Topic: WE'RE STUFFED!!!

[Jahn]

Much of the imbalance in the World economy comes from "over flow" from the oil producing middle east. A surplus of money that look for investments and good interest rates. Look at Dubai, what a explosion of wealth and money. The Dubai market tried to buy The Swedish Stock market in Stockholm but Nasdaq was the first prospective buyer and The Dubai offer was considered somewhat hostile even if their offer were better in terms of money. So the result and solution was that Nasdaq and Dubai creates a holding company and take over the Swedish stockmarket together. Qatar, another little oil country, has been involved in the deal too.

Who owns old Harrods in London? Who borrows money to the US? Who wants to buy the small petrol companies in the US.

But it is right, in the future it is China that will have the greates single influence on the World economy. They could create a crisis any day right now buy simple selling all the dollars they have, but it would not serve them so they don't.

[erik]

Snatched: Israeli commandos ‘nuclear’ raid

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2512105.ece

ISRAELI commandos from the elite Sayeret Matkal unit – almost certainly dressed in Syrian uniforms – made their way stealthily towards a secret military compound near Dayr az-Zawr in northern Syria. They were looking for proof that Syria and North Korea were collaborating on a nuclear programme.

Israel had been surveying the site for months, according to Washington and Israeli sources. President George W Bush was told during the summer that Israeli intelligence suggested North Korean personnel and nuclear-related material were at the Syrian site.

Israel was determined not to take any chances with its neighbour. Following the example set by its raid on an Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak 1981, it drew up plans to bomb the Syrian compound.

But Washington was not satisfied. It demanded clear evidence of nuclear-related activities before giving the operation its blessing. The task of the commandos was to provide it.

Today the site near Dayr az-Zawr lies in ruins after it was pounded by Israeli F15Is on September 6. Before the Israelis issued the order to strike, the commandos had secretly seized samples of nuclear material and taken them back into Israel for examination by scientists, the sources say. A laboratory confirmed that the unspecified material was North Korean in origin. America approved an attack.

News of the secret ground raid is the latest piece of the jigsaw to emerge about the mysterious Israeli airstrike. Israel has imposed a news blackout, but has not disguised its satisfaction with the mission. The incident also reveals the extent of the cooperation between America and Israel over nuclear-related security issues in the Middle East. The attack on what Israeli defence sources now call the “North Korean project” appears to be part of a wider, secret war against the nonconventional weapons ambitions of Syria and North Korea which, along with Iran, appears to have been forging a new “axis of evil”.

The operation was personally directed by Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, who is said to have been largely preoccupied with it since taking up his post on June 18.

It was the ideal mission for Barak, Israel’s most decorated soldier and legendary former commander of the Sayeret Matkal, which shares the motto “Who Dares Wins” with Britain’s SAS and specialises in intelligence-gathering deep behind enemy lines.

President Bush refused to comment on the air attack last week, but warned North Korea that “the exportation of information and/or materials” could jeopard-ise plans to give North Korea food aid, fuel and diplomatic recognition in exchange for ending its nuclear programmes.

Diplomats in North Korea and China said they believed a number of North Koreans were killed in the raid, noting that ballistic missile technicians and military scientists had been working for some time with the Syrians.

A senior Syrian official, Sayeed Elias Daoud, director of the Syrian Arab Ba’ath party, flew to North Korea via Beijing last Thursday, reinforcing the belief among foreign diplomats that the two nations are coordinating their response to the Israeli strike.

The growing assumption that North Korea suffered direct casualties in the raid appears to be based largely on the regime’s unusually strident propaganda on an issue far from home. But there were also indications of conversations between Chinese and North Korean officials and intelligence reports reaching Asian governments that supported the same conclusion, diplomats said.

Jane’s Defence Weekly reported last week that dozens of Iranian engineers and Syrians were killed in July attempting to load a chemical warhead containing mustard gas onto a Scud missile. The Scuds and warheads are of North Korean design and possibly manufacture, and there are recent reports that North Koreans were helping the Syrians to attach airburst chemical weapons to warheads.

Yesterday, while Israelis were observing Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, the military was on high alert after Syria promised to retaliate for the September 6 raid. An Israeli intelligence expert said: “Syria has retaliated in the past for much smaller humiliations, but they will choose the place, the time and the target.”

Critics of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, believe he has shown poor judgment since succeeding his father Hafez, Syria’s long-time dictator, in 2000. According to David Schenker, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, he has provoked the enmity of almost all Syria’s neighbours and turned his country into a “client” of Iran.

Barak’s return to government after making a fortune in private business was critical to the Israeli operation. Military experts believe it could not have taken place under Amir Peretz, the defence minister who was forced from the post after last year’s ill-fated war in Lebanon. “Barak gave Olmert the confidence needed for such a dangerous operation,” said one insider.

The unusual silence about the airstrikes amazed Israelis, who are used to talkative politicians. But it did not surprise the defence community. “Most Israeli special operations remain unknown,” said a defence source.

When Menachem Begin, then Israeli prime minister, broke the news of the 1981 Osirak raid, he was accused of trying to help his Likud party’s prospects in forthcoming elections.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads Likud today, faced similar criticism last week when he ignored the news blackout, revealed that he had backed the decision to strike and said he had congratulated Olmert. “I was a partner from the start,” he claimed.

But details of the raid are still tantalisingly incomplete. Some analysts in America are perplexed by photographs of a fuel tank said to have been dropped from an Israeli jet on its return journey over Turkey. It appears to be relatively undamaged. Could it have been planted to sow confusion about the route taken by the Israeli F-15I pilots?

