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A new study by CNA Corporation has discovered that the biggest consumers of water on the planet are not measured for water use. Neither the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) nor the Department of Energy (DOE), which regulate the power sector, measure water use. Water use is therefore left out of policy decisions. CNA found this information while investigating energy generation water consumption, which, CNA found, will begin to compete with human consumption needs for available water in the near future. By 2020, 30-40 percent of the world will face this type of water use decision, and by 2040, the world will face a global shortage if usage continues, CNA found.

“At least in part, this is because the EPA has no authority to regulate water quantity, only quality,” CNA stated in its report.

“Although the EPA regulates the power sector, which withdraws more water than any other, the agency is unable to consider the water use impact of its regulations, which include rules on cooling methods,” CNA wrote.

This was found to be because water management does not extend to its biggest user.” Although water availability is clearly a critical issue for the power sector, neither the EPA nor the DOE [which produces official long-term energy forecasts for the government] has policy models that include water,” CNA stated.

The effects of not monitoring water use could be large, CNA found, because considerations of water availability could produce very different projections for how the power sector would develop in the future. Knowing the amounts of water usage and availability could also alter the feasibility of technology options.

“It’s a huge problem that the electricity sector do not even realise how much water they actually consume. And together with the fact that we do not have unlimited water resources, it could lead to a serious crisis if nobody acts on it soon,” said Professor Benjamin Sovacool, one of the researchers in the study.

The water shortage will affect 30-40 percent of the world by 2020, CNA found, and it will be impossible to maintain current water usage by 2040, resulting in future competition between energy and human consumption needs.

Read more: Most Power Systems Do Not Register Water Usage, New Study Discovers — Will Cause Water Scarcity by 2020 and Water Shortage by 2040

“It’s a very important issue,” said Paul Faeth, lead researcher and Director of Energy, Water, & Climate at CNA. “Water used to cool power plants is the largest source of water withdrawals in the United States and France, and a large source in China and India.”

CNA found that omitting water use from policymaking is typical around the world. Power production scenarios usually operate with an assumption of no limits on water use. This blind spot extends to policy and technology analysis for the sector, according to the report.

“One area where this really matters is climate mitigation policy, because of the water use impacts of carbon capture and sequestration, which uses much more cooling water than does coal technology without CCS [carbon capture and storage/sequestration],” the report stated.

When CNA modeled scenarios in which water is assumed to be limited–a more realistic assumption, according to CNA–outcomes looked different.

When the CCS was factored into calculations, the impact on water consumption was substantial. The researchers gave the example of China, where 60 percent of generating capacity lies in the north, which has just 20 percent of its freshwater supply. After factoring in CCS, the impact on water consumption was 322 percent larger than the the WaterLimit consumption value by 2040, and 171 percent larger than even the Baseline. CNA concluded, “It’s very likely that CCS would not be a viable option in the North Grid of China due to water resource constraints, but the extent of the problem would be unknown if water were not included in our model.

“If we keep doing business as usual, we are facing an insurmountable water shortage–even if water was free–because it’s not a matter of the price. There will no water by 2040 if we keep doing what we’re doing today. There’s no time to waste. We need to act now,” concluded Sovacool.

By Day Blakely Donaldson

In light of the security situation in Tripoli, Libya, where local militias are engaging in violence in the immediate vicinity of the US Embassy, the US State Department has issued a travel warning for Libya. The warning superceded the May 27 warning, and is based on “clear and present danger” of kidnapping, violent attacks and death.

The State Department warned all US citizens against travel to Libya and recommended all US citizens in Libya should exercise extreme caution and depart the country immediately. NGO workers and travellers should also be aware that they may be targeted for kidnapping, violent attacks, or death, warned the State Department.

The State Department also stated that Libyan groups have called for attacks against US citizens and US interests.

The US Embassy has relocated embassy staff and suspended all embassy operations. The evacuation took place under the protection of fighter jets, marines, a drone and a V-22 Osprey. The evacuees were sent to neighboring Tunisia.

US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said that the US is grateful to Tunisia “for its cooperation and support.” She said the personnel are “traveling onward” from Tunisia.

The current violence in Libya stems from the 2011 revolution and is carried on with military-grade weapons that remain in the hands of private individuals. The equipment includes anti-aircraft weapons.

US Vice President John Kerry made clear that the US was not closing the US embassy.

Hraf stated the US’s continued support for Libya, “We are committed to supporting the Libyan people during this challenging time, and are currently exploring options for a permanent return to Tripoli as soon as the security situation on the ground improves. In the interim, staff will operate from Washington and other posts in the region.

“Securing our facilities and ensuring the safety of our personnel are top Department priorities,” continued Hraf, “and we did not make this decision lightly. Security has to come first. Regrettably, we had to take this step because the location of our embassy is in very close proximity to intense fighting and ongoing violence between armed Libyan factions.”

Former US ambassador Jim Jeffry stated that the US tries to maintain its prescence in nations like Libya, even in dire situations, but when “you do have very clear and present danger–and that was the case in Tripoli over the last few days–you suspent operations at an embassy.”

