"THE world's first tidal power project is to be built in the Sound of Islay, after approval was given by the Scottish Government. The £40 million scheme will be able to generate electricity for more than 5,000 homes - double the number on Islay.
The ten-turbine, 10MW facility, being developed by ScottishPower Renewables, will further develop emerging tidal energy technology ADVERTISEMENTand is seen as a forerunner for much larger projects in the Pentland Firth.
Plans are under way to generate 1,600MW of marine energy in the firth, off Caithness, following the world's first commercial wave and tidal leasing round announced last year.
The approval of the Islay scheme was announced yesterday by finance secretary John Swinney, who determined the application as it is in energy minister Jim Mather's Argyll and Bute constituency.
Mr Swinney said it was the world's only project of its kind with consent.
He added: "With around a quarter of Europe's potential tidal energy resource and a tenth of the wave capacity, Scotland's seas have unrivalled potential to generate green energy, create new, low-carbon jobs, and bring billions of pounds of investment to Scotland."
Other Scottish firms in the supply chain are set to benefit from £4m worth of contracts in making the turbines to be used in the development, including manufacture of a prototype at BiFab in Arnish, near Stornoway.
The site in the Sound of Islay, between the island and Jura, was chosen for its strong and predictable tidal flow, while being naturally protected from storms." _________________ The sun, wind and water produce enough energy all around us to provide for our needs for many years to come. Instead, we seek to desimate our natural environment for false choices through drilling her, poking her and sucking her lifeblood out. This to me is insanity and is one reason why the human species will never be at peace on Earth as we have not made peace with her. Ventures such as tidal energy seek to live in harmony with the water and allow her life energy to be used for good. In watching the tragedy and nuclear disaster in Japan unfolding one cannot help but be struck with such a sense of dumbfoundedness in wondering why countries continue to insist on nuclear energy when it is so dangerous to all life on Earth and when there are cleaner, healthier and more sustainable ways to create energy. Kudos to Scotland for seeing the potential of the water, the sun and the wind and for being a country that truly understands what it means to work for a sustainable future.
"Water usage in north Africa and the Middle East is unsustainable and shortages are likely to lead to further instability – unless governments take action to solve the impending crisis
• Failure to act on crop shortages fuelling political instability
John Vidal The Observer, Sunday 20 February 2011 Poverty, repression, decades of injustice and mass unemployment have all been cited as causes of the political convulsions in the Middle East and north Africa these last weeks. But a less recognised reason for the turmoil in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, Jordan and now Iran has been rising food prices, directly linked to a growing regional water crisis.
The diverse states that make up the Arab world, stretching from the Atlantic coast to Iraq, have some of the world's greatest oil reserves, but this disguises the fact that they mostly occupy hyper-arid places. Rivers are few, water demand is increasing as populations grow, underground reserves are shrinking and nearly all depend on imported staple foods that are now trading at record prices.
For a region that expects populations to double to more than 600 million within 40 years, and climate change to raise temperatures, these structural problems are political dynamite and already destabilising countries, say the World Bank, the UN and many independent studies.
In recent reports they separately warn that the riots and demonstrations after the three major food-price rises of the last five years in north Africa and the Middle East might be just a taste of greater troubles to come unless countries start to share their natural resources, and reduce their profligate energy and water use.
"In the future the main geopolitical resource in the Middle East will be water rather than oil. The situation is alarming," said Swiss foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey last week, as she launched a Swiss and Swedish government-funded report for the EU.
The Blue Peace report examined long-term prospects for seven countries, including Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, the Palestinian territories and Israel. Five already suffer major structural shortages, it said, and the amount of water being taken from dwindling sources across the region cannot continue much longer.
"Unless there is a technological breakthrough or a miraculous discovery, the Middle East will not escape a serious [water] shortage," said Sundeep Waslekar, a researcher from the Strategic Foresight Group who wrote the report.
Autocratic, oil-rich rulers have been able to control their people by controlling nature and have kept the lid on political turmoil at home by heavily subsidising "virtual" or "embedded" water in the form of staple grains imported from the US and elsewhere.