More importantly, questions remain about the precise nature of the material seized and about Syria’s intentions. Was Syria hiding North Korean nuclear equipment while Pyongyang prepared for six-party talks aimed at securing an end to its nuclear weapons programme in return for security guarantees and aid? Did Syria want to arm its own Scuds with a nuclear device?

Or could the material have been destined for Iran as John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, has suggested? And just how deep is Syrian and North Korean nuclear cooperation anyway?

China abruptly postponed a session of the nuclear disarmament talks last week because it feared America might confront the North Koreans over their weapons deals with Syria, according to sources close to the Chinese foreign ministry. Negotiations have been rescheduled for this Thursday in Beijing after assurances were given that all sides wished them to be “constructive”.

Christopher Hill, the US State Department negotiator, is said to have persuaded the White House that the talks offered a realistic chance to accomplish a peace treaty formally ending the 1950-1953 Korean war, in which more than 50,000 Americans died. A peace deal of that magnitude would be a coup for Bush – but only if the North Koreans genuinely abandon their nuclear programmes.

The outlines of a long-term arms relationship between the North Koreans and the Syrians are now being reexamined by intelligence experts in several capitals. Diplomats in Pyongyang have said they believe reports that about a dozen Syrian technicians were killed in a massive explosion and railway crash in North Korea on April 22, 2004.

Teams of military personnel wearing protective suits were seen removing debris from the section of the train in which the Syrians were travelling, according to a report quoting military sources that appeared in a Japanese newspaper. Their bodies were flown home by a Syrian military cargo plane that was spotted shortly after the explosion at Pyongyang airport.

In December last year, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Seyassah quoted European intelligence sources in Brussels as saying that Syria was engaged in an advanced nuclear programme in its northeastern province.

Most diplomats and experts dismiss the idea that Syria could master the technical and industrial knowhow to make its own nuclear devices. The vital question is whether North Korea could have transferred some of its estimated 55 kilos of weapons-grade plutonium to Syria. Six to eight kilos are enough for one rudimentary bomb.

“If it is proved that Kim Jong-il sold fissile material to Syria in breach of every red line the Americans have drawn for him, what does that mean?” asked one official. The results of tests on whatever the Israelis may have seized from the Syrian site could therefore be of enormous significance.

The Israeli army has so far declined to comment on the attack. However, several days afterwards, at a gathering marking the Jewish new year, the commander-in-chief of the Israeli military shook hands with and congratulated his generals. The scene was broadcast on Israeli television. After the fiasco in Lebanon last year, it was regarded as a sign that “we’re back in business, guys”.

[erik]

From The Times
September 24, 2007
La Nina threatens to wreck world’s weather

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2517868.ece

Experts predict a run of severe weather in the coming months, with devastating floods striking some parts of the world while severe droughts afflict other regions, as the climate phenomenon known as La Niña gathers momentum.

A chronic drought afflicting southern California and many southeastern states of America could be exacerbated, with Los Angeles heading for its driest year on record. In contrast, western Canada and the northwestern US could turn colder and snowier. Mozambique, southeast Africa, and northern Brazil may face exceptionally heavy rains and floods, while southern Brazil and much of Argentina suffer drought.

La Niña could even rearrange the pattern of sea ice around the Antarctic, pushing the ice pack towards the Pacific side of the continent. Already, torrential rains have triggered severe floods across a huge swath of Central Africa, stretching from Senegal in the west to Uganda in the east.

Rupa Kumar Kolli, chief of world applications at the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in Geneva, predicts that the worst of La Niña is yet to come. “This La Niña is now in its developing phase and getting stronger, and we can expect it to peak this coming December and January,” he said. Whether this episode of La Niña will make itself felt in Britain and continental Europe this winter is not certain. “We tend to get a mild end to winter with La Niña, but it’s not a strong signal,” said Adam Scaife, at the Hadley Centre of the Met Office in Exeter.

Met Office scientists have found that La Niña is likely to have played a part in the abysmal British summer. By upsetting the usual track of the high-altitude jet stream towards Britain, it delivered barrages of slow-moving Atlantic depressions with torrents of rain. La Niña may also have been involved in the spectacular Asian monsoon this summer, leading to floods that killed about 1,000 people in India and Bangladesh. And it allows hurricanes to develop - already this month the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico have experienced two monstrous Category 5 storms. Another hurricane broke the record for the fastest intensification of a storm.

La Niña occurs when the tropical seas of the Pacific off the coast of Latin America cool down, while the waters turn warmer towards Australia, the Philippines and Indonesia. That lurch in ocean temperatures can send weather systems into havoc over vast areas, delivering huge deluges of rain over the Far East and tropical Australia, while western parts of Latin America turn much drier than usual. This is the flip side of El Niño, although La Niña lasts for a shorter time, usually no more than a year.

The way that La Niña casts its spell over the globe, from the Pacific to the rest of the world, is known as a “tele-connection”. By disrupting sea temperatures, pressure systems and winds over the Pacific, it interferes with the atmospheric circulation around the tropics. This sends out waves in the atmosphere, like casting a stone into a pond, which can change the strength and position of jet stream winds several miles high. In this way the Pacific can have a huge impact on the weather far from the tropics.

Any rainfall promised for Australia?
They don't exclude hurricanes in Mediterranean...

From The Times
September 24, 2007
Warm waters may trigger Mediterranean hurricane

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/uk_and_roi/article2518264.ece

Anyone going on holiday to the Caribbean or southern coasts of the US needs to be aware of the risk of hurricanes, especially at this time of year. But tourists to the Mediterranean may need to watch out for hurricanes in the future.

This year brought the fastest intensification of a hurricane, when Humberto exploded from a tropical depression to a hurricane in just 16 hours. In 2005 there was a record number of hurricanes, including the most intense one yet on record.

