Rushing Rivers Blog

Recently, The Chipewyan and Cree Indians in Alberta, near the Athabasca River, were forced to relocate when without notice Syncrude, the largest oil-producer of Canada, demolished their homes and built six oil mines at a twenty mile radius that release contaminated discharges into tailing ponds. April 2008, hundreds of migrating birds mistook one of those ponds for a brief rest stop. All of them died. A narrow dike that has leaked in the past keeps the river from the ponds that hold contaminated water which is used for the industrial process, with intention of water recycle. But according to the University of Waterloo, 45,000 gallons a day of polluted water may be reaching the river.  By Fort McKay, bitumen, tar-like petroleum, leaks into the riverbanks, endangering aquatic life. More than 200,000 tons of water need to be used for the production of usable oil. The oil sands changed about 150 square miles into dust, dirt and tailing ponds, an oil explosion that has killed people and damaged the environment.

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A small Canadian firm, Element Four, in contact with United Nations  developed the WaterMill, a novel electricity-powered machine that takes moisture from the air and purifies it into clean drinkable water, going on sale this Spring. It will be available to many third-world countries such as Zimbabwe, currently facing severe water scarcity for 1.8 billion people. As a result from poor sanitation and lack of clean, sufficient water, Zimbabwe is also experiencing a serious outbreak of cholera. The company is currently working on the WaterWall, several water-creating appliances and attaching them to a wall, allowing more regions to be supplied with drinkable water.
However, the machine only functions at 35% percent relative humidity levels, thus in very dry climates WaterAid is focusing more on harvesting rainwater and hand-dug wells to help communities in more than 17 countries reach water. This 10-person company has revolutionary technology that may greatly help serious global water-shortages.
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Having lost 90% of its glaciers due to global warming, Spain faces drought in rivers that threaten the water supply of residents living at the foothills and south of the Pyrenees Mountains. Only 390 of 3,300 hectares of land remain covered by glaciers on this 267 mile mountain range which separates Spain from France. Glaciers feed rivers and provide sufficient water for agriculture, when they melt after the winter they also provide the correct temperature and water levels to sustain life in rivers such as the Gállego, Cincia and the Garona, particularly during the dry season. The rate at which the glaciers are disappearing is alarming, unseen for 5,000 years, as reported by the World Glacier Monitoring Service. Like major glacial melts in history, there is an extreme likelihood that they will disappear completely.
“Even the Alps, though, stand to lose up to 75% of its glacial area by mid-century.”
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The President of the United States, Barack Obama, has laid a plan on the table to introduce a cap and trade approach to emissions regulation to the US. Europe already has such a scheme in place. Looking at European cap and trade gives us a glimpse of what such a plan may mean in the US. One of the drawbacks to their system has been the decline in the value of pollution permits in the face of the global recession. There is simply less production and less demand for the permits, or the expensive alternative energy offsets. Still some think that cap and trade may be the face of things to come in the global response to the threat of global climate change.

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We need to know how fast artic ice is melting, and there is one sure way to do that, mount an expedition to the North Pole. That is exactly what a group of intrepid British explorers have set out to do. The effort will give scientists the on the ground knowledge of how soon we can expect an ice-free summer.

Read more here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7917266.stm