Gigantic Sandstorm Blankets Beijing - Again

Hola everyone!

Well, not a good way to start off the morning, but I had to report this as I don't know how many of you read The New York Times daily like I now have the luxury of time to do (since being retired).  This is just frightening to me.

And when I consider that if Orange One (Donald J. Trump, our illegitimate *president), gets his way, the United States could very well look like this in just a few years when he guts the Environmental Protection Agency and sells off our national heritage to big multi-nationals while slashing environmental protections for all Americans.

Dust Storms Blanket Beijing and Northern China
By Gerry Mullany May 5, 2017

The central business district in Beijing on April 25, left, and on Thursday, after a dust storm swept through. Such storms have become increasingly common for the region as China’s deserts expand.CreditNicolas Asfouri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

HONG KONG — Dust storms enveloped parts of northern China for a second day on Friday, reducing visibility in cities like Beijing and threatening the health of millions of people.

Such storms have become an increasingly common phenomenon for the region, as China’s deserts expand by gobbling up roughly 1,300 square miles a year. A half-century ago, such storms happened every seven or eight years; now they are an annual occurrence.

The storms typically happen in the spring, as strong winds send soil and sand from the Gobi Desert over northern China and even the Korean Peninsula.

This week’s dust storms led to the cancellation of scores of flights and caused pollution in northern China to soar. Beijing’s air-quality index hit a dangerous level of 623 on Thursday; the United States government rates readings above 200 as “very unhealthy” and 301 to 500 as “hazardous.”

Experts tie the problem to the rapid urbanization of northern China, deforestation and climate change. The government has spent billions of dollars to plant forests to stop the creeping desertification, but some experts have questioned whether it has been effective enough in doing so.

The state news media in China said that children and the elderly should stay indoors during the storms. On both Thursday and Friday, the storms were at their worst in the morning, with cities like Beijing clearing later in the day.

Sand and dust storms take place when hot air over the desert destabilizes the lower atmosphere, whipping up strong winds that send huge amounts of sand hundreds or even thousands of miles. The storms have been linked not only to respiratory illnesses but also to lethal epidemics because of the spread of potentially harmful bacteria, viruses and fungal spores.

The dust storms typically hit northern China after the region is afflicted by high wintertime smog, which is caused by coal-burning power plants, factories and vehicle emissions.

Hola darlings!

The hot, humid and unbearable tropical weather (dew points were close to 70 nearly every day) we've been suffering through the entire month of August and the beginning of September in my little piece of southeastern Wisconsin is FINALLY over, hooray!  Drier and cooler air coupled with plenty of sun have arrived, and I am feeling re-energized.  It also helps that my latest flair-up of sciatica seems to have miraculously nearly disappeared, literally overnight!  I'm actually tackling some much needed home improvement projects that I should have started and finished a year ago.  Oh well.

Headline:  DUH!  I mean, really.  We all know there are a kabillion jillion gallons of water locked up in Antarctica's ice cover and it is melting (along with the ice cover in the Arctic regions) at an alarming and rapidly expanding rate.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government fiddles instead of preparing for the coming inexorable rise in the oceans - and what will happen to the Great Lakes?  Will they be inundated with salt water via the St. Lawrence Seaway and other swamped rivers?  Holy Hathor!  I'm sure there will be those who say - hey, we'll have figured this all out long before 10,000 years from now.  I say: Yeah, right (sarcasm).

Students of herstory know for a fact that many great civilizations have come and gone over the thousands of years of recorded herstory and long before that, with many (most) of them wiped out by climate changes of relatively short (a few hundred years) or long (the last Ice Age) duration.  But somehow, we just never seem to learn herstory's lessons.  Why is that?  I leave that to the philosophers to debate.  Here's the article:

All of Antarctica Might Melt, Drowning Major Cities

By Zoë Schlanger22 hours ago

“Combustion of available fossil fuel resources sufficient to eliminate the Antarctic Ice Sheet.”

