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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."
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?
Someone needs to convert all that oil into water. Now THAT would be a miracle!
Yeah, I know it sounds stupid but Saddam Hussein drained 7,700 sq miles just to try to flush out people during the first gulf war. Before that the British had tried to drain all that fresh water out of there to stop the breeding of mosquitoes. Which, in the near future, is going to be looked back upon with disgust.
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.
My work here is dung.
The link in dstate's addendum already contradicts the sentence it's used in. The Golan Heights tributaries provide less than 20% of the freshwater used in Israel, and the original source is no longer functional. Moreover, Isreal recently completed a huge desalination plant, which provides a massive amount of freshwater (almost to the point of export). This winter, the Sea of Galilee nearly reached full levels, something that hasn't happened in over 20 years.
Not to mention that he linked to a footnote source on wikipedia. Not exactly a reliable source of information.
Nature already does that. We only have to collect and harvest it. There is no technical reason to suffer any kind of water shortage.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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
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... (NRSFW)
Ok. Seriously. There is a problem, but there are solutions too. Water conflicts have been around for a long time now in the Middle East since the beginning of civilization tiself.
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.
Also, lord knows that people will not want to drink recycled water.
Too bad. Drink or die.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
You don't need potable water to bathe.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The technical issue of distribution (and to a lesser degree storage) is the issue for many of the water problems.
Learn to love Alaska
Just like our shortage of oil has pulled the west together.
Exactly. It's all there in desalinization. This is just a little more expensive currently.
Like electricity to the home, in 100 years politicians will be taxing it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Dear Middle East, we are happy to trade you our water for your oil. -- The Western World
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
Earlier in the year, while pointing out several areas across the globe suffering significant droughts, the other person asked: "Well, where is it all going?" I had no ready answer. I guess the oceans? Though I thought the sea level rises were due mainly to ice melt (even more water!), not increased rainfall and runoff.
i give some back to the world every few hours
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=
Even ten years ago it was getting obvious that the main problem we'll face this century isn't energy it's water. People worry about cheap energy but cheap or even availibility of food should be the bigger concern. 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. If you're spending a $100 a week what happens when that's $200 or $300? 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. That was mostly from droughts and higher chemical prices. If the water used to irrigate those crops is polluted then the prices could be much higher. We can simply spend more of our cash on food. The third world will starve.
It is renewable just not at the rate that it is being used. In any case, I think it is likely we will find ways to cheaply desalinate ocean water before the threat of massive death by dehydration is imminent. After all, necessity is the mother of invention. Also, grey water systems would probably become more culturally acceptable as water prices increased. Here is one interesting reverse osmosis technology that is being researched using graphene.
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.
Hey humanity, guess what is more important than oil?
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.
Water shortage?! Quick! Convert all the wine to water!.
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 Emirates. Jordan and Morocco have been invited to join the council.
On 6 March 2012, the six members of the GCC announced that the Gulf Cooperation Council would be evolving from a regional bloc to a confederation, in possible response to Arab democratic unrest and increased Iranian influence in the region.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperation_Council_for_the_Arab_States_of_the_Gulf
Obligatory. "The laws of probability show that for every glass of water you drink, at least one molecule has passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell."
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
There's not an oil well or refinery within a thousand miles from me. Yet, I still seen to have an adequate supply of gasoline.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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. 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.
I understand that for poor (3rd world)people, and for wasteful agriculture, the cost of water is a big deal and should be managed, but the _actual cost_ of desalinated water is ridiculously low for a first world country, and will never be an issue. According to wikipedia (I'm lazy), as of 2005, it was 0.2 cents (US) per gallon. I pay at least an order of magnitude more than that right now in the US, getting water from Lake Michigan - clearly the "cost of the water" is mostly things other than "making" clean water - presumably it's the infrastructure for moving it around, and oversight / corruption. My monthly water bill is over $30, and I don't use the 500 gallons a day that my $30/month should buy - and I'm guessing processing Lake Michigan water is 1-2 orders of magnitude less expensive than desalination.
