The World's Best Water Photographer

These amazing photos of water in motion are amazing.

Please visit this site...and remember to cherish our water.

"These images are actually the ocean's waves, captured at their peak point of crash."

Thanks to Prof. Carol Yeager on Facebook for the tip on this fabulous photographer.

See more here: http://fb-694.lifebuzz.com/sea-mountains/

Fracking Company Sued Ohio Town For Its Water

Read this headline, and hold onto your hat!

"A $600-Million Fracking Company Just Sued This Tiny Ohio Town For Its Water"

Incredible, isn't it? Here's the scoop...excerpts from the article:

    A tiny town in eastern Ohio is being sued by an Oklahoma-based oil and gas company that bought more than 180 million gallons of water from the town last year. That water use, combined with a dry fall, prompted the village to temporarily shut off water to Gulfport Energy. Now, a second company has a water agreement, and there might not be enough water to go around.

    Gulfport Energy alleges in the lawsuit that the village of Barnesville, population 4,100, violated its agreement to provide water from its reservoir by entering into a contract with oil and gas company Antero Resources. Gulfport says the village’s contract with Antero allows for withdrawals beyond what Gulfport is allowed to take.

    Gulfport’s water supply can be shut off whenever water levels in the reservoir create a risk to the health and safety of the village residents and businesses. Last fall, the reservoir was down three feet below average when village officials stopped all outside withdrawals.

    “We felt like we had to shut everyone off to protect the regular users,” said village solicitor Marlin Harper. “We don’t have unlimited water.”

    But here’s the catch: Only Gulfport pumped water out of the reservoir last year. So even though, as Harper admits, the Antero contract has “a little bit of a priority” over the Gulfport contract, that’s not the reason Gulfport’s water supply was shut off. During the unusually dry fall, water withdrawals by Gulfport alone were too much for the reservoir to sustain.

    Environmentalists stress how valuable water is in the area, and particularly how valuable the reservoir at the heart of the lawsuit is. The water being sold to Gulfport comes from the Slope Creek Reservoir, which supplies water to all the town’s residents as well as another 8,000 people in neighboring areas, said John Morgan, a spokesman for Concerned Barnesville Area Residents.

The Slope Creek Reservoir in Barnesville, Ohio, provides water for at least two oil and gas companies.

Read the full story here: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/24/3637048/fracking-all-the-water-away/

More Trouble For Our Oceans

While we're talking about global warming, and worrying about its effects on climate and severe weather, there is an increasing amount of research being done on our oceans that we should be following.

Here's an excerpt from the article by Chris Mooney: Global warming is now slowing down the circulation of the oceans — with potentially dire consequences


    ...now this week brings news of another potential mega-scale perturbation. According to a new study just out in Nature Climate Change by Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a group of co-authors, we’re now seeing a slowdown of the great ocean circulation that, among other planetary roles, helps to partly drive the Gulf Stream off the U.S. east coast. The consequences could be dire – including significant extra sea level rise for coastal cities like New York and Boston.

    A vast, powerful, and warm current, the Gulf Stream transports more water than “all the world’s rivers combined,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But it’s just one part of a larger regional ocean conveyor system – scientists technically call it the “Atlantic meridional overturning circulation” — which, in turn, is just one part of the larger global “thermohaline” circulation (“thermohaline” conjoins terms meaning “temperature” and “salty”).

    For the whole system, a key driver occurs in the North Atlantic ocean. Here, the warm Gulf Stream flows northward into cooler waters and splits into what is called the North Atlantic Current. This stream flows still further toward northern latitudes — until it reaches points where colder, salty water sinks due to its greater density, and then travels back southward at depth.

Graph of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation by Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Red colors are surface currents, blue colors are below the surface. “NADW” stands for North Atlantic Deep Water.

Read the full article at The Washington Post website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/03/23/global-warming-is-now-slowing-down-the-circulation-of-the-oceans-with-potentially-dire-consequences/

Depth of Plastic Pollution in Oceans Revealed

If this article on the state of our oceans doesn't get your attention, nothing will!

Excerpt from PHYS.org:

    PhD candidate Julia Reisser and her international team published the study in the journal Biogeosciences, reporting the first ever high-resolution vertical profiles of plastic pollution in the so-called "ocean garbage patches".

    Most of the submerged plastics were very small - less than 1 mm across. Previous studies noticed that tiny plastics were missing from the oceans.

    "We have shown that at least a fraction of this missing plastic is still adrift at sea, but at depths greater than the surface layer that is usually sampled by scientists," Ms Reisser said.

    By using a new measuring device called a Multi-level Trawl, the researchers were able to measure plastic concentrations in ten layers simultaneously, down to a depth of 5 meters.

    While taking measurements in the North Atlantic Garbage Patch, the team demonstrated that the mass concentration of millimetre-sized plastics drops exponentially from the sea surface to deeper waters.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-depth-plastic-pollution-oceans-revealed.html#jCp

What's California Going To Do Without Water?

The water situation in California is getting worse by the day. A recent article by SFist, based on an LA Times Op-Ed, declared:

California Has One Year Of Water Left

A section of Lake Oroville in August, 2014. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Excerpt from the SFist blog: 

A stark Op-Ed in the LA Times lays out the case for why water rationing needs to start, statewide, basically now. Also, the state has to lay out better long-term water strategies, right now, because they have none and the situation is now dire.

The piece was written by a UC Irvine professor who's also a senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech, Jay Famiglietti. And he notes that California's water problems date back to at least 2002, when satellite imaging began tracking the steady decline in statewide water reserves every year. 

Groundwater pumping, especially in the Central Valley, remains a huge problem, and we now have to face the reality of what a paltry winter this has been for rain following on the extraordinary drought conditions we faced last summer and fall.

In case you've already forgotten, San Francisco got exactly zero rainfall in the month of January, which is unprecedented as far back as records have been kept. And statewide, January was the driest one on record since 1895.

Per Famiglietti:

Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain.

In short, we have no paddle to navigate this crisis.

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Sounds pretty serious to me. Most of us are still taking access to clean water for granted. As for me, I'm watching every drop I use and try to remind others to do the same. I write a monthly newsletter for my condominium where I include reminders about saving water. Let's all do our part before it's too late.


Read More: http://sfist.com/2015/03/13/california_has_one_year_of_water_le.php