‘This is a big deal': Mighty glacier finally succumbs to climate change

Massachusetts: One of the world's thickest mountain glaciers is finally succumbing to global warming, a new analysis reports.

An aerial view of Alaska's Taku glacier near Juneau.

The Taku Glacier, located north of Juneau, Alaska, has started to retreat as temperatures rise, said Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist at Nichols College in Massachusetts.

Up until now, of the 250 glaciers that he has studied, all had retreated except one: Taku Glacier.But an analysis shows that Taku has lost mass and joined the rest of the retreating glaciers.

"This is a big deal for me because I had this one glacier I could hold on to," Pelto told NASA's Earth Observatory. "But not anymore. This makes the score climate change: 250, and alpine glaciers: 0."

Read the story from The Age by Doyle Rice - “‘This is a big deal': Mighty glacier finally succumbs to climate change.”

Solar and wind could ease Australia's water shortage

Australia is one the world's top 20 water-stressed nations but a shift to more renewable energy could lessen the nation’s water pressure.

AGL's Liddell power station next to Lake
 Liddell, its main source of water.

A report by the World Resources Industry identified Australia as one country vulnerable to water stress where the potential for cheap renewable energy, solar and wind as opposed to fossil fuels, could reduce water consumption country-wide as these technologies use minimal - or zero - water.

"By better managing their limited water resources and investing in the right energy systems these renewable forms of energy can help countries meet their increased demand for electricity without adding carbon emissions or consuming water," the World Resources Institute's manager for water, Tianyi Luo, said.

"This could be particularly beneficial in countries where growing populations, farms and industries are already competing for scant water supplies”

A major issue with coal-fired generation is the amount of water it consumes.

Read the story by Cole Latimer from The Age - “Solar and wind could ease Australia's water shortage.”

Nestlé Makes Billions Bottling Water It Pays Nearly Nothing For

In rural Mecosta County, Mich., sits a near-windowless facility with a footprint about the size of Buckingham Palace. It’s just one of Nestlé’s roughly 100 bottled water factories in 34 countries around the world.

ILLUSTRATION: SILJA GÖTZ FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK

Inside, workers wear hairnets, hard hats, goggles, gloves, and earplugs. Ten production lines snake through the space, funneling local spring water into 8-ounce to 2.5-gallon containers; most of the lines run 24/7, each pumping out 500 to 1,200 bottles per minute. About 60 percent of the supply comes from Mecosta’s springs and arrives at the factory via a 12-mile pipeline. The rest is trucked in from neighboring Osceola County, about 40 miles north. “Daily, we’re looking at 3.5 million bottles potentially,” says Dave Sommer, the plant’s 41-year-old manager, shouting above the din.

Silos holding 125 tons of plastic resin pellets provide the raw material for the bottles. They’re molded into shape at temperatures reaching 400F before being filled, capped, inspected, labeled, and laser-printed with the location, day, and minute they were produced—a process that takes less than 25 seconds. Next, the bottles are bundled, shrink-wrapped onto pallets, and picked up by a fleet of 25 forklifts that ferry them to the plant’s warehouse or loading docks. As many as 175 trucks arrive every day to transport the water to retail locations in the Midwest. “We want more people to drink water, keep hydrated,” Sommer says. “It would be nice if it were my water, but we just want them to drink water.”

Read the Bloomberg Businessweek story By Caroline Winter - “Nestlé Makes Billions Bottling Water It Pays Nearly Nothing For.”