Wednesday, April 22, 2015

California is running dry. Serious drought continues.


Nestlé

Kaytee Riek, SumOfUs.org


4/19/15


 Newsletters
To: Joseph Raglione

NASA just gave California a dire warning: it only has one year’s worth of water left. Meanwhile, Nestlé is bottling huge amounts of water from the parched desert to sell for profit.

Tell Nestlé to stop selling water from drought-stricken regions.
Click here to sign the Petition
Joseph,
California will run out of water very soon.
According to NASA’s new report, California only has enough water to get it through the next year. People are under strict water-saving measures; farmers are struggling to keep their crops alive.
Yet, Nestlé is bottling water from at least ten natural springs throughout California, including from some of the most drought-stricken areas of the state, and selling it for profit. In places like Sacramento, it’s paying less than $0.14 per gallon. This is bananas.
We can stop this. Nestlé’s already feeling pressure in Canada -- last month, we hit front page news for our campaign to stop the giant corporation from withdrawing Canadians’ groundwater at dirt cheap rates, and political parties in Canada are debating the policy. If we're to stop Nestlé from sucking California dry, we have to keep up the pressure.
As California's water supplies dry up, Nestlé continues to make millions selling bottled water. Nestlé's Sacramento water plant is sucking water at a rate of 50 million gallons of water each year from the city's water reserves, and that's just one of the billion dollar company's five bottling plants in California. And Nestlé isn't even following the rules -- a new investigation shows that Nestlé Water's permit to transport water across the San Bernardino National Forest for bottling expired 27 years ago.
The biggest victims of this unprecedented drought are California's food crops and the minimum-wage workers who grow them. More than 80% of the world's almonds and nearly half of the USA's fruits and vegetables come from California. As crops sit withering on the vine and tens of thousands of farm workers lose their livelihoods, it's a travesty that precious water is being bottled and sold for profit instead of feeding our crops. 
SumOfUs members have stood up to Nestlé exploiting our natural resources for profits, and the company has heard us loud and clear. After hundreds of thousands of us called on Nestlé to stop exploiting Pakistan's water supply, we took the message straight to the company's annual meeting. And now we are making front pages in Canada. We can stop Nestlé's water-guzzling ways in California, but we need to speak out before the state completely runs out of water. 
Thanks for all you do,
Kaytee, Kat, Angus, and the rest of the SumOfUs team

**********
More information:
Nestlé called out for bottling, selling California water during drought, Reuters, April 2 2015
California only has one year’s worth of its water supply left, NASA scientist warns, Raw Story, March 13 2015

How to make drinkable water out of thin air

CLEAN TECHNOLOGY
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published 
Last updated 
California is drying up. Its current drought is ringing alarm bells across the state and the country, but it is far from being alone globally in facing water shortages.
Developed economies such as California already rely on sophisticated irrigation systems to utilize what sources it has. But what’s needed now are even smarter, 21st-century solutions.
One constantly evolving technology is desalination, which is being deployed successfully around the world, even as engineers work toward better systems that will use less energy.

