NASA: Huge Freshwater Loss In the Middle East

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."

Comments

Nobody will care

[benjfowler]

Nobody will care, since it'll only be illiterate poor brown people dying of thirst and hunger and they're a dime a dozen. If it were white people, things would be a lot different. /s

At the end of the day, it's merely self interest, coupled with the ability to maintain those interests, which matters. Such is the world that soulless neoliberalism has wrought.

Re:Where were you when the water wars began?

[AK Marc]

Someone elsewhere asked why conservationists are looked down upon, but I think we've managed to find the answer. The idiots who jump on the issue with the "it's about population" responses. It always comes across as stupid, inane, or eugenitics. Not to mention it's internally inconsistent, unless you see it as a justification of mass murder.

Now we've hit the point where resources are limited. A game changer could be a nanofilter that desalinates water, but that could make the problem worse.

OMG, we are all going to die from the Water Wars. Well, unless someone solves the problem, in which case the delay will make it worse. We should have a good war in the middle east now to help control population. Better still, lets just kill enough of them that the issue goes away.

The worst thing is that when China and India start WWIII, idiots like you will claim you were right all along and that the issue was water rights from Himalayan runoff, even if that wasn't related to the political issues.