read more:
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/India/from-himalaya-to-arctic-glaciers-at-risk-a-wake-up-call-on-world-water-day/ar-AA1Bqrlg
#WaterSecurity #WaterIsLife #OceanWarming #OceansAreLife
Global Warming Exacerbates Water Gaps: Study Reveals Alarming Trends https://www.byteseu.com/755728/ #Climate #ClimateChange #GangesBrahmaputraBasin #GlobalWarming #india #WaterGaps #WaterScarcity
#WaterScarcity on the Rise: #Rivers Drying at Record Rates
by Vivek SainiVivek Saini, October 8, 2024
"Rivers worldwide are drying up at the fastest rate in 30 years, posing a critical threat to ecosystems, agriculture, and human populations. In 2023, unprecedented heatwaves, prolonged droughts, and erratic rainfall patterns resulted in the most severe year of water depletion in three decades, according to World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reports. This alarming phenomenon is a direct consequence of climate change, worsened by unsustainable human activities, raising the spectre of widespread water scarcity.
A Crisis Accelerating: Rivers Drying at Record Rates
"The world’s rivers, crucial lifelines for billions of people, have shown alarming signs of depletion, with some drying up completely. The WMO’s recent State of the Global Climate report revealed that rivers in Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia experienced their lowest levels since the early 1990s. Rivers like the #Yangtze, #AmazonRiver, and #Danube can no longer support the #ecosystems and communities that depend on them for agriculture, drinking water, and transport.
"The impact of climate change, marked by rising global temperatures, has played a significant role in this crisis. The warming of the Earth’s surface increases the evaporation rate from rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, intensifying water loss. Regions already prone to droughts, such as the Middle East, parts of Africa, and southern Europe, face even more severe shortages due to intensified drought cycles. In 2023 alone, the Danube, Europe’s second-longest river, saw record-low water levels, which crippled shipping routes and threatened agricultural output in countries like #Hungary and #Romania.
"This drying trend is not limited to one region. The #ColoradoRiver continues to shrink in the United States, causing severe #WaterShortages for millions in states like #Arizona and #Nevada. Similar trends have been observed in the #IndusRiver in #SouthAsia, which supports millions of people in #Pakistan and #India. These drying rivers are a wake-up call for the global community to address water conservation and management issues before irreversible damage occurs."
Read more:
https://climatefactchecks.org/water-scarcity-on-the-rise-rivers-drying-at-record-rates/
#ClimateCrisis #WaterIsLife
The consensus of experts was that the combination of the winds, unseasonably dry conditions & multiple fires breaking out one another in the same geographic region made widespread destruction inevitable.
The article highlights many valid points, but the bottom line is that there was nothing that could’ve stopped the devastating tragedy. The destruction, suffering, & death toll continue to rise.
#CAFires #ClimateCrisis #Drought #WaterScarcity
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/10/us/california-la-fires-emergency-prep-invs?cid=ios_app
"Outside Corpus Christi, TX—where water is so scarce they hand out shower timers at HS football games—Musk is building a $1B lithium refinery -could need 8M gallons of water a day."
-C Webb
#Tesla doesn't have a contract for the water needed to operate the FAC, presenting a hurdle for CEO Musk’s goal of turning lithium into chem. products used to make EV batteries.
Trump/Abbott will ensure: #Musk gets what he wants.
#Deregulation harms, kills...
#USPol #WaterScarcity
https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/musks-massive-tesla-lithium-plant-hunts-for-water-in-drought-hit-texas-2025-01-08
"One of the reasons that datacenter operators have gravitated toward evaporative coolers is because they're so cheap to operate compared to alternative technologies.
"It is always of a higher coefficient of performance (COP), meaning less energy required, to evaporate water, regardless of what cooling medium is being utilized," Shelnutt said.
In fact, COP, which refers to the amount of heat removed for a given amount of power, for evaporative cooling comes in at 1,230 while dry coolers and chillers manage a COP of about 12 and 4, respectively, he explained.
In terms of energy consumption, this makes an evaporatively cooled datacenter far more energy efficient than one that doesn't consume water, and that translates to a lower operating cost.