Tropical cyclones also are cropping up in unexpected places: in 2004, the first hurricane appeared in the South Atlantic and struck the coast of Brazil, and a year later Hurricane Vince formed near the Madeira islands in the Atlantic and became the first known hurricane to hit Spain.

Climate change might be responsible for altering these areas where tropical cyclones develop. A recent study looked at climate change forecasts and revealed for the first time a risk of a tropical cyclone development over the Mediterranean as the waters there warmed up.

Although there were large uncertainties in the forecasts, the heat stored in the sea is expected to boost the intensity of storms, eventually triggering Mediterranean hurricanes.

[Michael]

that is interesting e, because I had heard that we were coming to the end of the La Nina phase. I may have this wrong, and I can ask my neighbours who own the property, as they watch it like a hawk. What I heard, was that we should have had our increased rains from this swing, but we didn't get them, and now we are about to swing back to the opposite, meaning dry - in Aust there is huge panic about the dry - it is about to devastate the entire rural sector.

[erik]

hard times we live!

[erik]

Three Gorges: China is warned of 'catastrophe'
By Clifford Coonan in Shenzhen, southern China
Published: 27 September 2007

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3001651.ece

An ecological disaster looms around the Three Gorges Dam, a potent symbol of China's social, economic and technological progress, despite years of insistence the project is safe. The banks of the mighty Yangtze are being eroded by the weight of the water behind the dam, hazardous landslides blight the area as water levels fluctuate wildly and huge waves crash against riverbanks.

Ever controversial since planning of the project began decades ago – it sparked the biggest political debate in communist China's history – the massive project is as potent a symbol of centrally planned technical prowess as you will find.

The left side of the dam began generating power in 2005, and turbines on the right side started sending electricity to the power grid earlier this month but the dream of cheap and efficient hydropower is turning sour.

While the dam has served as a barrier against seasonal flooding on the lower reaches of the Yangtze and the hydroelectricity generated has led to a decrease of 100 million tons of carbon emissions, the benefits have come at a potentially disastrous ecological and environmental cost. A group of experts and political grandees at a conference in the central Chinese city of Wuhan agreed the dam had had a "notably adverse" impact on the environment of the reservoir and along the Yangtze river since last year and "if no preventive measures are taken, the project could lead to catastrophe", the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Frequent geological disasters have threatened the lives of those who live around the reservoir area, said Huang Xuebin, head of flood control. He described landslides around the reservoir that had produced waves as high as 50 metres, which crashed into the adjacent shoreline, causing even more damage.

Tan Qiwei, vice-mayor of the huge metropolis of flood-threatened Chongqing – the biggest city in the world by some reckonings – said the shore of the reservoir had collapsed in 91 places and a total of 36 kilometres of land had caved in.

The Hubei vice-governor, Li Chunming, said clear water discharged from the dam had also threatened protective embankments downstream.

The State Council's director of the dam project, Wang Xiaofeng, said: "We can by no means relax our vigilance... or profit from a fleeting economic boom at the cost of sacrificing the environment."

The Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao said the dam's ecological and environmental woes were primary problems to be addressed.

For environmental activists such as the journalist Dai Qing, whose book Yangtze! Yangtze! earned her 10 months in a maximum security prison and the threat of the death sentence, the official admission that the dam is a potential environmental disaster was received with bitter irony.

[erik]

Beneath Booming Cities, China’s Future Is Drying Up
By JIM YARDLEY
Published: September 28, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/world/asia/28water.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/world/asia/28water.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

SHIJIAZHUANG, China — Hundreds of feet below ground, the primary water source for this provincial capital of more than two million people is steadily running dry. The underground water table is sinking about four feet a year. Municipal wells have already drained two-thirds of the local groundwater.

 Above ground, this city in the North China Plain is having a party. Economic growth topped 11 percent last year. Population is rising. A new upscale housing development is advertising waterfront property on lakes filled with pumped groundwater. Another half-built complex, the Arc de Royal, is rising above one of the lowest points in the city’s water table.

“People who are buying apartments aren’t thinking about whether there will be water in the future,” said Zhang Zhongmin, who has tried for 20 years to raise public awareness about the city’s dire water situation.

For three decades, water has been indispensable in sustaining the rollicking economic expansion that has made China a world power. Now, China’s galloping, often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing the country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is rampant nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened severely in north China — even as demand keeps rising everywhere.

China is scouring the world for oil, natural gas and minerals to keep its economic machine humming. But trade deals cannot solve water problems. Water usage in China has quintupled since 1949, and leaders will increasingly face tough political choices as cities, industry and farming compete for a finite and unbalanced water supply.

One example is grain. The Communist Party, leery of depending on imports to feed the country, has long insisted on grain self-sufficiency. But growing so much grain consumes huge amounts of underground water in the North China Plain, which produces half the country’s wheat. Some scientists say farming in the rapidly urbanizing region should be restricted to protect endangered aquifers. Yet doing so could threaten the livelihoods of millions of farmers and cause a spike in international grain prices.

For the Communist Party, the immediate challenge is the prosaic task of forcing the world’s most dynamic economy to conserve and protect clean water. Water pollution is so widespread that regulators say a major incident occurs every other day. Municipal and industrial dumping has left sections of many rivers “unfit for human contact.”

Cities like Beijing and Tianjin have shown progress on water conservation, but China’s economy continues to emphasize growth. Industry in China uses 3 to 10 times more water, depending on the product, than industries in developed nations.

“We have to now focus on conservation,” said Ma Jun, a prominent environmentalist. “We don’t have much extra water resources. We have the same resources and much bigger pressures from growth.”

