Drought prompts water curbs in Caribbean

[Judi Lynn]

Drought prompts water curbs in Caribbean
Jamaica, Trinidad and Guyana report rainfall lower than normal

updated 1 hour, 50 minutes ago
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad - Water levels are dropping quickly in several Caribbean countries, prompting officials to limit availability and impose restrictions as the region enters its dry season.

In Trinidad, people caught watering their gardens or washing their cars face fines and court appearances, said Ellen Lewis, Water and Sewage Authority spokeswoman.

"It is the first time since 1998 that the authority has decided to rigidly enforce the law," she said.

The agency also is cutting the amount of water it releases from the main reservoir by one-third, from 75 million gallons to 50 million gallons a day, CEO Jim Lee Leung told reporters Wednesday.

Meteorologists had forecast 3.4 inches of rain for January, but only 1.3 inches fell, he said.

In Guyana, the government recently spent nearly $2 million to irrigate crops and install water pumps in certain areas, said Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud.

Meanwhile, dry riverbeds have crippled mining operations in the South American country's interior.

Violet Smith, a spokeswoman for Toronto-based Guyana Goldfields, said costs have increased because ships can no longer navigate jungle rivers carrying fuel, miners and supplies.

"Huge rocks are now exposed in rivers because of the levels," she said. "We have to find alternative ways to supply our camps."

Boats also are getting stuck in waterways, forcing miners to suspend operations and wait out the drought in urban areas.

More:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35235699/ns/weather/

[Peace Patriot]

1. Gee, they must have leftist "dictators" in all those countries, cuz they're having drought problems!

I'm sorry to hear about this--and sick to death of rightwing disinformation about Venezuela.

[Judi Lynn]

2. I was wondering if anyone would remember these countries are close neighbors to Venezuela

and make the logical connection to Venezuela's water problems.

A certain element won't take the time to reflect, clearly, and will still keep looking for the next corporate spun anti-leftist "news" threads to get their attack juices flowing again. They never feel as alive as when they are embarked upon their Red Scare missions. It's the need to be part of a Cold War rabid pack. Addictive, apparently. Leaves so little time for thought.

[rabs]

3. Paraguay today declared a power emergency

Temps have been over 40 C (104 F) in Asuncion and other parts of the country in recent days/weeks.

Government has begun temporary blackouts to ease the increased demand on electricity, esp. for air conditioning and water pump usage.

The problem is not so much a drought, but the high temperatures. Paraguay lacks the necessary power grid to bring more electricity from the giant Itaipu dam that provides Brazil with power.

[Peace Patriot]

4. And still the U.S. is dicking around on this issue--won't sign even the Kyoto Treaty,

a half measure. The evidence of catastrophic climate change and ecological disaster, caused by industrial pollution, is EVERYWHERE--in massive die-off's of bees, frogs and other critters, in dead zones in the oceans, in migratory bird displacements and die-off's, in high cancer rates, in the increasingly extreme weather, of hot or of cold, or of hurricane force, in wildfire disasters in Australia--and one we have hardly heard of, in Colombia--in disastrous floods in one place, and lengthy drought in another, in the fast melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers, and on and on.

The U.S. seems utterly paralyzed as to addressing what may well be the "swan song" of Planet Earth--and the end of this fun experiment at being intelligent critters. It just drives me nuts that we are larding trillions of dollars on war and banksterism, and are not on Project Earth: How to correct our stupid mistakes!

You know what we offered Paraguay? Military aid! (They turned it down!) We should be offering TREES--millions of drought-resistance trees, to grow forests, to cool the ground and the air and to attract moisture. Trees create their own climate. Redwoods literally create clouds around their top branches. Drought resistant. Fire resistant. Insect resistant. What are we doing with these marvelous "carbon capturing" ancient critters? Cutting them down! Only 5% of the ancient redwood forest is left. Ah, me! We need a new marching song: "Tree Not Bullets!" for our aid to the "third world." And that would be a rather great slogan right here at home.

[protocol rv]

5. This issue isn't Japanese

It's the drought we know comes when we have El Niño. This isn't related to Global warming, or anything to do with Japan. It has to do with the Pacific Ocean water warming, and this is a periodic event. If you notice, it is also very cold in North America, the weather changes with El Niño. The lack of water in Venezuela isn't that bad, but the lack of electricity is bad. It is causing a lot of problems, and the government shouldn't be listening to the Cubans, who know nothing about a modern country like Venezuela, Cubans don't even know how to generate their own electricity properly, they use obsolete methods, and they don't have natural gas.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Cubans have been implementing solar power where useful for at least 10 years.