Now if you want cheap corn and beef and certain consumer goods (paper for example), then if water gets more expensive, agriculture and industry will have to quit wasting it - but they will, because it won't be cheap anymore. Funny how changing the price does that. Oh wait, no it isn't funny, it's basic economics - when something is nearly or actually free, people use it without a thought.
How you make it "not free" when anyone can put in a well and pump until the aquifers are empty is a different, mostly political issue. Presumably a tax on the sale of things that require water for their production would be the simplest, but there are smarter people than me who can figure that part out.
Remove oil and what fills the void?.... could it be ground water?
...for a fraction of the cost they could just import wheat.
But then, they would have to send out vast navies and armies to secure the supply. Now the costs start adding up.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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...
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
HHO powered vehicles...
Kickstart?
We HAVE solved it my dear fellow geek. Eat the whole can. There are no second uses.
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
And if you are willing to pay $5/gallon water won't be a problem either.
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 ?
I wonder how much water is now being stored in the increased population of humans and domesticated animals.
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.
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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 is over twenty thousand times greater than oil usage. 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 required? Do you honestly think that there are enough sources of fresh water to import from, assuming you had all the infrastructure and all the energy you needed to distribute it?
Do you know what the term "false equivalence" means?
=Smidge=
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.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
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 .
Let's hurry up and evolve to live off salt water. Go forth, and have sex with sweaty people.
Have no more than 2 kids, encourage your neighbors to do the same, eventually the availability of resources will magically increase.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
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.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
The cheese at the end of the nozzle is exposed to air and dries out. Sealing the end of the cheese nozzle might help.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Foregoing moderation to point this out: They do just dump the brine back in the ocean in some places. Where that's done, you get huge zones where nothing lives, because the algae at the bottom of the food chain usually can't live in such radically different salinity than they evolved in. This results in blooms of exotic algae, which tends to produce toxins - think red tide - when exposed to agricultural runoff. Fishermen are usually just run out of town, and if there was a commercial fishery, or the place was popular with out-of-town anglers, you've just killed the jobs involved with both of those.
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.
Screw eating it. Hook it up to an IV. Perhaps mixed with bacon grease.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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 or the current war in Yemen [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 extremists for years now. Iraq already attacked Kuwait once and wanted to move on Saudi Arabia. Today Iraq is mostly a threat because of instability.
However you seem to have missed the real point of the GCC's plan; to come together and create a confederation for economic and social development. They're not banding together because of threats - they're planning ahead. How long will the oil last? What do they live off afterwards? They have to develop their economies, industries, educate and train the population and be less reliant on foreign workers [from Asia and the West].
As for India and Pakistan, that's not their problem as those are Asian countries. Israel is obviously not loved by the GCC countries.
Does fracking require fresh water? Why not use salt water / dirty water.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
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.
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?
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. (Also the rate at which new icebergs melt, so you need to catch them quickly, and isolate them from salt water.)
Desalinization is probably cheaper.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
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.
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.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
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.
21st Century Renaissance Man
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 mirror. And that affects the proportions in EACH of the above categories.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
As predicted by The Twilight Zone (great episode BTW):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rip_Van_Winkle_Caper
...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.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
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 due to ocean current from that cooling Europe has warmed, and the monied interests of Europe are doing everything they can from stopping a reversal of this trend.
A group of my friends once tried to work out whether a tunnel dug with nuclear borers from Antarctica to Africa could be done inside the Earth's crust without running afoul of large-area gravitation/rotational effects. We fell down on the math skills, unfortunately.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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 bigger problem is that in California and most of the southwest we have vastly more people than we used to, but no more water has magically appeared. Therefore it comes down to a choice between building less houses or growing less crops...and with California real estate prices that's really a no brainer for politicians.
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.
21st Century Renaissance Man
Teddy was an avid hunter. Hunters are, without question, the most conservation minded people I know. I realize it's common to think of them as the big bad hunters killing animals but anyone who knows anything about hunting understands it is much much more than that. Teddy understood that well.
Modern day tree huggers? Not so much....
