NEWS: Parts of the world drying up says the UN.

According to the UN regions of the world are turning to dust with lands the size of Rhode Island becoming deserts every year. One third of the world is at risk, driving people into cities and destroying agriculture in parts of Africa.

 

U.N. Says Globe Drying Up at Fast Pace


In this topic the UN has been adamant, always stating that humans do have an impact on the environment and on climate change. While parts of the world are drying up other parts are getting an excessive amount of rain and other forms of extreme weather. While abrupt climate change has been found to be a normal cycle in the past, it does seems that human activities are increasing these climate changes this time around.



[edit on 16-6-2004 by Muaddib]

[edit on 16-6-2004 by Nerdling]

hmm...with the dwindling oil supply, population growth, and now this, an impending energy crisis seems more and more likely...

-raven

These changes are normal. Look at the Sahara desert. It didn't used to be like that. Change is normal. Now if we wake up tomorrow and the Sahara is green I'll be worried. :-) Throughout history the climate has changed. A climate cycle can last for a decade or two. And that is certainly long enough to dry a region out.

Discouraging but not surprising news. Climate change happens even without mankind's involvement.

The thing that irks me most is that in South America at least some of the problem could have been reduced by stopping slash and burn techniques and curbing deforestation.

I know the Chinese have been working hard by planting miles and miles of trees to stop the advance of the Gobi desert to little avail. I always thought they were fighting a losing battle there but at least they tried.

My bigger concern is war being waged over water rights in the coming years, as more people would potentially be willing to fight and die over it than perhaps oil.

Originally posted by Indy
A climate cycle can last for a decade or two.

only a decade?

There are a number of cycles that last centuries or even millenia.

The Ice ages are good examples.

Call me crazy but nature will always find a way to take control over the earth even if means human lost.

[edit on 16-6-2004 by marg6043]

Originally posted by marg6043
Call me crazy but nature will always find a way to take control over the earth even if means human lost.

[edit on 16-6-2004 by marg6043]

Indeed. The only way to ensure (or atleast signifigantly extend) human survival is to remember that we are part of nature as well, and work in tandem with it rather than in competition with it.

Yes, I am a hippy wuss.

Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey say that western drought could be the severest in 500 years with considerable worse effects than the Dust Bowl years.

 

Western drought worse than Dust Bowl


According to the report there is a current annual average flow in the Colorado river of 5.4 million acre-feet at Lees Ferry, Arizona during 2001-2003. While during the Dust Bowl years, between 1930 and 1937 the annual average flow was 10.2 million acre-feet. This would suggest that the current drought will be the same or more severe than the severe drought in 1590-1594, which had an annual average flow of 8.84 millian acre-feet.

Look, the UN has been aching to tax the world water supply...that's what this is all about.

How exactly will the UN tax all the world's water supplies? You think the US does what the UN wants?..... Ya, we saw that in the war in Iraq....the UN wanted more sanctions so that some of the countries in the UN kept making money while another half a million Iraqi children die, while the US wanted a more humane and faster approach to the threat.
BTW its the current drought, the one the Midwest US is going through, and the finding of US scientists a lie?

[edit on 19-6-2004 by Muaddib]

Muaddib asked:
"How exactly will the UN tax all the world's water supplies?"

junknewsie was referring to the UN's "Agenda 21" which would place a "cap & trade" system (sounds like Kyoto) on all natural resources as well as energy resources. It also goes to the extent of forcing the education and beliefs of this system on children (early brainwashing).

No specific mention of a "tax" is made, but a "cap & trade" system amounts to much the same thing.

In anticipation of this nonsensical socialist agenda from the non-elected, self-proclaimed god-like entity known as the UN, the U.S. government is mandating that all private wells on U.S. farms have meters installed.