In the past, the Communist Party has reflexively turned to engineering projects to address water problems, and now it is reaching back to one of Mao’s unrealized plans: the $62 billion South-to-North Water Transfer Project to funnel more than 12 trillion gallons northward every year along three routes from the Yangtze River basin, where water is more abundant. The project, if fully built, would be completed in 2050. The eastern and central lines are already under construction; the western line, the most disputed because of environmental concerns, remains in the planning stages.

The North China Plain undoubtedly needs any water it can get. An economic powerhouse with more than 200 million people, it has limited rainfall and depends on groundwater for 60 percent of its supply. Other countries, like Yemen, India, Mexico and the United States, have aquifers that are being drained to dangerously low levels. But scientists say those below the North China Plain may be drained within 30 years.

“There’s no uncertainty,” said Richard Evans, a hydrologist who has worked in China for two decades and has served as a consultant to the World Bank and China’s Ministry of Water Resources. “The rate of decline is very clear, very well documented. They will run out of groundwater if the current rate continues.”

Outside Shijiazhuang, construction crews are working on the transfer project’s central line, which will provide the city with infusions of water on the way to the final destination, Beijing. For many of the engineers and workers, the job carries a patriotic gloss.

 Yet while many scientists agree that the project will provide an important influx of water, they also say it will not be a cure-all. No one knows how much clean water the project will deliver; pollution problems are already arising on the eastern line. Cities and industry will be the beneficiaries of the new water, but the impact on farming is limited. Water deficits are expected to remain.

“Many people are asking the question: What can they do?” said Zheng Chunmiao, a leading international groundwater expert. “They just cannot continue with current practices. They have to find a way to bring the problem under control.”

A Drying Region

On a drizzly, polluted morning last April, Wang Baosheng steered his Chinese-made sport utility vehicle out of a shopping center on the west side of Beijing for a three-hour southbound commute that became a tour of the water crisis on the North China Plain.

Mr. Wang travels several times a month to Shijiazhuang, where he is chief engineer overseeing construction of three miles of the central line of the water transfer project. A light rain splattered the windshield, and he recited a Chinese proverb about the preciousness of spring showers for farmers. He also noticed one dead river after another as his S.U.V. glided over dusty, barren riverbeds: the Yongding, the Yishui, the Xia and, finally, the Hutuo. “You see all these streams with bridges, but there is no water,” he said.

A century or so ago, the North China Plain was a healthy ecosystem, scientists say. Farmers digging wells could strike water within eight feet. Streams and creeks meandered through the region. Swamps, natural springs and wetlands were common.

Today, the region, comparable in size to New Mexico, is parched. Roughly five-sixths of the wetlands have dried up, according to one study. Scientists say that most natural streams or creeks have disappeared. Several rivers that once were navigable are now mostly dust and brush. The largest natural freshwater lake in northern China, Lake Baiyangdian, is steadily contracting and besieged with pollution.

What happened? The list includes misguided policies, unintended consequences, a population explosion, climate change and, most of all, relentless economic growth. In 1963, a flood paralyzed the region, prompting Mao to construct a flood-control system of dams, reservoirs and concrete spillways. Flood control improved but the ecological balance was altered as the dams began choking off rivers that once flowed eastward into the North China Plain.

The new reservoirs gradually became major water suppliers for growing cities like Shijiazhuang. Farmers, the region’s biggest water users, began depending almost exclusively on wells. Rainfall steadily declined in what some scientists now believe is a consequence of climate change.

Before, farmers had compensated for the region’s limited annual rainfall by planting only three crops every two years. But underground water seemed limitless and government policies pushed for higher production, so farmers began planting a second annual crop, usually winter wheat, which requires a lot of water.

By the 1970s, studies show, the water table was already falling. Then Mao’s death and the introduction of market-driven economic reforms spurred a farming renaissance. Production soared, and rural incomes rose. The water table kept falling, further drying out wetlands and rivers.

Around 1900, Shijiazhuang was a collection of farming villages. By 1950, the population had reached 335,000. This year, the city has roughly 2.3 million people with a metropolitan area population of 9 million.

More people meant more demand for water, and the city now heavily pumps groundwater. The water table is falling more than a meter a year. Today, some city wells must descend more than 600 feet to reach clean water. In the deepest drilling areas, steep downward funnels have formed in the water table that are known as “cones of depression.”

Groundwater quality also has worsened. Wastewater, often untreated, is now routinely dumped into rivers and open channels. Mr. Zheng, the water specialist, said studies showed that roughly three-quarters of the region’s entire aquifer system was now suffering some level of contamination.

 “There will be no sustainable development in the future if there is no groundwater supply,” said Liu Changming, a leading Chinese hydrology expert and a senior scholar at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

A National Project

Three decades ago, when Deng Xiaoping shifted China from Maoist ideology and fixated the country on economic growth, a generation of technocrats gradually took power and began rebuilding a country that ideology had almost destroyed. Today, the top leaders of the Communist Party — including Hu Jintao, China’s president and party chief — were trained as engineers.

Though not members of the political elite, Wang Baosheng, the engineer on the water transfer project, and his colleague Yang Guangjie are of the same background. This spring, at the site outside Shijiazhuang, bulldozers clawed at a V-shaped cut in the dirt while teams of workers in blue jumpsuits and orange hard hats smoothed wet cement over a channel that will be almost as wide as a football field.

“I’ve been to the Hoover Dam, and I really admire the people who built that,” said Mr. Yang, the project manager. “At the time, they were making a huge contribution to the development of their country.”

He compared China’s transfer project to the water diversion system devised for southern California in the last century. “Maybe we are like America in the 1920s and 1930s,” he said. “We’re building the country.”

China’s disadvantage, compared with the United States, is that it has a smaller water supply yet almost five times as many people. China has about 7 percent of the world’s water resources and roughly 20 percent of its population. It also has a severe regional water imbalance, with about four-fifths of the water supply in the south.

