Posted on 07/21/2012 12:25:47 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
A newly discovered water source could supply half of Africa's driest sub-Saharan country with 400 years of water, reports Matt McGrath of BBC.
The new aquifer – called Ohangwena II – flows under the border between Angola and Namibia, covering an area of about 43 miles by 25 miles on Namibia's side.
The water is up to 10,000 years old and cleaner to drink than many modern sources.
Project manager Martin Quinger told BBC that the stored water could last 400 years based on current rates of consumption.
Currently the 800,000 people living in the northern part of the country get their drinking water from a 40-year-old canal that brings the scarce resource from Angola.
Quinger added that Ohangwena II could change the nature of farming in the area, which has only been viable near two rivers in the region, and could act as a natural buffer for up to 15 years of drought.
Natural pressure will make the water easy and cheap to extract.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
The water is up to 10,000 years old and cleaner to drink than many modern sources.I'm sure, as we speak, a group of muzzies somewhere is brainstorming plans for ruining the drinkability of this water.
Why?
Don't ask why.
Muzzies be muzzies and hate all things.
You just KNOW that environmentalists will find some way to make this an impossibility.
I want to pee in this water.
Not to mention the warlords taking control and not a drop will ever be used for anything.
That’s a whole lot of water and may be useful in helping solve America’s problems with current an future droughts.
And while an underground pipeline may not be cost effective, large supertankers full of that African water could be shipped to the US where it is desperately needed.
Now if they could only figure out well drilling.
“drill, baby, drill” and embrace the marketing potential!
The UN will find some reason to say that using this water will destroy the planet.
The last thing they want is for the earth to support more human life.
Their Agenda 21 explicitly states that they want to eliminate 6.5 billion human beings.
Don’t forget the article says 400 years at todays consumption rate.
When they start irrigating, and more people start moving in to reap the irrigation harvest, today’s consumption rate will be a drop in the bucket.
Today not many people in an arid environment waste water, their consumption rate is low. When it becomes plentiful all that will stop.
“A newly discovered water source could supply half of Africa’s driest sub-Saharan country with 400 years of water”
That’s wonderful news except for one thing: it’s in Africa, a place that epitomizes the saying, “Able to screw up a free lunch.”
As the most interesting man in the world says, you’ll “stay thirsty, my friend.”
“...today’s consumption rate...”
The local king will have an enormous fountain built. The water will last for a year after they tap it.
Irrigate an arid environment sufficiently and the microclimate will be altered to less arid via evaporation. Deserts come and go, tremendous ancient cities are buried in desert sands. This region, too, was once much less arid. That groundwater didn’t just materialize out of thin air.
It would be far more practical to tow icebergs from the arctic.
somebody or some group will now try to pollute it. and, how will they get the water to the people, i don’t think they have pipelines to the villages.
Read recently that one the size of Manhattan Island broke off some glacier or other up in those parts. Hell, they could even help defray costs by making it a reality TV show while they tow it to the Gulf coast.
“That’s a whole lot of water and may be useful in helping solve America’s problems with current an future droughts.”
I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard for NATO to get together and spread a little ‘democracy’ down there.
Not in Africa. This is one area where it's actually an advantage to be an African.
The various busybodies who afflict their pet causes on you guys are moralizers at heart. Speaking cynically for a moment, this moralization is normally a strength because it removes the "nudgings" from practical criticism and makes them seem an imperative. Who subjects moral decisions to a cost-benefit analysis? Even thinking about it is kinda creepy.
So, moralization works far better than pragmatism. It puts the opponents on the defensive and often disarms them. Normally, the only defense that works (except as a stopgap) is to credibly show that the moralizers are themselves hypocrites.
(I use "moralizers" because busybodies of this sort are politicals at heart. Moral reasoning, however sound, does not dissuade them. What dissuades them is public pressure, particularly public pressure motivated by moral outrage.)
Now in Africa, you have a group of people that the entire moralizer circuit considers disadvantaged: the underdogs. If the liberals have any principle that's non-negotiable, it would be "sympathy for the underdog." Moralizing liberals, consequently, will not go a'bannin' any activity that's undertaken by the disadvantaged underdog, however "immoral" by their standards.
Case in point: in southern Nigeria, homosexuality is illegal. If one man sticks his wing-wang into another man's evacuation chamber, both men can be sent to the hoosegow for up to 14 years. Yep, there have been protests about it from the usual suspects. But, with the sole exception of President Obama (and the Brits) threatening to withhold foreign aid in response to a Nigerian bill criminalizing gay marriage, there's been only talk and no action.
Why? Because African governments can deter the usual moralizers and even infect them with a bad conscience with these three words: "racism," "imperialism," "neo-colonialism." Those three words enter into many ready ears at the United Nations. They also enter into many ready ears in America itself, and would enter into more if the Nigerians adapt the playbook of the Vietnamese Communists.
What goes for Nigeria goes for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. If anything, moreso because the Nigerian economy is currently booming.
So, if that aquifer is developed, the viros will likely be stymied outright. Picking on a generally-accepted underdog will make them look really bad.
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