_kt75 | mirror

-- a _kt75 | note _NEW: follow the development of wolframscharnhorst.blogspot.com and explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here Have you also been informed that your LinkedIN account has been inactivated, at least temporarily? Did you also receive an e-mail that told you that "some members accused you to either spam, perform phishing or connecting with people you don't know"? Did the same e-mail ask you to confirm in written that you will adhere to the rules of LinkedIN? If so, you are in good company with many other concerned people. The common procedure is as follows: the account is inactivated without any prior warning the only contact path is directly via some sort of help center of LinkedIN if happened for the second time or more, the individual request for re-activation of the account is processed rather slowly the accusations are as always: spam, phishing or connecting with to many peop

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here Denmark, a tiny country on the northern fringe of Europe, is pursuing the world’s most ambitious policy against climate change. It aims to end the burning of fossil fuels in any form by 2050 — not just in electricity production, as some other countries hope to do, but in transportation as well. Now a question is coming into focus: Can Denmark keep the lights on as it chases that lofty goal? Let anyone consider such a sweeping transition to be impossible in principle, the Danes beg to differ. They essentially invented the modern wind-power industry, and have pursued it more avidly than any country. They are above 40 percent renewable power on their electric grid , aiming toward 50 percent by 2020. The political consensus here to keep pushing is all but unanimous. Their policy is similar to that of neighboring Germany, which has spent tens of billions pursuing

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here Approximately 40 to 60 percent of the region’s waste water is discharged into the sea when it could be stored and reused for other purposes, according to ARCADIS’ 2014 Middle East Aquifer Recharge report.“The region should use treated sewage effluent (TSE) as the precious resource it is and stop thinking of it as waste or a useless by-product,” said Titia De Mes, Water for Industry Leader, Middle East at ARCADIS. “TSE can and should be recycled, but this requires a change in thinking from being a choice and a cost to a necessity and investment – the optimal choice for the Middle East is aquifer recharge and recovery.” The report reveals that merely 60 percent of TSE could be stored in the aquifer and used at a later time through various approaches, highlighting three different methods to aquifer recharge – aquifer storage and recovery; aquifer sto

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here The ECOWAS Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Status Report, produced collaboratively by REN21 and ECREEE with lead authorship from the Worldwatch Institute, provides a regional perspective on the renewable energy and energy efficiency market and industry development in West Africa. Launched on November 10, 2014, the report concludes that renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies have rapidly become cost effective solutions for overcoming the diverse energy challenges facing the ECOWAS region (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo). "It is clear that the ECOWAS Member States acknowledge the enormous potential that renewables and energy efficiency bring to accelerating energy access and meetin

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here Of all the clean water that our cities consume, roughly half of it flows down our sewers to sewage treatment plants where it is treated and released back to the environment. Conventional sewage treatment plants are designed to clean this water to a degree that can be discharged to rivers or the ocean without major environmental or public health impacts. In many parts of the world, sufficient fresh water supplies are increasingly difficult to source. Water stressed cities now import water, pumped over large distances at a considerable energy cost. Los Angeles, for example, imports 8.9bn litres of water a day to meet the city’s needs. Other cities, such as Ashkelon in Israel, are investing in seawater desalination to produce drinkable water. But this process is also highly energy intensive and its application limited to coastal locations. An al

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here A crisis is developing beneath China’s thirsty farms and cities, but  no one knows its full extent. With about 20% of the world’s population but only about 5–7% of global freshwater resources, China draws heavily on groundwater. Those reserves are being depleted at an alarming rate in some regions and are badly polluted in many others,  warned experts last week at the International Groundwater Forum 2010 conference in Beijing. The scientists also warned that confronting the crisis will require dealing with other short - ages: of knowledge and regulation. They say that a nationwide network to monitor ground - water levels is urgently needed, and that the government should  improve data sharing, cut water waste and help farming become more efficient. “The water crisis is not unique to China,” says Frank  Schwartz, a hydrologist at Ohio State University in Columbus

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here The American West has a long tradition of conflict over water . But after fifteen years of drought across the region, it is no longer simply conflict: it is crisis. In the face of unprecedented declines in reservoir storage and groundwater reserves throughout the West, we focus in this discussion paper on a set of policies that could contribute to a lasting solution: using market forces to facilitate the movement of water resources and to mitigate the risk of water shortages.  We begin by reviewing key dimensions of this problem: the challenges of population and economic growth, the environmental stresses from overuse of common water resources, the risk of increasing water-supply volatility, and the historical disjunction that has developed between and among rural and urban water users regarding the amount we consume and the pri

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here Allowing polluters to buy, sell or trade water-quality credits could significantly reduce pollution in river basins and estuaries faster and at lower cost than requiring the facilities to meet compliance costs on their own, a new Duke University-led study finds. The scale and type of the trading programs, though critical, may matter less than just getting them started. "Our analysis shows that water-quality trading of any kind can significantly lower the costs of achieving Clean Water Act goals," said Martin W. Doyle, professor of river science and policy at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. "All other things being equal, regulators should allow trading to occur at the river basin scale as an appropriate first step. Larger spatial scales may be needed later if abatement costs increase," said Doyle, who also serves as director