But, says Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East programme at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic Studies, existing political relationships are liable to break down when, as now, the price of food hits record levels and the demand for water and energy soars.
"Water is a fundamental part of the social contract in Middle Eastern countries. Along with subsidised food and fuel, governments provide cheap or even free water to ensure the consent of the governed. But when subsidised commodities have been cut, instability has often followed.
"Water's own role in prompting unrest has so far been relatively limited, but that is unlikely to hold. Future water scarcity will be much more permanent than past shortages, and the techniques governments have used in responding to past disturbances may not be enough," he says.
"The problem will only get worse. Arab countries depend on other countries for their food security – they're as sensitive to floods in Australia and big freezes in Canada as on the yield in Algeria or Egypt itself," says political analyst and Middle East author Vicken Cheterian.
"In 2008/9, Arab countries' food imports cost $30bn. Then, rising prices caused waves of rioting and left the unemployed and impoverished millions in Arab countries even more exposed. The paradox of Arab economies is that they depend on oil prices, while increased energy prices make their food more expensive," says Cheterian.
The region's most food- and water-insecure country is Yemen, the poorest in the Arab world, which gets less than 200 cubic metres of water per person a year – well below the international water poverty line of 1,000m3 – and must import 80-90% o f its food.
According to Mahmoud Shidiwah, chair of the Yemeni water and environment protection agency, 19 of the country's 21 main aquifers are no longer being replenished and the government has considered moving Sana'a, the capital city, with around two million people, which is expected to run dry within six years.
"Water shortages have increased political tensions between groups. We have a very big problem," he says." _________________________
The point here is that water scarcity is an underlying cause of much of the unrest in this area of the world, only it is not getting the attention and press it needs in order to be dealt with. Governments would rather privitize it and much of it is polluted beyond the ability to be used. Even desalination in this area is proving costly. I am amazed that the word "conservation" never gets mentioned in addressing this crisis, and that is part of the problem. I would hope that the available sources would be shared equitably, but as we now see Turkey and Israel are the water bosses of the Middle East, and they control a large part of the water being used ( much of it now diverted for dams.) Also, we see many dams being built in Africa with hydropower becoming a source of energy that cannot be sustained in a land where drought and population growth are already straining agriculture along with the effects of biodistress (climate change.)
We need to address population and water usage in line with polluton of this resource that is now unsustainable. We also need to bring energy sources to these areas that do not consume huge amounts of water that should be used for growing food and addressing the needs of people in these areas. I have always contended that there was a MAD scenario to the water crisis in that no country would ever do anything to harm the source of another as it would come back on them. However, from what I have seen recently regarding unwillingness of upstream countries to share equitably with downstream countries, this crisis is becoming more and more contentious not only in the Middle East but in Asia and Africa.
The information here is a bit dated (1994) but the predictions to 2025 are coming true. Countries in this region have all stated that the one resource they will wage war over is water. And with this area already being arid now contending with longer replenishment rates due to climate change affecting the hydrologic cycle along with wasteful irrigation and drought where there is little potable water and higher populations, we will only see more protests along these lines as well as protesting higher food prices, unemployment and political corruption. Water is the 400 lb. gorilla in the room.
Survival of our species depends on taking this SERIOUSLY. And this is not about politics or religion. This is about humanity.
We must be the media since this has been totally blacked out. BP has killed the Gulf, and now the residents there are feeling the effects of Corexit and the oil which has not all disappeared contrary to what you may have read.
A well written piece by Paul Krugman appeared in the NY Times yesterday where he gives a truthful view on the current protests we are seeing in relation to food prices and world weather events and the effects of climate change. I have been reporting and writing about sustainable agriculture here for a couple of years now primarily in regards to the effects of climate, speculation, world policy regarding loans and food grown for export, types of sustainable agricultural practices, seed patents and the effects of monoculture GMOs on the world's economy, health, environment and food sovereignty.
