NASA: Huge Freshwater Loss In the Middle East 228
dstates writes with news from NASA about the state of available water in the Middle East. From the NASA article: "'GRACE data show an alarming rate of decrease in total water storage in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins, which currently have the second fastest rate of groundwater storage loss on Earth, after India,' said Jay Famiglietti, principal investigator of the study and a hydrologist and professor at UC Irvine. 'The rate was especially striking after the 2007 drought. Meanwhile, demand for freshwater continues to rise, and the region does not coordinate its water management because of different interpretations of international laws.'" dstates adds:
"Water is a huge global security issue. To understand the middle east, you need to understand that the Golan Heights provides a significant amount of the water used in Israel. Focusing on conflicts and politics means that huge volumes of valuable water are being wasted in the Middle East, and this will only exacerbate future conflicts. Water is a serious issue between India and China. And then there is Africa. U.S. food exports are in effect exporting irrigation water drawn from the Ogallala aquifer. Fracking trades water for energy, and lack of water limits fracking in many parts of th world. Think about it."
Mideast Water Shortage (Score:5, Interesting)
And I've recently been in the market for the London Bridge; have one for sale?
Re:Mideast Water Shortage (Score:5, Funny)
And I've recently been in the market for the London Bridge; have one for sale?
My fair lady, I did have one on the market but it has fallen down, fallen down.
pull these countries together (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like our shortage of oil has pulled the west together.
Pulling Together (Score:3)
Oh, you mean like the GCC? :) Now, it's a long way from finished, but it's what you asked for.
The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, also known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is a political and economic union of the Arab states bordering the Persian Gulf and located on or near the Arabian Peninsula, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab
Power and Influence (Score:3)
Any beef with each other? Did you miss anything? Yes, absolutely! :)
There's certainly the external threat from Iran, and the Shi'a population in many of the countries are less than happy with their Sunni rulers. Did I mention Iran? They're quite protective of Shi'as; be it during the recent uprising in Bahrain [bbc.co.uk] or the current war in Yemen [bbc.co.uk] [on Saudi Arabia's border]. There's always the threat of homegrown terrorists who wish to establish a theocratic state (Sunni). Saudi Arabia has been battling its own extre
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They thought so, but it came from Ireland & Romania and it turned out to be 60% horse and 30% pork.
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Like they did before the Crusaders started bothering them. I wish the Middle East would go back to the way they were during the Feudal period of the West. They sold books on the street corners, while the richest king in the West had a few measly volumes at most. They were performing surgeries, while the West still thought salamanders were born from fire. I wish the Catholic church of the time had never invented the crusades. I wonder if we would have half the problems we have now.
Re:Mideast Water Shortage (Score:4)
If not for the Crusades, the knowledge accumulated in the Muslim world might never have percolated to Europe.
It should also be noted that the downfall of that educated, scientifically oriented Muslim world was NOT European Crusaders, but a Muslim conqueror - Tamerlane (more properly, Timur the Lame).
You ought to remember him - he's the guy who destroyed Persia, killed everyone there who could read or write, that sort of thing.
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It would be nice to think that a regional water shortage would pull these countries together to solve a mutual problem.
And I've recently been in the market for the London Bridge; have one for sale?
Funny you should mention that. I think there's one in the Arizona desert.
Bring in the Prophets and Sons of Gods (Score:2, Funny)
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That's a terrible idea. Leave the oil as oil, please. Water is much more important to basic survival needs than oil. Oil is about $98 per barrel so that should put water easily around $750 per barrel, This should take care of the mideast trade deficit in short order and the silliness of sheiks riding around in private A380's.
People Forget About Iraq's Marshes (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think people yet understand or truly appreciate how much destruction they can bring to ecosystems. I wish conservation was given more respect than treating advocates like tree hugging hippies that have no clue about industry and economy. The area between these two rivers was once so lush and full of life that it was thought to be the origin of the Garden of Eden myth [wikipedia.org].
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Teddy Roosevelt was a real O.C. (yeah, original conservationist. i just did that).
