Even though sand can be found in nearly every single country on Earth, the world could soon face a shortage. Usage around the world has tripled in the last twenty years, according to the United Nations Environment Program. That’s far greater than the rate at which sand is being replenished.
After water, sand is the second most used commodity on earth. It’s used in concrete, glass, computer chips, computer screens, tile, and more. When you look at deserts and oceans, you may think we have an infinite supply. But we don’t. According to this ten-minute video produced by CNBC, we’re using it faster than Mother Nature is creating it.
Seems Infinite But Isn’t
And not all types of sand are suited for all uses. Desert sand, for instance, is windblown and round. That makes it unsuitable for concrete. For strength, concrete requires the more angular type found near and in rivers.
One small part of the massive Hallett sand mine on the San Jacinto West Fork
A Short Course on Sand
If you want to understand more, I highly recommend this video produced by CNBC. It’s short – only about 10 minutes. But it’s packed with information that puts production, consumption, and environmental tradeoffs in perspective.
For instance, do you know how the “tragedy of the commons” can ultimately lead to the collapse of environments?
The video is filled with facts and answers that you can use to amaze friends and family.
Did you know that China used more sand in the last three years than the US did in the last century?
How much sand does it take to produce concrete?
Where will it come from in the future?
What impact will the massive infrastructure bill now pending in Congress have on sand production and therefore the environment?
This video will answer all those questions and more. I highly recommend it.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 5/14/2021based on a tip from Chris Manthei
1354 Days after Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-14-at-10.02.51-PM.jpg?fit=1200%2C679&ssl=16791200adminadmin2021-05-14 23:15:032021-05-14 23:32:58Where Will Tomorrow’s Sand Come From?
Could you design a neighborhood center with the resources people need in floods and other emergencies? Could you develop a plan to implement a network of them throughout the City of Houston? If so, then maybe this is for you. The City seeks vendors to help it develop a network of “lily pads” that can act as refuges during emergencies.
Seniors at Kingwood Village Estates trying to evacuate to higher ground during Harvey when floodwaters rose in the middle of the night. Twelve people died: six from injuries sustained during evacuation and six from the heartbreak of seeing their condos destroyed.
Preparing for Emergencies
The City’s first resilience effort was somewhat of a utopian effort. It focused on helping people thrive after floods, not eliminating flooding. This one looks to gain more traction. It will take survival planning down to the neighborhood level and help people dislocated during adverse events such as Hurricane Harvey.
During Harvey, churches, schools, libraries, and businesses became gathering centers. However, many of these spaces were not equipped to serve as temporary shelters. The City seeks to identify and develop a network of unflooded spaces that can become locations for individuals to obtain basic needs, assistance, and recovery resources during floods, heat events, or air quality emergencies. They will become “lilly pads” that help the City distribute food and emergency supplies, telecommunications access, and federal assistance guidance. These spaces will also become gathering centers for the dissemination of relief and recovery for individuals.
Citizen Led, Government Supported
Instead of being led by local government, lily pads are intended to be supported by local government. Community members, community-based organizations, and/or faith-based groups will lead and manage them.
The City hopes such lily pads will help prepare for future disruptions and disasters. The request for proposals states, “For Houston to become more resilient, we must be able to adapt to future risks from chronic stresses such as addressing environmental justice issues and acute shocks including: extreme heat, poor air quality, flooding, hurricanes, and public health emergencies.”
Emphasis on Social Vulnerability
The selection of the strategic location and design elements of each Lily Pad will include social vulnerability and “equity.” The City intends to use these criteria to ensure locations benefit the most vulnerable and disproportionately affected populations. Social vulnerability and equity will also be taken into consideration when developing the lily pad master plan, toolkit and pilot project.
If you work for a company that does this sort of planning, consider responding to the RFP. It certainly sounds like a worthwhile effort as far as it goes. Personally, though, I think anyone rescued half naked from 20 mph floodwaters in the middle of the night deserves help.
NOAA has updated its climate statistics for the U.S. Every 10 years, the agency comes up with a “new normal” based on the last 30 years of data. The most recent 30 years, compared to previous averages, shows that our climate is getting hotter and wetter (at least in the Houston area).
Screen capture showing new “normal” temperature and precipitation for Houston Intercontinental Airport. Blue line represents precipitation. Orange = ave. minimum temp. Red = average temp. And dark red = average max temp.
Same data in tabular format.