Few peer-reviewed study titles sound quite so much like a line spoken by the bad-news-bearing scientist from a dystopian sci-fi movie. But there it is. A real-world—and apparently very possible—dystopia.

For what Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science and an author on the paper, published Friday in the journal Science Advances, believes is the first time, he and his colleagues have shown that there are enough fossil fuels still in the ground to melt “effectively all of Antarctica” and ultimately cause as much as 200 feet of sea level rise.

Of course, it wouldn’t be only Antarctica that melts under this scenario. “Our study shows that if we don't leave most of the carbon in the ground, we are going to melt most of the ice on this planet,” Caldeira says. “I think this is one of the most important papers of my career.”

How About a Friday Night Miscellany - TODAY!

Just because I'm in the mood, and I haven't been in a long time :)

First up, a new article on the Antikythera mechanism. I've posted about the mechanism here many times before.  To find those posts (I'm lazy tonight and not going to provide them for you) scroll down on the left hand column of the blog until you find the little search box and then type in "Antikythera" and voila!  Pop back up to the top of your screen and you will see a list of all posts from Chess, Goddess and Everything that mentions the Antikythera mechanism.

Anyway, darlings, here is a link to the latest, and it sure is interesting. Well, I always figured it wasn't based on what the Greeks knew, it was far too sophisticated for them.  It was the Babylonians who had it all figured out!  Yeah, turns out it was Babylonian astronomical knowledge that was incorporated into the mechanism - and for all we know, it wasn't a Greek "mechanic" who built it, either.  It could have been an immigrant who took a Greek name.Or a Babylonian who built the thing and shipped it to the person who ordered it in Greece.  How do we really know?  We don't.  So let's toss those pre-conceived notions into the Ionian Sea once and for all, shall we?  Yes, let's. 

Ancient astronomy: Mechanical inspiration
The ancient Greeks' vision of a geometrical Universe seemed to come out of nowhere. Could their ideas have come from the internal gearing of an ancient mechanism?
Jo Marchant
Published online 24 November 2010 | Nature 468, 496-498 (2010) | doi:10.1038/468496a

From the same website, but the way scary part of it - geez! - check this out.  The Fountain of Youth stuff is closer than we think, and when I think about what it could mean to mankind, it gives me the heeby-jeebies.  That it might be based upon flawed science - even scarrier, but who gives a hoot about that, heh, when eternal life is at issue...

Telomerase reverses ageing process
Dramatic rejuvenation of prematurely aged mice hints at potential therapy.
Ewen Callaway
Published online 28 November 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.635

Whoa!  For those of you who think that Global Warming (and it's effects, which hardly anyone ever seems to talk about except the real scientist people and now, the people who are actually being affected by it) is a bunch of hooey, this is "The Day Before Tomorrow" for Norfolk, Virginia.  And please don't tell me it's just due to Sun spots and the Moon being in a certain position, har!  In a way, this is even scarier than the "Fountain of Youth" thing I posted about above, because this is here and now. It's not going to go away, folks. It will just get worse and worse and worse. And what will we do about it? What will happen to those people in this area of Norfolk, Virginia, who own homes there? What will happen to all the people who live in areas at sea level? What will happen to my home town, Milwaukee, as sea levels rise and the Great Lakes rise too with influx from the Atlantic Ocean, and get more saline? Ohmygoddess, goodbye drinking water for a third of the USA - and Canada too. But this article is just about the here and now - for now...

From The New York Times, Environment
Front-Line City in Virginia Tackles Rise in Sea
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
Published: November 25, 2010

For those of us who like to lighten the load, so to speak, by partaking in spirits (not religious spirits) and forgetting all of our cares if even for just a little while, hail to the world's most expensive bottle of Tequila:

World’s most expensive bottle of tequila unveiled
Christopher Hooton - 24th November, 2010
Hacienda La Capilla has produced a bottle of tequila that it is expected to fetch £2.2 million at auction, making it the most expensive drink of its kind in the world.

