Also on today’s menu:
Growing Crops From Oil Field Wastewater
Sea Levels Threaten Coastlines
Nature Climate Change reports that the western United States and northern Mexico are experiencing their driest period in at least 1,200 years, or about the time that Charlemagne was being crowned emperor of Rome, based upon a study of tree rings.
The populations in the west rely in Lake Powell and Lake Mead for their drinking and irrigation needs, but the two reservoirs — the largest in the U.S. — are measuring about one-third their total capacity. Federal water managers have declared the first-ever water shortage along the Colorado River. Last December, Nevada, Arizona, and California agreed to take less water from the Colorado in order keep Lake Mead from going dry.
Park Williams, the author of the study, said the west’s water patterns have ranged from high to low in the past, with the last megadrought occurring in the 1500s, but that climate change has been speeding up evaporation and disrupting weather patterns. He estimates that about one-fifth of the problem can be attributed to humans and greenhouse gas emissions.
Growing Crops From Oil Field Wastewater
The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board has assured the public that eating California crops grown with oil field wastewater “creates no identifiable increased health risks,” based on studies commissioned as part of the Food Safety Project. However, the “neutral third-party consultant” that the board hired, GSI Environmental, regularly works with the oil industry, including defending Chevron in lawsuits around the world.
Furthermore, two board members have ties to the oil industry. One was nominated and paid by the oil industry, and the other worked as a consultant for an oil company selling produced water.
Thomas Borch of Colorado State University, who reviewed the data GSI used, said that the way they designed the experiments, “they were not able to draw the conclusions they did. Period.”
Sea Levels Threaten Coastlines
Scientists at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration are warning that the United States should prepare for 10 to 12 inches of relative sea level rise over the next 30 years, due to both sinking land and global warming. Moderate coastal flooding is expected to occur 10 times more frequently, and without significant adaptations, high tides will more frequently pour into streets and disrupt coastal infrastructure, they report.
Higher global temperatures cause thermal expansion in the ocean, causing it to rise higher, and melting ice from both mountain and polar regions add new quantities of water to the ocean. Polar ice in Greenland and Antarctica hold enough frozen water that, if they melted completely, the global sea level would rise by 200 feet, according to Jianjun Yin, an associate professor of geoscience at the University of Arizona.
As the surface height of the ocean rises, unique local conditions can alter the rate of rise, causing some areas to flood more quickly. The East and Gulf coasts of the United States face much higher risks than the West Coast and Hawai’i.
Please Support Our Efforts
The News Café is a virtual meeting place where we discuss the news of the day. An effort by the Liberty Independent Media Project, the work does not rely on advertising, as most media outlets do, freeing us to provide an independent focus on events and cultural issues. The project instead relies on direct monetary support from donors and subscribers.
If you like what we’re doing, please give what you can. Subscriptions to this newsletter are available for as little as $5 per month. Subscribers can share their knowledge, thoughts, and questions about any topic, and we may select some of those subjects for more in-depth analysis.
If you’re unable to pay but still want to receive all of the free public posts in your in-box, click the Subscribe button and select a free subscription.