“Truth? You can't handle the truth!”

[IndigoPrime]

The argument is pretty much beyond use once you start butchering public finances under the austerity banner and then miss every single economic target you've set in six years.

Yes, but you forget that this is all the fault of the Labour government. It's all down to the hand the Tories were dealt. Etc.

[NapalmKev]

A question about Water, if any will indulge me!

I work in a Warehouse which stocks many types of drinks. Just in our Depot alone there must thousands of litres of water sat on the shelf awaiting sale. Multiply that  across the UK and the rest of the World and we're looking at  millions of litres.

Could this contribute towards the many droughts seen across the World?*

Cheers

*in addition to climate change/man-made interference

[The Legendary Shark]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTUK0WSfpD4

[JPMaybe]

A question about Water, if any will indulge me!

I work in a Warehouse which stocks many types of drinks. Just in our Depot alone there must thousands of litres of water sat on the shelf awaiting sale. Multiply that  across the UK and the rest of the World and we're looking at  millions of litres.

Could this contribute towards the many droughts seen across the World?*

Cheers

*in addition to climate change/man-made interference

It's almost certainly a minuscule contributor; as profligate and wasteful as I find bottled water, looking at some very rough calcs from googling: volume sold in 2005 (about 200 billion litres) vs total world volume of water in reservoirs (around 700 thousand trillion litres) and you're looking at probably less than a millionth of the world's freshwater being bottled. This is very rough, and ignores any local effects, but I'd be very surprised if it were ever a significant factor in droughts compared to, say, heavy industry.

[The Legendary Shark]

It's been a while since I watched the documentary I linked to in my last post but I think it made some important points. It does mention the effects of bottled water plants on local communities (in one South American country, iIrc, one effect was to make Coca Cola cheaper than water) and other, more annoying claims. For example, one of the usual suspects in the ongoing global rape, the World Bank, imposes conditions like insisting on selling water infrastructure to western companies before granting aid to poor countries. One of the things I remember is that many water-poor African countries are actually forced to export water in the form of meat, tea and flowers - using the limited clean water for these industries whilst the human population is forced to subsist on the run-off.

I think this documentary is also where I learned that Florida is sinking due to its aquifers being pumped dry - but rising sea-levels due to global warming are blamed instead.

[IndigoPrime]

Huge chunks of Florida are barely above sea level. It really is going under due to rising sea levels, although not quite to the degree some small islands are. (I was there once during a bad storm that temporarily raised the sea levels about two metres. If nothing else, that should have been a wake-up call for people in that part of the US. Streets became rivers. Terrifying to drive through.)

[The Legendary Shark]

I'm no expert but I think "temporarily raised sea levels" are called high tides. However, in this case I suspect you may have experienced a storm surge.

[IndigoPrime]

Yep. Point is, it showcases what kind of shitstorm will happen when the seas rise that far and stay that way.

[The Legendary Shark]

My point is that pumping water from aquifers causes land to sink. This is illustrated by the photograph, below, of USGS scientist Joe Poland taken in 1977 in the San Joaquin Valley southwest of Mendota, California illustrating land subsidence due to groundwater extraction for agriculture since 1925.



In some areas of the world, like Alaska, land is actually rising due to the earth's crust still rebounding after glacial melt or through general tectonic activity, causing the relative sea level to fall.

Places like Florida, through poor water management, are actively exacerbating the effects of sea level fluctuations (which in Florida is rising at about 2.4mm per year). This also demonstrates the potential problems in measuring sea level from the land.

[IndigoPrime]

Florida has all kinds of issues at the moment. Water use is massive, but fresh water is an issue. And the climate has becoming noticeably more hostile over the past 25 years. People we know there say that years back, the weather was broadly reliable throughout the year. (And this was the cast in the 1990s whenever I visited.) Now, it's all over the place. Winters are far wetter and with far more cold snaps, killing crops. Springs and autumns are much warmer, causing issues relating to farming and health.

[Dandontdare]

I was amused to read today that Citibank are being represented in court in a multi-million pound hedge-fund fraud case by one Mark Howard QC.

As I've always suspected, this "Legendary Shark" persona is just a front to lure out the commies and malcontents to be reported to MI5

[Frank]

pumping water from aquifers causes land to sink. This is illustrated by the photograph, below, of USGS scientist Joe Poland taken in 1977 in the San Joaquin Valley southwest of Mendota, California illustrating land subsidence due to groundwater extraction for agriculture since 1925.

I'm going to pull this one out next time someone asks why Megacity One is flush with the land around it, when it was built on top of old New York. The aquifers around Albany must have been pumped dry.

[IndigoPrime]

Perhaps the Cursed Earth beyond the walls is all sorts of crap on top of the old world, too. (A bit of a stretch...)

[The Legendary Shark]

I was amused to read today that Citibank are being represented in court in a multi-million pound hedge-fund fraud case by one Mark Howard QC.

As I've always suspected, this "Legendary Shark" persona is just a front to lure out the commies and malcontents to be reported to MI5

How very dare you! MI5 indeed. I wouldn't be caught dead working for such an amateurish bunch of clowns.

I represent the Chimera Group, of course. We're much scarier and have better shoes.

[The Legendary Shark]

Club Shooter was Gay (?)

Truth, lie or obfuscation? It's so hard to tell these days. Does it really matter in the end, though? All those dead human beings. Tragic.

This is one of the side-effects of only allowing the state police to own guns. Were nightclubs (and other public venues) expected to take charge of their own security through trained and armed private police, there would most likely be a better chance of stopping people with rifles at the door instead of having to call 911 and wait for "official" assistance.