Paradoxes - and are they, or aren't they?  Damned if I know, and I don't give a hoot.  Let the Republicans try and figure it all out, they claim they can, after all.  They're the remedy to what ails America, right?  Right?

Paradoxical Truth
November 28, 2010, 5:30 pm
By GRAHAM PRIEST
Professor Greene is lecturing. Down the hall, her arch-rival, Professor Browne, is also lecturing. Professor Greene is holding forth at length about how absurd Professor Browne’s ideas are. She believes Professor Browne to be lecturing in Room 33. So to emphasize her point, she writes on the blackboard the single sentence:

Everything written on the board in Room 33 is false.


But Professor Greene has made a mistake. She, herself, is in Room 33. So is what she has written on the board true or false? If it’s true, then since it itself is written on the board, it’s false. If it’s false, then since it is the only thing written on the board, it’s true. Either way, it’s both true and false. ...

More Vermont Families Seeking Food Assistance
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 28, 2010
Filed at 6:51 p.m. EST

ENOSBURG FALLS, Vt. (AP) — The extended downturn in the economy is forcing more Vermont families to seek food assistance.

A new federal report says the share of households in Vermont that at times didn't have enough nutritious food rose from 12.1 percent to 13.6 percent between 2008 and 2009.

The Enosburg Food Shelf is feeding more families than it had expected. Three years after opening it now serves an average of 160 families each month. It had predicted it would be serving about 60 families.

******* Heeelllloooooooo! The worst part of the downturn was NOT between 2008 and 2009, it is right now, when all the people who were laid off during 2009 (after the so-called Great Recession was already supposedly OVER)  are suffering because their jobs are gone forever and EVERTHING they were told was true : WORK HARD, GO TO SCHOOL, GET A DEGREE, WORK HARD, SAVE MONEY, BUY A HOME turned out to be LIES. Fricking duh!  Of course there is an increase in need for food from people who have had their livelihoods wiped out by multinational corporations whose profits are not taxed in the USA.  That it is happening in the state where people have historically prided themselves on being self-reliant is - well - see the article above about paradoxical truths.

An Amazon Culture Withers As Food Dries Up

Article from The New York Times By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL Published: July 24, 2009 XINGU NATIONAL PARK, Brazil — As the naked, painted young men of the Kamayurá tribe prepare for the ritualized war games of a festival, they end their haunting fireside chant with a blowing sound — “whoosh, whoosh” — a symbolic attempt to eliminate the scent of fish so they will not be detected by enemies. For centuries, fish from jungle lakes and rivers have been a staple of the Kamayurá diet, the tribe’s primary source of protein. But fish smells are not a problem for the warriors anymore. Deforestation and, some scientists contend, global climate change are making the Amazon region drier and hotter, decimating fish stocks in this area and imperiling the Kamayurá’s very existence. Like other small indigenous cultures around the world with little money or capacity to move, they are struggling to adapt to the changes. “Us old monkeys can take the hunger, but the little ones suffer — they’re always asking for fish,” said Kotok, the tribe’s chief, who stood in front of a hut containing the tribe’s sacred flutes on a recent evening. He wore a white T-shirt over the tribe’s traditional dress, which is basically nothing. Chief Kotok, who like all of the Kamayurá people goes by only one name, said that men can now fish all night without a bite in streams where fish used to be abundant; they safely swim in lakes previously teeming with piranhas. Responsible for 3 wives, 24 children [obviously they don't practice birth control] and hundreds of other tribe members, he said his once-idyllic existence had turned into a kind of bad dream. “I’m stressed and anxious — this has all changed so quickly, and life has become very hard,” he said in Portuguese, speaking through an interpreter. “As a chief, I have to have vision and look down the road, but I don’t know what will happen to my children and grandchildren.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that up to 30 percent of animals and plants face an increased risk of extinction if global temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in coming decades. But anthropologists also fear a wave of cultural extinction for dozens of small indigenous groups — the loss of their traditions, their arts, their languages. “In some places, people will have to move to preserve their culture,” said Gonzalo Oviedo, a senior adviser on social policy at the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Gland, Switzerland. “But some of those that are small and marginal will assimilate and disappear.” To make do without fish, Kamayurá children are eating ants on their traditional spongy flatbread, made from tropical cassava flour. “There aren’t as many around because the kids have eaten them,” Chief Kotok said of the ants. Sometimes members of the tribe kill monkeys for their meat, but, the chief said, “You have to eat 30 monkeys to fill your stomach.” Living deep in the forest with no transportation and little money, he noted, “We don’t have a way to go to the grocery store for rice and beans to supplement what is missing.” Tacuma, the tribe’s wizened senior shaman, said that the only threat he could remember rivaling climate change was a measles virus that arrived deep in the Amazon in 1954, killing more than 90 percent of the Kamayurá. Cultures threatened by climate change span the globe. They include rainforest residents like the Kamayurá who face dwindling food supplies; remote Arctic communities where the only roads were frozen rivers that are now flowing most of the year; and residents of low-lying islands whose land is threatened by rising seas. Many indigenous people depend intimately on the cycles of nature and have had to adapt to climate variations — a season of drought, for example, or a hurricane that kills animals. But worldwide, the change is large, rapid and inexorable, heading in only one direction: warmer. Eskimo settlements like Kivalina and Shishmaref in Alaska are “literally being washed away,” said Thomas Thornton, an anthropologist who studies the region, because the sea ice that long protected their shores is melting and the seas around are rising. Without that hard ice, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to hunt for seals, a mainstay of the traditional diet. Some Eskimo groups are suing polluters and developed nations, demanding compensation and help with adapting. Rest of article.