The “normals” help farmers, energy companies, water managers, transportation schedulers and others whose businesses depend on weather plan their activities. That includes your local TV weather casters who constantly compare what they predict for tomorrow with what has happened in the past.
What’s Normal – From 30 years Down to The Hour
The NOAA stats come in annual, seasonal, monthly, daily and even hourly tables. Because the normals have been produced since the 1930s, they also help put current weather in a historical context.
The New York Times produced a series of animated “heat” maps that show changes in temperature and precipitation for those 30-year windows from the 1930s to today. Heat maps in this sense do not refer to temperature but to colors that reflect temperature or precipition differences. Hotter colors like red and orange reflect increases. Cooler colors like green and blue reflect decreases.
Choose Your Start/Stop Points Carefully
Curiously, the animations show the U.S. getting both hotter and colder through the decades. Likewise with wetter and drier. You can clearly see alternating cycles of hot and cold, wet and dry. As cycles come and go, where you chose your start and stop points lets you support or disprove your favorite climate change hypothesis.
The change is especially drastic between the new normals and the previous ones, from 2010. “Almost every place in the U.S. has warmed,” Dr. Michael Palecki told the Times. He manages the project at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
Palecki claims the world has warmed by more than 1 degree Celsius (about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1900, and that the pace of warming has accelerated in recent decades.
However, if you compared 1921-50 with 1941-70, you might think the world was cooling. The same goes for large parts of the county with dry/wet cycles. Although the Houston region has experienced increasing wetness on a fairly consistent basis, you can see drought ebb and flow through other parts of the country.
If you use 1900 as your start point and today as your stopping point, Palecki says the world has warmed by more than 1 degree Celsius (about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) and that the pace of warming has accelerated in recent decades. The precipitation maps show the Southwest becoming increasingly drier, while the Central and Eastern parts of the country are getting wetter.
These two “heat” maps show the change in average annual precipitation and temperature during the previous 30-year reporting period and today’s.
Says NOAA, “Most of the U.S. was warmer, and the eastern two-thirds of the contiguous U.S. was wetter, from 1991–2020 than the previous normal period, 1981–2010. The Southwest was considerably drier on an annual basis, while the central northern U.S. has cooled somewhat.”
For More Information
Check out the fascinating NY Times article or go straight to NOAA for far more detailed information.
Like all NOAA statistics, they are publicly available. You can even customize your own data searches based on time and location.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 5/13/2021 based on information from The NY Times and NOAA
1353 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-13-at-1.24.08-PM.png?fit=2200%2C836&ssl=18362200adminadmin2021-05-13 13:44:502021-05-13 13:50:52NOAA Adopts New Normal: Hotter, Wetter
Where Will Tomorrow’s Sand Come From?
Even though sand can be found in nearly every single country on Earth, the world could soon face a shortage. Usage around the world has tripled in the last twenty years, according to the United Nations Environment Program. That’s far greater than the rate at which sand is being replenished.
After water, sand is the second most used commodity on earth. It’s used in concrete, glass, computer chips, computer screens, tile, and more. When you look at deserts and oceans, you may think we have an infinite supply. But we don’t. According to this ten-minute video produced by CNBC, we’re using it faster than Mother Nature is creating it.
Seems Infinite But Isn’t
And not all types of sand are suited for all uses. Desert sand, for instance, is windblown and round. That makes it unsuitable for concrete. For strength, concrete requires the more angular type found near and in rivers.
A Short Course on Sand
If you want to understand more, I highly recommend this video produced by CNBC. It’s short – only about 10 minutes. But it’s packed with information that puts production, consumption, and environmental tradeoffs in perspective.
For instance, do you know how the “tragedy of the commons” can ultimately lead to the collapse of environments?
The video is filled with facts and answers that you can use to amaze friends and family.
This video will answer all those questions and more. I highly recommend it.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 5/14/2021 based on a tip from Chris Manthei
1354 Days after Hurricane Harvey
City of Houston Seeks Proposals for Planning Lily Pads
Could you design a neighborhood center with the resources people need in floods and other emergencies? Could you develop a plan to implement a network of them throughout the City of Houston? If so, then maybe this is for you. The City seeks vendors to help it develop a network of “lily pads” that can act as refuges during emergencies.
Preparing for Emergencies
The City’s first resilience effort was somewhat of a utopian effort. It focused on helping people thrive after floods, not eliminating flooding. This one looks to gain more traction. It will take survival planning down to the neighborhood level and help people dislocated during adverse events such as Hurricane Harvey.
