Hurricane worse than Katrina to hit New Orleans

New Orleans residents have been fleeing in their thousands after the city's mayor ordered an evacuation ahead of Hurricane Gustav. In 2005, three-quarters of the city was flooded. More than 1,800 people died. Sarah Debacher, who has lived in New Orleans for 10 years and is preparing to leave her home for the fourth time, told the BBC she was feeling more anxious this time round.
"The failure of the federal levees after Hurricane Katrina meant that we experienced devastation that we shouldn't have experienced.
"We don't know, frankly we don't have a lot of faith in the work that's been done to repair the damage that was caused by those failures and by the storm. So, this time we're feeling very insecure.”

Not everyone agrees that this storm will be as bad as Katrina was, however. Eric Blake, from the US National Hurricane Centre in Florida, told the BBC Mr Nagin (The New Orleans mayor) may have exaggerated the size of the hurricane.
The hurricane has already killed more than 80 people in the Caribbean.
It has swept through Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica over the past week, causing widespread damage. It has strengthened rapidly from a tropical storm to a Category 4 hurricane, and is expected to grow to a Category 5 storm - the maximum on the scale - as it crosses the Gulf of Mexico. Another page on the current evacuation here.

A video from the BBC can be seen here. A reminder – the BBC site on hurricanes is excellent. Visit it here. More on this later.

Why happiness is a postcode lottery

Powys in Wales tops the list of 273 districts, with Edinburgh apparently the most miserable place in Britain.
Eight of the top 10 districts with the highest levels of wellbeing are in Scotland or the north of England. Not such good news for us though as we are number 4 in the least cheerful places apparently. Can you work out why? What makes a place a happy one? If we get time I may discuss this next week. See the Independents article on this here.

LEAST CHEERFUL PLACES
1. Edinburgh
2. Cynon Valley and Rhondda
3. Amber Valley and north east Derbyshire
4. Clydesdale; Cumnock and Doon Valley; Kyle and Carrick
5. Swansea
See the BBC info on this here.

Recycling Research

Nice site here to start you off on the recycling task. Help for glass recycling in particular. Click on the labels of: Reduce
Reuse and

Recycle

Use it up: What Can You Do With Junk Mail?

See this site here: http://www.greenusesforwaste.co.uk/staying-green-reuse-junk-mail.html

Britains use of water

The UK has become the sixth largest net importer of water in the world. Average household water use for washing and drinking in the UK is about 150 litres a person daily, but we consume about 30 times as much in "virtual water"(see below) used in the production of imported food and textiles;
Taking virtual water into account, each of us soaks up 4,645 litres a day;
People in poorer countries typically subsist on 1,000 litres of virtual water a day;
· Different diets have different water footprints. A meat and dairy-based diet consumes about 5,000 litres of virtual water a day while a vegetarian diet uses about 2,000 litres.
What's particularly worrying is that huge amounts of the food and cotton we consume are grown in drier areas of the world where water resources are in short supply.

Virtual water Alternatively called embedded, is water that has been used in the production of food and fibres. Includes resources also for irrigation, processing and packaging of produce.
Water footprint Amount of virtual and visible water used by a country, businesses or individuals.
Green water That which derives directly from rainfall or from the soil. Generally replenished, but climate change will alter patterns of rainfall and there could be a decline in many parts of the world.
Blue water Withdrawn from ground-water or surface reserves. In many areas blue water is being used faster than nature replenishes it.
Read the rest of this interesting article , including what M and S are trying to do. See here.

Bottled v. tap water

Nice video here and an interesting web site to have a look at. Thanks to Tony Cassidy for highlighting this one.

Maps and Google side by side

Great site here that allows you to split screen both the resources above. Try this link to see an example.
http://wheresthepath.googlepages.com/wheresthepath.htm

Water Issues in Ghana

Ghana Geography Homework – Water Issues