I challenge anyone to call him a tree-hugging hippy.
He will haunt your dreams. Possibly hunt them as well. Not a situation I want to be in.
Re:People Forget About Iraq's Marshes (Score:4, Informative)
That's an insightfully humorous comment.
Yes, Teddy Roosevelt was the essentially the founder of the conservation movement (along with John Muir, Ansel Adams, etc.). And he was a big game hunter. He created the national park system. But he also believed that only the rich would have an opportunity to enjoy them. He was consistently favoring certain wealthy interests. (I believe he also founded the FDA after his son got poisoned by some bad food.) And he founded "Trust Busting". But he chose his battles carefully, and didn't offend his core supporter...except that he didn't hold enough support so that when he ran for re-election he had to create a new political party, the Bull Moose Party, to promote him. (This didn't work. He had popular support, but the Democrats and the Republicans both held the levers of power in different places. The design of the system intentionally renders third parties ineffective. That's why a plurality is sufficient to elect a candidate. If a majority were required, it would be a different story.)
Not surprising....he's a hunter (Score:3, Insightful)
Modern day tree huggers? Not so much....
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For example, when faced with a dilemma of either eradicating a species or facing an epidemic of disease caused by that species, a conservationist would wipe out the pest while a tree-hugger would not.
Mosquitoes are people too!
Re:People Forget About Iraq's Marshes (Score:4, Funny)
For example, when faced with a dilemma of either eradicating a species or facing an epidemic of disease caused by that species, a conservationist would wipe out the pest while a tree-hugger would not.
Mosquitoes are people too!
You're confusing mosquitoes with mega-corporations. Understandable mistake though, they're both blood-sucking parasites...
Re:People Forget About Iraq's Marshes (Score:5, Informative)
There is a big difference between conservation and tree-huggers, namely who benefits from their policies. Conservation puts people first, tree-huggers put "the earth" first. For example, when faced with a dilemma of either eradicating a species or facing an epidemic of disease caused by that species, a conservationist would wipe out the pest while a tree-hugger would not.
Imaginary scenarios that have never happened are always brought up to bash "tree huggers." The reality, however, is that if you express any concern for wildlife or the unregulated and unmonitored growth of damaging industries like drilling, people write you off by labeling you a tree-hugger.
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For example, just look at "tree spiking" where a piece of metal or ceramic is hammered in a tree, when the tree is cut down the spike can easily hurt or kill someone when a saw hits the spike.
Or just look at the numerous fire-bombings that have happened due to environmental groups.
The core philosophy behind them is that preserving "the earth" is more important than preserving man.
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You realize this is a tiny lunatic fringe and that no government has come close to touching "tree hugger" philosophy with a 30-foot pole, right?
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Very rarely is human life at stake. 99.9% of the time it is someone worried about not being able to make another buck.
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I agree that ecologically intelligent business can out last competitors who are not, but your examples counter your point.
Hybrid vehicles do not have a higher margin, nor will they. The cost to manufacture them greatly outweighs the perceived benefits; and most importantly, the materials required to produce them are much more scarce than the oil used to produce gasoline. And these materials are definitely not renewable.
The material problem also applies to alternative energy. The solar panels and wind tu
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The solar panels and wind turbines require materials that are not available on a scale that would allow those sources of energy to ever meet our current needs, let alone future needs.
This is simply not true. I have no idea where you are getting it from.
A wind turbine is simply a bunch of fibre glass, a gear, and a generator. Fibre glass is abundant, gears just require rather commonly available metals, and the generator is often a standard electromagnetic generator. You can win a few percent extra power and possibly save on the gear by going to permanent magnets, but 5% at the margin isn't going to determine whether we can meet the energy needs of the world -- and the "rare earths" neede
Israel is almost completely desalination provided (Score:5, Informative)
Quite a bit of Israel's water consumption is already either from desalination (domestic) or recycled (agriculture) water. It created quite a spike in the water prices, but otherwise greatly increased Israel's water reserves (the Kineret, as well as a couple of big underground reservoirs, one of them shared with the Palestinians).