During Harvey, churches, schools, libraries, and businesses became gathering centers. However, many of these spaces were not equipped to serve as temporary shelters. The City seeks to identify and develop a network of unflooded spaces that can become locations for individuals to obtain basic needs, assistance, and recovery resources during floods, heat events, or air quality emergencies. They will become “lilly pads” that help the City distribute food and emergency supplies, telecommunications access, and federal assistance guidance. These spaces will also become gathering centers for the dissemination of relief and recovery for individuals.
Citizen Led, Government Supported
Instead of being led by local government, lily pads are intended to be supported by local government. Community members, community-based organizations, and/or faith-based groups will lead and manage them.
The City hopes such lily pads will help prepare for future disruptions and disasters. The request for proposals states, “For Houston to become more resilient, we must be able to adapt to future risks from chronic stresses such as addressing environmental justice issues and acute shocks including: extreme heat, poor air quality, flooding, hurricanes, and public health emergencies.”
Emphasis on Social Vulnerability
The selection of the strategic location and design elements of each Lily Pad will include social vulnerability and “equity.” The City intends to use these criteria to ensure locations benefit the most vulnerable and disproportionately affected populations. Social vulnerability and equity will also be taken into consideration when developing the lily pad master plan, toolkit and pilot project.
If you work for a company that does this sort of planning, consider responding to the RFP. It certainly sounds like a worthwhile effort as far as it goes. Personally, though, I think anyone rescued half naked from 20 mph floodwaters in the middle of the night deserves help.
You can find additional documents here on the City’s bid website. The City will hold a pre-proposal bid conference on May 26. The bid deadline is June 10.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 5/13/2021 with thanks to Carla Alvarez for the heads up
1353 Days since Hurricane Harvey
NOAA Adopts New Normal: Hotter, Wetter
NOAA has updated its climate statistics for the U.S. Every 10 years, the agency comes up with a “new normal” based on the last 30 years of data. The most recent 30 years, compared to previous averages, shows that our climate is getting hotter and wetter (at least in the Houston area).
The “normals” help farmers, energy companies, water managers, transportation schedulers and others whose businesses depend on weather plan their activities. That includes your local TV weather casters who constantly compare what they predict for tomorrow with what has happened in the past.
What’s Normal – From 30 years Down to The Hour
The NOAA stats come in annual, seasonal, monthly, daily and even hourly tables. Because the normals have been produced since the 1930s, they also help put current weather in a historical context.
The New York Times produced a series of animated “heat” maps that show changes in temperature and precipitation for those 30-year windows from the 1930s to today. Heat maps in this sense do not refer to temperature but to colors that reflect temperature or precipition differences. Hotter colors like red and orange reflect increases. Cooler colors like green and blue reflect decreases.
Choose Your Start/Stop Points Carefully
Curiously, the animations show the U.S. getting both hotter and colder through the decades. Likewise with wetter and drier. You can clearly see alternating cycles of hot and cold, wet and dry. As cycles come and go, where you chose your start and stop points lets you support or disprove your favorite climate change hypothesis.
The change is especially drastic between the new normals and the previous ones, from 2010. “Almost every place in the U.S. has warmed,” Dr. Michael Palecki told the Times. He manages the project at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
Palecki claims the world has warmed by more than 1 degree Celsius (about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1900, and that the pace of warming has accelerated in recent decades.
However, if you compared 1921-50 with 1941-70, you might think the world was cooling. The same goes for large parts of the county with dry/wet cycles. Although the Houston region has experienced increasing wetness on a fairly consistent basis, you can see drought ebb and flow through other parts of the country.
If you use 1900 as your start point and today as your stopping point, Palecki says the world has warmed by more than 1 degree Celsius (about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) and that the pace of warming has accelerated in recent decades. The precipitation maps show the Southwest becoming increasingly drier, while the Central and Eastern parts of the country are getting wetter.
Says NOAA, “Most of the U.S. was warmer, and the eastern two-thirds of the contiguous U.S. was wetter, from 1991–2020 than the previous normal period, 1981–2010. The Southwest was considerably drier on an annual basis, while the central northern U.S. has cooled somewhat.”
For More Information
Check out the fascinating NY Times article or go straight to NOAA for far more detailed information.
Like all NOAA statistics, they are publicly available. You can even customize your own data searches based on time and location.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 5/13/2021 based on information from The NY Times and NOAA
1353 Days since Hurricane Harvey