I learned about installing solar power in remote schools high in the mountains in 2000. Nice try.

Don't even imagine you'll be able to spread disinformation here sufessfully. Real citizens make the effort to find out about things even when corporate media strives to bury the information.

[Peace Patriot]

7. Is El Niño melting the polar ice caps? The glaciers? The sky slopes?

Is it destroying half the bee populations in the U.S.? Is it frying peoples' skins in Australia? Is it creating dead zones in the oceans? Is it killing off the coral reefs--home to most fisheries--worldwide? Is it killing off the krill populations in Alaska and starving whales?

We have a complex of HUGE ecological catastrophes happening all at once--and the main cause of every one is drastic human alteration of the environment--by massive pollution of air, soil and water, with industrial waste, and massive deforestation--loss of, or serious depletion/damage to, 80% of the world forest cover in only 100 years time. The cumulative effect of all of this is drastic climate change, causing extremes of heat and cold, encroachment of the seas onto islands and mainland coastal areas, more violent weather and other impacts. Australia is being fried. England is being frozen. These are unprecedented impacts and they have all been predicted by climate change models--and they are all related to human activity. We MUST change our ways or we lose the planet. It is simply stupid not to recognize this. Are we a stupid species? Maybe we deserve to lose our only home!

Human cleverness is a wonderful thing! I love refrigerators and iPhones and microwave ovens and airplanes! And all the wonderful things we have are mostly well-intended by the people who make them. And all the marvelous engineering works of humankind--the suspension bridges, the cathedrals, the great cities, the highways, computers, putting men on the moon, massively moving products and people here and there and everywhere, electrification all over the globe--it is all a spectacular accomplishment. But we must take the next step in evolutionary growth and understand our impacts on the matrix of life from which we emerged, or we are over, as a species. Fini. Kaput. This is the end.

Please help us do this! Please do not promote untutored opinions about it. It is a grave matter. And it doesn't look like we're going to make it. We are trashing this planet at a catastrophic rate. The World Wildlife Fund gives us 50 years--50 years to the DEATH of planet earth! And that was about a decade ago. Now it's 40 years. We have 40 years to turn this around. That's all.

[protocol rv]

9. Dry times come periodically

El Niño brings dry weather. Everybody knows this happens, it has nothing to do with global warming. And people do need to burn oil, it's not practical to use solar power. And everybody knows the Cubans don't have a very advanced technology. They are invited to Venezuela because Chavez needs an excuse to send money to Cuba.

And let me ask you, do you think it makes sense for people in Venezuela to support this concept you have, when we make a living selling oil? When we have a government with the idea that we can have comunes do everything people used to do on their own, so now nothing gets done because everybody is a government employee? Do you think we are going to starve because you want to buy solar power? Go find somebody to sell you that solar power as cheap as well you the oil. Then you can tell me how we are going to eat, because nobody here is prepared to buy a farm or a business when the government is ready to take it all.

[EFerrari]

8. Cuba is one of the Caribbean countries that DOES have natural gas.

[protocol rv]

13. Cuba doesn't have natural gas

i don't know where you get the idea, but they don't. Cuba has a little oil production, it's mostly heavy oil, and comes with poisonous gases (like swamp gas but worse). This little gas doesn't qualify Cuba to "have natural gas". I have friends who came from Cuba, and they say the Cubans use bottled propane and butane, not natural gas, which is known as methane.

What the Cubans did, for Cuba, was install small sized electricity generation plants, the ones using liquid fuels like diesel or fuel oil. The geniuses here in Venezuela listened to Cuban "experts", and went and bought the same type of plant, but that's not what we need in Venezuela, we have natural gas, and we have money (or would have it if Chavez didn't waste it buying Russian planes and giving it away), this means we can build large plants with engines fueled by natural gas, which is very cheap. And this allows us to export the refined liquid products.

One problem we have is PDVSA lack of ability to extract this gas, which sits in the earth and can't come out because the PDVSA gas wells don't work anymore. And they don't know how to drill the new ones properly. Around here, everybody knows that. The second problem is a government run by people who have no idea of how to run a government, or do anything right. Like they say around here, Chavez, tas ponchao.

Cuba has for a long time had a very poor and technologically backwards economy, and this idea of bringing "Cuban experts" to Venezuela is not practical. All this is shows is our government is making Venezuela into a Cuban copy, with Cubans telling the Venezuelan government what to do. This is going to create serious reactions, because people are getting tired of seeing the money go to Cuba for all these useless "consultations" and the Cubans coming here to do work Venezuelans can do. They are parasites.

