When Washing Hands Isn’t Easy

I thought it would be easy to blog periodically as the semester started, way back in January, but my return to full-time teaching turned out to be more time-consuming than I planned…and then, Coronavirus was upon us. I am feeling compelled to carve out the time to say a few things about water in the […]

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Environmental Trade-offs In An Age Of Uncertainty

One of the “hidden” issues around water is the vast quantities which are often required for producing the goods we buy every day. Manufacturing of almost any sort of product generates heat. Water has an unusually high “heat capacity” — it can absorb a lot of heat without boiling, as anyone who has ever waited […]

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Not Just About The Coastline

A great deal of reporting around climate change has focused on rising sea levels and their impact on coastal communities around the world. These are urgent concerns, particularly for those of us who do live near the coast, as I do. However, changing weather patterns are also creating major changes for inland waters. The Army […]

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Not Enough Water In Florida?

My husband and I are vacationing in Florida, and as you can see from the photo taken at our Daytona Beach hotel, there appears to be plenty of water around us. The ocean, the pool, the clouds in the sky. Florida, in fact, is a place most often known for too much water. Hurricanes can […]

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A Poem For 2020

Happy New Year to one and all! Tangled Up In Blue is back to celebrate a new decade, and I’d like to start the year off with a poem, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, that seems both ageless and timely. The water understandsCivilization well;It wets my foot, but prettily,It chills my life, but wittily,It is not […]

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Movie Review: Aquarela (2018)

Viktor Kossakovsky’s new film, Aquarela, is billed as a documentary that “takes audiences on a deeply cinematic journey through the transformative beauty and raw power of water.”  If you hear “documentary about water” and think you’ll be hearing the soothing whispers of David Attenborough, think again. I’d characterize it instead as:  a high-resolution photographic painting […]

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The Problem With Drinking Water (Part II)

Tap water is a revolutionary invention, involving both the coordinated distribution of clean water and the treatment of wastewater.  The ability of most US city dwellers to have a reliable source of clean, safe tap water always at hand has been with us for only about the past two centuries. The need for a water […]

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Water Safety In Developing Countries

My friends at Knowable Magazine have published a fascinating review of the challenges of providing clean water in places that have no municipal water system. Technology can take the process only so far. The success or failure of a particular system relies heavily on human behavior, including education, training, reinforcement, and empowerment. There are lessons […]

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The Problem With Drinking Water (Part I)

Recently the San Francisco Airport (SFO) announced that it would soon prohibit the sale of bottled water in plastic bottles.  Plastics are a major problem in landfills and in our oceans, and the market for recycling plastics has collapsed in recent months.  Some bottled water companies are considering switching to packaging their product in aluminum […]

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Southwestern States Are Thirsty — Las Vegas, Nevada Not So Much

The recently-released report from the World Resources Institute (WRI) made headlines in all the major news outlets yesterday, with headlines such as “A Quarter of Humanity Faces Looming Water Crises, Study Says (New York Times)” and “India’s Chennai rapid growth threatened by water shortages (Washington Post).” Why is this happening? Some of the crisis is […]

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