More Bad News for the World from Global Warming

Hmmmm, perhaps it's because two days ago it was 75 degrees F at 5:00 p.m., and today it was 35 degrees F at 5:00 p.m. with a zero degree F windchill. I'm fascinating by weather news. When will this torment of a winter end????? From National Public Radio Antarctic Ice May Melt, But Not For Millennia [Hmmm, I don't believe that it will take millennia] by Richard Harris March 19, 2009 · A huge chunk of Antarctic ice can't withstand nonstop global warming, according to a new study published in the latest Nature magazine. And if it melts, the ice will raise the global sea level by 15 or 20 feet — or more. The only good news here is the catastrophe isn't likely to unfold quickly. The ice in question is called the West Antarctic ice sheet. In some ways, it's the planet's Achilles' heel. It holds a vast amount of water, locked up as ice, and it's sitting below sea level, so it's inherently unstable. Research On The West Antarctic Ice Sheet David Pollard at Penn State University says there has been intense research recently to figure out how the ice sheet has behaved over the past 5 million years. "Before there was only a vague idea of how the West Antarctic ice sheet grew and decayed over those time scales," he says. Now, a scientific drilling project has brought back sediment samples taken from underneath the ice sheet, allowing scientists to study the mud layers, like so many tree rings, to show what ice there has done over history. "It's really exciting," Pollard says. "They've shown it really has collapsed and re-grown, multiple times." [True - and that's why we cannot now stop it, no matter what we think we might be able to do]. Pollard and a colleague have taken that detailed information and asked what it portends for the future of the West Antarctic ice sheet. "The main reason that it collapsed in the past is the ocean has gotten warmer around the periphery of Antarctica, increasing the rate of melting of these floating ice shelves which fringe West Antarctica," Pollard says. These floating ice shelves act like buttresses to keep the much larger ice sheet pinned back. And whenever the shelves melt away, the ice behind them flows into the sea and sea levels rise. Warming ocean water around Antarctica, by a maybe 2 to 5 degrees Celsius, could trigger that chain of events, Pollard says. That degree of ocean warming is not forecast for this century, but at the rate the planet is heating up, it seems inevitable at some point. But Pollard's study indicates that the West Antarctic ice sheet won't melt away too rapidly. He figures that will take at least 1,000 years, and more likely 2,000 to 3,000 years. But instead of being reassured by this long time horizon, Pollard says, "I'd say I feel more nervous." That's because there's now a clear history showing this massive ice sheet has melted before, under conditions that the Earth may soon experience. And while the full effect may not unfold for thousands of years, it would transform the planet into a place we would not recognize today. Behavior Of Ice Still Unknown Stefan Rahmstorf at Postsdam University in Germany says there are still so many unknowns about how Antarctic ice behaves that Pollard's study is surely not the final word on this subject. Nor does it have to be. "We certainly don't need a collapse of the ice sheet to cause major problems with sea level rise," he says. Even if Antarctica contributes little or no water to the oceans this century, Rahmstorf says, there's a growing consensus that seas are likely to rise by at least two or three feet — and quite possibly more — before the end of this century "unless of course we stop the global warming fairly soon." Rahmstorf is not involved in the current Antarctica research, but he was at a scientific meeting last week in Copenhagen about rising seas and other aspects of global warming. Rahmstorf says Europe's global warming policy at the moment is built around a goal to limit global warming to about 4 degrees Fahrenheit. "Just like we have this temperature limit, we should also have a sea level limit," he says. He advocates setting that "sea level limit" at about three feet of sea level rise. Even if that can be accomplished, many vulnerable low-lying places on earth would be swamped, Rahmstorf acknowledges. But it's hard to imagine doing any better. And, as West Antarctica reminds us, we could easily do much, much worse.