Mao’s vision of borrowing water from the Yangtze for the north had an almost profound simplicity, but engineers and scientists spent decades debating the project before the government approved it, partly out of desperation, in 2002. Today, demand is far greater in the north, and water quality has badly deteriorated in the south. Roughly 41 percent of China’s wastewater is now dumped in the Yangtze, raising concerns that siphoning away clean water northward will exacerbate pollution problems in the south.

The upper reaches of the central line are expected to be finished in time to provide water to Beijing for the Olympic Games next year. Mr. Evans, the World Bank consultant, called the complete project “essential” but added that success would depend on avoiding waste and efficiently distributing the water.

Mr. Liu, the scholar and hydrologist, said that farming would get none of the new water and that cities and industry must quickly improve wastewater treatment. Otherwise, he said, cities will use the new water to dump more polluted wastewater. Shijiazhuang now dumps untreated wastewater into a canal that local farmers use to irrigate fields.

For years, Chinese officials thought irrigation efficiency was the answer for reversing groundwater declines. Eloise Kendy, a hydrology expert with The Nature Conservancy who has studied the North China Plain, said that farmers had made improvements but that the water table had kept sinking. Ms. Kendy said the spilled water previously considered “wasted” had actually soaked into the soil and recharged the aquifer. Efficiency erased that recharge. Farmers also used efficiency gains to irrigate more land.

Ms. Kendy said scientists had discovered that the water table was dropping because of water lost by evaporation and transpiration from the soil, plants and leaves. This lost water is a major reason the water table keeps dropping, scientists say.

Farmers have no choice. They drill deeper.

Difficult Choices Ahead

For many people living in the North China Plain, the notion of a water crisis seems distant. No one is crawling across a parched desert in search of an oasis. But every year, the water table keeps dropping. Nationally, groundwater usage has almost doubled since 1970 and now accounts for one-fifth of the country’s total water usage, according to the China Geological Survey Bureau.

The Communist Party is fully aware of the problems. A new water pollution law is under consideration that would sharply increase fines against polluters. Different coastal cities are building desalination plants. Multinational waste treatment companies are being recruited to help tackle the enormous wastewater problem.

 Many scientists believe that huge gains can still be reaped by better efficiency and conservation. In north China, pilot projects are under way to try to reduce water loss from winter wheat crops. Some cities have raised the price of water to promote conservation, but it remains subsidized in most places. Already, some cities along the route of the transfer project are recoiling because of the planned higher prices. Some say they may just continue pumping.

Tough political choices, though, seem unavoidable. Studies by different scientists have concluded that the rising water demands in the North China Plain make it unfeasible for farmers to continue planting a winter crop. The international ramifications would be significant if China became an ever bigger customer on world grain markets. Some analysts have long warned that grain prices could steadily rise, contributing to inflation and making it harder for other developing countries to buy food.

The social implications would also be significant inside China. Near Shijiazhuang, Wang Jingyan’s farming village depends on wells that are more than 600 feet deep. Not planting winter wheat would amount to economic suicide.

“We would lose 60 percent or 70 percent of our income if we didn’t plant winter wheat,” Mr. Wang said. “Everyone here plants winter wheat.”

Another water proposal is also radical: huge, rapid urbanization. Scientists say converting farmland into urban areas would save enough water to stop the drop in the water table, if not reverse it, because widespread farming still uses more water than urban areas. Of course, large-scale urbanization, already under way, could worsen air quality; Shijiazhuang’s air already ranks among the worst in China because of heavy industrial pollution.

For now, Shijiazhuang’s priority, like that of other major Chinese cities, is to grow as quickly as possible. The city’s gross domestic product has risen by an average of 10 percent every year since 1980, even as the city’s per capita rate of available water is now only one thirty-third of the world average.

“We have a water shortage, but we have to develop,” said Wang Yongli, a senior engineer with the city’s water conservation bureau. “And development is going to be put first.”

Mr. Wang has spent four decades charting the steady extinction of the North China Plain’s aquifer. Water in Shijiazhuang, with more than 800 illegal wells, is as scarce as it is in Israel, he said. “In Israel, people regard water as more important than life itself,” he said. “In Shijiazhuang, it’s not that way. People are focused on the economy.”

[erik]

Baltic Sea Severely Polluted, Experts Warn

from
Deutsche Welle


Campaigners from the World Wildlife Fund have said that the Baltic Sea north of Germany is turning into a "death zone," warning that around 70,000 square kilometers of water are uninhabitable.

Towns on the Baltic Sea are normally idyllic places of retreat, but the waters lapping toward them have become more than a little mucky.

The World Wildlife Fund in the Baltic seaport of Stralsund said this week that low oxygen levels have rendered around 70,000 square kilometers of the sea uninhabitable (the total area of the Baltic Sea is 422,000 square kilometers, i.e. 1/6 of it is dead).

The main culprit polluting and strangling the waters is fertilizer, said Jochen Lamp, head of WWF in Stralsund. He said fertilizer nitrates are leaking into the Baltic Sea from farms and estuaries.

In addition, across one sixth of the Baltic, algae flowers now bloom where plants and animals once lived -- with serious consequences for the ecosystem.

"On the top of the water it looks like a normal sea, but on the bottom, there is very little which still lives," he said. 

Waste being dumped into Baltic Sea

However, Dietrich Schulz of the German Federal Environment agency said that fertilization runoff from crops is not the biggest issue.

Schulz, who is part of a group working on ways to lessen the impact of animal by-products on the Baltic, said that the water near the new EU states in Eastern Europe, and in Belarus and Russia, suffers from another problem.

"The bigger problem is that the animal farms in the area have no place to discard their waste, so the farmers tend to just discharge it into the water," he said.

