Even as the world prepares for the grand climate meet at Copenhagen this December, a large part of South India has gone under water. And while talks have already begun on coming up with an equitable deal and the very fear that there may be none, over 300 people have already lost their lives while millions are displaced and missing in this global warming related freak weather event, predicted well in advance by the IPCC in its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.

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More and more homeowners are using rain barrels to conserve water while collecting soft, non-chlorinated rainwater to nourish grass and plants.

This weekend, in Calgary, Canada, Clean Calgary Association, in partnership with the City of Calgary, will hold its 8th Annual Rain Barrel Sale.

With spring coming, local residents there are thinking about their lawns and gardens. Water usage in Calgary doubles in the spring and summer due largely to lawn irrigation.

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The Xingu River — home to some 600 species of fish — is one of the largest tributaries running through the Amazon. But not if the Brazilian state power company has their way.

What would be the world’s third largest dam, called the Belo Monte, would flood over 200 square miles of tropical rainforest; about the size of Tucson, AZ. It would also flood the homes of 19,000 people.

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One of the biggest stories in the UK at present is the relationship between democracy and the police – or as it has been expressed several times by Nick Hardwick, chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission - the police needed to remember that they were “servants, not masters” of the public.

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The breakthrough process, which is called reverse electrodialysis, captures the energy created when freshwater becomes saltier by mixing with seawater. Although scientists in the 1950s discovered that electricity could be generated this way, no one knew just how efficient the process could be until a recent study proved that a remarkable 80% of the energy could be recovered.

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Climate change, developers, and logging are blamed

Since the winter of 2006, when a state of emergency was declared for 18 counties in the state, Western Washington has experienced increasingly dramatic annual flooding episodes creating a state of emergency in growing numbers of counties each year.

For the past three years here, the number of roads, farms, buildings, and houses damaged or destroyed increased—helped along by the landslides that usually follow in the wake of such flooding. Although with this year the number of landslides has been somewhat constrained, the total area of flooding has increased from the previous two years (several sections of Interstate 5 remained shut down as of Saturday night, Jan. 10), and tens of thousands of people have had to be evacuated over the past 10 days. The governor declared a state of emergency in late December, which has only abated in the past couple of days.

It would seem that a “trifecta” of reinforcing factors is to blame: climate change (an extra heavy dose of snow, followed by several days of heavy rains), upland forest clear-cutting (leaving less vegetation to soak up water and hold the soil in place), and over-development in flood plane areas (leaving too many people’s houses too low in the face of rising rivers) …all of which set the stage for the current state of emergency. The damage is still being tallied, and although the heavy rains have largely abated, repairs to roads and highways will take months if not a full year (and with state budgets so tight) or more.

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Friends of the Earth has planned an extensive day of protest against the Australian Prime Minister’s declaration that Australia will decrease its carbon emissions a mere 5 percent by 2020. To illustrate the problem, activists dressed in emergency gear will surround four separate government offices with sandbags today.

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After raining all day on September 13 and 14, the Windy City became the flooded city.  The far-reaching tendrils of the hurricane dumped 9 inches of rain in less than 24 hours.  Roads and basements became water logged.  The Chicago River overflowed in some parts, leading to the evacuation of about 300 homes.  Flooding in Northwest Indiana led to the closure of Interstate 90.

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Read more at UNEP’s Website and find an insightful commentary on “Gustav, Global Warming and Sarah Palin” at Salon.

Image credit: NASA at Wikimedia Commons.

Luckily, under Brazil’s Constitution Indians must be heard if government changes will affect their land, which gives them veto power over the Belo Monte. Of course, who needs veto power when you have a machete?

Indigenous natives from many tribes attacked an engineer during a protest in Altamira last May, leaving him shirtless and with a bloody gash in his shoulder. After the bloody executive was led away, the protesters danced in celebration, waving their machetes.

“It was a shocking and regrettable act,” said Glenn Switkes, the Brazil-based representative of International Rivers, a California-based nonprofit group. “But it defines what’s at stake and shows that the determination and resistance by indigenous people is likely to be strong.”

The World Wildlife Fund-Brazil says that government officials could meet the growing needs of country by upgrading current systems. In one study they reported that Brazil loses 16-percent of the power it generates, compared with an international rate of about 6-percent. Rapid development of wind, solar and biomass facilities could also reduce the need for building dams.

Belo Monte would be built in the heart of Para, a state that’s home to an explosive mix of poor settlers, cattle ranchers, loggers and scammers who fake land titles. And of course business and political leaders in Altamira support Belo Monte because of the development it will bring.

“With the dam, we’d have more income to improve infrastructure,” said Altamira’s mayor, Odileida Sampaio.

The dam would cost $10 billion and wouldn’t open until 2014 at the earliest. Jose Antonio Muniz, the president of gigantic state power company Eletrobras, said he expected to win approval to let construction bids in October and begin work on Belo Monte next year.

“It’s the best site in the world for a dam,” he said during an hourlong interview. “It will produce a lot of energy and have a minimal impact on people and the environment.”

