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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(4)
Plague/Virus:(1)
Climate Chaos:(15)
Resource Depletion: (2)
Biology Breach:(6)
Recovery:(3)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
carbon emissions  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ contamination  ~ global warming  ~ airborne pollutants  ~ health impacts  ~ smart policy  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ climate impacts  ~ short-term thinking  ~ falling fertility  



ApocaDocuments (2) for the "Resource Depletion" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Resource Depletion scenario and stories]
Wed, Dec 1, 2010
from Sydney Morning Herald:
Australian Great Barrier Reef not looking so great
They began the world-first experiment on a two-square-metre patch of the reef off Heron Island in May and found damage to the reef more serious than expected. They will soon remove the four experimental chambers - two simulating future carbon dioxide levels and two with control conditions. They are using more than 20 precision instruments to monitor the changing water chemistry. The experiment simulates the predicted levels of carbon emissions in 2050. Team member David Kline said the group had noted that in only eight months the part of the reef with the higher CO2 levels already looked quite different. ''What is growing there has changed, the types of algae are different and, based on our research, we would expect that the growth rate of the coral would have slowed,'' he said. ''If people's CO2 emissions continue as they have, the future of the reef is very grim. I would suggest that coral reefs will be highly altered and perturbed ecosystems by 2050 if we do not make a massive effort to curb our emissions. The findings back up much of the previous research that finds ocean acidification will have serious impacts on reefs.''... Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said scientists could use the data to predict at what point the reef would fade away. ''The corals are disappearing at a rate of 1 or 2 per cent a year ... If you multiply that by 20 years, that's 40 per cent.'' ...


A percent here, a percent there, pretty soon it adds up to real damage. Oh, hey, that might have implications elsewhere!

ApocaDoc
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Wed, Dec 1, 2010
from Earth Institute:
California's Water Rights Controversy: Should Farmers Be Allowed to Transfer Water to Developers?
Two farmers in San Joaquin Valley, California have recently come under scrutiny for proposing to sell their water rights to developers. As a part of the Dudley Ridge Water District they have the right to draw up to 57,343 acre-feet of water per year from the California State Water Project. (An acre-foot is the amount it takes to cover an acre of land in a foot of water - about twice as much as an average household uses in a year.) The California Department of Water Resources defines its State Water Project as "a water storage and delivery system of reservoirs, aqueducts, powerplants and pumping plants," 30 percent of which is set aside for agriculture and from which farmers are allotted their yearly supply. Under this potential sale, the farmers would be paid a total of $11.7 million dollars, as they sell the water at a price of $5,850 per acre-foot to the Tejon Ranch who will have access to 2,000 acre-feet per year. This kind of arrangement is not limited to these two farmers, and is an increasingly common occurrence as the water a farm has access to becomes more valuable than the returns from actually growing crops. Last year, the Dudley Ridge Water District sold 14,000 acre feet of water to the Mojave Water District for a total gain of $73 million. While the idea of transferring water is not new, the main difference is that while up until this point the majority of water transfers have been temporary agreements between districts, this is a permanent transfer of water.... Another commonly echoed argument against permanent and long-term water transfers is that it gives farmers an unfair advantage since they pay a mere $500 per acre-foot compared with the district’s selling price of $5,850 per acre-foot. ...


"Farming water" seems a little bit of a stretch, but not at those profit margins.

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