It is no overstatement to state that we are in a climate/food crisis. Recent events in Australia, Russia, China, Africa and Latin America for example have not only been a part of rising prices but also in giving us a glimpse of what life will be like in a warming world. Agriculture, its cultivation, its very existence is under threat by an ongoing assault of erratic and intensifiying weather/climate events, pesticides, expansive and destructive industrial agricultural policies and practices that see more land going to growing non food items, lack of food access and the effects of GMOs and the transgenic contamination they bring which has already affected not only the traditional corn varieties of Mexico's culture and livelihood, but crops around the world which works against what we must now be doing to save our agriculture.
As we look to the future our ability to provide for our needs is being made much harder by our own actions. As we see our population approaching a projected 9 billion within the next several decades we must begin to seriously understand the role our actions play in the world we see before us, and the world we will leave successive generations. The ability to feed ourselves and plant seeds that preserve our global biodiversity is being attacked by those who would profit from both their ownership and their demise.
In this century there will be no greater challenge to our species than working to preserve the planet that provides our food, our water, and our lives. What Mr. Krugman states here is not to be taken lightly. Climate change is indeed upon us, and its reach goes far beyond the political differences that have kept this urgent crisis from being faced as it must be now. The protests in Egypt and around the world are warning signs as well as hopeful signs. If we do not deal with the root causes of this crisis including and most importantly climate change, the world of our making will not be one we will be able to inhabit. This does come down to the very seeds we plant in our soils, and in our consciences.
The latest development in the Gulf is how an incomprehensible bacterium is remarkably eating up the methane gas. It appears that engineered designer genes have also been used to remove the gas just as they have been used to consume the oil. The common denominator is that neither of these microbes are natural microorganisms. This should come as no surprise.
Microbiologist David Valentine at the University of California at Santa Barbara stated,
“Within a matter of months, the bacteria completely removed that methane. The bacteria kicked on more effectively than we expected.”
It sounds to me that this created synthetic genome microbe far exceeded the engineering and programming expectations.
According to a Fox Business report,
“This discovery offered a rare glimpse into the remarkable abilities of an obscure family of microbes in the depths of the Gulf”.
I agree. It is scientifically incomprehensible that any natural microorganism could do this and synthetically engineered microbes are definitely obscure by comparison.
University of Georgia microbiologist Samantha Joye, who has been independently analyzing methane from the Gulf of Mexico, also agrees with me. She said,
“It would take a superhuman microbe to do what they are claiming.”
So it has, Samantha. It was specifically engineered and its “superhuman” genetics were created synthetically.
In a January 7, 2011 article, the UK Register wrote how the scientists were particularly
“surprised at the speed with which the bacteria consumed their enormous meal”.
They also brought up the fact that earlier studies elsewhere in the world suggested methane levels around Deepwater Horizon would be well above normal for years ahead. It’s remarkable what highly engineered designer genes can do.
On January 6, 2011, the Christian Science Monitor reported how the study’s leaders boldly stated that rates of methane decomposition after the Gulf oil spill
“were faster than had ever been recorded in any other place on the planet.”
That’s because these are not natural microbes. You can’t compare apples to grapefruit.
TRACE ELEMENTS ADDED TO THE GULF
In the same CS Monitor report, University of Georgia microbiologist Samantha Joye stated how
“[The Gulf] is not well stocked with trace elements the bacteria need to survive – among them, copper, which bacteria specifically use to deal with the methane. Shortages of copper, as well as other trace elements, likely would have slammed the brakes on the exponential growth in bacterial populations needed to get rid of the methane in fewer than four months.”
The same applies to hydrocarbon-eating bacteria that consume oil, except that iron is needed more than the other trace elements. Since copper and iron are not prevalent mineral elements normally found in the Gulf of Mexico, the synthetic bacterium eating both the oil and the methane would not be able to do so at the remarkable speed they have without such essential earth elements. The only possible way these synthetic bacterium could have done this is by adding the required elements to the Gulf. Spraying a highly dissolved or colloidal mixture of trace elements onto and into the Gulf of Mexico would be absolutely required to accomplish this.