Friday Night Miscellany

Hola darlings! A landmark of sorts - we have passed 2,200 posts at our blog! When I awoke this morning it was to a world covered in ice. After taking a look out the front door and venturing a step off the front stoop, I did not even fetch my morning newspaper, and so my allowed cup of coffee per day (except when the investment club meets at Meyer's Restaurant) was drunk without the benefit of my usual reading material. I read an old decorating magazine instead :) Not venturing down the drive to fetch the paper at the road, needless to say I did not venture the 3/4 mile walk to the bus stop to go to the office today. Later, the sun came out and although the temperature stayed below freezing all day, the sun was strong enough to melt the ice off the driveway - not sure when that happened. When I checked around 4:30 p.m. the driveway was mostly ice-free, so I was able to fetch both newspaper and mail. In the meantime, I patched the nail holes and areas in the upstairs bath where the wallpaper border pulled away the paint, exposing coverless drywall. I sanded later. What a chore, yech! Tomorrow I shall prime, and do taping and drop cloths. I expect to get at least a couple of walls painted. But first, I must give everything one last go-over with broom and dust cloth to get up what sanding residue I missed today, etc. etc. Some items I found of interest: I read this article in the newspaper yesterday (today?) I can't say I'm surprised, but why were the scientists surprised by the findings? - what gives with those dudes anyway? Evidently they have very little active imagination! The Arctic and Antarctic regions are warming faster than previously thought, raising world sea levels and making drastic global climate change more likely than ever, international scientists said on Wednesday. More baloney from the evolutionists - world's oldest human footprint. Well, if it's human and it's 1.7 million years old, why are you still drawing mankind that old as apes? Wow! I'm watching this program right now on PBS - "The Linguists" - and it's fascinating. Wish I was 20 years younger with that energy, I'd go back to school in a flash and take up this as a calling. "What Happens When a Language Dies?" "Why You Might Not Realize You Are Dead" - hmmmm...okay...

When It Rains, It Pours...