Another path to drinkable water

Desalination takes undrinkable seawater and removes the salt to provide potable water. It works by pushing salt water at high pressure through a superfine membrane, which blocks salt molecules and lets the water through.
Africa’s first desalination plant was built by GE in Algiers, Algeria in 2008. The plant supplies 53 million gallons of freshwater every day, a quarter of the city’s needs. 
Netherlands-based Dutch Rainmaker BV has come up with an alternative, and novel, solution to water shortages. The company, with partners in Canada and other countries, has developed a technology that can deliver water out of thin air. Its technology uses wind turbines to conjure up H20, in some cases with no access to any inflowing sources.
The company’s air-to-water system, called AW75, is already operating in extreme desert conditions in Kuwait and in the cooler Netherlands. It works without access to the power grid, with minimal operation and maintenance and no waste.
“We combine technologies that are already known,” says Piet Oosterling, Rainmaker’s founder and Chief Technology Officer. The system deploys the wind via a turbine, but instead of generating electricity it creates thermal energy to cause condensation. It works because air always contains a certain amount of water, though this varies according to temperatures and humidity. When it’s 20 degrees Celsius and the relative humidity is at 50 per cent, the air contains about seven grams of water per cubic metre of air. If the temperature climbs to 30 at the same humidity, the amount of water doubles.
“The air-to-condensation process effectively heats and cools the air to the dew point. It basically creates condensation and makes it rain,” says Michael O’Connor, Rainmaker Worldwide’s Peterborough, Ont.-based CEO. The condensed droplets are collected into a storage compartment.
The heart of the air-to-water unit is the device’s wind-fed power unit. Inside the nacelle at the top of the tower there’s a proprietary compressor (heat pump). The system converts wind energy to thermal power, which, in turn, feeds the water production unit attached to the tower. The turbine forces air through a heat exchanger, cooling the air and forming condensation. When the temperature falls below its dew-point, water droplets will form. These are collected in a water storage compartment.
The company’s prototypes in Kuwait and the Netherlands each produce an average 7,000 litres per day of water. The unit in Kuwait has managed to produce 8,700 litres a day at temperatures of 28 degrees and 40 per cent relative humidity.
The company will not say where else it is testing the technology – there is a French company testing a rival system - but says it has potential in countries such as Saudi Arabia, China, Indonesia and India.
Prototypes of the air-to-water system are installed in both Kuwait and the Netherlands. (DUTCH RAINMAKER)
Air-to-water technology is not viable for colder climes, such as remote communities in Canada’s North, some of which have suffered from polluted supplies or have to truck in water via ice roads. For such climates, Oosterling says Rainmaker has another technology that the company calls water-to-water.
This unit also uses wind to produce thermal energy, but rather than pull moisture from the air it heats water from existing supplies and sends it through a membrane. It’s different than conventional reverse osmosis (RO) membrane filtration because it only allows water vapour to pass through, by varying the pressure on each side of the membrane.
The water-to-water unit can be used to desalinate and to filter brackish water; the first model can produce up to 95,000 litres of water per day, enough for a town of between 1,800 and 4,000 people.
Oosterling says he is discovering that producing clean water from the wind may be useful in ways he didn’t anticipate, for example in the mining sector. “It’s something I never envisioned,” he says.
But for now, he is focused on trying to serve the needs of the 783 million people who don’t have regular access to clean water (according to the United Nations). “It can be used where the infrastructure is not tremendous,” he says. “It has to be simple and people have to be able to understand it.”
To enlarge image click here
For more innovation insights, visit www.gereports.ca
This content was produced by The Globe and Mail's advertising department, in consultation with GE. The Globe's editorial department was not involved in its creation.

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Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Our wonderful international web site index.


  This week I recommend you visit: 

18. = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhLa6O1OP0Y
30.= http://www.iTooch.com  How to greatly improve our school systems.
49.  http://eol.org/
50. http://www.seedsavers.org/onlinestore/
51. http://www.human4us.net/
53. http://www.popsci.com/chiles-calbuco-volcano-erupts-spectacularly
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Gentle People:

 We need to strengthen the United Nations and allow that organization to create a world wide peace force. Such a force, when created, must be deployed quickly to stop cruel dictators and blood thirsty anarchists from murdering innocent human beings. A world peace force based on protecting human rights and the environment and comprised of peace keepers from every nation on earth. They would not only be trained for fighting but they would also have medical training and would be utilized for emergency disaster relief anywhere on the planet.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Dear Mr. Nelson Raglione

We have received your request for media accreditation and have provided you with ID Number 35329. 

Please retain the ID Number for your records as it will be required to check on the status of your accreditation and to complete the accreditation process.

If you have not already done so, please forward your duly signed letter of assignment by fax to 1-212-963-4642 or as a scanned document in jpeg format or as a PDF to malu@un.org.

You will be notified by email of your accreditation status as soon as possible.

You can check your accreditation status online, or review or modify the information you provided in the online registration form. Go to Url www.un.org/en/media/accreditation/form/renewal.shtml#login), where you can log in to your personal accreditation account. To log in, please enter the e-mail address you gave us and the password you selected.