Eletrobras submitted its environmental impact statement on Feb. 27 to Brazil’s environmental agency. It has yet to be made public.

Muniz said the government would minimize the environmental impact and the impact on its indigenous people. He also promised to compensate those affected, even those without land titles.

I don’t know about you, but my money’s on the guys with the machetes!

Source: PhysOrg.org

Image credit: fishbone1 via Flickr, under a Creative Commons license.

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Their efforts take on a special poignancy with the start of yet another hurricane season (it officially began on June 1, though the tropical system Arthur formed a day early around the Yucatan Peninsula). With lingering La Niña conditions and water temperatures in parts of the Gulf of Mexico already a degree or two above average, there’s reason to be concerned.

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Many dams in Southwest China sustained significant damage after the recent massive earthquake.

The Min River and its tributaries have 30 dams upstream from Dujiangyan and 16 incurred significant damage from the recent earthquake. The Zipingpu dam is an example where a dam failure could have disastrous consequences.

Zipingpu dam threatens millions

The Zipingpu reservoir can hold a staggering 1.1 billion cubic meters of water, but the dam wall was cracked after the earthquake. Dujiangyan, with a population of 600,000 would be devastated by a dam failure first. Within a couple hours, water would then hit the provincial capital, Chengdu.

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In 2005 the world was aghast by the images seen on television and newspapers of the mass destruction caused to human life and the city of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina.

A recent report reveals that State authorities are bolstering levees around Sacramento to prevent it from experiencing Katrina-like effects during a flood. They also hope that severe storms don’t hit the capital city before the completion of projects planned to end by 2012.

With the right combination of bad weather conditions, officials from the Department of Water Resources predict that the American River’s 18,000-square-mile watershed, along with the Sacramento River’s 23,000 square miles in Northern California, could flood the capital city under 20 feet of water, cause $25 billion worth of damage, and devastate homes in Sacramento-area communities.

According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, flooding from the rivers would also leave “500 dead, 102 square miles flooded, and 300,000 people uprooted, an international airport and state agencies under water, and years of recovery.”

So what is the State doing to prevent Sacramento from becoming another New Orleans?

The Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency has been designated to work with state and federal agencies to double Sacramento’s flood protection by using pre-approved $5 billion dollars in state bond money.

Stein Buer, the agency’s executive director, is working with The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the federal Bureau of Reclamation to reinforce the Central Valley’s 1,600 miles of levees, build a spillway channel for the Folsom Dam, and buttress Natomas Basin levees.

Besides infrastructure maintenance, other signs that people are preparing for the worst are building moratoriums near flood-prone areas and higher flood insurance prices.

Environmentalists are concerned about the environmental impacts of more levee construction, homeowners are upset at another high expense, and builders are dismayed at the inability to build, but state officials assure that their plans are in the name of safety.

Because, after all, how horrible would it be if Sacramento became another Katrina? Nobody wants that.

Photo: Wikipedia

Luckily, under Brazil’s Constitution Indians must be heard if government changes will affect their land, which gives them veto power over the Belo Monte. Of course, who needs veto power when you have a machete?

Indigenous natives from many tribes attacked an engineer during a protest in Altamira last May, leaving him shirtless and with a bloody gash in his shoulder. After the bloody executive was led away, the protesters danced in celebration, waving their machetes.

“It was a shocking and regrettable act,” said Glenn Switkes, the Brazil-based representative of International Rivers, a California-based nonprofit group. “But it defines what’s at stake and shows that the determination and resistance by indigenous people is likely to be strong.”

The World Wildlife Fund-Brazil says that government officials could meet the growing needs of country by upgrading current systems. In one study they reported that Brazil loses 16-percent of the power it generates, compared with an international rate of about 6-percent. Rapid development of wind, solar and biomass facilities could also reduce the need for building dams.

Belo Monte would be built in the heart of Para, a state that’s home to an explosive mix of poor settlers, cattle ranchers, loggers and scammers who fake land titles. And of course business and political leaders in Altamira support Belo Monte because of the development it will bring.

“With the dam, we’d have more income to improve infrastructure,” said Altamira’s mayor, Odileida Sampaio.

The dam would cost $10 billion and wouldn’t open until 2014 at the earliest. Jose Antonio Muniz, the president of gigantic state power company Eletrobras, said he expected to win approval to let construction bids in October and begin work on Belo Monte next year.

“It’s the best site in the world for a dam,” he said during an hourlong interview. “It will produce a lot of energy and have a minimal impact on people and the environment.”

Eletrobras submitted its environmental impact statement on Feb. 27 to Brazil’s environmental agency. It has yet to be made public.

Muniz said the government would minimize the environmental impact and the impact on its indigenous people. He also promised to compensate those affected, even those without land titles.

I don’t know about you, but my money’s on the guys with the machetes!

Source: PhysOrg.org

Image credit: fishbone1 via Flickr, under a Creative Commons license.

The Agency has a special webpage dedicated to flooding, updated every 15 minutes, and as I type this, the page states the following:

1 severe flood warning

74 flood warnings

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