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/litre if you want to keep yourself clean. And irrigation? Give me a break. Anything more than a few pennies per kiloton of water (millions of liters) is unsustainable for agriculture.
No water for agriculture? No food. No food? War. Which means less water. Which means more war. Simple as that.
Fracking trades water for energy, and lack of water limits fracking in many parts of th world.
So what we need is less water!
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.....
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.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
If you farm, you are still hurting the aquifer, as you suck up way more water then the water cycle puts back in.
Desalinators running off of solar and nuclear, and better suited crops for an environment will help water usage tremendously (most of the human race lives near oceans, so shut up heartlanders). Alas, as we see with oil, it is easier to use up our Inheritance rather then try to build a way to support ourselves.
This is a desert/hot dry country problem. Meanwhile in other parts of the world, flooding is becoming more regular and dangerous.
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 better then this
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.
So you're telling me that you've laid claim to so much fresh water that you shit in it? And you think the solution is for everyone to be so wasteful so they'll stop giving you a hard time? Cities are populated because urban living is less resource-intensive and cheaper. Rural living is horridly inefficient.
Here's what your "living in the country" means: two hundred people could live off the water resources that you currently monopolize with your awful well-water/septic leech lifestyle. Be grateful that long ago, a bunch of people decided to kill for the plot of land you live on and raise an army to shoot anyone who disagreed. Be grateful that you won the birth lottery and started your life on the butt-end of those guns.
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.
Me too, but it's too salty to drink. Or so your mom says.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Actually, in the UK there is a massive amount of water that spills straight into the gutter. It lands on your roof, and when you actually start to collect it, you wonder why there is even a water company...
Well, not really. Israel imports substantial quantities of grain (approximately 80% of local consumption) What does that have to do with water? Grain trade is essentially a trade of water, in concentrated form. Growing wheat, for example, takes 584 lbs of water per lb of crop produced (it might even be worse, since I'm not sure if that is the entire wheat plant or just the grain). So importing 1 lb of wheat equates to importing about 600 lb of water. Maybe we think "water" means drinking water or taking showers, but that is a minuscule fraction of overall usage.
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 population of between 2.5 and 5 million people for thousands of years. Now they're closing in on 90 million.
You don't get car gasoline piped into your home like you do municipal water. The comparison is for liquids you must go out to buy at a distributor local to you.
No it cannot escape, my understanding is that the water molecules are too heavy to "float away" from the earths gravity. In fact chances are we have more water than back when the dinosaurs roamed, for the simple reason that all those frozen balls of ice that occasionally smash into the earth from the heavens have an ungodly amount of water in them.
Over the time span of the earths existance, I would suspect that the amount of water has been steadily increasing, overall.
At least it's illegal in the US to collect it, guaranteeing the water companies profit (depending on jurisdiction, YLMV).
Learn to love Alaska
Water gets broken into oxygen and hydrogen all the time and combined with carbon and other atoms for all sorts of interesting molecules. The fact that water itself cannot escape does not necessarily mean that it cannot disappear in other ways.
I would guess the same as you though, that the amount of water is increasing, incredibly slowly.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
1. You know nothing about drain fields.
2. You live in a city where your poo gets dumped in the ocean where people have to swim in it.
3. You're an asshole.
you can desalinate using a pond or other small body of water on very small scales, but this is not economical on large scales
Evaporation is absolutely economical on an industrial scale. Evaporation ponds around the Salt Lake produce around 1.5 M tons salt per year. Maybe not as high fast as digging it out of lake beds that spent a few million years evaporating, but letting the sun do your evaporation for free is definitely economical.
Do not try to defend your comparison, you made a horrible comparison because you did not think it all the way through. Your comparison fails when it goes beyond drinking water. It fails to account for bathing, cooking, and other sundry uses of water. Drop it.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Come on California, your better then this
Most of the subsidies are Federal, not state. So this is an "American" problem, not a Californian problem. But anyway, as a Californian, I thank you for your contribution to our state's economy.
