Wait a sec. I've been reading some posts in here and need clarification. You mean to tall me that some folks believe that we make water? The bottled waters are man-made? Come on... Theres no new water on Earth. It's all the same. The water you are drinking right now could be the very water that Moses parted or the water from halfway around the globe from 20000 years ago. How many aisles of bottled water are there in a grocery store? How many stores in your town? In the state? Country? How many gallons is that? I say set it free. The polar icecaps are melting and we are causing the whole thing because there is not enough water to dilute the salt and freeze solid to reflect heat energy back out to space and save us... Oh the sky is falling ..
Seriously, is bottling water hurting us? Are "Green Roofs" vs White roofs hurting us? Green, blue, black, all absorb heat where white reflects back out to space. Coral Bleaching regulates where tropical activity is greater. Sunlight, heat is reflected back to the surface of the ocean, Hurricanes love that. The icecaps job was to reflect back, Its losing, should we be making White Roofs instead?

Hello, Kevinthegarden and welcome to OG.

I agree w/you on all the delusional, commercial hype of those bottled generic and designer waters. I don't recall, however, a post where someone wrote that humankind is "making" water. Was that specifically written?

It seems your emphatic about the reality of global warming. I'm with you on there. Other than that, I'm afraid I'm either missing or not too clear on the entire point of your message.

Care to elaborate?

I think Kevin is picking up on Bill's comment that we are not going to run out of carbon or water because they just recycle over and over again.

True that we don't make water (or carbon) but here in the arid West, we know that water is frequently not available in the quantities that some would like.

Recently the town where I work experienced a serious contamination of the water supply that resulted in around 1000 cases of salmonella infection and a couple of deaths, and in the closing of most businesses in town for at least a week, restaurants even longer (some for 6 weeks).

So, while there is a lot of water in the world, there is not always enough clean water where we want it, and if local supplies fail, there may not be a simple or cheap way to replace it. So it makes sense to protect the supplies and reduce the demand.

Kevin,

The albedo effect does reflect heat back into the atmosphere, but the main affect of the albedo effect, vis-s-vis the ice caps, is that the caps themselves don't absorb that heat. As the caps melt, the ground, or sea absorbs the heat that would have been reflected back, causing additional warming on the fringes of the caps and therefore accellerating the melting of the caps.

Installing white roofs would not counteract the lost albedo effect of melting ice caps, it would just add additional heat to the atmosphere...it would also keep your house cooler...

Thanks, ctdahle, for clearing that up. I did, indeed, overlook that part of the discussion.

Thanks again.

Yeah, its what I was getting at. Polar Ice does not absorb, it reflects. Without them ( or whats left ) there is no reflection, just absorbtion of heat. Sorry about the contamination there. I found some interesting FDA and EPA info on how much and what kind of pharmacuticles were in ground water and at what depths, which kind of gave hope if water was allowed to filter properly through the Earth, then pure water would again exist, but no, all the eco-screamin-hardcases have to keep ammending laws while drinking from their store bought water, which by the way, do you really think it comes from the mountain spring in the picture? The drugs found in the samples was astonishing, but it's like no one cared, but they were pushing their damn green roofs like it was the cure-all. If there was an overload of viagra in the water I bet there would be a lot of screamin at congress to get the water right.. Well maybe not at first, but it would happen..

Kevin, I may not know a lot, but I do know about ground water.

The purity of the water in deep wells has to do with how long it's been there, that is, it is water that trickled into the acquifer hundreds or thousands of years ago. It's pure because it was pure when it went into the ground.

If we keep putting pharmaceuticals in the waste stream, they will end up even in the deep wells.

Biological contaminants, like the salmonella that shut our town down recently, are in fact removed by the natural processes that occur in our acquifers, but the natural systems that kill biological contaminants suspended in the water and filter out the dead pathogens are not able to filter out chemical contaminants dissolved in the water.

I agree with you that bottled water is not only NOT the solution, but making the problem worse.

However, since there is no market incentive to avoid putting pharmaceuticals and other chemical contaminants in the water, there must be regulations to prevent people from flushing their extra viagra down the toilet.

Viagra is hardly the worst of it though. The real problem, besides paint thinner and motor oil, is that antibiotics flushed down the toilet enter the water treatment facilities.

Diluted with the rest of the wastewater, flushed antibiotics become low dose treatments for the zillions of biota that live in sewage lagoons. The sewage lagoons then become breeding grounds for antibiotic resistant bacteria.

quote:

..... Oh the sky is falling ....

....but no, all the eco-screamin-hardcases have to keep ammending laws while drinking from their store bought water, which by the way, do you really think it comes from the mountain spring in the picture? ....

Welcome to the forums.

