Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NASA: Huge Freshwater Loss In the Middle East

Posted by Unknown on from the should-have-used-six-sigma dept.

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."

60 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. Mideast Water Shortage by gpronger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Mideast Water Shortage by NevarMore · · Score: 4, 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.

    2. Re:Mideast Water Shortage by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 3

      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.

      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.

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  2. Bring in the Prophets and Sons of Gods by ixarux · · Score: 2, Funny

    Someone needs to convert all that oil into water. Now THAT would be a miracle!

  3. People Forget About Iraq's Marshes by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
    1. Re:People Forget About Iraq's Marshes by Kreigaffe · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      ... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about. :|
    2. Re:People Forget About Iraq's Marshes by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

    3. Re:People Forget About Iraq's Marshes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Very rarely is human life at stake. 99.9% of the time it is someone worried about not being able to make another buck.

    4. Re:People Forget About Iraq's Marshes by Darkness404 · · Score: 2

      There are lots of examples from "tree huggers" putting the environment above people.

      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.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    5. Re:People Forget About Iraq's Marshes by GameboyRMH · · Score: 2

      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?

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    6. Re:People Forget About Iraq's Marshes by quacking+duck · · Score: 3, 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...

    7. Re:People Forget About Iraq's Marshes by HiThere · · Score: 3, 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.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    8. Re:People Forget About Iraq's Marshes by aceboomblain · · Score: 2

      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 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. Oil is abundant compared to what we need to make efficient solar panels and wind turbines.

      These are things that the "tree huggers" have been fooled into becoming proponents of, even though the ecological damage that would result would be much worse than the pursuit of oil if we ever tried to scale those up to actually meet our energy needs.

      The worse part of this is that reasonable alternatives like natural gas cars is taking a back seat to what the tree huggers imagine we should do. Granted, NG will run out someday too, but it would buy us a whole lot of time and decrease our dependance on foreign oil. The good news is that some ecologically intelligent companies aren't waiting for the political winds to change and are already using NG in their fleet cars.

    9. Re:People Forget About Iraq's Marshes by amorsen · · Score: 2

      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" needed for permanent magnets are not actually very rare.

      Solar cells are made from a myriad of materials. Some of those will scale almost unlimited, some likely won't.

      However, your views luckily do not matter. Wind power is now cost competitive in South America without subsidies, even if fossil fuels do not have to pay for any of the damage they cause. In just a few years that will be true in much larger parts of the world. Simple economics will kill off coal-fired power plants.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
  4. Israel is almost completely desalination provided by Sun · · 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

  5. Where were you when the water wars began? by concealment · · Score: 2

    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)

    1. Re:Where were you when the water wars began? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, 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.

  6. A History of Water Diplomacy in the Middle East by ixarux · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. pull these countries together by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just like our shortage of oil has pulled the west together.

  8. Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... by alen · · Score: 3, Funny

    i give some back to the world every few hours

  9. Re:Welp by Smidge204 · · Score: 4, 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=

  10. The main reason I'm against fracking by Grayhand · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:The main reason I'm against fracking by Darkness404 · · Score: 2

      Except that cheap energy = cheap food. If you look at the logistics of farming in America, unless you are a factory farm and use hundreds and thousands of acres of land, you simply cannot profitably produce (much) food. Energy is needed to provide the power to run tractors and combines, energy is needed to ship the food. We are healthier today than we were in 1813 partially because we can have a wide variety of foods in our diet. If you lived in a non-tropical area 200 years ago, you couldn't eat tropical fruits. If you lived in an area where apples could grow and oranges couldn't you ate apples and not oranges. You had only a handful of different ingredients to get all their nutrients from, if something didn't grow during that time of year or the crops failed, you didn't eat that. Just look at the malnutrition that faced countries with a single staple food (such as Ireland). Today though, even though its the dead of winter in Minnesota, I can still go out to my local grocery store and pick up a fresh pineapple.

      When it comes to water, we've got a nearly infinite water reserve called the ocean and desalination is quite feasible already and will more than likely become more and more refined as time goes on. We might have to pay a bit more for water than right now (although if we encouraged competition with water companies that could be lessened) but I don't see some gigantic water-less apocalypse happening anytime soon. Just build a couple more desalination plants and the problem will solve itself.

