Results tagged “water” from 60 Second Science

I love public television. Still, it's not known as an outlet for thrill seekers. It seldom provides its viewers with an adrenaline rush. Nonetheless, PBS does stage memorable television events, and one of them was the documentary, Cadillac Desert, accompanied by Marc Reisner's best-selling book of the same name.

Reisner chronicles in mostly-riveting, though sometimes mind-numbing, detail the great Westward Migration in America and its dependence on a dwindling, non-renewable water supply. The intrigue and politics of water, says Reisner, have been the driving force in shaping the American West, and in the end there simply will not be enough of it. When it runs out, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, followed inevitably by a great Eastward Migration.

Readers of Cadillac Desert will remember one of the most notorious events in California History, the collapse of the St. Francis Dam, which occurred eighty years ago this week. Early Twentiety-Century celebrity, Los Angeles water engineer William Mulholland (as in Mulholland Drive) had just watched a proposal to strip yet more water from the Owens Valley go sour. He desperately needed to find a way to satisfy LA's growing water addiction, and in the end he decided to expand the size of an already-large dam in the nearby San Francisquito Canyon. This proved to be a lousy idea.

Continue reading 'Dam! California celebrates a notorious anniversary.' >

Villagers in the Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountains have practiced "glacier growing" for centuries, according to local legend. Historically, snowmelt often hasn't provided enough water for crops or humans in the dry, high-altitude regions, so growing glaciers became crucial to survival. How did they do it? By combining "male" and "female" glaciers to grow the glaciers larger.

Before you laugh at what sounds like old-world witchcraft, consider this: Researcher Ingvar Tveiten from the Department of International Environment and Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences seems to support the locals' methods of glacier farming. While only a few villages still have glacier-growing elders, if Tveiten can refine and disseminate these techniques for glacier growing, it could go a long way to alleviating problems caused by population growth and glacier retreat in the poverty-plagued mountains of Central Asia.

So how does it work? Local tradition believes that there are two types of glaciers: "male" glaciers are covered in soil or stones and move hardly if at all, while "female" glaciers are whiter, grow faster and yield more water. Tradition also dictates that in order to grow a glacier, you need equal amounts of both types of glaciers — just like the birds and the bees, only colder.

Continue reading 'How do you grow a glacier? Make a boy and a girl glacier get it on' >

China won the right to host the 2008 Summer Olympics after overcoming political worries, environmental concerns and a knockdown-drag-out fight with Paris. China declared of Paris that "certain urban areas leave something to be desired when it comes to cleanliness. In particular, errant dogs and rabid dogs are increasingly numerous." Claude Bebear, the head of the Paris Olympic bid committee, shot back with "dogs are dogs...they do the same thing everywhere... It's just that there are no dogs in China - because they eat them." BURN!

So after that flame war, there's no way in hell China's going to let a little thing like water ruin the opening-day festivities: They've had some success in preventing light rain, as we've previously reported.

But at the same time that China is attempting to stop H2O from falling from the sky, they've also constructed a groundbreaking structure inspired by water bubbles (pictured above). The Beijing National Aquatics Center, or Water Cube, as it's affectionately called, is covered in 100,000 square meters of iridescent, Teflon-like plastic called ETFE. ETFE is only 0.08 of an inch think, but it can hold up to 300 times its weight. The Water Cube is said to mimic nature's way of filling space most efficiently — with bubbles — while also absorbing solar heat to warm the building and the pool. It's said to be one of the most sustainable buildings in the increasingly environmentally-aware China, who want to look good for the world come August.

Check a video of the building after the jump:

Continue reading 'China simultaneously in love and at war with water before 2008 Olympics' >

Environmental groups have shed an unbecoming light on bottled water companies lately. The plastic bottles suck energy, pile up in landfills, and waste...water.

The guilt trip has lead one water company to change its ways. Today, the square-bottle company Fiji Water announced it's goal to go carbon negative in 2008. That means cutting packaging by 20 percent, reducing waste from production, installing a windmill at the bottling plant, and altering shipping routes to lower emissions.

Continue reading 'Bottled Water Company Feels the Heat, Goes Green' >

The new Global Warming is water -- and of course the two are linked.

With uncanny timing, given the current droughts in the American Southeast, an exhibit saturated with facts and figures about water will open at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City on Saturday.

Continue reading 'It takes 190 liters of water to produce a glass of milk' >

This week’s New York Times Magazine does a nice job of summing up a prolonged crisis near and dear to my California-native heart: the West’s aridity. A fact underlying today's frontpage news as Southern California wildfires burn out of control and Schwarzenegger declares a state of emergency.

Continue reading 'Whither the water in the West?' >