Shachar
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The submitter "dstates" has presented the results of study as being essentially Israel vs the rest of the region. This is coming from his bias & not the study itself as the video is centered on the Tigris/Euphates basin (Turkey/Syria/Iraq) where the loss of water reserves is much more severe.
Because you see, a Palestinian suffering from thirst is apparently somehow worse than an Iraqi...
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Israelis are water wasters (Score:3)
The fact is that the 500 000 Israeli settlers in their colonial outposts in the occupied West Bank use about ten times the water that the millions of Palestinians do in the West Bank. Fact is it's the gardens, farms, pastures, groves & orchids of West Bank Palestinians that are the most efficient Water wise - they have no choice, the Israeli settlers steal 95% of their water.
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Like electricity to the home, in 100 years politicians will be taxing it.
Actually, it already is basically taxed - at least in the US. Most of the water systems are municipal operated. Call it a fee or a tax...the money is going to the government at some level.
Where were you when the water wars began? (Score:3)
We knew we'd reach this point inevitably. Earth is finite, and humanity keeps reproducing.
Now we've hit the point where resources are limited. By the rules of nature, this means we're going to fight it out and someone's going to hoard the resources. They will then outreproduce others and replace them.
A game changer could be a nanofilter that desalinates water, but that could make the problem worse. If every nation on earth was able to keep overpopulating, the resulting land clashes could be catastrophic.
In the meantime, take careful notice of where you are. You want to be able to tell your grandchildren (or fellow Mars base refugees) where you were when the water wars began.
In other words... [youtube.com] (NRSFW)
Re:Where were you when the water wars began? (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize that much of the world has fallen below replacement rates by the simple expedient of making people wealthy enough that they can choose whether to extrude yet another baby or not?
China has been trying to avoid the messy demographic squeeze that occurs in the intervening period(since improvements in standard of living usually slash child mortality before they slash fertility rates, you end up with ~1 generation of unsupportable boom children); but the evidence is overwhelming that people actually don't like keeping up the uterine-clown-car act once they have an option.
Here's where he got the argument (Score:3)
I agree with you.
Here's what fuzzy is parroting:
Nuclear warfare. (Score:2)
I'm assuming you're referring to nuclear warfare here; if wrong, please correct.
I don't know if any nation at this point intends to use its nukes except if (a) someone else launches first or (b) it is invaded and the invaders are winning.
It's too unstable to use except as a final act.
A History of Water Diplomacy in the Middle East (Score:5, Interesting)
4500 years ago, the control of irrigation canals vital to survival was the source of conflict between the states of Umma and Lagash in the ancient Middle East. 2700 years ago, Assurbanipal, King of Assyria from 669 to 626 B.C., seized control of wells as part of his strategic warfare against Arabia. In the modern era, the Jordan River Basin has been the scene of a wide variety of water disputes. In the 1960s, Syria tried to divert the headwaters of the Jordan away from Israel, leading to air strikes against the diversion facilities. The 1967 war in the Middle East resulted in Israel winning control of all of the headwaters of the Jordan as well as the groundwater of the West Bank. In these cases, water was certainly an important factor in both pre- and post-1967 border disputes.
But contrast this to cases in Africa, like the Okavango delta (the world's largest inland delta) which through a negotiation by Angola, Botswana and Namibia has received a fresh lease of life. I think the key is how likely countries are to negotiate rather than go to war. The current Middle East does not seem like a place where cooperation can or will replace conflict.
Our water for your oil. (Score:2)
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That may be a bit short-sighted.
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It wouldn't be shortsighted, but it also wouldn't make economic sense. Transportation costs for water would be excessive. Europe or Russia might manage it via a pipeline, I guess, but it would need to be around 500 times the size of an oil pipeline. The problem is extending it far enough to reach the areas where there is a great surplus of water. A secondary problem, since the best place to collect the water is at the mouths of rivers, is processing it to remove pollutants.