And they have terrible ideas, thinking their so called socialist society works better than what we had here before Chavez decided to become a communist. Those poor Cuban people come to Venezuela and their mouths are wide open because they have never seen how people live normal lives, owning their own apartments and houses, with the ability to start their own business, buying clothes, and here we can change jobs and don't have to beg and be treated like a slave by some government official who asks for money or makes us join by force the government party, the communist red shirts of the PSUV.

We used to have food in the stores, electricity, water, crime wasn't this bad, and the government was corrupt, but these guys are even worse. And the hospitals were bad, but now they are worse. They even have malandros going into the hospitals to rob the doctors and the patients, this just isn't a way to live.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Cuba does have natural gas, of course. Why spread disinformation here, anyway?

We know enough to recognize the kinds of things you've been scribbling here as sounding EXACTLY like the ignorant drool which has been gushing from the right-wing since Hugo Chavez was elected. We've heard it all by now.

One quick google grab on Cuba's natural gas, would invest more time to look for more of these references, but it's simply not worth my time:

Cuba’s power revolution
Published on 21 September 2009

~snip~
Natural gas-powered stations
A new source of reliable energy arose; in 1997, Cuba began to utilise the natural gas that had previously flared off in the production of oil from its offshore fields. This meant the gas was brought on shore and processed, and then delivered to over a million people in the Greater Havana area for domestic use. In addition, natural gas is now being used to generate 376MW of electricity by 2007, for sale to Electrica. Eventually, this private-public partnership between Canadian energy company Sherritt International and state oil company CUPET and Union Electrica aims to supply 20 per cent of the country’s electricity in this manner.

More:
http://kn.theiet.org/magazine/issues/0916/cuba-power-revolution-0916.cfm

[protocol rv]

16. Cuba doesn't have natural gas

Maybe it is the definition. What Cuba has, as you pointed out, is a little gas associated with the oil production. In Venezuela, where we do know about these things, this type of gas is called associated gas. And the volumes you mention are very small. Just consider this, they talk about eventually reaching the goal of generating 20 % of the country's electricity generation with natural gas (which we call associated gas). IF they had gas in meaningful quantities, they would generate 100 % with this gas, which is a lot cheaper. Did you notice how they mention that before they used to burn it, and not use it? They were causing CO2 emissions and making worse the global warming problem, and never even bothered to use it to generate electricity. And they had to use the help of a private company from Canada to understand how to use this gas. This is an interesting point, isn't it?

Now let us discuss this problem in more detail. The Cubans, before the Canadian company came and taught them to use the gas, burned liquid fuels or coal to generate electricity. I don't have to look this in google, because this is the way it works, and I don't think Cubans have a lot of hydropower, because the island is like a spagueti noodle, they don't have big rivers. So the Cuban "experts" are used to working with liquid fuel plants, and they had to bring Canadians to teach them how to gather and use the associated gas.

And this is why when we started having problems here, the geniuses recommended to the Venezuelan government they go and buy liquid fueled generators. And a Venezuelan engineer can tell you this is a very wrong answer for us, because we DO have natural gas. We are the gorilla of natural gas in Latin America, Cuba is the flea, you may say. The only problem we have here is Chavez, and the way he has made PDVSA into a company more worried about selling food and running around wearing red shirts and shouting proChavez slogans, rather than worry about producing the gas and the oil. And this means today we don't have the natural gas we need. Did you know we import gas from Colombia because PDVSA has been too ignorant to produce the gas we have? And they decided they would kick out most of the foreign companies, so now we are left with no electricity, no water, and no natural gas.

Like I wrote to your other friend who is so fond of Chavez, maybe you should not be so condescending and insult people here. I know what I'm discussing when I write it. Maybe my definitions are not yours. Americans are known to be very proud and arrogant people, who think the rest of the world is theirs. But I do hope you are more intelligent like that, and can decide not to be the typical American, and learn to listen, and understand the point of view of other peoples.

[EFerrari]

15. Do you not have The Google?

LOL

Good grief. If you want to spread disinformation here, you have to do better than THAT.

[protocol rv]

17. I looked up the google

Cuba's gas production was associated gas, increased to 117 million cubic feet per day in 2009. This is caused by the efforts of the Canadian company which is exploiting the fields offshore. This is the chart I used to estimate the figures, and coverted it to units you Americans use:

http://www.indexmundi.com/cuba/natural_gas_production.html

But let us look at this in perspective. The tiny island of Trinidad produces 30 times the amount Cuba produces. This is what I call have natural gas. And Venezuela produces more than 50 times what Cuba produces. This is BIG. The problem here is a lot of this gas is used to inject into the oil fields, and the country is a lot more industrialized and wealthier than Cuba, and not thanks to Chavez, most of what we have now was built before Chavez showed up.

