Free Republic

Russia's Agriculture Minister Nikolay Fedorov announced on April 24 that Ukraine had blocked the North Crimean water channel, which is the main water supply source for the peninsula annexed by the Russian Federation. [....] Ukraine's Water Resources Agency denies the stoppage of the water supplies to Crimea through the North-Crimean channel. "North-Crimean channel works as usual, all irrigation systems are working," reads the statement on the agency's website. According to the statement, despite Russia’s claims otherwise, it has not offered signing a contract to regulate water supplies to Crimea, and thus the peninsula currently uses the water without any legal...

Democrats were writing obituaries for California's GOP after winning a supermajority in the state legislature last November, thus gaining veto-proof power to raise taxes. But their legislative lock may have slipped after this week's special election in which Republican farmer Andy Vidak appears to have defeated a Democrat—in a heavily Democratic senate district—who had championed high-speed rail and a higher minimum wage. If Mr. Vidak wins an outright majority—late Friday, he led with 49.8% of the vote and provisional ballots were still being counted—his victory would put Republicans two senate seats short of reclaiming their veto on tax hikes. But...

As more solar farms arise in the sunny corners of the U.S., it’s inevitable that solar developers will have to play ball with environmentalists. First Solar and SunPower announced an agreement with the environmental groups to add thousands of acres near their projects for wildlife protection. As more solar farms arise in the sunny corners of the U.S., it’s inevitable that solar developers will have to play ball with environmental groups. First Solar and SunPower announced an agreement on Tuesday with the Sierra Club and others to add thousands of acres near their proposed projects for wildlife protection. The agreement...

The Arizona Senate has approved a bill that would allow cities and towns to enter restricted federal land without permission in emergencies. ... Republican bill sponsor Rep. Kelly Townsend of Mesa says she was inspired by the battle between the city of Tombstone and the federal government over access to repair its water supply system in the Coronado National Forest. She says local authorities should have the right to go in where needed without being granted approval first in cases of emergency.

One of the criticisms levied against hydraulic fracturing, particularly during recent periods of drought, is the amount of water used in the process. However, energy companies are seeking to reduce water use during hydraulic fracturing, even as research shows more water is used in other activities. The numbers put things into perspective. The amount of water used to frack a well varies, but most reporting entities put the figure in a range of about 3 to 6 million gallons of water. In Pennsylvania, the average amount of water per well is about 4.4 million gallons, according to State Impact Pennsylvania,...

Fort Huachuca’s leadership over the years on water conservation has established an indisputable record of accomplishments, which serves to protect the San Pedro River and its watershed. And the surrounding civilian communities have also provided hard work and innovation — actions that other communities with similar challenges now try to emulate. Confirmation that this team is doing things the right way was announced on Friday. Officials from the Army and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reached agreement on a formal Biological Opinion last Monday. For those wondering what the fuss is about, the lack of a Biological Opinion has...

Over dinner that night, the astronauts and cosmonauts had discussed their options. Cassidy was of the opinion that NASA would probably wait until he and Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, who was scheduled to arrive in a couple of weeks, could do an extravehicular activity—NASA parlance for a spacewalk—to assess the problem. Houston ordinarily didn’t like to rush into anything, let alone an EVA. Plus, half the crew was packing up to return to Earth in just four days. That’s why Cassidy couldn’t believe what he now saw on his laptop screen in big red letters: “Welcome to EVA prep day.”...

A NASA spacecraft has spotted a big gully on Mars, a feature that appears to have formed only within the last three years. The powerful HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) imaged the channel, which is found on the slope of a crater wall in the Red Planet's mid-southern latitudes, on May 25, 2013. The feature was not present in HiRISE photos of the area taken on Nov. 5, 2010. NASA unveiled the image on Wednesday (March 19). While the Mars gully looks a lot like river channels here on Earth, it likely was not carved out by...

Roger Bowley, a physics professor at the University of Nottingham, explains why holding a key fob next to your brain can help extend its signal. He also demonstrates the same effect using a bottle of water, which comes in handy when trying to unlock a car.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Health officials are recognizing 430 Illinois communities for maintaining state-mandated fluoride levels in drinking water. The Illinois Department of Public Health presented the awards Monday in Springfield. Health experts say drinking fluoridated water from birth can reduce tooth decay by up to 65 percent. The department's director, Dr. LaMar Hasbrouck, says fluoridation saves money for families and the health care system.

NASA really wants to go to Europa, and anyone who knows anything about exobiology really wants NASA to go to Europa. Why? Water. On Earth, water is what fuels life. Of course, there are a lot of other things that fuel life on our planet, but water is an integral part of life as we know it. Indeed, so far all of our research has indicated that–where there is water, there is life (Earth isn’t called “the Pale Blue Dot” for nothing). And while it is possible that alien life could exists on other worlds and thrive off of...