All in all, desalinization is
Where's Waldo (Score:2)
Re:Where's Waldo (Score:5, Informative)
Weather patterns carry evaporated water off the oceans and over land, where it can fall as rain or snow. If the rain falls on the ocean, or on the shore running back into the sea, it doesn't replenish inland reservoirs. If a winter is very mild, less polar water will be frozen in place, meaning the snowmelt won't be enough to keep the rivers full all summer. The evaporation process is also the natural desalinization process, making rainwater the most critical supplier of freshwater. That's why droughts and global patterns like El Niño and El Niña so important.
The overall amount of water on the planet is (mostly) constant, bet the amount of accessible freshwater is a tiny fraction of it, and is highly dependent on the weather and the rate of consumption.
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I thought we learned that the overall water content of the planet is steadily increasing due to gravitational attraction of the planet sucking in comets water deposits and the like. Sure in a few hundred years it's not much, and I don't imagine water mining the asteroids or capturing comets technologically.
The main reason I'm against fracking (Score:3)
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In the US we won't face a lack of water but it'll get expensive and food prices are likely to double and could triple or more in adjusted dollars.
There have been areas of the US that have had to face water shortages already, actually: Los Angeles periodically has to ban watering of front lawns, for example. It's kind of interesting living where I do, less than 5 miles away from the world's largest supply of fresh water anywhere: there have been numerous attempts to convince the various governments that have access to it to divert as much of it as possible in various directions, thankfully none of them successful. Generally speaking, liberals want to
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Cheap energy = cheaper water (Score:2)
For desalination and filtering plants, it seems one of the bigger obstacles is energy. So if we had cheap (renewable) energy, we could also have more abundant potable water .
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look, the problem with water isn't that there wouldn't be enough of it.
the problem is that all the good fresh water is elsewhere from where you'd need it(well, plenty of places where you need it have plenty but for some reason people insist on living on dry patches of desert that have been rape farmed for thousands of years..).
water wars are local. in middle east they're limited to middle east. it's not like they're going to invade greenland for the water or some shit like that, they'll just go upstream of
fracking water (Score:2)
Re:fracking water (Score:4, Interesting)
Because the people would complain that the wells of some poor person 100 miles from where they live whom they never met were being contaminated with salt water now too.
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Some families I'm sure the number is already $200 or more a week. They'll face $400 to $600 food bills. That's $1,600 to $2,400 a month. It'll equal or exceed their mortgage.
So the invisible hand of the market will respond by moving investment from old, tired, mortgages to a whole new and exciting class of debt to all these families so they can meet their monthly food and water bills. And then even more debt to meet the interest payments on the other ones.
There is nothing that could possibly go wrong with this scenario.
Growth forever!
Ice Pirates (Score:5, Funny)
I watched the documentary "Ice Pirates" back in the 80s. It shows a far future without much water, and people turning to piracy to get it. I bet they never knew how quickly we'd be getting to that point.
Oh and Bruce Vilanch.
3 minutes, 3 days, 3 weeks ... (Score:2, Funny)
You can live without oxygen for 3 minutes, on average, if not a bit longer.
You can live without water for 3 days, depending on the environment.
You can live without food for 3 weeks, but in the case of Americans more like 3 months.
You can live without gasoline forever.
Now, can any of you bright people guess the order of importance of the above resources ?
Soylent green (Score:2)
Using wikipedia articles on average water in a human body and world population growth you get about 40billion liters of water being stored in humans in the year 1800, up to 280billion liters being stored in humans in the year 2012. A more indepth study would be interesting.
evolution (Score:5, Funny)
Oh oh.... (Score:2)
Here come the zombie creating virus we are all now preparing for .....
We have been warned by Hollywood countless times, yet our greed still pushes us to go out there and bring back
things that are not from here.... mmmmm... wonder what sort of DNA might be encased inside the meteor that
some scientist could bring back to life.....
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Also, lord knows that people will not want to drink recycled water.
Too bad. Drink or die.
Re:So, no matter what we do, we are screwed (Score:4, Funny)
Also, lord knows that people will not want to drink recycled water.
Call it Brawndo(TM) and they won't be able to drink enough of it.
