dohboi wrote:Palau declares state of emergency over drought
Desalination
Recent tests on four solar still designs by the Texas AgriLife Extension Service in College Station, Texas, have shown that a solar still with as little as 0.7 square meter surface area can produce enough water for a person to survive.
Jupidu wrote:dohboi wrote:Palau declares state of emergency over drought
Do they have no television and no internet?Desalination
Recent tests on four solar still designs by the Texas AgriLife Extension Service in College Station, Texas, have shown that a solar still with as little as 0.7 square meter surface area can produce enough water for a person to survive.
http://www.sswm.info/content/desalination
One possible device (from link above):
Solar Distillation
Or as simple as this (with sea water instead of contaminated water):
Source: http://www.scienceforums.com/topic/1783 ... gineering/
It's just a matter of some wood, some glass pane, some tubes, some sealant and a sea-water pump.
And i am quite sure that El Nino didn't hit Palau for the first time.
vtsnowedin wrote:The first question is there any contaminated water that can be distilled..
vtsnowedin wrote: The second question is how much do they need for the people, the sacred cows and other livestock and to irrigate their crops.
vtsnowedin wrote: Then do the math and see how much of that need can be supplied by the solar distillers that they have room and materials enough to build.
Palau
The government is the largest employer, relying heavily on U.S. financial assistance.
dohboi wrote:What happens to these in hurricanes? (Which they get many of every year, iirc.)
An increased supply of clean and safe water is now accessible to citizens on Peleliu State in the Republic of Palau. A newly installed solar power generation system and salt water desalination plant on Peleliu has increased water supply from 19 litres of rainwater per day to 150 litres for approximately 450 residents.
As Maharashtra continues to struggle with drought, Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh which has been hit by three droughts in successive years, is staring at an acute famine with widespread crop loss, scarcity of drinking water and poor nutrition.
...Drought, hailstorms, unseasonal rainfall and most recently an unusually warm winter have played havoc with crop yields, making farming unviable for many.
Unemployment has soared, and locals are leaving the rural belt to work as unskilled labour in nearby urban areas. Financial assistance provided by the authorities has failed to achieve much on the ground, as it is far lower than farmers' losses.
The present situation has forced people to adopt chapati-salt as staple food
The situation has worsened to such an extent that people in the famine-hit district are dependent on roti and salt for their survival. With no income at all, pulses and vegetables are out of the reach, and they are struggling to get the basic necessities for survival.
The impact on the region, especially the poor, has been acute. From three meals a day, they are down to two. The quality of food has plummeted; the recourse to rotis of grass is an indication that they have reached the bottom of their food stocks.
Villagers are selling their blood for money
Karna, a farmer from Badgaon village revealed a chilling picture of how poverty has affected them. He says he has few options but to sell his blood for money, after persistent drought left him unable to live off his land.
"I was working as a labourer in Jhansi for survival. When my son fell ill, I had no other option but to sell my blood for his treatment.”
The hospital took almost two bottles of his blood and gave him 1,200 rupees.
For many farmers in this part of Bundelkhand, blood has become the new cash crop — a source of guaranteed income as they exhaust other ways of making ends meet.
…
The entire state is being impacted by the drought, but Hawaii Island is being hit the hardest. Extreme drought areas on the Leeward side of the island just popped up on Thursday.
On Oahu, brush is dry, and it’s a fire risk to properties. Just last month, firefighters battled a brush fire on the slopes of Diamond Head.
In upcountry Maui, there has been an ongoing request for a voluntary 10-percent reduction in water use.
Even as drought and the effects of climate change grew visible across this land, the Kariba Dam was always a steady, and seemingly limitless, source of something rare in Africa: electricity so cheap and plentiful that Zambia could export some to its neighbors.
The power generated from the Kariba — one of the world’s largest hydroelectric dams, in one of the world’s largest artificial lakes — contributed to Zambia’s political stability and helped turn its economy into one of the fastest growing on the continent.
But today, as a severe drought magnified by climate change has cut water levels to record lows, the Kariba is generating so little juice that blackouts have crippled the nation’s already hurting businesses. After a decade of being heralded as a vanguard of African growth, Zambia, in a quick, mortifying letdown, is now struggling to pay its own civil servants and has reached out to the International Monetary Fund for help.
Drought has turned parts of the area behind Venezuela’s Guri dam, one of the world’s biggest, into a desert, but the government is optimistic of rain within weeks to drive the vast installation that provides the bulk of the OPEC nation’s power.
Hundreds of rivers have vanished in northwestern Gansu, one of the country’s driest regions. Beijing blames climate change for wreaking havoc on scarce water resources, but critics say the country’s headlong drive to build its industrial prowess and huge hydro projects are just as responsible.
El Salvador declared a water shortage emergency for the first time in its history on Thursday, citing the effects of climate change and the El Nino phenomenon, the country’s president said.
In the last four years, rainfall has decreased considerably in the Central American country, and river and water reserve levels have reached a critical state, President Salvador Sanchez Ceren said at a news conference.
In recent weeks, residents from neighborhoods on the outskirts of the capital city of San Salvador have protested because of water shortages in their communities.
Countries across Central America declared an agricultural alert last year as a result of the severe drought which has affected some 1.6 million people in the region, in particular growers of coffee, corn and beans.
Secret conversations between American diplomats show how a growing water crisis in the Middle East destabilized the region, helping spark civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and how those water shortages are spreading to the United States.
Classified U.S. cables reviewed by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting show a mounting concern by global political and business leaders that water shortages could spark unrest across the world, with dire consequences.
Many of the cables read like diary entries from an apocalyptic sci-fi novel.
“Water shortages have led desperate people to take desperate measures with equally desperate consequences”...
...
one-third of the world’s population will be affected by fresh water scarcity by 2025,
with the situation only becoming more dire thereafter and potentially catastrophic by 2050
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