      And when it comes to the third world, the problem is mostly government. When governments stop fighting wars and stop the theft of their people, agriculture can truly start taking off, but with the current climate in many of the starving places of coming into an "enemy" village, burning its crops and killing its men of course you are going to have hunger.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    2. Re:The main reason I'm against fracking by gl4ss · · Score: 2

      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 some river and try to get control that area and if they have control then re-route the water to their fields. and since they've been warring already non-stop when the fuck did the water wars start? 1949? 1929? 1915?

      (oh and if you have energy you can purify or create water...)

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  11. Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... by Githaron · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  12. Re:So, no matter what we do, we are screwed by JeanCroix · · Score: 3, 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.

  13. Re:Welp by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, 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.

  14. Pulling Together by andersh · · Score: 2

    It would be nice to think that a regional water shortage would pull these countries together to solve a mutual problem.

    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

    1. Re:Pulling Together by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      Do any of those places have any beef with each other anyway?

      They thought so, but it came from Ireland & Romania and it turned out to be 60% horse and 30% pork.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  15. Re:So, no matter what we do, we are screwed by Githaron · · Score: 2

    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.

  16. Re:Where's Waldo by plover · · Score: 4, 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.

    --
    John
  17. Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... by ackthpt · · Score: 2

    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
  18. Ice Pirates by Stele · · Score: 4, 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.

  19. 3 minutes, 3 days, 3 weeks ... by Anonymous Coward · · 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 ?

  20. Re:Welp by Smidge204 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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=

  21. Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  22. Cheap energy = cheaper water by phorm · · 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 .

  23. evolution by WillgasM · · Score: 4, Funny

    Let's hurry up and evolve to live off salt water. Go forth, and have sex with sweaty people.

  24. Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... by Chrontius · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  25. Power and Influence by andersh · · Score: 2

    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.

  26. Re:So, no matter what we do, we are screwed by Golddess · · Score: 2

    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)-
  27. Re:Welp by quacking+duck · · Score: 2

    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.

  28. Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... by dj245 · · 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.

    --
    Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
  29. Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... by thomasw_lrd · · Score: 2

    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
  30. Re:Welp by thomasw_lrd · · Score: 2

    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
  31. Not surprising....he's a hunter by tacokill · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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....

  32. Re:fracking water by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 3, 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.

    --
    Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
  33. Re:Welp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  34. Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is a desert/hot dry country problem. Meanwhile in other parts of the world, flooding is becoming more regular and dangerous.

  35. Re:Welp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

  36. Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

    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."
  37. Re:Israel is almost completely desalination provid by timeOday · · Score: 2

    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.

  38. Re:Welp by ahodgson · · Score: 2

    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.

  39. Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

    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.
  40. The Turkish Dams by DABANSHEE · · Score: 2

    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.

  41. Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... by riverat1 · · Score: 2

    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.

  42. Israelis are water wasters by DABANSHEE · · Score: 2

    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.

  43. Re:At the rate that we're drinking water... by Troed · · Score: 3, 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.

    --
    it's in my head
  44. Here's where he got the argument by concealment · · Score: 2

    So the burn rate isn't increasing, big fucking deal. We're still not remotely at a break even point for water consumption so, guess what, there's still a huge problem.

    I agree with you.

    Here's what fuzzy is parroting:

    Moreover, the poor, highly fertile countries that once churned out immigrants by the boatload are now experiencing birthrate declines of their own. From 1960 to 2009, Mexico’s fertility rate tumbled from 7.3 live births per woman to 2.4, India’s dropped from six to 2.5, and Brazil’s fell from 6.15 to 1.9. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, where the average birthrate remains a relatively blistering 4.66, fertility is projected to fall below replacement level by the 2070s. This change in developing countries will affect not only the U.S. population, of course, but eventually the world’s.

    Why is this happening? Scientists who study population dynamics point to a phenomenon called “demographic transition.”

    “For hundreds of thousands of years,” explains Warren Sanderson, a professor of economics at Stony Brook University, “in order for humanity to survive things like epidemics and wars and famine, birthrates had to be very high.” Eventually, thanks to technology, death rates started to fall in Europe and in North America, and the population size soared. In time, though, birthrates fell as well, and the population leveled out. The same pattern has repeated in countries around the world. Demographic transition, Sanderson says, “is a shift between two very different long-run states: from high death rates and high birthrates to low death rates and low birthrates.” Not only is the pattern well-documented, it’s well under way: Already, more than half the world’s population is reproducing at below the replacement rate. - Slate.com

    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

  45. Re:Welp by ahodgson · · Score: 2

    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.