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Extracting energy requires clean water.
Everything and everybody needs clean fresh water.
Basically, no matter what we do, we will always be on a negative slope in terms of water conservation.
Also, lord knows that people will not want to drink recycled water.
Also, lord knows that people will not want to drink recycled water.
Almost all water is recycled [wikipedia.org]. I am actually curious what percentage of the water the average person drinks came from bodily fluids of another human being of the past or present.
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Have no more than 2 kids, encourage your neighbors to do the same, eventually the availability of resources will magically increase.
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Also, lord knows that people will not want to drink recycled water.
Which is funny, given that we're already drinking recycled dinosaur urine. Plus many people drink urine directly. It's called beer.
And no, that is not a stab at American beer producers. Alcohol == yeast urine.
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You've never heard of "Black Diamond bottled water"? (Well, probably not, it is or was a minor company.) It sells/sold recycled water from a sewage plant at premium prices.
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You don't need potable water to bathe.
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Re:Welp (Score:5, Informative)
The technical issue of distribution (and to a lesser degree storage) is the issue for many of the water problems.
This is not really a technical issue. It is more of an economic policy issue. Here in California, farmers receive subsidies, and subsidized water, to grow water intensive crops like rice and cotton. If you remove the subsidies, farmers will switch to crops and irrigation practices that actually make sense, and the "water shortage" will disappear. The problem in the Middle East is similar. For instance, Saudi Arabia pays huge subsidies to domestic wheat farmers, when for a fraction of the cost they could just import wheat.
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Saudi Arabia pays huge subsidies to domestic wheat farmers, when for a fraction of the cost they could just import wheat.
Silly Saudis, don't you know you're supposed to outsource all your critical resources to the lowest bidder?
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For the most part farmers are already using drip irrigation and not growing water intensive crops. The trade for 'subsidized' (hint -not free-) water is that the water districts can and do shut off the taps anytime they feel like it.
The b
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The thing about the Saudis is that their population has grown from a few million to around 30 million in like 60 years, all funded by oil wealth.
They also know that the oil will eventually run out. They sort of want to find some way of feeding everyone after they have nothing left to trade for food.
I kind of think they're screwed, but they at least are looking forward to the future and trying to do something to avoid the cliff.
The water problem is a population problem, globally. Egypt had a stable populatio
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I'm not really an environmentalist and I never said anything like that. I simply stated the fact that overpopulation is straining water resources. I don't need their resources; I live in Canada - we have more water than we know what to do with.
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or grow crops that need alot less water and are native to Socal. Jojoba makes an excellent oil for use in medicine, cosmetics, and Biodiesel. Date palms for fruit, liquor, sweetener, animal feed, a coffee like stimulant, and as a cellulose crop. Citrus fruits are a no brainer, as well as some cultivars of squash, beans, and Corn.
This is all stuff native to california, but nobody plants it, and are willing to import dates from the Middle east and use soybeans to make biodiesel.
Come on California, your bett
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Or they could just form an economic coalition with friendly neighbours like the EU, where lots of countries aren't food-independent. The UK for example would be incapable of supporting its population using the existing territory. Of course that requires you play nice with everyone around you and act like a mature modern nation, so maybe more of a problem for the Saudis.
Re:Welp (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't rain much in the middle of a desert and there are these things called "droughts" you have to worry about...
If you use fresh water faster than nature can replenish it, you're going to have a shortage. The fact that fresh water reservoirs are decreasing is a sure sign that water is being used faster than it is being replenished... so you either reduce usage (start with waste), supplement supply (desalinization, massive aqueduct construction, etc), or suffer drought.
=Smidge=
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Doesn't rain much in the middle of a desert and there are these things called "droughts" you have to worry about...
And also the deserts have greatly expanded throughout the recent cold period in human history. Vast regions of Africa were once lush and are now just piles of sand.