The challenge is that not every location and climate is well suited to evaporative cooling. In hotter climates where water is either scarce or places with high humidity where evaporative coolers are ineffective, chillers, which function similar to your AC unit, may be used instead."
https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/04/how_datacenters_use_water/
While Trump & Republicans deny the climate crisis, disasters remind Americans why the US government should be mitigating climate change. Republicans aren’t just ignoring CC, their agenda includes rewarding more fossil fuel drilling, which will increase GHG emissions, removing safeguards & regulations that Pres Biden put in place, & possibly defunding FEMA.
“Palisades fire: Evacuations, road closures, shelters.”
#USPol #ClimateCrisis #California #Drought #WaterScarcity
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-07/palisades-fire-evacuation-road-closures-shelters
CA farmers could soon enjoy bumper crops thanks to Trump’s pledge to lift water restrictions. But who'll pick them if he follows thru on his deportation threats?
The country’s largest AG constituency backed Trump re his promises to “open the faucet” & deliver more water to the C Valley. Now it’s reckoning with an uncomfortable contradiction: he also campaigned on mass deportations of undoc. #immigrants *at least half of CA's AG workforce.
#MassDeportation #WaterScarcity https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/26/california-farmers-trump-water-workers-00195839
Freshwater is scarce, worldwide.
"An international team of scientists using observations from NASA-German satellites found evidence that Earth's total amount of freshwater dropped abruptly starting in May 2014 and has remained low ever since. Reporting in Surveys in Geophysics, the researchers suggested the shift could indicate Earth's continents have entered a persistently drier phase."
#Water #WaterScarcity #ClimateCrisis
https://phys.org/news/2024-11-nasa-satellites-reveal-abrupt-global.html
Global Water Crisis Leaves Half Of World Food Production At Risk In Next 25 Years
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/16/global-water-crisis-food-production-at-risk <-- shared media article
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https://watercommission.org/publications/ <-- Global Commission on the Economics of Water publications
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#water #hydrology #freshwater #planning #projections #watersecurity #foodsecurity #agriculture #farming #global #waterresources #watermanagement #climatechange #evaporation #report #publication #world #watercrisis #waterscarcity #cost #economics #subsidies #industry #recycling #nutrition #rainfall #precipitation #international #nations #interconnected #cooperation #hydrologicsystems #watercycle #environmental #extremeweather #drought #wildfire #deforestation #moisture #atmosphere #wetlands #ecosystems ##irrigation #waterrights #GlobalCommissionOnTheEconomicsOfWater #soil #risk #hazard #food #production
@watercommongood
The system that moves #water around the #Earth is off balance for the first time in human history
The #WaterCycle refers to the complex system by which water moves around the Earth.
By Laura Paddison, CNN
Published Oct 17, 2024
"Humanity has thrown the global water cycle off balance 'for the first time in human history,' fueling a growing water disaster that will wreak havoc on economies, #FoodProduction and lives, according to a landmark new report.
"Decades of destructive #LandUse and #WaterMismanagement have collided with the human-caused #ClimateCrisis to put 'unprecedented stress' on the global water cycle, said the report published Wednesday by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, a group of international leaders and experts.
"The water cycle refers to the complex system by which water moves around the Earth. Water evaporates from the ground — including from lakes, rivers and plants — and rises into the atmosphere, forming large rivers of water vapor able to travel long distances, before cooling, condensing and eventually falling back to the ground as rain or snow.
"Disruptions to the water cycle are already causing suffering. Nearly 3 billion people face #WaterScarcity. #Crops are shriveling and cities are sinking as the groundwater beneath them dries out.
"The consequences will be even more catastrophic without urgent action. The water crisis threatens more than 50% of global food production and risks shaving an average of 8% off countries’ GDPs by 2050, with much higher losses of up to 15% projected in low-income countries, the report found.
'“For the first time in human history, we are pushing the global water cycle out of balance,' said Johan Rockström, co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water and a report author. '#Precipitation, the source of all #freshwater, can no longer be relied upon.'
"The report differentiates between '#BlueWater,' the liquid water in #lakes, #rivers and #aquifers, and '#GreenWater,' the moisture stored in #soils and #plants.
"While the supply of green water has long been overlooked, it is just as important to the water cycle, the report says, as it returns to the atmosphere when plants release water vapor, generating about half of all rainfall over land.
