Posts Tagged ‘collapsing cities’
Posted by edro on October 13, 2009
Dallas: The First Major US City to Collapse?
Air, water and soil contamination may cause collapse of population centers
For more information see: The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
Dallas
- Estimated population: 1.3 million
- State ranking: Third largest city in Texas [After Houston and San Antonio]
- National ranking: Main city and economic hub of the 12-county metropolitan area [Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington] with a population of 6,500,000
- Population Growth: Fourth largest and number one fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States in2008.
Continued…
Contaminants in air around Texas gas town: study
By Ed Stoddard
DALLAS (Reuters) – High concentrations of harmful compounds have been found in the air in a north Texas town that is in the heart of the region’s gas industry, according to a report released this month by an environmental consultancy.
The study by Wolf Eagle Environmental Engineers and Consultants found high concentrations of carcinogenic and neurotoxin compounds in the atmosphere at seven locations around the rural town of DISH, which is about 50 miles northwest of Dallas.
Carcinogens are linked to cancers while neurotoxins are toxins that act on nerve cells.
The report said the levels of several of the substances exceeded those that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) uses as benchmarks or triggers that could prompt it to investigate or take action.
The TCEQ is conducting its own studies in the area.
DISH is on the Barnett Shale, a large geological formation in north Texas that contains vast amounts of natural gas. In and around the town are pipelines, wells and several compressor stations owned by a number of energy companies including Chesapeake, Atmos and Crosstex.
The town hired the consultancy to do the study.
“The chemicals and concentrations that we found are consistent with other facilities that we have tested in and around the Barnett Shale. Many of these chemicals are related to the scenting process of natural gas because natural gas has no odor,” said Alisa Rich, president of Wolf Eagle.
“I’m extremely confident that this is linked to the gas industry,” she told Reuters in an interview. The data was collected over a 24-hour period in August.
She said the compressor stations were a special cause for concern because of the volumes of gas pumped through them.
“Atmos Energy does not believe that its operations in the DISH area make any significant contribution to the emissions of the chemicals listed in the Wolf Eagle Engineering study,” Atmos said in response to an e-mail query from Reuters.
“Atmos Energy is aware that the TCEQ is planning additional emissions testing in this area in the near future and will cooperate fully with those efforts,” it said.
Chesapeake and Crosstex declined to comment.
DISH’s Mayor Calvin Tillman told Reuters he would like to see the compressor stations shut down “until we can know with confidence that they are not emitting these toxins.”
The report is the latest to link environmental and health hazards with America’s booming gas industry.
In August, U.S. government scientists announced that they had found for the first time found chemical contaminants in drinking water wells near natural gas drilling operations, fueling concern that a gas-extraction technique is endangering the health of people who live close to drilling rigs.
(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Christian Wiessner)
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE59B5AS20091012
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Posted in Atmos Energy, Barnett Shale, Chesapeake, Crosstex, chemical contaminants, collapse mechanisms, drinking water, energy, energy dinosaurs, natural gas, nerve cells | Tagged: Carcinogens, collapsing cities, Dallas, DISH, dynamics of collapse, First Wave of Collapsing Cities, Nemesis, neurotoxins, TCEQ | Leave a Comment »
Posted by msrb on August 18, 2008
The problems?
- Water scarcity. About 3 billion people are affected by water scarcity caused by diminishing reserves of freshwater (excessive use), climate change (drought, extreme climatic events, vanishing snow caps…)
- Excessive volumes of wastewater produced by growing urban population
- Increased demand for crops to feed growing urban population
The “Quick Fix!”
Irrigating urban agricultural land with untreated wastewater!
A possible outcome:
Spread of pandemic diseases leading to large scale collapse
A new 53-city study conducted by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) reveals that about 80 percent of the cities studied use untreated or partially diluted wastewater for agriculture. At least 50 percent of the urban agricultural land in those cities is irrigated with raw or diluted wastewater.
“Irrigating with wastewater isn’t a rare practice limited to a few of the poorest countries. It’s a widespread phenomenon, occurring on 20 million hectares across the developing world, especially in Asian countries, like China, India and Vietnam, but also around nearly every city of sub-Saharan Africa and in many Latin American cities as well,” said IWMI researcher Liqa Raschid-Sally.
“It’s a widespread phenomenon, occurring on 20 million hectares (50 million acres) across the developing world, especially in Asian countries, like China, India and Vietnam, but also around nearly every city of sub-Saharan Africa and in many Latin American cities as well.”
Wastewater is most commonly used to produce vegetables and cereals, especially rice, pose a health threat to the farmers as well as the consumers.
“The negative and positive implications of wastewater agriculture have only recently received attention. This study offers the first comprehensive, cross-country analysis of the conditions that account for the practice and the difficult tradeoffs that arise from it,” said Colin Chartres, director general of IWMI.
About 200,000 people in Accra, 10 percent of the urban population of Ghana’s capital city, consume vegetables produced on just 100 hectares of urban agricultural land, which is irrigated with wastewater, according to the IWMI report. “That gives you an idea of the large potential of wastewater agriculture for both helping and hurting great numbers of urban consumers.” Raschid-Sally said.