In November, experts will present the Baltic Action Plan to the Helsinki Commission, a collaboration of all the countries that surround the Baltic, in November.

Calls for sustainable practices

Good agricultural practices could be binding for EU members, but we also have Russia and Belarus as members of the Helsinki Commission and they are not within the EU schemes, Schulz said. "So we have to define other standards and respect the Russian and Belrussian positions," he added.

The EU cross-compliance controls -- the trade-off of agricultural subsidies for environmentally friendly practices -- will cut funding for animal farms with antiquated waste management systems in old EU states starting in October.

But, this will not go into effect for the new EU member states until 2013.

Experts say the real problem is increasing and uncontrolled agricultural production in the new EU states.

They are calling for a binding and sustainable agricultural policy for the entire Baltic Sea region.

...there. the time of Man is running out so very fast and the end will be ugly - drowning in own crap
...always the same - learning through experience - and there is one monumental EXPERIENCE heading our way
...yes, the remaining time...must be put in good use...i'll put it in good use
...nothing left to say in this thread...

[Jahn]

...there. the time of Man is running out so very fast and the end will be ugly - drowning in own crap
...always the same - learning through experience - and there is one monumental EXPERIENCE heading our way
...yes, the remaining time...must be put in good use...i'll put it in good use
...nothing left to say in this thread...

... except to mention "The Final Solution" or  "Some Inconvenient Math"

This week that follows (w 41) we pass what is called The Overshoot day - it is the day when we pass the limit what the Earth can provide to us human in one year. The rest of the year we borrow resources from the future. Resources that we deplete.

The Overshoot day

All this can be calculated in energy terms and some has tried to estimate use of resources in the equation of Ecological footprint where the Western societies use more per capita than not so developed countries etc. You probably know all this. My point is that we were at break even back in 1987 when the total population was around 5 billion. Today we are about 6,6 billion people that consume the resources in a more or less wasteful manner.

The World Population

Now - fortunately noone has yet come up with the idea to solve this minus equation by using The Ecological Suicide. We simply reduce the population back to a limit where it still is possible to feed us (with oil  ).  Food seems not to be the problem because overweight is more common than starving, so that problem is only a transferrence issue.

Anyway, to get in some balance we ought to reduce our mass with 1,4 billion people. But that is a average, for each westerner savings are greater and Africans can almost be left alone in this solution because they consume so little.

So up to the front - who wants to save the world! Be a good ecological fool and commit suicide. If noone does it freely perhaps we can have random selections as TV-shows each weekend ... 

The calculation: On oct the 10th there is about 22 % days left of the year, 22 % of 6,6 billion gives roughly 1,4 billion.

 

[erik]

jahn, our sea is as good as dead:

The current area of dead bottoms, which are found in the Gulf of Finland, in the Baltic Proper, the Belt Sea and the Kattegat, is 100 000 km2, which is about one third of the entire area of the sea floor. Anoxic conditions in the bottom water also cause sediment-bound phosphorus to be released into the water. The brackish character of the Baltic Sea also plays an important role in its ecology. Water circulation in the Baltic Sea is weak. Surface water movement is most affected by winds, a significant factor in water mixing and distribution of pollutants. In winter, the Baltic Sea is largely ice-covered, which renders it even more vulnerable to the effects of pollution. Finally, many rivers bringing freshwater, especially to the Baltic Sea Proper, also carry with them many polluting substances.

http://www.baltic.vtt.fi/demo/balful.html

the fact, that somebody still eats fish caught in that dirt pond (though, i've heard that in sweden eating any fish from the baltic sea is forbidden to pregnant women) and somebody still swims in it is largely caused by ignorance. since 1980s they've known  how bad the sea has been and nobody did anything substantial - they only bought us some time. the preference is clear - welfare NOW, and to hell with future and respect for nature.

[erik]

The only thing that makes me wonder is that there still seem to be people hoping that it all could be reversed somehow.

Record 22C temperatures in Arctic heatwave
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 03 October 2007

http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article3021309.ece

Parts of the Arctic have experienced an unprecedented heatwave this summer, with one research station in the Canadian High Arctic recording temperatures above 20C, about 15C higher than the long-term average. The high temperatures were accompanied by a dramatic melting of Arctic sea ice in September to the lowest levels ever recorded, a further indication of how sensitive this region of the world is to global warming. Scientists from Queen's University in Ontario watched with amazement as their thermometers touched 22C during their July field expedition at the High Arctic camp on Melville Island, usually one of the coldest places in North America.

"This was exceptional for a place where the normal average temperatures are about 5C. This year we frequently recorded daytime temperatures of between 10C and 15C and on some days it went as high as 22C," said Scott Lamoureux, a professor of geography at Queen's.

"Even temperatures of 15C are higher than we'd expect and yet we recorded them for between 10 and 12 days during July. We won't know the August and September recordings until next year when we go back there but it appears the region has continued to be warm through the summer."

The high temperatures on the island caused catastrophic mudslides as the permafrost on hillsides melted, Professor Lamoureux said. "The landscape was being torn to pieces, literally before our eyes."

Other parts of the Arctic also experienced higher-than-normal temperatures, which indicate that the wider polar region may have experienced its hottest summer on record, according to Walt Meir of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

"It's been warm, with temperatures about 3C or 4C above normal for June, July and August, particularly to the north of Siberia where the temperatures have reached between 4C and 5C above average," Dr Meir said.

Unusually clear skies over the Arctic this summer have caused temperatures to rise. More sunlight has exacerbated the loss of sea ice, which fell to a record low of 4.28 million square kilometres (1.65 million square miles), some 39 per cent below the long-term average for the period 1979 to 2000. Dr Meir said: "While the decline of the ice started out fairly slowly in spring and early summer, it accelerated rapidly in July. By mid-August, we had already shattered all previous records for ice extent."