Kind regards,
The Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit team
United Nations Headquarters
Room S-250
New York, NY 10017
 
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Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Greenpeace Activists Are Refusing To Leave Oil Rig Headed For The Arctic, Despite Legal Threats

BY NATASHA GEILING POSTED ON 
 
"Greenpeace Activists Are Refusing To Leave Oil Rig Headed For The Arctic, Despite Legal Threats"
 
Greenpeace activists hold a banner that reads 'The People vs. Shell' as they scaled the Polar Pioneer drill rig in the Pacific Ocean.
Greenpeace activists hold a banner that reads ‘The People vs. Shell’ as they scaled the Polar Pioneer drill rig in the Pacific Ocean.
CREDIT: VINCENZO FLORAMO / GREENPEACE
On Monday, some 750 miles northwest of Hawaii, six Greenpeace activists boarded a Shell oil rig en route from Malaysia to the Port of Seattle in protest of the oil company’s plans for drilling in the Arctic. A mere 24 hours later, Shell filed a lawsuit in federal court, hoping to kick the activists off of the rig.
“These acts are far from peaceful demonstration,” Shell said in a press release following the injunction, which it filed in federal court in Alaska. “Boarding a moving vessel on the high seas is extremely dangerous and jeopardizes the safety of all concerned, including both the people working aboard and the protestors themselves.”
The protesters, who had been following the rig’s trans-Pacific journey on a Greenpeace ship named the Esperanza, used inflatable boats and climbing gear to approach the vessel carrying the rig — called the Blue Marlin — and scale the rig. The Esperanza, which has several other Greenpeace members on board, is continuing to follow the Blue Marlin, bringing protesters food and supplies as needed.
The 400-foot-tall rig, dubbed the Polar Pioneer, is intended to be staged for Arctic drillingonce it reaches Seattle. It is one of two rigs eventually bound for the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska, an area that Shell — pending federal permits — intends to develop for offshore drilling.
“We are certainly prepared to stay here as long as it takes to get out message out loud and clear that Arctic drilling is unacceptable,” Aliyah Field, environmental activist and one of the protesters currently on the rig told ThinkProgress.
Field said that, despite wind and cold, “everyone is feeling pretty good.” The protesters haven’t had direct contact with the Blue Marlin’s crew, and Field said that the crew hasn’t displayed any clear hostility toward them.
Field had not heard about Shell’s lawsuit, but in an e-mailed statement, Greenpeace USA’s Executive Director Annie Leonard called the injunction “Shell’s latest attempt to keep people from standing up for the Arctic.”
“Shell wants activists off its rig,” Leonard said. “We want Shell out of the Arctic.”
The protest comes a week after the Obama administration reaffirmed Shell’s 2008 lease in the Chukchi Sea, essentially giving the company the green light to begin preparations for drilling in the Arctic as early as this summer. Shell has reportedly spent $4 billion in its effort to drill in the Arctic, but hasn’t been allowed to drill there since 2012, when a key piece of safety equipment used in cleaning up oil spills failed.
Environmentalists worry that, given the Artcic’s remoteness and extreme weather, an oil spill would be a near-certainty. An Environmental Impact Report released by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) — part of the Department of the Interior, which gave last week’s go-ahead — found that, under the current plan for drilling in the Chukchi Sea, there is a 75 percent chance of a major oil spill in the Arctic.
This isn’t the first time that Greenpeace has boarded vessels in an attempt to stop Shell from drilling in the Arctic. In February of 2012, actress Lucy Lawless and seven other activists boarded an Arctic-bound drilling ship while it was in port in New Zealand. A month later, in March of 2012, activists boarded two ice-breakers leased by Shell as they were preparing to sail from Helsikni, Finland to the Arctic.
Following those protests, Shell won a federal court injunction that required Greenpeace USA to stay away from any of their Arctic-bound drill rigs until October of 2012.

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Friday, April 10, 2015

Why Photography unites and languages divide.

Vocal sounds existed long before cultural icons. Today we can hear Birds and Monkeys and Dogs create sounds of warning. When our cave ancestors created pictures on walls, those pictures became the first creative cultural and silent means of communication away from their vocal sounds. Over centuries wall Art pictures became smaller and smaller until they changed into tiny symbolic icons. Today, sounds silently represented by icons are different for each culture. For example I am writing the phonetic English alphabet where each icon, (or small letter) has two distinct sounds understood by English people. First, a child learns the English sounds created by his parents and friends and then he or she is taught how a small letter represents each sound he has learned. The letters are then combined into words and those words are associated with objects and people and places within the child's environment. When enough words are placed together they create larger communication letters and books.

 Children are taught to link small letters together to create words. The letters (or icons) are handed down through the centuries. When small English letters are combined they create a word which is understood by English people. When a Chinese person creates a large letter written with Chinese symbols, it is seldom understood by English people.  The same goes for Russian letters and for Greek letters and for every other different culture and nationality. Unless we all learn to use the same language, communication is difficult and without communication, we develop social problems. It becomes difficult to warn each other when there is an impending natural or social disaster!