“And it isn’t just affluent consumers of exotic vegetables whose welfare is at stake. Poor consumers of inexpensive street food also depend on urban agriculture.” She reported.
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Posted in 286W, Accra, climate change, economy, energy, environment, future, ghana, lifestyle, pollution, soil | Tagged: cereals, china, Cities Collapse Engine, collapsing cities, First Wave of Collapse, India, IWMI, Japan, large scale collapse, Latin America, Liqa Raschid-Sally, Quick Fix, raw vegetables, rice, Spread of pandemic diseases, sub-Saharan Africa, untreated wastewater, urban agriculture, urban population, Vietnam, Water Cycle, water scarcity | 1 Comment »
Posted by edro on May 21, 2008
Nature is an NPO. It has performed wonderfully well for a very, very long time. Why can’t humans do the same?
See Main Entry: Wal-Mart’s 7Rs
This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the Antennae galaxies (NGC 4038 & 4039) is the sharpest yet of this merging pair of galaxies. During the course of the collision, billions of stars will be formed. The brightest and most compact of these star birth regions are called super star clusters.
The two spiral galaxies started to interact a few hundred million years ago, making the Antennae galaxies one of the nearest and youngest examples of a pair of colliding galaxies. Nearly half of the faint objects in the Antennae image are young clusters containing tens of thousands of stars. The orange blobs to the left and right of image center are the two cores of the original galaxies and consist mainly of old stars criss-crossed by filaments of dust, which appear brown in the image. The two galaxies are dotted with brilliant blue star-forming regions surrounded by glowing hydrogen gas, appearing in the image in pink. Source: http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/2006/46/images/a/formats/full_jpg.jpg
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration Acknowledgment: B. Whitmore (Space Telescope Science Institute)
The Infrared Milky Way
This panoramic view encompasses the entire sky as seen by Two Micron All-Sky Survey. The measured brightnesses of half a billion stars (points) have been combined into colors representing three distinct wavelengths of infrared light: blue at 1.2 microns, green at 1.6 microns microns, and red at 2.2 microns. This image is centered on the core of our own Milky Way galaxy, toward the constellation of Sagittarius. The reddish stars seemingly hovering in the middle of the Milky Way’s disc — many of them never observed before — trace the densest dust clouds in our galaxy. The two faint smudges seen in the lower right quadrant are our neighboring galaxies, the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds.
Atlas Image mosaic courtesy of 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF”
The Cosmic Microwave Background temperature fluctuations from the 5-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data seen over the full sky. The average temperature is 2.725 Kelvin (degrees above absolute zero; equivalent to -273.15 C or -459 F), and the colors represent the tiny temperature fluctuations, as in a weather map. Red regions are warmer and blue regions are colder by about 0.0002 degrees. Source: NASA / WMAP Science Team
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Posted in atmosphere, climate change, economy, energy, environment, future, lifestyle, pollution, soil, war | Tagged: -459 F, co-operatives, collapsing cities, collapsing world, Cosmic Microwave, Infrared Milky Way, money, NASA, Nature, NPO, profit, rot, ruins, science, wal-mart, water | 3 Comments »
Posted by edro on April 30, 2008
Tipping Point
A confirmation of tipping point is presented in the following report by James Hansen, NASA climatologist:
Excerpts from Hansen’s report:
- We are at the tipping point because the climate state includes large, ready positive feedbacks provided by the Arctic sea ice, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and much of Greenland’s ice.
- Our home planet is dangerously near a tipping point at which human-made greenhouse gases reach a level where major climate changes can proceed mostly under their own momentum. Warming will shift climatic zones by intensifying the hydrologic cycle, affecting freshwater availability and human health.
Source:Tipping Point: Here and Now!
Report:Tipping Point: PERSPECTIVE OF A CLIMATOLOGIST [PDF]
The ice in the Arctic is much younger than normal, with vast regions now covered by first-year ice and much less area covered by multiyear ice. Left: February distribution of ice by its age during normal Arctic conditions (1985-2000 average). Right: February 2008 Arctic ice age distribution. Credit: NSIDC [Caption: NASA]
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Posted in Arctic, CO2, Earth, HIoN, Human activities, Human-induced climate change, Index of Human Impact on Nature, air pollution, atmosphere, civilization, climate, climate change, dynamics of collapse, energy, environment, extinction, future, health, human migration, ice dynamics, industrialism, lifestyle, limits to growth | Tagged: collapsing cities, Arctic ice, positive feedback, multiyear ice, PERSPECTIVE OF A CLIMATOLOGIST, Tipping Point, climatic zones, greenhouse gases, Greenland’s ice, James Hansen, NASA, collapsing ecosystems | Leave a Comment »
Posted by edro on April 10, 2008
Poverty, Food Scarcity, Riots
Since February 2008, riots and violent protests concerning rising food prices or food shortages have been reported in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cameroon, Egypt, El Salvador, Haiti, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique, Philippines Senegal, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.
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Posted in Giga Trends, HIoN, Index of Human Impact on Nature, Weather-Related Disasters, civilization, extinction, police state | Tagged: 2012, civil conflict, collapsing cities, First Wave of Collapse, Food Crisis, poverty, riots, scaled-down future, topsoil | 1 Comment »
