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There’s Money in Thirst
Claudia H. Deutsch, NY Times
Everyone knows there is a lot of money to be made in oil. But a fresh group of big businesses is discovering there may be even greater profit in a more prosaic liquid: water.
“You’ve got exploding urban populations, increased pollution and a need to address those things in a meaningful way,’’ said Ian Barbour, general manager of Dow Chemical’s Water Solutions unit. “Of course, we’re investing significantly in the water business.”
Most analysts expect the water market in the United States to be worth at least $150 billion by 2010. And it may happen even sooner than that. Arid cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix already grapple with sporadic water shortages. New York City’s water – once lauded for its purity – is getting cloudy, and the American Society of Civil Engineers has given the pipes and other parts of the country’s creaky water system a D minus.
Globally, water problems are even more immediate. Many experts estimate that water-related equipment and services already make up a $400 billion global market.
(10 Aug 2006)
Plasma screens threaten eco-crisis
David Smith and Juliette Jowit, The Observer
Our insatiable appetite for the big picture is threatening the planet. A scientist has warned that if half of British homes buy a plasma-screen TV, two nuclear power stations would have to be built to meet the extra energy demand.
Britons were buying flat-screen TVs every 15 seconds from Currys and its online sister company Dixons during the build-up to the World Cup, and subsequent price reductions have ensured they remain hugely popular.
But plasma sets can use up to four times as much electricity as the old-style cathode-ray tube models. Combined with set-top boxes, digital video recorders, DVD players and home PCs, the digital home is seen by environmental campaigners as a growing contributor to the energy crisis.
(13 Aug 2006)
Bill Kemp, author of The Renewable Energy Handbook, said on The Watt last week that the electricity consumption of “our big screen high def TV, it is almost exactly the same amount of power when it is turned off as when it is turned on running, unbelievable.”
-AF
Java sinks deeper into toxic crisis
Mark Forbes, The Age
TOXIC mud still spurting from a gas drilling well part-owned by Australian mining giant Santos is threatening to mire East Java in a full-scale disaster.
Unable to prevent millions of tonnes of mud from blocking highways and rail links, experts propose to divert the flow into the ocean, risking another environmental catastrophe.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited the disaster zone south of Surabaya yesterday, after thousands more villagers were evacuated when the rising mud breached levees.
For two months mud has flowed from an exploratory well near Porong, inundating 25 square kilometres, putting 1000 people in hospital with breathing difficulties and forcing more than 10,000 from their homes. It has cut roads, covered train lines and threatens the rail link between Jakarta and Surabaya, Indonesia’s busiest port.
On Thursday, more than 5000 people fled a wave of mud when a dam broke, leading to suggestions that large areas of land should be left to the mud and residents relocated. Authorities are concerned that other six-metre-high dirt dams erected to contain the mud will not hold.
Cost estimates range from hundreds of millions to more than $A4 billion, with compensation costs continuing to climb.
Santos has declined to comment directly on the cause of the disaster and clean-up attempts, saying these are matters for the well operator and Indonesian authorities.
(12 Aug 2006)
Pacific’s ‘dead zone’ is larger than first feared
Joseph B Frazier, The Independent
The oxygen-starved “dead zone” along America’s Pacific Coast that is causing widespread crab and fish deaths is worse than first thought, scientists said.
The dead zone is a 70-mile stretch of water along the Continental Shelf in Oregon, between Florence and Lincoln City. In some areas the seabed is strewn with dead marine life – and the weather appears to be the culprit.
Oregon State University (OSU) scientists looking for weather changes that could reverse the situation are not finding them. Levels of dissolved oxygen critical to marine life are at their lowest since the first dead zone was identified in 2002. It has returned every year.
(14 Aug 2006)