It shouldn't be too surprising - there's now a three frikkin mile thick layer of freshwater ice that's been geologically trapped from the atmosphere on Antarctica, with a significant amount of accretion over the same period. But du
The Turkish Dams (Score:3)
The Turks have built numerous dams on the Euphrates 'n Tigris & their tributaries & are diverting a significant percentage of their waters that traditionally flowed through to Syria & Iraq.
In some cases this could be considered an act of war.
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And if you are willing to pay $5/gallon water won't be a problem either.
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And if you are willing to pay $5/gallon water won't be a problem either.
People already regularly pay more than that. Willingly, without a second thought, while bitching about paying $3-4/gal for gas. They even do it when the water is freely available out of nearby taps and water fountains, thinking it's somehow cleaner, purer, or from a mountain spring like the label on the bottle says.
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And if you are willing to pay $5/gallon water won't be a problem either.
People already regularly pay more than that. Willingly, without a second thought
No, they really do not pay more. You see, water usage is not for drinking. Water usage is for,
1. agriculture (irrigation)
2. irrigation of stupid lawns - that is only a problem in few parts of the world.
3. industrial applications (eg. mining, steel production, consumer goods, etc.)
4. personal usage, like washing yourself.
5. distant last place is actual drinking of water.
You can pay $1/day for drinking water. You can't pay $0.10/l
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So you are willing to pay 5 dollars a gallon for your shower?
25 gallons * 5 dollars = 125 dollars.
No people ARE NOT willing to pay that much.
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There's not an oil well or refinery within a thousand miles from me.
Somehow I doubt that. Where do you live?
Not that it matters. For the US, water usage [usgs.gov] is over twenty thousand times greater than oil usage [eia.gov]. Oil, not gasoline, which accounts for only a fraction of oil usage. That ratio is probably higher for areas that use less gasoline per capita (which is nearly everywhere outside the US).
Do you think there would be plenty of gasoline if everyone used even a hundred times more, let alone twenty thousand times more? Could you imagine the infrastructure that would be require
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Actually, there ARE enough sources of fresh water to import. At least currently. The problem is that the importation is expensive when you need to do it at a long distance. And global warming means an increased supply of fresh water...just not evenly distributed and not where it used to be, either. You might need to collect rain that currently falls on the ocean...Also a single iceberg contains enough fresh water to supply a large area for a long time. And the rate of iceberg formation has increased.
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Nature already does that. We only have to collect and harvest it. There is no technical reason to suffer any kind of water shortage.
Problem is, you divert a little here and a little there from the streams and rivers and you wind up with the Aral Sea.
Some places do get plenty of rain and could harvest from some collector system, say, around Seattle, and export it. There's an idea which will probably happen when the price of water gets high enough.
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Most areas of the US you can collect enough rain water from your roof, providing you don't have a drought like we did last summer. For instance in my area, (I made up the square ft of an average roof around 200 sq ft, not sure how accurate this is) I could gather about 70,000 gallons of water. This is based on 50 square inches of average rainfall in a year. I really need to stop renting and start buying a house and put up some rain barrels.
Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... (Score:4, Funny)
i give some back to the world every few hours
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Me too, but it's too salty to drink. Or so your mom says.
Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is an urban problem.
City folks give me a hard time about living in the country, but I pump my water from a hole in the ground and then I dump it back into the ground when I'm done with it. Bacteria eat up all my poo, and the cycle begins again. Call it the ultimate recycling.
Works pretty well until you cram a whole bunch of people into a little space.
Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a desert/hot dry country problem. Meanwhile in other parts of the world, flooding is becoming more regular and dangerous.
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I've always been curious about water. Does the amount of water we have today, equal the amount of water from the when the dinosaurs lived? While I know we can run out of freshwater in areas, does that freshwater all end up in the ocean and other parts of the world? Or can it evaporate into space? My guess is no, water cannot achieve escape velocity.
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I've always been curious about water. Does the amount of water we have today, equal the amount of water from the when the dinosaurs lived?
More or less the same. There may be differences in how much is fresh, and how much is saline, and differences in ocean levels due to glaciation or polar ice.
The issues of water shortage are due to our using more and more of the fresh water that is available. We continue to believe that there will always be enough of whatever we need so that population will increase forever.
