Accuracy please ... or are you just conning us with science?

[xaphod]

Here's a quote from Teletext which I saw this morning....

...........................................................................................................

Concern is growing over the damage to wetlands as the expansion of tourism in the Mediterranean takes its toll on the surrounding wildlife.

In Cyprus, where water is limited, eight golf courses are being built.

Each course will require about one million cubic metres of water per hectare per year, which is the equivalent of the water consumption of a city of 12000 inhabitants.

...........................................................................................................

Now, a hectare is 10000 square metres, so 1 million cubic metres will cover a hectare to a depth of 100 metres. This corresponds to an annual rainfall of 100 metres, 328 feet, or 3936 inches. Someone is bullshitting me !

To make matters worse, the next fact, based on this false premise is reasonably correct regarding the water consumption of each person per year, but who is fooling whom when we are told that a CITY has a mere 12000 inhabitants.

The way I read this is that some booze-fuelled hack typed this press release from an ecological activist verbatim, without bothering to think, even if he/she could assess the truth of the scientific statements.

What really pisses me off is that there are fewer and fewer people out there who are aware of any basic science, and even less of these have any access to media to rubbish this blatant political huckstering of a beardy-wierdy crank group.

Xa .... with steam pressure partly dissipated.

[Trolldeg]

what really pisses me of is people building golfcourses in places with limited watersupplies, while hundreds of thousands of people around the world don't have access to fresh drinking water.

[Highluc]

Cyprus is a not too large island with quality (not too salty) meditarenean water available nearby. To irrigate golf coarses you don't need drinking water, so a few pumps and drains will do the trick and after seeping in the clean irrigation flows back to te mediterenean. Sorry but I can't see any ethical nor ecological problem. PS: I do not play golf nor watch those games.

[Rockpup]

In my area we use reclaimed water, as in water pulled from waste-water (drains, toilets, etc) to irrigate. This water is not acceptable for human use, and trust me when it sits in the pipes for a few days you -know- where the water came from Population growth often excedes what infrastructure is in place, often no-one notices till it hits a critical point. I say.. build the golf courses, and use the extra tax revenue to build bigger water facilities to serve the community. Jim PS: forgot to mention that quite a few groups rely on the fact most people do not read beyond the headlines..

[Dr. Shoe]

Most Irrigation in Cyprus is done with reclaimed sewage water (as I discovered on a recent trip there).

I hate to contradict but: The Med has a slightly higher salinity than the oceans owing to the fact that it is comparitively shallow, has a narrow inlet/outlet and is situated in a region know for high levels of direct sunlight for speedy evaporation.

Even if it did have lower salinity it still would not be suitable for irrigation otherwise this would be the norm in the northern Sahara.

However it is true that there is a lot of Environmental propaganda and I suspect that the journalist misunderstood and meant that the entire development would require that quantity of water. Moreover, in the US any settlement with a population of more than one can (and tends to) call itself a city!

It reminds me of an Environmentalist trying to tell me that if the ice-caps melted, the sea levels would rise by 16 feet or 5 metres. This is bull because in order to do that there would have to be in excess of 10 billion cubic kilometres of land ice. As every expert will tell you most of the world's deep ice is already floating on water and would not cotribute to sea-level rises at all. Besides which, much of the land ice would become trapped in lakes and inland seas.

I'm not trying to say that we should not take care of the environment because global warming can (and would) do more harm than than just raising sea levels.

[Skirted-UK]

My local golf course has it's own bore hole. The water is pumped up during the day and stored in a reservoir. The course is automatically watered during the night, each Hole and Tee has it's own sprinkler which pops up when in use. The prices that our local water company charge would make it too expensive to use tap water. Can't see what people see in Golf anyway!

[xaphod]

New one .....

The London Evening Standard came up with this one in winter 1991/2.

A jumbo jet flying across the Atlantic produces more carbon dioxide than the Amazon rainforest can absorb.

.... I remember this one because it produced a huge row between me and the g/f of the time .... she might have had 8 grade A 'A' levels, but she couldn't think out of the box.

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Exercise for the student ....

Given that the exo-atmospheric solar power flux is about 1380 Watts per square metre (from when Xa worked on space satellites) and that the last track on Vangelis 'Heaven and Hell' album is 'Albedo 0.39', show that the Amazon Rain Forest can support the energy requirements of around 10^4 to 10^5 jumbo jets.

Xa

PS, talking about solar flux, we had a huge solar event at 0800 UTC today.

[J-Nation]

Being a cynical sort, I wanted to check how many square metres there are in a hectare, and typing hectare square metres into google gives a results page that says 1 hectare (square meters) = 10 000 m4!

Emma

[genebujold]

It reminds me of an Environmentalist trying to tell me that if the ice-caps melted, the sea levels would rise by 16 feet or 5 metres. This is bull because in order to do that there would have to be in excess of 10 billion cubic kilometres of land ice. As every expert will tell you most of the world's deep ice is already floating on water and would not cotribute to sea-level rises at all. Besides which, much of the land ice would become trapped in lakes and inland seas.

I'm not trying to say that we should not take care of the environment because global warming can (and would) do more harm than than just raising sea levels.

Not only do environmentalists get this wrong, but so do a lot of scientists! Evidently they're so awash in numbers they can't see the forest through the trees.

You want rigorous analysis? Ask a scientist.

You want the truth? Ask a child.

[Dr. Shoe]

Not only do environmentalists get this wrong, but so do a lot of scientists! Evidently they're so awash in numbers they can't see the forest through the trees.

You want rigorous analysis? Ask a scientist.

You want the truth? Ask a child.

Ain't that the truth !

[raccoon]

Think twice before you blame someone.

Being a cynical sort, I wanted to check how many square metres there are in a hectare, and typing hectare square metres into google gives a results page that says 1 hectare (square meters) = 10 000 m4!

Emma

The answer is perfectly correct. What else cold you expect if you ask, 'how much is one hectare multiplied by a square metre' ?

Try this instead:

Google: 1 hectare

[PJ]

.....In Cyprus, where water is limited, eight golf courses are being built. Each course will require about one million cubic metres of water per hectare per year, which is the equivalent of the water consumption of a city of 12000 inhabitants.

...........................................................................................................

Now, a hectare is 10000 square metres, so 1 million cubic metres will cover a hectare to a depth of 100 metres. This corresponds to an annual rainfall of 100 metres, 328 feet, or 3936 inches......

I’m no golfer. After researching the internet, I learned the following facts:

#1 – An American 18-hole golf course will receive approximately 100 million gallons of water irrigation per year.

#2 - American golf courses average between 1 and 3 holes per acre. For simplicity sake, I will assume the average is 2 holes per acre. So for an 18-hole course, you would have 9 acres to water.

#3 - 100 million gallons = 13,368,056 cubic feet

and 9 acres = 392,040 square feet

My calculations are not important here but can be provided if requested. Here are the results of my calculations.

For a USA golf course, 100,000,000 gallons of water over a 9-acre area will achieve a cumulative depth of 409.2 inches in one year, which averages to about 1.12 inches of water per day.

This is much more reasonable than the 10.77 inches per day for those Cyprus golf courses.