In our October 21, 2010 research article The Gulf BLUE PLAGUE (BP): It’s Not Wise To Fool Mother Nature, we had revealed the abnormally high amounts of elements found in the Gulf and that it was being sprayed along with or separately from the oil dispersants. In August 2010, rain water samples were tested by the Coastal Heritage Society of Louisiana where rain coming directly from the Gulf had unusually high concentrations of iron, copper, nickel, aluminum, manganese, and arsenic.
Without a doubt, the synthetically created bacterium introduced into the Gulf of Mexico to consume the oil and gasses were – and continue to be – fed these essential trace elements. Otherwise, they could not have thrived or reproduced at the accelerated rate they have. The continued spraying in the Gulf by aircraft and by boat is not Corexit or other oil dispersal chemicals. Consider the current spraying to have the same effect of adding liquid fertilizer to your crops.
In early December, 2010 the research vessel WeatherBird II, owned by the University of Southern Florida (USF), went back to the Gulf of Mexico for follow-up water and core samples. As reported by Naomi Klein on January 13, 2011 in Hunting the Ocean for BP’s Missing Millions of Barrels of Oil,
“…these veteran scientists have seen things that they describe as unprecedented …evidence of bizarre sickness in the phytoplankton and bacterial communities…”
This “bizarre sickness” in the indigenous Gulf microorganisms is the direct result of the synthetic microbes that are still creating genetic sicknesses by mutating the DNA of the natural microbes. We had alerted our readers to this in DNA Mutations Confirmed in Gulf of Mexico on September 28, 2010 when we stated,
“DNA mutations are occurring within the Gulf of Mexico at a microscopic cellular level. The obvious effect this has on marine life as well as humans is a Pandora Box of unknowns.”
Tampa Bay Online gave further insight to this in an interview with Dr. John Paul, an oceanography biology professor at USF, regarding the oil plume they had discovered 40 miles off the Florida Panhandle:
It was found to be toxic to microscopic sea organisms, causing mutations to their DNA. If this plankton at the base of the marine food chain is contaminated, it could affect the whole ecosystem of the Gulf.
“The problem with mutant DNA is that it can be passed on and we don’t how this will affect fish or other marine life,” he says, adding that the effects could last for decades.
In Naomi Klein’s article, she describes how Paul introduced healthy bacteria and phytoplankton to Gulf water samples and what happened shocked him. The responses of the organisms “were genotoxic or mutagenic”. According to Paul, what was so “scary” about these results is that such genetic damage was “heritable,” meaning the mutations can be passed on.
Genotoxins pass on genetic changes to successors who have never been exposed to the original gene. Healthy microorganisms are then genetically changed and will pass on their DNA mutations to their descendants. This is a genetic chain-reaction as each mutated microbe interacts with and affects other microorganisms, especially with regards to the food chain:
“…the phytoplankton, the bacteria, and the [microorganisms] that graze on them – the zooplankton – seem to be the most potentially impacted.” – Dr. David Hollander, USF Marine Geochemist: December 6, 2010: Video interview on WeatherBird II.
______________ "DNA mutations are occurring within the Gulf of Mexico at a microscopic cellular level. The obvious effect this has on marine life as well as humans is a Pandora Box of unknowns.”
Geoengineering the Gulf with mutant bacteria they have not told the public about. Is this why this disappeared so fast from media coverage? Because based on this it is safe to assume this was done deliberately to conduct this experiment. Is this now why BP will continue to make deals to drill in the Arctic and elsewhere, because they can now spill to their heart's content in skirting environmental laws and spending to adhere to safety regulations because they can unleash this genetically mutated synthetic bacteria to eat it all up without revealing the effects it has on our oceans, marinelife and humans? The effects of this are incomprehensible.
This is not something that we can continue to talk about as happening in the future as if planning for it can be put off. The world has already seen close to half a million people affected by climate change in ways that have made them have to move from their homes and homelands due to sea level rise, drought, and water scarcity which has also effected agriculture. With events becoming more severe and pronouced as the fires In Russia, the flooding in Pakistan and now Australia and severe droughts as we now see in much of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, what does happen when a land is so devastated by continuing climate change that its inhabitants can no longer live there? Where do they go?How does it effect their culture?