Well, at least in parts of Australia right now. I guess the horrid drought that killed millions of animals across that great continent (domestic and wild) is over, at least for the time being. Now flooding is wreaking havoc - I read in an article earlier today that yesterday in one part of Australia over 15 inches of rain fell, and more is expected as a cyclone passes close by. Ohmygoddess! I feel overwhelmed too. Except here, it's not raining, the weather is just fricking freezing everyone and everything to death! This morning I walked to the bus stop in minus 20 F. Even my heavy-duty cold wear did not keep my poor hands warm, which were suffering mightily by the time I got to the bus stop. Thankfully, the bus was already coming over the hill as I was crossing the street to the stop. If I'd have left the house 30 seconds later, I would have missed it - when normally I have a 2-3 minute wait once I get there! Seems it left it's starting point earlier than usual this morning. As it is, I'm outside exposed to these elements between 20-25 minutes every morning, and every night (that doesn't include the extra time if I trek to the supermarket when I get off the bus at night...) What kept me warm a few years ago isn't working any more. What does that mean??? Alright, I know - move to warm, dry. Except I can't - not for 10 more years. Full retirement age and all that - plus like everyone else, my 401(k) had five plus years of carefully garnered gains wiped out by those bastards on Wall Street. Let's bring back firing squads - and each and every one of them who took a bonus for 2008 will be lined up. I'll gladly volunteer to pull triggers! So, I have a plumber coming on Saturday - when I should be at work earning OT pay. And last night, I heard once again something either in the attic or scratching it's way up the side of the house. I've heard it at least four separate times now since I moved into the north bedroom. That means to me that something is now living in the attic - a space I have never seen in the nearly 19 years I've lived in this house. A space I do not WANT to see, ever! That means hiring someone to go up there and check it out - someone to get rid of any critter(s) - and then hiring a separate someone to fix the hole, or whatever the critter(s) are coming through - so it doesn't happen again. I am pretty sure now that the leak that has been slowly spreading a stain over a part of the ceiling in my living room downstairs is from the toilet. Since I called the plumber on Monday I have not used said toilet, and the stain has dried up - leaving a "slit" in the dry wall where it has split and ugly brown marks all over. I disinfected the area with full-strength bleach on a cloth Monday night. Oh Goddess! From what I've read on the internet about such problems, now I'm thinking the ant problem I had back in 2003 may be related to this leak - it must have been leaking all this time. Ants, particularly carpenter ants, are attracted to warmth and moisture. I haven't had the ants since paying $800 to have the house treated - but what if they're still there, living just beneath the upstairs bathroom floor? EEK! What if the floor is rotted out from all the years of water damage? EEK! As if the plumber isn't expensive enough - oh my, I think I'm having a heart attack. Needless to say, all of this is proving extremely upsetting, not to say expensive. All culminating at the worst possible time. It wouldn't be so bad if I could just kick back on the deck at night and put my feet up and enjoy the stars. But to endure this - this - CRAP - during the coldest winter in Wisconsin in the last 20 plus years, that's unbearable. By the way, today I got my combined electric/gas bill - $221 and change. Two months in a row, over $200! I NEVER had utility bills over $200 before - EVER. I HATE THIS CLIMATE. Welcome to global warming. It's totally screwed up the Jet Stream, not to mention the Gulf Stream. It wil just get worse and worse and worse for the next thousand years or so...

Water Wars!

Oh, this is just too precious to pass up posting. From that BASTION of Truth, Justice, and the former SOVIET (now RUSSIAN) Way. What's the opposite of the movie "Water World?" Yikes! Mankind to wage wars for water by 2025 15.07.2008 [What - 2025? Come on, darlings! We'll be whacking off each other's heads and swiping out each other's eyeballs for the fluid by 2015, if not before...] The shortage of fresh water on planet Earth is likely to become the biggest problem ever during the forthcoming decades. Experts from the International Water Management Institute said in their recent report that the water crisis in the world would occur because of the growing number of population. According to the UN, the population of planet Earth will grow from 6 to 8.5 billion people by 2030. One person living in an industrially developed country consumes up to 3,000 liters of water a year. If the global population grows by 2.5 billion, it will be necessary to find additional 2,000 cubic kilometers of water for their living. “The global consumption of water has increased six times during the recent 100 years and will double by 2050. There are countries that have already run out of water reserves for the production of their food. The shortage of fresh water will inevitably boost prices on this resource,” the Director of the International Water Management Institute, Frank Rijsberman said. The accelerating urbanization and the rising living standard will set forth new requirements to the quality of water. Drinking water and industrial water is obtained from one and the same sources. It may just so happen that agricultural producers, for example, will face serious problems with the required volumes of water. Mankind will have to deal with a serious shortage of water in 25 years. Earth’s fresh water reserves will not be enough to feed the growing population of the planet. Specialists say that one should take urgent measures now to solve the water problem. The list of measures includes the construction of water reservoirs, the use of rain water for irrigation of fields and gardens, etc. It is not the first time when futurologists raise the water crisis subject. They believe that the crisis may occur even before the planet runs out of its fresh water. The shortage of water can be accompanied with large-scale military conflicts. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon raised the subject in December 2007 at the first Asian-Pacific Water Forum, which took place in Japan. Ban Ki-moon said that one-third of Earth’s population lives in the areas, which already suffer from the lack of water. More importantly, about 1.1 billion people living on the planet nowadays do not have access to fresh water which poses no health risks. Humans still pollute water sources irresponsibly and do not seem to care about the consequences. Rest of article.

