Yet more adverse side effects of fracking have been identified, as new research indicates that it could threaten water supplies in drought-prone areas.
Fracking is a controversial method of extracting gas reserves from underground seams, using high pressure water jets which are injected into the ground to fracture shale rocks and release the natural gas inside.
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Global warming affects different water ways differently. Glacier melt has opened up the Northwest Passage again, but the mighty Mississippi’s water level is reaching a historic low due to the Midwestern drought, and America’s busiest waterway could become impassable to barge traffic between Cairo, Illinois and St. Louis within two weeks.
The country’s biggest inland waterway is already too shallow for barge traffic shipping coal and steel. The Mississippi is now about two feet below its normal level for this time of year, and is expected to soon reach an all-time low of just over 6 feet soon.
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The deserts of Utah and Nevada have not always been dry: Between 14,000 and 20,000 years ago, valleys throughout the desert southwest filled with water to become large lakes, which–at their maximum–covered about a quarter of both those states. And a dry stream bed has been found on Mars–was this "red desert" planet ALSO once covered with water? This transformation may have happened on Mars as well!
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Drought is getting to be the new normal for large parts of the world (including the US) and it turns out it was for the ancient Mayans as well (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show).
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