planetwater

Currently, the 5th World Water Forum takes place in Istanbul. Its subtitle is “Bridging Divides for Water” hinting at the necessary turning point for water resources: making drinking water available for everybody. It seems like the geographic location of Istanbul might be a proper choice for that theme. There are six main themes, around which sessions are grouped: “Global Change and Risk Management”, “Advancing Human Development and the MDGs”, “Managing and Protecting Water Resources”, “Governance & Management”, “Finance”, and “Education, Knowledge and Capacity Development”.

Additionally, there is a big exposition with booths from participating countries and companies. There are “high level panels” on “water and disasters”, on “local financing”, on “water, food, and energy”, on “sanitation”, and on “water and climate change”.

The main webpage is huge, and it is a little hard to find out what is happening where. It seems like a huge congress though. It will be interesting to see what the outcomes are! The Guardian reports on the congress and on protesters. The article quotes Maude Barlow, recipient of the 2005 Right Livelihood Award and chairperson of The Council of Canadians:

It’s organised to look like a UN-type event but it’s not. […] It’s really just a big trade show put on by the big water companies. There is going to be no mention of water as a human right. They don’t want to support that because they see water as a commodity to be sold on the open market. There is mounting evidence that privatisation has failed. We believe water should be a public trust.

Maude Barlow is also member of the organizing committe of the “Alternative Water Forum“, which also takes currently place (March 20 to 22), also in Istanbul.

Balazs Gardi is the winner of the “Pictures of the Year International” competition in the category “Global Vision Award“.

Winning photograph at the Pictures of the Year International Competition.

From a description of his work:

My project aims to examine the lives of people directly impacted by these developments, to search for solutions and coping strategies, and to encourage reflection on an issue of global scale that requires concerted local action.

Check out more pictures at lightstalkers.org

Neataroma.com has a post on “5 really weird things about water”. These 5 points are:

1. Hot Water Freezes Faster Than Cold Water
2. Supercooling and “Instant” Ice
3. Glassy Water
4. Quantum Properties of Water
5. Does Water Have Memory? Bonus: Ice Spikes Bonus 2: Make Instant Snow with Boiling Water

Item 5 does a fairly good job in explaining how Homeopathy is supposedly working!

White House sits problems out (does not open email from EPA)

Six months ago, the EPA was told by the US Supreme Court to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment. The EPA answered that question in an email to the White House, stating that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled. The White House decided that this email officially has never been opened. Now, six months later, the EPA is writing a new watered down letter. Reported by the New York Times, via scientificactivist

NASA: “world’s only hope is drastic action”

NASA scientist James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences, has warned the US Congress 20 years ago about the negative effects of Global Warming. He just did it again.

The year of Hansen’s original testimony was the world’s hottest year on record. Since then, 14 years have been hotter, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

All Chinese Water is Funneled to Beijing

Wired is reporting on how much water is needed in Beijing, especially for the upcoming summer Olympic Games, that in the vicinity of Beijing more and more wells are running dry.

Changing Climate Can Trigger Wars

Weird has a piece on how changing climate can trigger wars

The Grand Canyon has been flooded recently for the third time since 1996. Der Spiegel has a series of articles on the preparation, the process of the flooding, and the aftermath. Some environmentalists claim that the interval between man-made floods is too big to simulate the flooding intervals that occurred naturally, before the Colorado River was dammed (see also this previous blog post on planetwater). Besides bringing water to land on higher elevation, the natural floods lead to a completely different sediment scheme in the Colorado River. The major reservoirs retain a big part of the naturally occurring sediment load.

As a side-note to the topic “Grand Canyon”: Carl Zimmer recently had an article on weird commenting on how creationists try to prove that Noah’s Arc was very much related to the Grand Canyon, only a couple of 1000 years ago…

For me, Christmas Holidays are for the family. But sometimes you gotta take a little break and so I did some reading to catch up with my blog-subscriptions and some more reading in the vastness of the internet. Here are some things I found relevant for planetwater.org:

Water, Global Warming

Here are a couple of interesting and not necessarily related links to things relevant to water and global warming:

This year, there is no ice on the old Wayne Gretzky backyard rink (found through this blog entry). What clearer sign could there be that things change?

Orange county makes drinking water out of sewage

An Earthquake might pose threat on LA water supply (german, Der Spiegel), and more California water issues (on bromide in reservoirs)

Wired: 2007 was a record year for US

High tritium levels found in landfill in Ontario

Funding for science, policies?

In this interview, the president of Harvard emits some interesting views on how to fund science. Ivy League complains about funding, also discussion on cosmic variance

US legislation

I don’t want to get much into a political debate, especially not before or during presidential elections in the US. I’m sure there are enough pages on the internet and elsewhere that cover that. However, when it comes to environmental legislation, this might be worth remembering: US legislation passed before christmas

Global maps

The goole earth blog has written about the influence of human beings on earth. There are two interesting maps:

• biomes around the world
• population density around the world

Carl Sagan

Browsing through the web trying to find good scientific presenters, I came across Carl Sagan. He was instrumental in SETI, and he had a TV show called “cosmos”, which is available on DVD. I really like his seven-minute long talk on nuclear war:

This is a cool video of a couple of cool experiments with a big water bubble in space.

This is a cool video of a couple of cool experiments with a big water bubble in space.