Spanish Drought Reveals Medieval Ruins

I wonder - is this drought due to climate change caused by global warming? Sort of sounds like it at the end of the article. A fascinating story:

From BBC News Online, May 13, 2008
Ships bring water to parched Barcelona

Climb down the stony banks of the massive Sau reservoir in the mountains above Barcelona and you get a real sense of why this famous city is so short of water that it's resorted to bringing in emergency supplies - by ship.

Nestling in a deep valley of stunning cliffs and forests, this vital source of water has sunk so low it's exposed the eerie sight of a medieval village that was flooded when the reservoir was opened in the 1960s.

The huddle of ancient stone buildings, including a church with its spire, has now re-emerged into the light and stands as a potent symbol of the severity of this water crisis.

In a year that so far ranks as Spain's driest since records began 60 years ago, the reservoir is currently holding as little as 18% of its capacity - at a time of year when winter rains would usually have provided an essential boost by now.

Rainfall figures show a consistent series of shortfalls in recent years - just as Barcelona's population has expanded to more than five million and the region's booming agribusinesses demand ever more irrigation.

For residents here, the arrival of water by ship is a profound shock - normally it's the drier areas further South that are notoriously parched.

Already they are living with restrictions on the use of hosepipes and the filling of swimming pools.

Now the Barcelona authorities are having to take the unprecedented step for any major European city of topping up supplies by the highly visible means of giant tankers arriving in relays, each bringing 28 million litres, up to a dozen ships coming over the next month.

The shipments won't be enough to restore the reservoirs - or make the ancient village vanish again. But they may buy time for a highly controversial pipeline to be completed by the end of the year. That should bring more reliable supplies from a neighbouring region but at a high political cost.

And it may also remind people of the forecasts from climate scientists of still drier conditions to come in the approaching decades.