So let me get this straight. First you quote Chicken Little (and then Donald Rumsfeld describing the concerns Americans had with his botched management of the war,) in describing the world's concerns with global warming?

Then you start in with nasty phrases and ridiculous charactures to describe those concerned with clean water, or global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps?

I am concerned with clean and available water, as well as all the known and predicted effects of global warming and I do not ever buy bottled water.

Most people, including me and many people on this forum and even those responsible for amending laws are aware that that even though a company puts a picture of a mountain stream on it's bottle, the the water inside might come from a tap connected to a city water supply. It may have escaped your extremely keen eye, but bottled water sold in the US generally lists its source on the label.

So there goes a big part of your condescending introduction to exactly how little you know, at least about the people you've come here to insult.

Again, welcome to the forum.

Wayne

Hear it? That's the oh so distinct sound of the chime that rings when Wayne and I agree on another point, be it ever so slight (the agreement)!

Dirt

Oh, and I thought that was just an angel getting his wings.

Wayne

Wow, "Wayne",
I didn't come here to insult anyone, kinda like you did me. I see people every stinkin' day thinking that if its in the media, then they should do it. Do people really think they should fertilize lawns 6 times a year with at least a 29-3-4 NPK like the commercial says? Theres a brown ring in their yard, should they apply harsh pesticides like the media states, or is it a fungus because they water at night? Get rid of the lawn and build a "natural area" that now they have to keep spraying for bugs and fertilize constantly because Ma Nature MUST shop at Home Depot or Lowes to keep her stuff right. Lets see, a mossy, succulent green roof will most of the time take care of itself, but the fly-by-night landscrapers are putting in annuals and perennials with Miracle-Gro soils, and have drip irrigation systems put in to maintain the health of the "native" plants they installed. I think the excess water would have to go to a downspout somewhere to the ground water, thus canceling out the "green roof" and killing my appetizers. There are no rules in gardening. If you are following rules, you are only landscraping. Folks need only to try to remember high school biology to keep a plant alive.
BTW, Wayne, you read the lable, you will see the words "Private source, and Tap" on the lables with all the additives involved. Nothing natural at all. For all anyone knows its being recycled at the plant next door to the Milorganite plant in Michigan....
And what the heck do you mean about Rumsfeld and the botched war effort? Nothing in my posts about that. I said ground water not ground war.....

Reflective white roofs reduce the heat island effect in towns. They also drastically reduce heat buildup in attics. This reduces the need for airconditioning therebye reducing the use of electricity, 50% of which is generated using coal power plants. The white roofs for houses are typically metal and last for 40 years or more while asphalt shingles might last 20 years(more in milder climates). Florida has an active program to encourage white roofs and the federal government will give you a tax credit for doing so.
Green roofs do have their place in large flat roofs in urban areas. Skyscrapers perhaps. More maintenance than the average homeowner would engage in in my opinion though.
BTW my long term plans are to install a relective metal roof on my house.

Wayne, I don't think Kevin was insulting anybody. Welcome to the forums Kevin.

Thanks TGF, My life is not so messed up that I need to go to forums to insult people behind a keyboard.

Merely opinions and observations released by folks here, and I find most of them head pokers and the rest humorus. Organic gardening is not new. If you are buying anything to garden, then its never OG. Heck, the Model-T drivers of old had no Lowes or HD. Where'd they get their mulch and lawn fertilizer?

Oh, think I see.

"Eco-screamin-hardcases," is not an insult but a "term of endearment" or at least high praise in your estimation.

I'm very aware, as are most here, of recent legislation to amend the Clean Water act, amendments necessary to enable it to continue serving it's original purpose, that is to keep all the nation's water as pure and clean as possible.

I'm sure then, since you are apparently fond of the "Eco-screamin-hardcases," you'll agree that amending the Clean Water Act to preserve the original intent of the Act, (signed into law by Richard Nixon, of all people,) is a necessary and heroic step to counteract recent Supreme Court decisions that strips protection under the Act from perhaps 60% of the nation's waters. Our "hardcases" have further fought to protect us from Bush directives ordering the Army Corp Of Engineers to ignore the Act and keep no records concerning decisions to ignore it.

I can see why, though I earlier misread your meaning, you are fully in support of the "hardcases" in their fight to protect our waters.

So I apologize to you Kevin, since you are actually now supportive of the efforts of the "Eco-screamin-hardcases" in our Congress and among those of us who care about our environment. (Unless I, again, misunderstand your current meaning.)

I do think, though, you are mistaken in your belief that, although extremely wise and courageous in the fight to protect our waters, we are somehow so grossly uninformed as to the source of our bottled water. Please be assured that we are not as ignorant as you, somehow, mistakenly, have been led to believe.

Wayne, an Eco-screamin-hardcase
(Got a problem with that?)