Desert cities are living on borrowed time, UN warns

[cal04]

· Climate change threatens conditions for 500 million
· But report points to huge solar energy potential

The 500 million people who live in the world's desert regions can expect to find life increasingly unbearable as already high temperatures soar and the available water is used up or turns salty, according to the United Nations. Desert
cities in the US and Middle East, such as Phoenix and Riyadh, may be living on borrowed time as water tables drop
and supplies become undrinkable, says a report coinciding with today's world environment day. Twentieth-century modernist dreams of greening deserts by diverting rivers and mining underground water are wholly unrealistic, it
warns. But the report also proposes that deserts become the powerhouses of the next century, capturing the world's solar energy and potentially exporting electricity across continents.

For instance, a 310-square mile area of the Sahara could, with today's technology, generate enough electricity for the whole world. The problem now facing many communities on the fringes of deserts, says the UN environment programme report, is not the physical growth of deserts but that rising water tables beneath irrigated soils are leading to more salinisation - a phenomenon already taking place across large tracts of China, India, Pakistan and Australia. The Tarm river basin in China, it says, has lost more than 5,000 square miles of farmland to salinisation in a period of 30 years.

The report suggests that Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia have used water from the desert very unwisely. Rather than growing staple crops such as wheat or tomatoes, it suggests that precious water should be used only for high value crops such as dates and fish farming. The mining "fossil" water, laid down many millions of years ago, was once believed to have the potential to green deserts, but is now not thought to be a solution - except in Libya, where opinion is divided as to whether supplies may last 100 or 500 years. But the greatest threat to people and wildlife living anywhere near deserts is climate change, which is already having a greater impact on desert regions than elsewhere.

The Dashti Kbir desert in Iran has seen a 16% drop in rainfall in the past 25 years, the Kalahari a 12% decline and Chile's Atacama desert an 8% drop. Most deserts, says the report, will see temperatures rise by 5-7C by the end of the century and rainfall drop 10-20%. This will greatly increase evaporation and dust storms, and will move deserts closer to communities living on their edges. The problems of more heat and lower rainfall are being compounded by the melting of glaciers in mountainous regions. These waters sustain life in deserts but would be perilously close to drying up if global warming continued as expected.

more
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1790471,00.html

[Zynx]

1. I'll tell you this much, if people expect the Midwest to give water to

the South West so they can build golf courses and gardens because they tapped all their ground water, they have another thing coming.

[madrchsod]

2. they will try...

and they will be stopped. canada also has a say so in the great lakes...

[Zynx]

3. And international treaties trump domestic decisions.

The Constitution says so.

[iamjoy]

5. I Agree - It's Ridiculous (Golf Courses)

the Phoenix area, Palm Springs California, etc are supposedly big golfing resorts. They are in the middle of the DESERT. There is hardly any water there and to just think of how much is consumed for a games/hobby/sport!

I live in Florida and it ticks me off no end that we can't water OUR lawns but two days a week and yet golf courses can drain our water table as much as they would like.

I agree though that wind and solar farms in some of these remote desert areas is a great idea.

[Glorfindel]

8. Really, when you think about it, what on EARTH is more ridiculous

than a lawn? Seriously. An expanse of trimmed grass that serves no purpose except to waste water and energy. Lawns should be taxed at 300% of the value of the property they waste. That would solve the problem of watering them pretty quick, I think.

[midnight armadillo]

10. Why do you hate America?

Really, when you think about it, what on EARTH is more ridiculous than a lawn?

Xeriscaping means the terrorists have won!

[Confusious]

11. Yea...

While we're at it, we could do away with art. Not very energy efficient, really has not purpose in survival. We just want to scrap by. Just think of all the energy and trees that could be saved by not making pencils, paint, hell the list goes on and on...

[iamjoy]

17. Well, We Tried To Grow Plants

we don't have grass, we have mulch and plants. For a while, it looked pretty and the plants were leafy, hopefully helping provide oxygen for our atmosphere. Then the drought hit, our plants died...

