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Water Shortages Pose Greatest Threat to US Economic Growth

Paul B. Farrell of MarketWatch, has warned that by 2024, water shortages and pollution will pose the greatest threats to the US, potentially ending all economic growth and the future security of the US.

Scientific American undertook a study to research this idea, and determined that in order to prevent this from happening, the government would have to invest $60 trillion; a bit of a tall order, seeing as though global GDP is only 70 trillion.

As the planet slowly warms, a giant reservoir of methane begins to thaw under the East Siberian Sea permafrost, an event that if allowed to worsen, would act as an economic time bomb with the potential to devastate the global financial system.

2012 US drought
In 2012 a drought across the US ruined crops. (treehugger)

Related article: Why the CIA Is Worried About Geoengineering

Unfortunately, despite the fact that 97% of scientists now agree that climate change is real, many big oil supporters, and their pet politicians, refuse to accept the truth.

Clive Hamilton, the Australian Professor of Ethics, wrote that “sometimes facing up to the truth is just too hard. When the facts are distressing it is easier to reframe or ignore them. Around the world only a few have truly faced up to the facts about global warming ... It’s the same with our own deaths; we all ‘accept’ that we will die, but it is only when our death is imminent that we confront the true meaning of our mortality.”

Ernst & Young has estimated that “20% of the world’s undiscovered but recoverable oil and natural-gas resources” are located under the frozen layer of methane in the Arctic, and that big oil’s determination to access these fields poses a serious threat to the stability of the methane and risks its potential release.

Bill McKibben told Foreign Policy that it may already be too late to stop this climate change time bomb.

By the time the impact of global warming is too obvious for anyone to negate, it will be too late to do anything about it; and already we seem to be reaching that tipping point.

Related article: What to Expect in the Warsaw Climate Change Talks

In a Rolling Stone article, ‘Goodbye Miami,’ it was written that, “by century’s end, rising sea levels will turn the nation’s urban fantasy land into an American Atlantis. But long before the city is completely underwater, chaos will begin.” Other US cities at risk are; New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, Boston, Norfolk, Galveston, Texas, Tampa, and even California’s Silicon Valley.

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Jeff Goodell, the contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, stated: “Want to know what global warming has in store for us? Just go to Australia, where rivers are drying up, reefs are dying, and fires and floods are ravaging the continent. Australia is the canary in the coal mine ... What is happening in Australia now is similar to what we can expect to see other places in the future.”

Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/americas-new-60-trillion-deadliest-enemy-2013-08-14?pagenumber=2

By. James Burgess of Oilprice.com



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  • Edmund Fraser on August 24 2013 said:
    Frank Passarelli, where can I find more information about P-VES? Searching on the acronym was not successful. Sounds like Pressurized Vapor Evaporation (or Extraction) System; but low pressure would seem intuitively more likely.
  • Frank Passarelli on August 17 2013 said:
    The solution for the acute shortage of water in the world would be solved by using the new water technology P- V ES. System. Systems placed in a locations to supply water, adjacent to the facilities as it was in older times as water wells were. Water supplied from deep well of salt water are contaminated water. This process with the lowest energy consumption for water purification and distillation, leaving a vapor saturated residue of rejected solids (no liquid discharge), with the smallest footprint requirement and the greatest concerns for the environment invention is an extremely low energy operation due to conservation of energy performed by recycling the energy in a thermal loop. This thermal loop utilizes the heat from the phase changes from liquid to vapor and then back from vapor to liquid distilled water by means of heat enchanters to heat the incoming seawater ahead of the introduction into the pressure vessel. It is estimated that the energy needed for operation of P-VES is 4-5 times less energy than the best RO Systems on the market. The invention can be embodied in an apparatus of small size, or scaled in size to meet the needs of a large seawater desalination program. For example, the size of the invention apparatus to produce 1 acre foot of water per day is approximately the size of an 16 foot truck trailer bed.

    The process may be operated with natural gas, electricity, thermal cogeneration and natural energy sources. The most efficient (reverse osmosis based) desalination plants consume about 5 kWh of energy per meter of fresh water produced, the P-VES would consume about 1.315 kWh of energy per meter.
    This process has been designed to facilitate small and large installations at the lowest capital investment. The simplicity of the process makes the monitoring and maintenance of the system manageable by non-technical personnel. This process does not produce a brine but produces a rejected raw salt or solids for the commercial market. I have described a few of the features of the process.
  • Neo on August 16 2013 said:
    Will it? Won't it? Shall we? Should we? Human consciousness seems to lean toward the oblivious. Numerous civilizations have come and gone. They have come by reason of resources, then over use, then the system resets itself. It is unfortunate these lessons are never learned. What is progress and how do you define it? A sustainable system would appear to be progress where a system that requires more consumption on an ever growing scale will suffer the inevitable results. There are finite resources, there are greedy humans on the planet and the eco-system will have the last say. It is the flaw in human consciousness that could use some tweaking. Harmony with life, sharing precious resources. Living in balance. It's a nice idea, but humans are not ready for it.
  • CASSE3 on August 16 2013 said:
    We should consider that the underlying cause of climate change is the relentless pursuit of economic growth in a 90% fossil-fueled economy. Economic growth entails increasing consumption of resources and greenhouse gas emissions which lead to the loss of ecosystems that the economy itself depends on. If we're serious about stabilizing climate, we have to get serious about the steady state economy as the sustainable alternative to growth.

    See steadystate.org
  • Mr. Andersonn on August 15 2013 said:
    Where in the hell do we dig these idiots up? And can we not bury them again?
    In Columbus' day everyone knew you'd sail off the planet if you kept going West. In Gallileo's day everyone knew the earth was the center of the universe. In more modern time (1970s), everyone knew we'd be out oil by the mid nineties. These people don;t know JACK! The hubris backed by lots of letters after thier names, blinds them to reality. The world has not been changed nor challenged by the 97% who agree, but by the 3% who disagree!

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