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 has declined about 9 percent since it was first tapped for irrigation. (note this is not linear, as the aquifer shrinks, some places will run out of water long before other. In Long Beach, California, groundwater pumped subsidence was 29 feet in it's deepest part. Many oil wells were destroyed, as well as pipelines. http://www.longbeach.gov/oil/subsidence/story.asp , there are other places also, such as Houston Texas. http://www.subsidence.org/FAQs/Common.html
And once subsided, the aquifers don't come back, they are not elastic, at least on any time scales that will help humans.
There will probably be more rivers like the Colorado, that are completely used for people, and do not make it to the ocean any longer. We can feed the world with it's population growth - but only for a while
Is there a solution? Well, I would prefer that we stop popping out new people at the present rate. will that happen? I doubt it. So in lieu of a mass die-off, we might want to read the Dune novels, as a sort of look ahead. We'll probably go to hydroponic factory farms, which will free up land for more people, while going to a more manageable watering system. Efficient methods of irrigating on open land tend to salinate the soil.
The concept of the daily shower will probably go the way of the Dodo, I would expect strict water rationing per person.
Other possibilities might be massive nuclear plant fueled desalinization plants. As in plants much larger or more numerous than we have now, that are dedicated to desalinization. There are some serious waste material problems, like chlorine and salt. This method of producing fresh water does not help with the great plains water issues. There will still be liestyle issues. This whole method of getting water will put a lot of resources into just producing water and the resulting food/sanitation/life support will take up much more of our money.
Or we'll just all start fighting among ourselves, and kill most of us off. Which will solve the problem in the worst possible way.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Water that is absorbed by the ground and isn't directed into aquifers or similar structures is effectively lost.
No, the water eventually comes back as precipitation. It's a cycle. The problem is tht the water doen't aleay come back where you want it. I live in the Northeast of th eUSA. An area that gets plenty of water. Other places like Southern California, popular because it doesn't rain often, are using up water that they don't have, and have to get it form other areas.
But evaporated water always returns.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I remember a boast from the Thames Water Board a number of years agao that "every drop of the Thames has been drunk 7 times by the time is gets to the sea". Makes most Americans I know cringe at the thought. Maybe advertising hyperbole, but we do drink recycled water all the time
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.
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.
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.
Just this month new wind-farm energy dropped in cost to the point that it's now cheaper per kilowatt hour than new coal fired electricity generation. BTW that includes taking into account issues related to storage & peak loads.
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.
No, they pay that much for convenience in small volumes of water. They don't flush their toilets with it, or grow their wheat with it.
Oh, but I did think it all the way through. My first comment had most of the disclaimer seen in my second. It survived two previews then got deleted because 1) it should have been obvious people aren't paying $5/gal for *municipal* sourced water; 2) it was inconsistent with the bit about nearby taps and water fountains (municipal water), which served to drive home the actual point I was making in my first comment: how ridiculous people look when they bitch about gas prices even as they regularly buy bottled water at a higher rate, often using "convenience" as an excuse for laziness or unwillingness to prepare ahead of time.
("Convenience" excludes things like airport security or nightclubs which prevent you bringing along your own water or reusable bottle, or can't refill it. Obviously there's other valid reasons to use disposable water bottles, e.g. natural disaster aid)
As you've clearly demonstrated, including that disclaimer also would've detracted and distracted from the actual point I was making. The comparison was deliberately restricted to drinking water, since I look down on habitual use of disposable water bottles for "convenience" sake and was calling people out on that. Per your sig, that's my opinion and I'm entitled to it.
What the fuck? We're not running out of water. What we don't have is storage.
(Speaking for the US here, but) the civil engineers have, for decades, engineered every city to make water RUN OFF as fast as possible, downhill.
Then we wonder why the Mississippi and the Ohio and the Missouri fucking flood every year.
But it's fucking ILLEGAL up here in Colorado, where the water falls highest, to dig a wee pond to hold some, or even to put a rain barrel at the bottom of your downspout.
This isn't a science problem, it's a political problem. Oh, and hey, watch this! We stop so much water running back to the ocean... we check those rising sea levels!