[phantom power]

13. We're going to fight you for it

:evilgrin:

[Zynx]

14. And you'll lose. International treaty obligations trump domestic ones.

[NNadir]

16. If you mud wrestle, making the mud will involve water.

For neutrality's sake, maybe the event can take place during one of those Arizona flash floods one hear's about.

[phantom power]

18. Da thunderdome. 2 go in, 1 comes out! 2 go in, 1 comes out!

[iconoclastic cat]

4. Seriously, why not create massive solar energy farms?

It would be a whole lot less destructive than coal oil or whatever.

[Selatius]

6. You don't want to hurt our precious oil companies, do you?

We want our CEOs from Exxon-Mobil to continue to retire with $400,000,000 retirement packages, don't we? Anything less than 400 million is, frankly, un-American!

:sarcasm:

[iconoclastic cat]

7. Hurt them? I want to feed them Metamucil and habaneros.

[Confusious]

9. You know...

I live in the Southwest. Tucson, AZ. to be exact. I always love these posts about how people here are using water to grow grass in a desert. It shows how little you know. Most people have desert landscaping in their yards (lots of small rocks and cacti) We don't use fresh water to water our parks and golf courses. And we don't have that lovely fine bladed grass that you do. We have high tolerance Bermuda grass, and the water that we use to water parks and golf courses comes from the crap we flush down the toilet. I see signs all over town "DO NOT DRINK THE WATER". Maybe you could do some research before going off on us "EVIL water hogs" in the southwest. I'm sure you've got some water problems of your own to deal with. See the post about Florida. Maybe they should have a law like ours. Oh, and the effluent that we use to water the parks, you really couldn't do anything more with it, economically, unless you want to lone us "water hogs" ( aren't the great lakes down by 20 feet or so right now?) some cash. I'll keep watch.

[eppur_se_muova]

12. Deserts 'need better management' (BBC) {different story, same UN report}

Climate change, high water demand and even tourism are putting unprecedented pressures on the world's desert ecosystems, according to a new report.

The Global Deserts Outlook, produced by the UN's Environment Programme, is described as the most authoritative assessment to date of desert regions.

Its authors say too much water is being frittered away on water-intensive agricultural crops.

But, they add, deserts have huge economic benefits if managed sensibly.
***
more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5041988.stm

[dcfirefighter]

15. Resources don't work like goods & services

The Capitalists are wrong to want to make them private, the socialists are almost always wrong when they decide their use.

Free market pricing does an EXCELLENT job of allocating scarce goods and services: no shortages, no surpluses. Prices go up, and more goods and services are produced.

This doesn't work with things that aren't produced - things the likes of Adam Smith and Karl Marx termed 'Land'. Prices go up with these, and no more is produced, but rather speculators purchase more to withold, driving prices up further. For example, 'Rev' Moon might buy up all the land (and water rights) to a large aquifer. Or people buy second and third houses, and try to cover the mortgage with the rent. All this causes prices to rise, and yet the supply doesn't increase.

It's commonly seen as 'fair' to allow water rights to be absolute. Water rights purchased twenty years ago are cheaper than water rights purchased today - and so 'established' farms may be able to afford to grow water intensive vegetables like lettuce, while new farms and properties can't afford to irrigate at all - unless they pay the 'old' owners high prices.

A better solution than either private ownership of 'Land' or social control of 'Land' would be to socialize the financial returns to land - Socialize 'Rents'. Not all Rent is realized as a cash flow, so practically this means taxing property when that property is a natural resource like Land.

In the case of water, if the annual financial value of water rights is collected, and that revenue is shared publicly, either through services or cash, everyone will have 'enough' water and the water will be put to it's highest and best use. It is financially equivalent to dividing the actual water into shares, distributing these equal shares to the population, and then allowing them to buy and sell water as they please. Everyone would retain enough water for themselves, while those that can use the water more productively than others would pay for it.