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here _Experts expect global warming to have a negative impact on crop yields, but shortages of water for irrigation could make for double the trouble, according to a study published yesterday. As described in ScienceDaily, “given the present trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions, agricultural models estimate that climate change will directly reduce food production from maize, soybeans, wheat and rice by as much as 43 percent by the end of the 21st century. But hydrological models looking at the effect of warming climate on freshwater supplies project further agricultural losses, due to the reversion of 20 to 60 million hectares of currently irrigated fields back to rain-fed crops.” The study’s lead author, Joshua Elliot, said the analysis is the first of its kind to feature an in-depth comparison of agricultural and hydrological models, which

-- a _kt75 | reprint NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here Water footprints and virtual water flows have been promoted as important indicators to characterize human-induced water consumption. However, environmental impacts associated with water consumption are largely neglected in these analyses. Incorporating water scarcity into water consumption allows better understanding of what is causing water scarcity and which regions are suffering from it. _progress | M replaces _kt75 | mirror. visit: http://progress-m.blogspot.com . ready: 01.07.2015. close ✕ In this study, we incorporate water scarcity and ecosystem impacts into multiregional input-output analysis to assess virtual water flows and associated impacts among 30 provinces in China. China, in particular its water-scarce regions , are facing a serious water crisis driven by rapid economic growth. Our findings show that inter-regional flows of virtual water reveal ad

-- a _kt75 | reprint NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here The sharing of water resources has been an influential feature affecting life, society and development in the Arabian Peninsula , the Mashrek and Mesopotamia for millennia. Historically, communities living in these arid and semi-arid regions always shared the water of rivers, springs and wadis, although this was more out of necessity than idealism. Water resources were traditionally managed at the local level, with tensions emerging between Bedouins, shepherds, pastoralists and growing urban centres. Water management and irrigation schemes – such as the underground aqueducts or falaj networks found in Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – sustained different communal needs for dozens of centuries, while the marshes of Mesopotamia, the Tigris floodplain and the Jordan River Valley were cultivated and sustained successive civilizations since earliest of times. Hills

-- a _kt75 | note NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... This is the two hundredth _kt75 | post since February 2010 and with a daily hit rate between 100 and 200 unique visitors the _kt75 | mirror appears to be a well-accepted source of information in a rather narrow niche: sustainable development with a focus on water management . However, even reliable entities like the _kt75 | mirror seem to be subject to some kind of censor-ship. Just recently the LinkedIN channel of the _kt75 | mirror was temporarily shut-down because of the following baseless accusations: phishing multiple contacting spamming Phishing was never done via _kt75 | mirror, neither multiple contacting. Remains 'spamming'. Now, it might be worth to clarify that the _kt75 | mirror is operated without any kind of (3rd party) advertisement. The only service _kt75 | mirror offers (free of charge) is information supply. This effort is performed with highest dedication and ac

-- a _kt75 | reprint NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... Water is scarce but it continues to be wasted excessively in many industrial states, warns a new study by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), predicting that a global conflict over water resources could bring billions in losses for the German market. EurActiv Germany reports.  Tomatoes from Spain, textiles from India, metals from South Africa, roses from Kenya; every year, Germany imports massive amounts of goods from around the world that would not be available without considerable water resources. But water is becoming an increasingly scarce global resource . In many countries, it has become more and more difficult to supply the population with adequate drinking water and irrigation for crops. Besides export-reliant countries with critical water resources, the effects of the shortage can be devastating for others as well. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the wor

-- a _kt75 | reprint Download: Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q02/2014 . Natural gas is contaminating some aquifers not from hydraulic fracturing but from faulty well preparation, according to a new paper. Poorly built and cemented gas wells, rather than fracking itself, have allowed contaminants to flow into shallow drinking-water sources, according to a report published in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences. A debate has raged for years over whether the U.S. energy boom is fouling aquifers and water wells—and what can be done about it. Researchers reported Monday that they developed a tool that can identify whether underground gas has migrated toward the surface over time, or whether it moved recently and rapidly up an industry-drilled well or the cement surrounding the well pipe. Fracking involves pushing a slurry of water, sand and chemicals down a well to break up dense rocks and coax more fuel from the ground. Many academics and

-- a _kt75 | double reprint: EN/DE Download: Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q02/2014 . The environmental resources situation is shaped by changes in climatic conditions, coupled with pressures exerted by a rapidly growing global population, its increasing demands and the subsequent impacts on the environment. Current practices across the economy sectors are still not sufficiently ambitious in terms of sustainability ; they fail to ameliorate the stress conditions of vital resources like water. In recent years, the need has been highlighted for governance and management schemes that allocate resources appropriately among users (including the environment) and that promote the efficient use of such resources. The very nature of these needs calls for adequate policy responses. One of these policy responses — applied either separately or in combination with other economic or regulatory instruments — is water pricing . The use of such instruments brings a