"Disruptions to the water cycle are 'deeply intertwined' with climate change, the report found.
"A stable supply of green water is vital for supporting vegetation that can store planet-heating #carbon. But the damage humans inflict, including destroying #wetlands and tearing down #forests, is depleting these carbon sinks and accelerating #GlobalWarming. In turn, climate change-fueled heat is drying out landscapes, reducing moisture and increasing [#wildfire] risk.
"The crisis is made more urgent by the huge need for water. The report calculates that, on average, people need a minimum of about 4,000 liters (just over 1,000 gallons) a day to lead a 'dignified life,' far above the 50 to 100 liters the United Nations says is needed for basic needs, and more than most regions will be able to provide from local sources.
"Richard Allan, a climate science professor at Reading University, England, said the report 'paints a grim picture of human-caused disruption to the global water cycle, the most precious natural resource that ultimately sustains our livelihoods.'
"Human activities 'are altering the fabric of our land and the air above which is warming the climate, intensifying both wet and dry extremes, and sending wind and rainfall patterns out of kilter,' added Allan, who was not involved in the report.
"The crisis can only be addressed through better management of natural resources and massive cuts in planet-heating pollution, he told CNN.
"The report’s authors say world governments must recognize the water cycle as a '#CommonGood' and address it collectively. Countries are dependent on each other, not only through lakes and rivers that span borders, but also because of water in the atmosphere, which can travel huge distances — meaning decisions made in one country can disrupt rainfall in another.
"The report calls for a 'fundamental regearing of where water sits in economies,' including better pricing to discourage wastefulness and the tendency to plant water-thirsty crops and facilities, such as #DataCenters, in water-stressed regions."
#AI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #DataCenters #ChatGPT #Water #WaterScarcity: "You may be hungry for knowledge, but your chatbot is thirsty for the world’s water supplies. The huge computer clusters powering ChatGPT need four times as much water to deliver answers than previously thought, it has been claimed.
Using the chatbot for between ten to 50 queries consumes about two litres of water, according to experts from the University of California, Riverside.
A pre-print study from the academics, which was released last year, estimated that one 500ml bottle was used for this volume of queries, but they have now discovered it underestimated the problem.
Technology companies developing powerful artificial intelligence use water for cooling, power generation and in manufacturing chips.
The study, entitled Making AI Less Thirsty, looked at an earlier version of ChatGPT (GPT-3) and will be published in the Communications of the ACM magazine."
#Mexico #DataCenters #BigTech #WaterScarcity #Energy: "In a nondescript building in an industrial park in central Mexico, cavernous rooms hold stack after stack of servers studded with blue lights, humming with computations and cooled by thousands of little fans and large vents blasting great columns of air across the room.
“Datacentres are the lungs of digital life,” says Amet Novillo, the managing director of Equinix Mexico, a digital infrastructure company, as he stands in the middle of the airflows that stop the hardware overheating.
Datacentres are clustering in the state of Querétaro, where Amazon, Microsoft and Google are among those lining up multibillion-dollar investments. Amazon alone has said it will invest $5bn. The government heralds the industry as a new driver of economic growth – but in a drought-prone state where the electrical grid suffered blackouts this summer, critics want to know how strained infrastructure will find the extra water and energy it needs.
Similar debates are playing out across Latin America, where datacentres are springing up to meet the needs of an expanding digital world."
“Hawaï has long been run for the benefit of everyone but the Hawaiians” https://youtu.be/j8DxdibHibU #Hawaii #tourism #TouristsYouAreTheTerrorists #LastWeekTonightWithJohnOliver #LastWeekTonight #JohnOliver #waterScarcity #fires #HawaiiFires
#AI #GenerativeAI #DataCenters #Water #WaterScarcity: "The building of new data centres is increasing demand for water resources. Some data centres are presently located in areas of water stress or are likely to be in the future. Developing cooling technologies which minimise or do not require water is becoming increasingly important. Perhaps AI will find a scalable solution to this problem."
How big business is profiting from the growing water crisis | #DW News
Water scarcity -- whether driven by drought or the overexploitation of water sources --has created fertile ground for a burgeoning water market in which local communities and private companies fight for the right to access an essential resource.
Greg Cocks 