The problem we have is that natural gas production has to increase to feed the new power generation plants they should have been building, but neglected to build. And they neglected to drill the gas wells to produce the gas. It is a fact of nature they ignored, people are born, and they use more electricity and gas.

This problem is a lot more serious than many understand, because it takes time to drill a gas well, and then connect the pipeline to the main pipeline systems. And the gas has to be treated in a gas plant, to remove the water and other impurities. And the government has been talking and talking about these new investments, but they have not done enough.

There are other solutions they should have tried, for example, they could have built hydroelectric plants at an accelerated pace, but they did not. And they could have installed windmills on Paraguana. This is a very windy area next to the big refinery at Cardon, which uses a lot of electricity. I have been reading in the newspapers about these ideas for many years.

Chavez himself said the windmills sounded like a good idea. But he is like a big child, he says something on TV on Sundays, then he forgets it, and they move to their next bright idea. And he surrounds himself with people who only know how to nod their heads yes and applaud when he says something. It is really ridiculous, to see a government run this way, on a Sunday TV show, with all the ministers dressed like clowns in red shirts, and Chavez reading from his little notes, and telling them to take note like they are little students. It's a shame.

[Bacchus39]

10. Cuba orders extreme measures to cut energy use

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N11371755.htm

Cuba orders extreme measures to cut energy use 11 Nov 2009 21:58:49 GMT
Source: Reuters
* Cuba's energy situation termed "critical"

* Some factories, workshops to be closed through December

* Most other economic activities to be reduced

By Marc Frank

HAVANA, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Cuba has ordered all state enterprises to adopt "extreme measures" to cut energy usage through the end of the year in hopes of avoiding the dreaded blackouts that plagued the country following the 1991 collapse of its then-top ally, the Soviet Union.

In documents seen by Reuters, government officials have been warned that the island is facing a "critical" energy shortage that requires the closing of non-essential factories and workshops and the shutting down of air conditioners and refrigerators not needed to preserve food and medicine.

Cuba has cut government spending and slashed imports after being hit hard by the global financial crisis and the cost of recovering from three hurricanes that struck last year.

"The energy situation we face is critical and if we do not adopt extreme measures we will have to revert to planned blackouts affecting the population," said a recently circulated message from the Council of Ministers.

"Company directors will analyze the activities that will be stopped and others reduced, leaving only those that guarantee exports, substitution of imports and basic services for the population," according to another distributed by the light industry sector.

President Raul Castro is said to be intent on not repeating the experience of the 1990s, when the demise of the Soviet Union and the loss of its steady oil supply caused frequent electricity blackouts and hardship for the Cuban public.

The directives follow government warnings in the summer that too much energy was being used and blackouts would follow if consumption was not reduced.

All provincial governments and most state-run offices and factories, which encompasses 90 percent of Cuba's economic activity, were ordered in June to reduce energy use by a minimum of 12 percent or face mandatory electricity cuts.

The measures appeared to resolve the crisis as state-run press published stories about the amount of energy that had been saved and the dire warnings died down. The only explanation given for the earlier warnings was that Cuba was consuming more fuel than the government had money to pay for.

The situation is not as dire as in the 1990s because Cuba receives 93,000 barrels per day of crude oil, almost two-thirds of what it consumes, from Venezuela. It pays for the oil by providing its energy-rich ally with medical personnel and other professionals.

Cuba has been grappling with the global economic downturn, which has slashed revenues from key exports, dried up credit and reduced foreign investment.

The communist-run Caribbean nation also faces stiff U.S. sanctions that include cutting access to international lending institutions, and it is still rebuilding from last year's trio of hurricanes that caused an estimated $10 billion in damages.

In response, the government has cut spending, slashed imports, suspended many debt payments and frozen bank accounts of foreign businesses. It reported last week that trade was down 36 percent so far this year due mainly to a more than 30 percent reduction in imports.

[Bacchus39]

11. you want to reforest Paraguay with non-native trees???? no thanks

any assistance from the US in the environmental arena should be to establish native species nurseries.

[Peace Patriot]

12. Criminy, I was just using redwoods as an example of what trees can do.

It's quite visible and obvious with redwoods, because they're so big, attract so much moisture and create clouds around their towering crowns. But ALL trees do this, to some degree--create wet, cool environments, as well as regulating the flow of water which prevents floods. We should FUND the use of NATIVE trees to re-forest areas hit by drought, instead of funding guns, bullets and oppression.

You OFTEN deliberately misconstrue what I say. Please stop doing that.