BOISE, Idaho — Millions in tax revenue from Idaho's cigarette sales is closer to flowing toward the state's scarred-up highway asphalt and its drought-depleted aquifers. The House voted 63-4 on Friday to redirect cash from the state's 56 cent-per-pack tax — it has totaled about $35 million to $40 million annually — that's currently being used to retire bonds for the $130 million Idaho Capitol renovation, as well as funding cancer programs, state buildings and juvenile probation. With the Capitol bonds nearly paid off, there's been a scramble this session for the money that's no longer needed.

ST. HELENA, Calif. (AP) — With California in the grips of drought, farmers throughout the state are using a mysterious and some say foolhardy tool for locating underground water: dowsers, or water witches. Practitioners of dowsing use rudimentary tools — usually copper sticks or wooden "divining rods" that resemble large wishbones — and what they describe as a natural energy to find water or minerals hidden deep underground. While both state and federal water scientists disapprove of dowsing, California "witchers" are busy as farmers seek to drill more groundwater wells due to the state's record drought that persists despite recent...

Near the end of 2013, a Florida official decided Robin Speronis was doing something too strange to tolerate: She was trying to live off the grid. Off the Grid News reports: Speronis has been fighting the city of Cape Coral since November when a code enforcement officer tried to evict her from her home for living without utilities. The city contends that Speronis violated the International Property Maintenance Code by relying on rain water instead of the city water system and solar panels instead of the electric grid. And now, a judge has ruled that living independently of the city’s...

Abstract: The young Earth appear to have been bombarded by comets for several hundred million years shortly after it was formed. This onslaught, perhaps involving hundreds of millions of comet impacts, is currently the best explantion for the origin of the Earth’s oceans, atmosphere and organic molecules. Although historically a controversial idea, there is now a considerable amount of physical and chemical evidence supporting the theory. Comet scientist Armand Delsemme reviews the evidence and argues that comets from the vicinity of Jupiter contributed the bulk of the constituents found in Earth’s biosphere.

Given the reality of the dark spots, which soon became known as "atmospheric holes" because of their appearance in the images, there is only one explanation which has endured over all these years to present. That is, the holes are due to the shadowing of the atmospheric light by an object above the atmosphere. This object simply cannot be a stony or iron meteor because the holes are very large, tens of miles in diameter. A rock of this size would provide a disastrous impact on the Earth's surface. As it turns out, water vapor is very good at absorbing...

Scientists have long believed that comets and, or a type of very primitive meteorite called carbonaceous chondrites were the sources of early Earth's volatile elements -- which include hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon -- and possibly organic material, too. Understanding where these volatiles came from is crucial for determining the origins of both water and life on the planet. New research led by Carnegie's Conel Alexander focuses on frozen water that was distributed throughout much of the early Solar System, but probably not in the materials that aggregated to initially form Earth... It has been suggested that both comets and carbonaceous...

Whether water is produced by solar wind (SW) radiolysis has been debated for more than four decades. In this paper, we exploit the high spatial resolution of electron microscopy and sensitivity of valence electron energy-loss spectroscopy to detect water (liquid or vapor) in vesicles within (SW-produced) space-weathered rims on interplanetary dust particle (IDP) surfaces. Water in the rims has implications for the origin of water on airless bodies like the Moon and asteroids, the delivery of water to the surfaces of terrestrial planets, and the production of water in other astrophysical environments... The solar wind (SW), composed of predominantly ∼1-keV...

“If true, the stirring provided by migrating planets may have been essential to bringing those asteroids,” the astronomers stated in a press release. “This raises the question of whether an Earth-like exoplanet would also require a rain of asteroids to bring water and make it habitable. If so, then Earth-like worlds might be rarer than we thought.” To take this example further, the researchers found that the asteroid belt comes from a mix of locations around the solar system. Well, a model the astronomers cite shows that Jupiter once migrated much closer to the sun, basically at the same distance...

And it's actually (relatively) nearby. This is poor, unfortunate Ceres. Discovered in 1801, it was at first called a planet, then soon classified as an asteroid, and recently as a dwarf planet, not quite qualifying for real planet status despite residing in the solar system's asteroid belt. But now it can feel special: the Herschel Telescope has, the for the first time, detected water on the lil' planet--probably a whole lot of it, too. The telescope, using infrared vision, detected a signature of water vapor from Ceres. The researchers think when the 590-mile-wide Ceres moves closer to the sun, part...