ROBERT CIANFLONE/Getty Images News

Today marks the fifteenth annual World Water Day, first designated by the United Nations in 1992. This year's theme though, "Coping with Water Scarcity," is hardly celebratory, and reflects a growing global concern about the steady drip of bad news for water supplies.

Water scarcity and its implications for global stability is one of the most critical, yet least discussed, issues of our generation. As Sandra Postel and Aaron Wolf reported in FP way back in 2001, more than fifty countries on five continents are facing severe water crises that could spiral into military conflicts. By the time the article was written, the renewable water supply per person had dropped by almost sixty percent since 1950. And it gets worse:

By 2015, nearly three billion people - 40 percent of the projected world population - are expected to live in countries that find it difficult or impossible to mobilize enough water to satisfy the food, industrial, and domestic needs of their citizens. This scarcity will translate into heightened competition for water between cities and farms, between neighboring states and provinces, and at times between nations.

Unlike with oil, there is no substitute for fresh water. Have a nice day.

 In 2001, atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen theorized that particles suspended in the atmosphere (dust and soot) were blocking up to 15 percent of the sunlight meant to reach the ground in many parts of Asia. Back then, this was considered to be a bad thing—but today, aerosols are hailed as a potential foil to global warming. The map above is a NASA image generated by two of their Earth-imaging satellites, Terra and Aqua. The dark orange areas represent high concentrations of airborne particles, while the lighter areas depict clearer atmosphere. The grey areas have not been mapped. 

NASA notes:

The global aerosol patterns in 2006 were similar to previous years. High aerosol concentrations were observed over western and central Africa (a mixture of dust from the Sahara and smoke from agricultural fires), northern India (where urban and industrial  pollution concentrates against the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains), and northeastern China (urban and industrial pollution). Aerosol optical depth appeared unusually high in 2006 over Indonesia, probably as a result of increased fire activity there. The image also shows the impact of fires in Russia’s boreal forest, which spread aerosols into the Arctic.

The high res version is splendid.

Lots of folks around the world are worried about the effects of global warming, but not these guys:

Yes, it's definitely getting warmer," said Tsawang Dumi, 56, a Tibetan shepherd watching over a flock of 60 sheep and goats amid the winter snows of a Himalayan hillside. "Fewer animals died of the cold this winter." [...]

The glacier that falls from its peak has shrunk by nine per cent in recent years. "I have heard of global warming, though I don't really understand what it means," said Tashi, 30, another shepherd, watching his sheep lower down the mountainside.

"But you can see there is less snow on the mountains. In the old days, all those rocks would be covered. I don't have to take my sheep so far away from the mountain in lambing season now." [...]

The winter in Tibet has been freakishly warm, with monks this week strolling round the monasteries of Lhasa — altitude over 12,000ft — with bare arms warmed by the afternoon sun.

In Qamdo, Eastern Tibet, the mercury hit a record 71 degrees Fahrenheit on the first Friday in January.

The above is one of the very cool maps at Worldmapper. It shows the world's countries not by geographical size, but in terms of the number of people affected by disasters caused by insects. As you can see, China's got big problems with bugs, while North Africa and Ethiopia (in pink) have insect issues vastly out of proportion to their populations.

China's big bug problem could get worse due to global warming, Chinese scientists fear, because warm winters are good for worm eggs.

What if, before you were allowed to get a driver's license, you had to understand why catalytic converters are good for the environment and where they are located on a car? I'm guessing here in America we'd have a lot fewer people on the roads.

But from September of this year, that's exactly what people seeking drivers licenses in the United Kingdom will be tested on—their knowledge of so-called "eco-driving." The Times of London got a hold of some sample questions, which make up the pop quiz below (answers below the fold):

1. When a roof rack is not in use it should be removed. Why is this?
a) It will affect the suspension
b) It is illegal
c) It will affect your braking
d) It will waste fuel

2. Driving at 70 mph uses more fuel than driving at 50 mph by up to...
a) 10 percent
b) 30 percent
c) 75 percent
d) 100 percent

3. What is most likely to cause high fuel consumption?
a) Poor steering control
b) Accelerating around bends
c) Staying in high gears
d) Harsh braking and accelerating

4. On a vehicle, where would you find a catalytic converter?
a) In the fuel tank
b) In the air filter
c) On the cooling system
d) On the exhaust system

5. Supertrams or Light Rapid Transit (LRT) systems are environmentally friendly because...
a) They use diesel power
b) The use quieter roads
c) They use electric power
d) They do not operate during rush hour

What's Global Cool, you ask? It happens to be the latest, splashiest, star-studded global do-gooder campaign. It aims to persuade one billion people around the world to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions every year for the next ten years in order to combat global warming.

And this really is a campaign for the kids. They've enlisted some of the "biggest names in entertainment," like Sienna Miller, Orlando Bloom, and the Scissor Sisters. (Note: If that last sentence confuses you at all, I'm afraid Global Cool might not resonate.) Global Cool is taking the Live 8 route, planning five simultaneous concerts this summer to raise awareness and inspire the kids to really, you know, care about global warming, especially since Live 8 did so much to eradicate global poverty in 2005.