An international team of scientists on board the Polar Stern, a research ship operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, also felt the effects of an exceptionally warm Arctic summer. The scientists had anticipated that large areas of the Arctic would be covered by ice with a thickness of about two metres, but found that it had thinned to just one metre.

Instead of breaking through thicker ice at an expected speed of between 1 and 2 knots, the Polar Stern managed to cruise at 6 knots through thin ice and sometimes open water.

"We are in the midst of a phase of dramatic change in the Arctic," said Ursula Schauer, the chief scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, who was on board the Polar Stern expedition. "The ice cover of the North Polar Sea is dwindling, the ocean and the atmosphere are becoming steadily warmer, the ocean currents are changing," she said.

One scientist came back from the North Pole and reported that it was raining there, said David Carlson, the director of International Polar Year, the effort to highlight the climate issues of the Arctic and Antarctic. "It makes you wonder whether anyone has ever reported rain at the North Pole before."

Another team of scientists monitoring the movements of Ayles Ice Island off northern Canada reported that it had broken in two far earlier than expected, a further indication of warmer temperatures. And this summer, for the first time, an American sailing boat managed to traverse the North-west Passage from Nova Scotia to Alaska, a voyage usually made by icebreakers. Never before has a sail-powered vessel managed to get straight through the usually ice-blocked sea passage.

Inhabitants of the region are also noticing a significant change as a result of warmer summers, according to Shari Gearheard, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre. "People who live in the region are noticing changes in sea ice. The earlier break-up and later freeze-up affect when and where people can go hunting, as well as safety for travel," she said.

Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, said: "We may see an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer within our lifetimes. The implications... are disturbing."

The North-west Passage: an ominous sign

The idea of a North-west Passage was born in 1493, when Pope Alexander VI divided the discovered world between Spain and Portugal, blocking England, France and Holland from a sea route to Asia. As it became clear a passage across Europe was impossible, the ambitious plan was hatched to seek out a route through north-western waters, and nations sent out explorers. When, in the 18th century, James Cook reported that Antarctic icebergs produced fresh water, the view that northern waters were not impossibly frozen was encouraged. In 1776 Cook himself was dispatched by the Admiralty with an Act promising a £20,000 prize, but he failed to push through a route north of Canada. His attempt preceded several British expeditions including a famous Victorian one by Sir John Franklin in 1845. Finally, in 1906 Roald Amundsen led the first trip across the passage to Alaska, and since then a number of fortified ships have followed. On 21 August this year, the North-west Passage was opened to ships not armed with icebreakers for the first time since records began.

[Nick]

I have nothing to hide, and I pity whoever might be reading mine ... boring stuff! Is a way around that through these forums? (Though I suppose installing one of those keystroke-hack-measuring-thingies is always a possibility for them.)

If you really want to make an effort not to be watched on the net you might start reading this: http://www.fravia.com/noanon.htm

I'm not terribly concerned about it, but perhaps I should. 

[Jahn]

jahn, our sea is as good as dead:

http://www.baltic.vtt.fi/demo/balful.html

the fact, that somebody still eats fish caught in that dirt pond (though, i've heard that in sweden eating any fish from the baltic sea is forbidden to pregnant women) and somebody still swims in it is largely caused by ignorance. since 1980s they've known  how bad the sea has been and nobody did anything substantial - they only bought us some time. the preference is clear - welfare NOW, and to hell with future and respect for nature.

A new fish has come to enter the mud. It came with ships and are now expanding in the south of the Baltic sea.

I know it is a awful situation, and if we, all caring countries, cannot have a healthy sea around our coasts, who can? And now the Russians want to stir up the mud by building a gaz connection to Germany!

Pregnant women, well they got many things to check. The last news was that eating fish as such is more healthier than not, even if it come from the Baltic as long as it is not more than 2 times per week. But what the h-ll, you seldom find fish from the Baltic, the fish at the supermarket comes from the whole world. The only thing we eat that is local is sweet water fish and herring. Pickled herring (or Sill as we call it) is a big deal here, it is mostly consumed to christmas and midsummer but also used as a delicate first course all year around. Herring with onions (classic), with mustard (a best seller), with garlic and about ten other mixes is available. It has some similarities with Sushi. And the Sill should be served with potatoes , knäckebröd (hard bread) and schnaps (Swedish vodka).

[erik]

Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/19/SS6JS8RH0.DTL&feed=rss.news

At the start of the Academy Award-winning movie "American Beauty," a character videotapes a plastic grocery bag as it drifts into the air, an event he casts as a symbol of life's unpredictable currents, and declares the romantic moment as a "most beautiful thing."

To the eyes of an oceanographer, the image is pure catastrophe.

In reality, the rogue bag would float into a sewer, follow the storm drain to the ocean, then make its way to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that's twice the size of Texas, according to marine biologists.

The enormous stew of trash - which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers - floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man's land between San Francisco and Hawaii.

Marcus Juhanisen, director of research and education at the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach, said his group has been monitoring the Garbage Patch for 10 years.

"With the winds blowing in and the currents in the gyre going circular, it's the perfect environment for trapping," Juhanisen said. "There's nothing we can do about it now, except do no more harm."

The patch has been growing, along with ocean debris worldwide, tenfold every decade since the 1950s, said Chris Parry, public education program manager with the California Coastal Commission in San Francisco.

Ocean current patterns may keep the flotsam stashed in a part of the world few will ever see, but the majority of its content is generated onshore, according to a report from Greenpeace last year titled "Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans."