There's oceans full of water that evaporate into fresh water and fall on the land... but only so much falls in a year. Hold the water ON THE LAND. This is a fuckin' no-brainer, people. Get out the bulldozers, build ponds, cut swales, trap the water.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
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.
it's in my head
At the rate of lacking water accessibility we should consider the obvious need that people have: *) Water Yes, one simple thing - water. Should we deprecate gold as being the finite value of things and replace it with water? /J
# # #
We're at seven billion people now. Do you think that number is going to go down?
I agree with you.
Here's what fuzzy is parroting:
This argument, which is not proven science, suggests the following: as technology and wealth improve likelihood of survival, people tend to have fewer children. That which technology does not do, birth control will also.
The main evidence for this, in this article's view, is that in fewer than half of the nations on earth, population growth has declined, and it took us as a whole longer to add the 7th billionth person than it has to add the previous billion.
The article is shoddy science for a number of reasons.
First, the nations that are declining in population tend to be the wealthier ones or ones aided by immigration in becoming so. Related to that is that the nations which are dropping in birth rate are importing large immigrant populations.
Second, the delay in adding the seventh billion may have very little significance. A few tragedies or droughts, some instability or disease, and a delay can happen. That's even assuming our estimates are right, since we're estimating that seven billion and when it occurred.
Finally, the article ignores the path of history. The poorer tend to outproduce the wealthier, which tends to make wealthy nations poorer and less stable, which tends to increase the birth rate as well.
Further, many of our magic cures like antibiotics are no longer guaranteed barriers to disease. In addition, many diseases are mutating. Life expectancy rates of a modern nature may be a blip on the radar.
As you noted, we're already at a stressing point. We don't need to look much farther than the collapse of fish stocks to see that we're trying to feed too many people.
The Slate article is suspect for another reason: Slate tends to pump out these feelgood articles every year or so encouraging us not to think about any problem that contradicts popular notions of fre
The feasibility of this approach is obviously dependent on local currents. Sun is already doing the same thing with sea water, on a global scale, by evaporating the water and keeping the salt in. I also believe that there are multiple mitigating techniques being used to cope with this even now, all different in principle, but all of them consisting in not dumping a large volume of highly concentrated brine in a single place.
Ezekiel 23:20
About the same amount, plus or minus the amount that this puppy's impactor added to the equation or blasted into space.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
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.
Oh, then all is well. The 10 billion people will be perfectly fed and watered, and have all the natural resources they will ever need.
We are aound 6.8 billion now. What is another 3 billion? And I agree that we'll probably start shrinking. Shrinking might a relatively pleasant term for what the process will be. Anyhow, my doubt is more based on my belief that we will take ourselves over some population brink, and then nature will adjust our population for us. And I wouldn't be surprised if it happens well below the 10 billion mark. Maybe not, perhaps Malthus will always be wrong.
But that is why I tie it in with our dissapearing water supplies. I pointed out a method to support a lot of people in a dry environment, but the expense might be too great, and the alternative will be to starve off a few billion. Not a pleasant thought.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yes, the anti-human environmentalists come out. If we killed all humans, the world would be better off. Well, I meant everyone but me. If you really believed what you said about overpopulation, you'd just kill yourself, right? Oh, it's not you that's overpopualted, it's all those people in Asia. All those people that don't look like you should kill themselves and send their resources to you to use.
Learn to love Alaska
and lack of water limits fracking in many parts of th world.
Thank goodness, I'd rather have clean water and walk a mile to get food than water with who-knows-what in it and gas in my car. You can't simply pump that crap waste water back into the earth and think that aquifers won't be affected, aka, the hole in the ground. Watch Gasland... I live near the Colorado epicenter of gas-drilling and we're, thankfully, creating harder restrictions to the practice than any other state. You can't make clean food with polluted air and poisoned water.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
The ocean is filled with fish. And these fish are constantly urinating and defecating.
In being able to drink the ocean long before freshwater supplies dry up.
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.
...about a million gallons. Tasty, too; I drink it.
Let's trade for some oil, gold, whatever.
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