They do have plenty of useful (albeit recycled) suggestions on how to reduce one's personal carbon dioxide emissions: Turn out the lights, turn the heating down, put the computer on standby (good one)—all things that require little effort, but can have a huge impact when done by millions.

The campaign is a bit corny, but Global Cool is trying hard to make sure that they're taken seriously as an environmental player, and not just seen as padding for some starlet's resume. They're aware that a skeptical public might just tune them out, and they recognize how "tiresome a bunch of rock stars and movie actors can appear when trying to tell the public how to run their lives." And so far, it doesn't appear the campaign has gotten quite the media splash it was designed to receive. I have to say, as much as Global Cool hopes to be a influence leader on global warming, I'm just not sure any strategy involving, as theirs does, the use of the term "ecosexual" is one that is going to get a lot of traction.

The world has moved closer to doomsday, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age. Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the world faced such perilous choices. North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed U.S. emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a larger failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth.

As in past deliberations, we have examined other human-made threats to civilization. We have concluded that the dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause drastic harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival.

As a result, the Bulletin has moved its iconic Doomsday Clock two ticks clockwise, to 5 minutes before midnight. Midnight, of course, being when we all die.

The clock was started in 1947 by the organization as a way to dramatize the dangers in the nuclear arms race. It debuted at 11:53, and has been adjusted 18 times. Total annihilation was deemed closest in 1953 following the detonation of the first thermonuclear explosives; after the Soviet Union's fall in 1991, mankind was a full 17 minutes away from destruction.

The Bulletin may be losing some historical perspective here. It's hard to believe that we're actually closer to Armageddon now than we were for more than half of the Cold War. And as scary as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il may be, the world is actually a more peaceful place than it ever has been.

Even if you missed the WSJ's take this week about the announcement that the big fuzzy white predators will be classified as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, you can probably guess they weren't so enthusiastic. They borrowed the global warming camp's classic charge that politics wrongly trumps science in the American debate, citing a growing polar bear population over the last few decades as evidence that the threat to the "majestic" carnivore isn't real. It's all political manipulation, they cried, and it could lead us down the dangerous road to (gasp!) federally mandated reductions in greenhouse gases.

It's interesting that the WSJ took such umbrage at the possibility that a species could be considered "threatened" based on future projections of the quality (or existence) of its habitat. We're already seeing evidence that the bears' polar habitat is retreating and breaking up. To back up its claim that the bears are better off than ever, the WSJ notes that some Canadians consider the bears overabundant, a fact the rest of us may "have difficulty grasping." But that sense of overabundance likely stems from the fact that bears are pushing into areas populated by humans in order to forage for food because the ice shelves on which they hunt are rapidly retreating. 

I asked Bill Stanley, director of the Global Climate Change Initiative at the Nature Conservancy, if he had any reaction to the WSJ's argument. He had this to say:

There are generally numerous threats to species, some are more immediate and some are more chronic or farther off into the future. Even though some populations may be bouncing back now because of reduction or removal of some immediate threats, the looming threat of climate change is likely to undermine much of that progress.

This debate shouldn't just be about the size of the polar bear population. They're not the only wildlife that will be put at risk by warming temperatures. According to peer-reviewed scientific studies, fully one-fourth of Earth's species may be headed for extinction by 2050 if the emissions and associated warming continues at its current rate. Wouldn't our time and efforts be better spent debating how best to protect them -and us - from the the disastrous consequences of climate change?

Indeed.

Wow:

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true. [...]

Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.

While nobody's happy about rising sea levels and temperatures in hotter parts of the world, the warming of the Arctic is a different story. The melting of the sea ice during the summer months has at last made the dream of 15th-century explorers—the Northwest Passage—a reality. The new Arctic passage will dramatically reduce shipping times. But as The Economist points out, the shipping industry is not the only one that will benefit from climate change:  

The biggest beneficiary is likely to be Russia itself, which encircles almost half the Arctic Ocean. Currently uninhabitable areas will become more hospitable; currently inaccessible energy resources will become more exploitable.

According to the United States Geological Service, about one-quarter of the world’s undiscovered energy reserves may be in the Arctic. [...]

Russia has claimed half the Arctic Ocean, including the North Pole, as its territory. It submitted the claim under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, but had it rejected. The convention decrees that who owns what is determined partly by the extent of a country’s continental shelf, and Russia did not have enough geological data to back up its claim. Russia is now mapping energetically, as are America, Canada, Denmark and Norway, which also border the Arctic Ocean.

Ironically, major oil producers who have invested thousands of dollars promoting "research" suggesting that global warming is a hoax are also beneficiaries of melting Arctic ice. They may find, however, that the Arctic's treasures aren't quite as rich as originally thought.