Well, the following pictures can be found at the coast to coast website. The pictures were taken by a trucker on Kansas. i am not familiar with these kind of duststorms anywhere in the US, but it looks pretty bad. The trucker mentioned that as he was going through the duststorm the climate changed and it was colder. He thinks it was a cold front that made the duststorm. Is any ATS member from Kansas who saw this, or knows something about it?





The pictures and the report from the trucker can be found here.
www.coasttocoastam.com...

I think thats pretty normal in some areas of the midwest. As for climate change well thats normal, like somebody said the sahara was actually a savanah at one point. But I would bet that human caused global warming is going to make this change either worse or more rapid.

Howard sorry I didnt respond sooner. I was refering to cycles tied to the PDO (pacific decadal oscillation). There are much longer cycles such as the ice age cycle but I was talking about the shorter ones. Actually I suspect the ones tied to the PDO are often confused for climate change due to the length of the cycle.

Originally posted by HowardRoark

Originally posted by Indy
A climate cycle can last for a decade or two.

only a decade?

There are a number of cycles that last centuries or even millenia.

The Ice ages are good examples.

Re: Muaddib's post of the Coast To Coast pics.

It looks like dust was kicked up by a cold air downdraft or perhaps a microburst. Trucker Warren did mention a weather front "looming in the distance" and that the temps were in the 90's until that cold blast came through. Considering that the photo is of a farming area, dust would be abundant from nearby fields.

I don't know the date of the event, but much of the lower midwest has had plenty of storm activity the past few weeks due to a persistant high pressure area that kept a cooler, dryer air mass to the north of much of the region. Warmer, moister air from the south and southwest has been bumping into that cooler front causing the normal reaction associated with such things. Warren's comments about his heading fit well with this recent weather pattern.

In the midwest and plains states, downdrafts and microbursts are not unusual in weather situations like these. They can happen without any percipitation or thunderstorm activity.

As for Warren's comments of "electrical discharges", this could be possible although extremely rare, especially if there was no sign of a thunderstorm. Still, a rapid enough downdraft of very high altitude air may not give that air mass enough time for its higher electrical charge to reach equilibrium with lower altitude air before it hits the ground. If that was the case, Warren may have been caught up an exchange of air-to-air and air-to-ground static discharge.

India and China are planning controversial megaprojects to link major rivers in giant networks that span the countries, for the purposes of avoiding both floods in some regions and droughts in others.

India:

A Case For Inter-Basin Transfer of Water

The continued onslaught of floods and droughts in the intervening years in various parts of the country and the consequent loss of life and property necessitated the Government of India to review the situation and to come out with a National Perspective Plan for interlinking the rivers. The plan comprises two components:
...
Long distance transfer of water is not an end by itself but it is a means to end the human sufferings from frequent droughts and floods.



Interlinking Idea Revisits Polity

Obeying the Supreme Court�s orders issued last October, the Union Government has revealed the blue-print for a scheme on interlinking our rivers so that the water resource available could be put to optimum use to overcome floods and droughts. The scheme is to be completed in a 10-year period and is expected to cost over Rs 200,000 crore, plus any rise due to price escalation. The scheme, unlike earlier concepts, provides for three links, one in the South peninsular area and two in the North.

China:

www.peopleandplanet.net...

The Chinese government has authorised one of the world's biggest engineering projects to pump water from the flood-prone south of the country to the drought-stricken north.

Three man-made rivers will transfer water from the Yangtze - the world's third largest river - across 800 miles to the crowded northern provinces, where more than 400 cities now face water shortages.

The first such imported water could reach Shandong province by 2005. By 2010, water from the south could be flowing into washbasins, kettles and fountains in Beijing.



China's Water Diversion Raises Eco-Activist Alarm

Environmentalists are gearing up for an international fight against China's latest megaproject, a mammoth network of dams and canals that will dwarf the controversial Three Gorges project.

China is already boasting that the water diversion scheme will be the biggest hydraulic engineering project in history. At cost of $60-billion (U.S.) over the next 50 years, it will be twice as expensive as the Three Gorges hydroelectric dam.