By James Halevy

 

 

After the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011, the US government announced that they had obtained a “treasure trove” of documents that would fill a “small college library”–estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands to one million documents. The importance of these documents was displayed by initial government statements that 400 threats had been identified within the first week of viewing the documents. Top al Qaeda experts believe that the documents show who was connected to al Qaeda and what direction the organization would take after the death of bin Laden, in addition to other information. The number of documents so far released, however, remains at 17, which were published two years ago in May 2012.

Top al Qaeda experts, such as Long War Journal Senior Editor, Tom Joscelyn, 35-year terrorism scholar and former Corporate Chair in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency at the RAND Corporation and former Director of RAND’s Washington, D.C. Office, Professor Bruce Hoffman, and adjunct assistant professor in Georgetown University’s security studies program, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross think that there is no good reason the documents have not been released, and that the interpretation based on the official government line and the released documents is wrong.

“There’s a lot we can’t see.. and the stuff that we do see totally contradicts that paradigm,” said Joscelyn at a recent conference on terrorism. After bin Laden was killed, Joscelyn noted, referring to what the Obama administration had originally said about the extent of the archive found in bin Laden’s lair, Tom Donilon, a former Obama Administration National Security Advisor who was replaced by UN Ambassador Susan Rice in a White House shakeup last year, was one of the first officials to discuss bin Laden’s files. One week after the raid, Donilon described the files found in bin Laden’s residence as “the largest cache of intelligence derived from the scene of any single terrorist.” Donilon, citing the CIA, said the files would fill a “small college library.”

“The number I’ve had quoted to me from officials,” said Joscelyn, “is over a million documents and files. That’s certainly in the hundreds of thousands. Now are all those equally important? No. But a lot of them are.”

Read more: In 1988 When Al Qaeda was Formed There Were Three Jihadist Groups; in 2001 There Were 22; Today There Are 49 

To date, only 17 documents and some videos have been released to the public.

“This is not transparency,” said Joscelyn. “I don’t care if this is a republican administration or a democratic administration… And I think a lot of our debate about how al Qaeda is structured, how if functions, how it’s organized.–I think the answers to a lot of those questions can be found in those documents. And I think there’s no good reason for a lot of those documents to be kept from the public.”

Georgetown University’s Gartenstein-Ross agreed with Jocelyn’s assessment of the documents, and commented that America was not doing all it could to use the documents to understand the al Qaeda terrorist threat.

“We should hasten the declassification of these documents in order to better harness the talents of open-source researchers,” said Gartenstein-Ross. “A lot of these areas where we can’t actually see the organization, open source researchers would understand much, much more if they had access to these documents. And, in my view, the vast majority of these–maybe 90 percent or more–could be released with no harm to national security, no harm to US national interests in any way.

“And I think open source research is very important. It informs the public, it can inform policy makers,” continued Gartenstein-Ross. “We should be getting the most out of this sphere. As long as these documents remain classified… we’re not going to be making the most of open source researchers.”

Professor Bruce Hoffman also agreed. “I couldn’t agree more. I think its shameful that only 17 documents out of literally thousands [have been released]. And anybody who does any kind of historical research knows that you cannot make any kind of judgments on anything based on a handful of highly selected documents. Why I also think it’s absolutely imperative that they should be opened up is the conflicting things we’ve been told about them.

Hoffman commented also on the contradictory nature of the US governments characterization of the documents.

“In May 2011 we were told that these documents incontrovertibly proved that bin Laden was a mastermind,” said Hoffman, “that he was far more involved in running al Qaeda operations than anyone assumed, that he was meeting financiers, that he had connections with affiliates and associates, and even the 17 documents that have been released are highly ambiguous, because you can find, actually, validation for all those points. But then, inexplicably, exactly a year later, in May 2012 we’re told that it says completely the opposite: that bin Laden wasn’t involved, that he was irrelevant, that al Qaeda never really existed as an organization. So which one is it?

“Now, admittedly, some of them, of course, are highly sensitive, for various intelligence reasons, but its hard to believe that we have not taken advantage of this opportunity to establish a baseline understanding of what al Qaeda was like in the last, final days of bin Laden’s reign, and in turn, how that would effect the current organization and direction of al Qaeda.

“This is completely lost,” concluded Hoffman, “and its completely inexplicable as well.”

As to the reason why the document had not been released, Joscelyn stated, “I think there are a lot of bad reasons they haven’t been released. I can’t think of any good ones. The bottom line…is we know the minimalist interpretation of what these documents say is wrong. Here’s how we know it’s wrong: Because James Clapper, DNI, got in front of Congress and said the immediate exploitation of these documents led to 400 individual threats being tracked down by the US intelligence community and its partners. Now think about that. That’s just the immediate threat stream that the US intelligence community was able to cull out of these documents. And there were more than 400 of them. And I’ve been told that’s actually more than 400 individual documents you’re talking about there in the threat stream.

Joscelyn also commented on the contradictory nature of the Obama administration’s characterization of the bin Laden documents. “Now that story–what Clapper said–is the precise opposite of the story that came out with the 17 documents that the administration released. The 17 documents came out not just as documents, but they came out with a narrative, and the narrative said that he was isolated or sidelined in Abad Abad. He was a lion in winter. None of that was true. We have Clapper saying to you that we have 400 immediate threats being culled out of these documents right away.

“You should want to see this incredible archive that has been captured,” concluded Joscelyn.

By Day Blakely Donaldson