   All cultures and nationalities live within the same reality on this planet, however, we utilize so many different sounds and letters to describe that reality, we isolate ourselves!  When small iconic symbols are placed 
together to create words, the words are often associated with a specific culture. Chinese people have different sounds for the same reality and so do Russians and Greeks and every other nationality. All human beings who live on this Earth use different sounds to describe our Planet. It is only in the realm of Photography where we can all unite to see the same beautiful wonders this Planet holds for all of us and then we can describe those wonders in what ever language we choose. In other words Photography is helping us return to creating beautiful wall Art and it can also warn us of impending dangers.
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Tuesday, April 7, 2015

The Arctic is melting!

Annual Peak of Arctic Sea Ice is Far Below the Norm
acquired March 14, 1983
Color bar for Annual Peak of Arctic Sea Ice is Far Below the Norm
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The sea ice cap atop the Arctic Ocean appeared to reach its annual maximum extent on February 25, 2015, scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) announced in their latest analysis. At 14.54 million square kilometers (5.61 million square miles), this year’s maximum extent was the smallest in four decades of satellite records. It was also one of the earliest maxima.
Arctic sea ice—frozen seawater floating on top of the Arctic Ocean and its neighboring seas—is constantly changing. It grows in the fall and winter, reaching its maximum between late February and early April. It shrinks in the spring and summer until it reaches its minimum extent in September. The past three decades have seen a downward trend in sea ice extent during both the growing and melting season, though the decline has been steeper in the melting season.
This year’s maximum was reached 15 days earlier than the 1981 to 2010 average date of March 12. Ice conditions have been below average everywhere except in the Labrador Sea and Davis Strait. A late spurt of ice growth is possible, but it is unlikely now that spring sunlight is arriving in the Arctic Circle. If the maximum remains at 14.54 million km2, it would be about 130,000 km2 below the previous lowest peak (set in 2011).
The maps above show Arctic sea ice extent on February 25, 2015 (top) and March 14, 1983 (bottom). Extent is defined as the total area in which the ice concentration is at least 15 percent. According to NSIDC, the average maximum extent for 1979–2000 was 15.46 million square kilometers (5.96 million square miles). The 1983 maximum covered roughly that extent, so a comparison between 2015 and 1983 gives an idea of how conditions this year strayed from the long-term average. Turn on the image-comparison tool to see the differences.
The biggest variable in the wintertime maximum tends to be the seasonal ice at the edges of the ice pack. On the maps above, this is most obvious along the Pacific coasts of Russia and Alaska, and around Greenland and Labrador. The ice in these regions is thin and at the mercy of the winds. Winds from the south can drive ice northward while bringing warm air and water that makes the ice melt; cold winds out of the north allow more sea ice to form and spread toward lower latitudes.
A record low sea ice maximum extent does not necessarily lead to a record low summertime minimum extent. “The winter maximum gives you a head start, but the minimum is so much more dependent on what happens in the summer,” said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Scientifically, the yearly maximum is not as interesting as the minimum because it is highly influenced by weather. We’re looking at the loss of thin, seasonal ice that is going to melt in the summer anyway, and it won’t become part of the permanent ice cover. With the summertime minimum, when the extent decreases, it’s because we’re losing the thick ice component, and that is a better indicator of warming temperatures.”
The 2015 map was compiled from observations by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR-2) sensor on the Global Change Observation Mission 1st–Water (“Shizuku”) satellite, operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The 1983 image was made from observations by the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer) on the Nimbus-7 satellite. The white circle over the pole is a data gap caused by how satellites fly close to but not directly over the poles. Wider coverage by AMSR-2 has shrunk the size of this gap. The area within the circle is ice-covered—an assumption confirmed by many surface expeditions—but researchers use an average of the ice just outside the gap to estimate the extent within.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Jesse Allen, using data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR-2) sensor on the Global Change Observation Mission 1st-Water (GCOM-W1) satellite and the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) on the Nimbus-7 satellite. Caption by Maria-Jose Viñas, NASA Earth Science News Team.
Instrument(s): 
DMSP - SSM/I
GCOM-W1 - AMSR-2
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