While we continue this process, we use water from sources that are not infinite. The Oglalla Aquifer in the Great Plains of the US
Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... (Score:4, Informative)
I would prefer that we stop popping out new people at the present rate. will that happen? I doubt it.
The rise in population growth has been declining for decades. The UN median projection is that we will top out just below 10 billion around 2070 and then shrink.
No doubt needed.
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Some water in the atmosphere gets decomposed by cosmic rays all the time and the hydrogen thus freed can escape the atmosphere and no longer be available to make water. But we probably get enough water coming back in from meteors, etc. to make up for it.
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...we'll soon run out of it.
We should be conserving this precious natural resource. It's not renewable, you know!
Don't worry, once we get massive arrays of seawater-powered deuterium fusion reactors online our energy problems will be solved forever and we'll have all the helium we can drink...
oops.
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Water that is absorbed by the ground and isn't directed into aquifers or similar structures is effectively lost. The rest is lost to the ocean or to evaporation. Granted, you could desalinate the ocean, but then the question becomes what to do with the leftover material, which is an environmental issue unto itself.
You sell it, duh!
Have you priced Sea Salt lately?
We still have operating salt ponds aorund the San Francisco Bay. Often easily identified by their giant piles of salt. Now if they trapped the water evaporated it would be a Win-Win.
Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... (Score:5, Insightful)
Water that is absorbed by the ground and isn't directed into aquifers or similar structures is effectively lost. The rest is lost to the ocean or to evaporation. Granted, you could desalinate the ocean, but then the question becomes what to do with the leftover material, which is an environmental issue unto itself.
You sell it, duh!
Have you priced Sea Salt lately?
We still have operating salt ponds aorund the San Francisco Bay. Often easily identified by their giant piles of salt. Now if they trapped the water evaporated it would be a Win-Win.
These ponds are intended to collect salt, and the water is lost. You can't use a pond for desalination on an industrial scale*. One common method is to boil the water in a partial vacuum to obtain vapor, and discard the brine. Brine's boiling temperature increases the saltier it gets, so at some point it becomes uneconomical to extract the water. Plus transporting brine is easier than bulk damp salt- you just pump it. You could then put the brine in a pond and let nature run its course, but the amount of land required would probably be prohibitive since desalination on useful scales is BIG. It is much easier and cheaper to just pump the brine back to the sea and deal with the environmentalist complaints. Maybe in the future regulations will be stricter but the places that need this water the most are the kind of places that won't care about a saltier ocean.
Incidentally, most desalination processes use large amounts of energy, so that is why the easier water is used up first.
*you can desalinate using a pond or other small body of water on very small scales, but this is not economical on large scales. It is done in survival situations however.
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Granted, you could desalinate the ocean, but then the question becomes what to do with the leftover material, which is an environmental issue unto itself.
I guess you pour it back into the sea, nicht wahr? It's not like you separate all the water from the brine, you'd get a terribly corrosive solution for your reactor vessels.
Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... (Score:5, Interesting)
Since biological processes impact coastal erosion, you may or may not also have to worry about your coastline receding, too - that depends mostly on how lucky you get, I think, but I have no data handy.
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Granted, you could desalinate the ocean, but then the question becomes what to do with the leftover material, which is an environmental issue unto itself.
That depends on the technique used for desalination. There are methods where the only byproduct is sea salt. The problem is that they are not as economical as those where you start by pumping in chemicals and process the water in tanks that pollute the brine with corrosion.
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The cheese at the end of the nozzle is exposed to air and dries out. Sealing the end of the cheese nozzle might help.
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Screw eating it. Hook it up to an IV. Perhaps mixed with bacon grease.
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I think you misunderstand. Most people won't care if it doesn't obviously effect themselves, their family, or their close friends. A few additional people will care if it affects others that they see frequently. Lots of people will care briefly if they see it on the news, but not be moved to action. A very few people will care enough about distant strangers to act to help them.
Race barely comes into it, though admittedly it's easier to empathize with someone who looks more like the face you see in the m