At the Mercy of Rain

Archeology Writer Warns of Drought With Climate Change By Grant Rhodes, Guest Writer, 2-05-08 Brian Fagan, a leading archaeological writer, said at a lecture at the University of Montana Tuesday night that one of the key ramifications of climate change will be its effect on the world’s water. “Many millions of people in the world today live at the mercy of the rain,” Fagan said. “And because of that, one of the great issues of climate change is our vulnerability.” As part of the 2008 Wilderness Institute’s Lecture Series, Fagan’s presentation was entitled, “The Great Warming Drought and the Flail of God: An Archaeologist Looks at Climate Change.” It focused on how, until recently, we knew little about ancient climate change. But now archaeologists are able to illustrate how civilizations survived and adapted to different warming and cooling periods hundreds of years ago. Fagan noted at the beginning of “The Little Ice Age,” which lasted from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Century, storms and rains destroyed crops, forcing people to adapt to the changing conditions. “It was a period of serious famine but also a period of agricultural innovation,” Fagan said. “In short, there was an agricultural revolution.” Fagan uses these historical examples as a lesson that climate change forces people to be innovative. “It is the social and cultural impact of climate change that makes all the difference.” Fagan warned that it is not just Africa and other under-developed regions that will suffer from a water shortage. Parts of the Southwest United States and Southern Rockies, along with parts of the Midwest along the Eastern slope of the Rockies, are considered arid or semi-arid regions. “In the next century, extreme drought will affect 30 percent of us on Earth, which will be up from 3 percent,” Fagan said. Moderate drought would affect half of all of us, he added. “These are reasonable forecasts for the future. We must learn from the lessons of climate change in the past.” So how do we deal with global warming and impending crisis of water shortage today? “The issue isn’t if we can stop global warming. The issue is how do we live with it,” Fagan said. It is important to not let the issue become the “silent elephant in the room,” Fagan warned. There is a need to address it on a personal level as well as on a governmental level. While trying to stay as apolitical as possible on the issue, Fagan did say, “We spend so much money on stupid wars, and we don’t spend it on our future.” Fagan assured the audience that despite an impending water shortage, life will go on. “Humans are adaptive, and capable of making changes, but at the expense of great suffering,” he said. While saying nobody knows what global temperatures will do—whether they will continue to increase or begin to go down—Fagan admitted to being scared at the possibilities. Not scared for himself, but for future generation, because they will be the ones that have to live with it. Speaking to a crowd of mostly students, Fagan warned, “We are playing a huge game of Russian Roulette, and you guys are right in the middle of it.”

Scary Global Warming Story

Scientists fear ice caps melting faster than predicted Paul Brown in Ilulissat Friday September 7, 2007 Guardian Unlimited The Greenland ice cap is melting so quickly that it is triggering earthquakes as pieces of ice several cubic kilometres in size break off. Scientists monitoring events this summer say the acceleration could be catastrophic in terms of sea-level rise and make predictions this February by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change far too low. The glacier at Ilulissat, which supposedly spawned the iceberg that sank the Titantic, is now flowing three times faster into the sea than it was 10 years ago. Robert Correll, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, said in Ilulissat today: "We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at two metres an hour on a front 5km [3 miles] long and 1,500 metres deep. That means that this one glacier puts enough fresh water into the sea in one year to provide drinking water for a city the size of London for a year." Prof Correll is visiting Greenland as part of a symposium of religious, scientific, and political leaders to look at the problems of the island, which has an ice cap 3km thick containing enough water to raise worldwide sea levels by seven metres. Today leaders of Christian, Shia, Sunni, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist and Jewish religions took a boat to the tongue of the glacier for a silent prayer for the planet. They were invited by Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of 250 million Orthodox Christians worldwide. Prof Correll, director of the global change programme at the Heinz Centre in Washington, said the estimates of sea level rise in the IPCC report were conservative and based on data two years old. The predicted rise this century was 20cm to 60cm, but it would be at the upper end of this range at least, he said, and some believed it could be two metres. This would be catastrophic for European coastlines. He had flown over the Ilulissat glacier and "seen gigantic holes in it through which swirling masses of melt water were falling. I first looked at this glacier in the 1960s and there were no holes. These so-called moulins, 10 to 15 metres across, have opened up all over the place. There are hundreds of them." He said ice-penetrating radar showed that this melt water was pouring through to the bottom of the glacier creating a lake 500 metres deep which was causing the glacier "to float on land. These melt-water rivers are lubricating the glacier, like applying oil to a surface and causing it to slide into the sea. It is causing a massive acceleration which could be catastrophic." The glacier is now moving at 15km a year into the sea although in surges it moves even faster. He measured one surge at 5km in 90 minutes - an extraordinary event. Veli Kallio, a Finnish scientist, said the quakes were triggered because ice had broken away after being fused to the rock for hundreds of years. The quakes were not vast - on a magnitude of 1 to 3 - but had never happened before in north-west Greenland and showed the potential for the entire ice sheet to collapse. Prof Correll said: "These earthquakes are not dangerous in themselves but the fact that they are happening shows that events are happening far faster than we ever anticipated."