This particular video is from a documentary called King Tide and deals with the people of Tuvalu, a small island nation that is already seeing the effects of rising sea levels. In climate conference after climate conference however, the effects of climate change on water have been continually ignored. This even though much of these effects revolve around water and the hydrologic cycle being interfered with by the human actions of fossil fuel use, deforestation, unsustainable agricultural practices (irrigation), dams, water waste, privitization and pollution resulting in sea level rise, glacier melt affecting water scarcity, floods, drought, stronger storms, erratic rainfall, etc.
I don't think it can be stressed enough based on what we are now seeing taking place globally that planning for the future regarding climate refugees is of paramount importance. We can no longer afford to act as though this is going to go away. It isn't. The socio-economic impacts alone of millions of refugees with no place to call home and no where that wants them aside from the inability to provide for them in a world where potable water and available land is shrinking are huge and cannot wait until the floods completely wash out a country or drought dries it into desert. Lives will be lost. This goes beyond politics. This truly is the moral challenge of our generation.
We have seen unsettling changes in the hydrologic cycle and in the world of water in general this past year which have affected economy, health, and agriculture as well as water access. Climate events were the big news in 2010 with droughts, floods, glacier melt and stronger storms (both rain and snow) leading us to the reality that we indeed have entered a period of consequences regarding our climate.
The BP Gulf Oil Ecocide that is now virtually forgotten is still working its evil on the Gulf, with an 80 mile stretch all the way to the bottom of oil with no life present. The Arctic also saw its second lowest ice extent this past November and the melting is affecting ocean currents in line with a La Nina weather event.
Floods are now taking place in the North of Australia that cover an area as big as France and Germany combined that have stranded 200,000 people, with people saying it is now a catastrophe of "biblical" proportions. Pakistan, India, China, Latin America, the Southwest and Northeast US, all examples recently of climate events where the reality of what we are doing to affect the hydrologic cycle is becoming more evident and that is also related to oversaturation of land and oceans with CO2. The proliferation of dams globally is also a factor that we must now also consider regarding our concerns about water access and availability.
As climate change bears down on us water will be affected drastically regarding both access and quality in relation as well to pollution, privitization, politics and outdated infrastructure (which led to Ireland's current water woes.) Yet, governments of the world (Cancun the most recent example with water left out again) are woefully unprepared for the effects bearing down on us as we continue to push out 90 million tons of Co2 along with other GHGs daily which exacerbates the release of methane from permafrost, which then effects the atmosphere, glaciers, all the way to ocean currents which effect our climate in both extremes. And that does not even take into consideration climate refugees which are already beginning to leave lands due to sea level rise, drought, dying of crops, livestock, etc.
How are events like these not in the consciousness of all sentient beings? How can we say Happy New Year unless we are truly resigned to changing the factors that lead us to disasters like these?
In the coming year we must become more involved in seeking water justice, food security and climate justice for all peoples of the world. We can no longer leave it just in the hands of governments in collusion with corporations seeking to profit off the misery of others. The challenges we now face regarding our global water resources are challenges that if not addressed now will bring nothing but hardship for those feeling the effects of climate change the worst, and those who are the prey of interests using land and water for profit at the expense of our planet's sustainability and the cultural/economic sovereignty of those nations.
Therefore, in reviewing the year gone by and looking ahead we must all become part of the Water Justice Movement in whatever way we can. Whether it is in protest, in writing, in educating, in conserving, it is incumbant upon us all to become part of the solution. Seventy percent of our planet is now is some stage of environmental stress. The signs are evident, the message is clear. We can no longer afford to close our eyes, ears and hearts to the work at hand.
In this year I will be working to provide potable water to those in need through organizations that make a difference, as well as standing up for indigenous people of the world in regards to their land and water, writing my book in earnest and doing all I can to conserve. Whatever you do however small you may think it is, just remember that many raindrops together make a flood, only this flood should be one that turns the tide for true water justice, food sovereignty, climate balance and peace.