The report found that 80 percent of the oceans' litter originated on land. While ships drop the occasional load of shoes or hockey gloves into the waters (sometimes on purpose and illegally), the vast majority of sea garbage begins its journey as onshore trash.

That's what makes a potentially toxic swamp like the Garbage Patch entirely preventable, Parry said.

"At this point, cleaning it up isn't an option," Parry said. "It's just going to get bigger as our reliance on plastics continues. ... The long-term solution is to stop producing as much plastic products at home and change our consumption habits."

Parry said using canvas bags to cart groceries instead of using plastic bags is a good first step; buying foods that aren't wrapped in plastics is another.

After the San Francisco Board of Supervisors banned the use of plastic grocery bags earlier this year with the problem of ocean debris in mind, a slew of state bills were written to limit bag production, said Sarah Christie, a legislative director with the California Coastal Commission.

But many of the bills failed after meeting strong opposition from plastics industry lobbyists, she said.

Meanwhile, the stew in the ocean continues to grow.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is particularly dangerous for birds and marine life, said Warner Chabot, vice president of the Ocean Conservancy, an environmental group.

Sea turtles mistake clear plastic bags for jellyfish. Birds swoop down and swallow indigestible shards of plastic. The petroleum-based plastics take decades to break down, and as long as they float on the ocean's surface, they can appear as feeding grounds.

"These animals die because the plastic eventually fills their stomachs," Chabot said. "It doesn't pass, and they literally starve to death."

The Greenpeace report found that at least 267 marine species had suffered from some kind of ingestion or entanglement with marine debris.

Chabot said if environmentalists wanted to remove the ocean dump site, it would take a massive international effort that would cost billions.

But that is unlikely, he added, because no one country is likely to step forward and claim the issue as its own responsibility.

Instead, cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is left to the landlubbers.

"What we can do is ban plastic fast food packaging," Chabot said, "or require the substitution of biodegradable materials, increase recycling programs and improve enforcement of litter laws.

"Otherwise, this ever-growing floating continent of trash will be with us for the foreseeable future."
How to help

You can help to limit the ever-growing patch of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean. Here are some ways to help:

Limit your use of plastics when possible. Plastic doesn't easily degrade and can kill sea life.

Use a reusable bag when shopping. Throwaway bags can easily blow into the ocean.

Take your trash with you when you leave the beach.

Make sure your trash bins are securely closed. Keep all trash in closed bags.

Texas' area is 680 000 sq km, i.e. garbage island has an area of 1.3 million sq km and weight of 3.5 million tons - 3 tons/sq km. Plastic...
Hmm...
Australia has total area of 7.6 million sq km, US 9.8 million sq km.

[erik]

That is a thing I have wondered about for a while. Humanitarians and social scientists say that humans can do really many things. Natural scientists say there are physical limits to what can be done. The size of population and the available territory are such physical variables (I've been trained as an engineer and for me they matter much more than any other variable, intention or factor). It seems so clear and inevitable that population growth must destroy and take over the habitats of wild animals, and when it comes to choosing - human or animal? - the choice is made before the question is asked.

Yet the lingering hope...amazing how it refuses to die in the face of inevitable.

Mahendra Shrestha: The heartbreaking fate of India's symbol of strength

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article3112842.ece

Published: 31 October 2007

As its national emblem, the tiger symbolises India's strength and natural beauty. And this makes the new tiger population estimate of between 1,300 and 1,500 even more heart breaking. It is also truly shocking, for it is less than half of the estimates from the 1990s.

The method used to calculate previous estimates was controversial and this resulted in a dangerous complacency regarding the need proactively to protect India's tigers, their prey and their habitats. This new figure is the outcome of a rigorous sampling procedure. It is the realistic figure today and it is one which everyone, from the Indian authorities to conservationists, needs to accept.

Saving tigers is increasingly challenging in today's India, as it seeks to juggle the livelihood of its rural population, its speedy economic growth and at the same time protect its natural assets. But it is a challenge that must be met. And there are historic precedents to suggest that real success is possible. The 1972 estimate of 1,872 tigers prompted the launch of an extensive tiger conservation effort, with strong political support. It was one of the most successful wildlife conservation efforts for the recovery of tigers and numbers recovered to 3,750 within two decades. But after that step forward, it has been many steps back and the population has declined.

Lower tiger numbers underscore the precarious situation of tigers throughout Asia, since India has always been the tiger's stronghold. The number of tigers in captivity around the world now far exceeds the population in the wild, and a recent study found that the area in the wild in which tigers are able to roam is down by 40 per cent on what it was in the 1990s.

This gloomy picture calls for tiger conservation efforts to be urgently re-evaluated, especially in light of the new demographic and economic changes seen in Asia. Economic growth in the region has enabled a large emerging middle class to afford expensive tiger parts and products and sparked a resurgence of illegal trade in tiger parts, intensifying the poaching pressure on tiger reserves in Asia.

The capacity of government institutions needs revamping to address the emerging threats. The establishment of the Wildlife Crime Bureau in India is encouraging, but regional co-operation such as ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network is essential to curb the trans-border illegal trade.

Strong and lasting commitments from governments, NGOs, development agencies and others are critical to save tiger lands. The tiger population in India includes many small populations and tigers in small and isolated reserves are always vulnerable. Habitats must be protected, embedded into the larger landscape with very little or no human intervention, so a viable tiger population can survive. Winning the support of people living in the surrounding communities is critical and so conservation efforts need to benefit local people – they need to see why they should save tigers.

There were about 100,000 tigers in Asia at the beginning of the last century and if we are to prevent the last animals from dying out in this century then we need nothing short of a miracle. But every miracle must start somewhere, and it is these initial steps that India must now take.

Mahendra Shrestha trained as a forester in India and is now the director of Save The Tiger Fund, based in Washington DC