Article on the problem of Carbon credits
Sunday, 17 June 2007
Is this the world's most polluted river?
It was once a gently flowing river, where fishermen cast their nets, sea birds came to feed and natural beauty left visitors spellbound. Villagers collected water for their simple homes and rice paddies thrived on its irrigation channels. Today, the Citarum is a river in crisis, choked by the domestic waste of nine million people and thick with the cast-off from hundreds of factories. So dense is the carpet of refuse that the tiny wooden fishing craft which float through it are the only clue to the presence of water.
Their occupants no longer try to fish. It is more profitable to forage for rubbish they can salvage and trade - plastic bottles, broken chair legs, rubber gloves - risking disease for one or two pounds a week if they are lucky. On what was United Nations World Environment Day, the Citarum, near the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, displayed the shocking abuse that mankind has subjected it to.
More than 500 factories, many of them producing textiles which require chemical treatment, line the banks of the 200-mile river, the largest waterway in West Java, spewing waste into the water. On top of the chemicals go all the other kinds of human detritus from the factories and the people who work there. There is no such luxury as a rubbish collection service here. Nor are there any modern toilet facilities. Everything goes into the river. The filthy water is sucked into the rice paddies, while families risk their health by collecting it for drinking, cooking and washing. Twenty years ago, this was a place of beauty, and the river still served its people well. As one local man, Arifin, recalled: "Our wives did their washing there and our children swam."
Its demise began with rapid industrialisation during the late 1980s. The mighty Citarum soon became a garbage bin for the factories. And the doomsday effect will spread. It is one of two major rivers that feed Lake Saguling, where the French have built the largest power generator in West Java. Experts predict that as the river chokes, its volume will decrease and the generator will not function properly. The area will be plunged into darkness. But at least the factories will be stilled and their waste will stop flowing.
Link to Is this the world's most polluted river? | the Daily Mail
Your climate, your life
Climate change is one of the most important issues of our time. It regularly makes the news - the main debate amongst scientists today is focussed on the amount and rate of climate change we can expect to experience in the future.
This site is about our changing climate and how it affects our lives, from the buildings we live and work in, to the way we travel, the holidays we take and the food we buy in the shops.
Link to Your climate, your life
GeoHive: Global Statistics
Welcome to GeoHive, a site with geopolitical data, statistics on the human population, Earth and more. The main kind of data you can find here is population statistics of regions, countries, provinces and cities. Next to that there are some statistics on economic factors like wealth, infrastructure; statistics on natural phenomena; ....... and yet, even more
The site is structured into several parts. To get at statistics for a specific country, you can go directly to by Country. The Global section has regions and countries compared with each other: what are their capitals, areas, population, growth figures, &c. Also two- and three-letter codes for countries, historical population data and projected future populations for countries. Then there is a section with Charts. Find the city with the highest number of inhabitants, the largest airports of the world and the longest rivers.
Link to GeoHive: Global Statistics
Global Warming Interactive, Global Warming Simulation
Good interactive simulation from National Geographic
Link to Global Warming Interactive, Global Warming Simulation, Climate Change Simulation - National Geographic
Three Gorges Dam, China
The longest river in Asia, the Yangtze River brings mixed blessings to China. Although it meets the water needs of millions of people, the river regularly overflows its banks. In the twentieth century alone, Chinese authorities estimated, the river claimed the lives of 300,000 people. To protect some 15 million residents and 3.7 million acres (roughly 14,970 square kilometers) in the lower Yangtze floodplains, China began construction on the Three Gorges Dam in 1994. Like the river itself, the dam appears to be a mixed blessing: the reservoir was expected to submerge about 632 square kilometers (244 square miles) of land and force the relocation of more than a million people. The reservoir was anticipated to submerge ecologically and culturally important sites in the three gorges—Qutang, Wu Xia, and Xiling—that were the dam’s namesake.
These images show the Yangtze River in the vicinity of the Three Gorges Dam (lower right). Landsat 7 acquired the top image on November 7, 2006, after the main wall was complete. Landsat 5 acquired the bottom image on April 17, 1987, several years before construction on the dam began. In the top image, the dam’s main wall appears as a thin, buff-colored line crossing the water. The water body balloons out markedly in the later image—evidence of the rising water level. The water has backed up and expanded tributaries well upstream of the dam (upper left of image).
Link to EO Newsroom: New Images - Three Gorges Dam, China
World's Longest Rivers Map Quiz
Interactive river game based on world map and identification of rivers shown.
click on links above for Interactive games on naming countries and capitals.
Link to World's Longest Rivers Map Quiz
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