The Nations That Will Be Hardest Hit By Water Shortages By 2040

merbs writes: Water access is going to be one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century. As climate change dries out the already dry areas and makes the wet ones wetter, we're poised to see some radical civilizational shifts. For one, a number of densely populated areas will come under serious water stress—which analysts fear will lead to strife, thirst, and even violent conflict. With that in mind, the World Resource Institute has assembled a new report projecting which nations are most likely to be hardest hit by water stress in coming decades—nations like Bahrain, Israel, Palestine, and Spain lead the pack.

Comments

Alaska

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how Alaska gets included with the rest of the nation even though we have nothing close to a water shortage with all the glaciers up here. We should have been grouped with Canada.

Re:Alaska

[NicBenjamin]

If you're gonna divide it up like that the Great Lakes bit of the Midwest should have no shortage, either. The prairie bit of the Midwest is in much bigger trouble because the Oglala Aquifer is being drawn down too much, and the Mississippi is probably gonna be schizo with more evaporation (ie: lots of heat meaning more evaporation, and some years the rain'll come down within the Mississippi valley and they'll have too much, and others it won't and they'll have too little). The Pacific Northwest should also be fine.

I suspect the South, Southwest, and Cali will have the biggest problems.

No idea about the Northeast.

Re:Alaska

[hawguy]

I love how Alaska gets included with the rest of the nation even though we have nothing close to a water shortage with all the glaciers up here. We should have been grouped with Canada.

Did you read the headline? The Nations That Will Be Hardest Hit By Water Shortages By 2040. Unless Alaska has somehow seceded from the union, I don't see how they could group Alaska with Canada.

There are plenty of other US state drought maps that you can use if you really care about a single state's water, but don't complain that a global representation of drought was not local enough for you.

Re:Alaska

[Z00L00K]

It would make a lot more sense to build up a map of regions where areas with the highest shortages are plotted, much like the US drought monitor but worldwide.

There are areas within countries with a lot of water like Canada where there's a shortage because the population density is too high as well as areas where there's no shortage of water even though it's arid because few people live there.

Re:Alaska

[RabidReindeer]

I love how Alaska gets included with the rest of the nation even though we have nothing close to a water shortage with all the glaciers up here. We should have been grouped with Canada.

You have glaciers now. But California gets, um got a significant amount of water from its mountain snowpack, as well. Another big chunk of Greenland glacier fell off into the sea this week.

Florida has been under water restrictions for decades. And it's surrounded by water on 3 sides. Just not potable water.

Re:Alaska

[garyisabusyguy]

Yes, Alaska and Canada will be water suppliers to the lower 48

Re:Alaska

[rtb61]

A lot of weather forecasting is done based upon analysis of past data with prior weather patterns. More accurate future weather forecasting will require analysis of future stable weather patterns. Localising data is very difficult at the moment as weather patterns oscillate somewhere between past weather patterns and future developing weather patterns.

Water shortages are subject to water usage at particular locations, so more water in areas not developed to make use of it and less water in areas fully developed to make use of existing availability.

Water as a resource is unlike other resources and totally bound to energy availability. With surplus cheap energy, there is no such thing as a water shortage, as you could condense it straight out of the atmosphere.

Re:Alaska

[userw014]

Drought is relative too. An ecology evolved for wetter conditions can suffer when precipitation falls - even to levels that would be considered "wet" elsewhere. The northern part of the lower peninsula of the State of Michigan has been under fire-watch/no-burn orders over the summer for the past few years, even though Michigan is surrounded by the Great Lakes. A few years back, parts of the south around Georgia were under drought conditions.

There is fraking (hydraulic fracturing) extraction occurring in Michigan - and because of shallow water tables in some areas, the fraking operators are demanding large quantities of water from local water systems because on-site wells can't supply their needs (to make a speculative profit.) These demands on local water systems exceed the capacity of systems designed for residential and light industrial use - and might require local communities to overbuild local water systems for transient gain by non-local companies and investors.

Of course, given the importance Californian agriculture has for the whole of the United States, drought conditions there impact everyone

Re:Alaska

[kellymcdonald78]

This is the Pacific Northwest that is currently on fire (as in 500km away I can hardly see across the street due to the smoke from Washington State)

Re:Alaska

[david_thornley]

While there's lots of fresh water in the Great Lakes, the watershed really isn't all that big, so it won't renew itself real fast. Drain it too fast, and there will be some pretty big problems from lowering lake levels.

Re:Alaska

[NicBenjamin]

Two points:

1) Unlike many watersheds, particularly towards the coast, it's a closed system except for evaporation. Chicago water comes from, and goes to, the same lake. This water is then available for Chicago again, or (more likely) can be pumped into Michigan for irrigation, Milwaukee's water system, etc. And then it proceeds through Huron, Erie, and Ontario; and is usable by Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, etc. etc.

2) The lakes contain a fifth of the world's fresh water. The watershed population them contain much less then a fifth of the human race (by my count it's 1% or so, it's hard to do more precisely because the political borders do not match up to the hydrological borders).

Which means we'd have to be using as truly ridiculous amount of water before the fact it was in the fields irrigating Cherries (and not in the lake) started affecting the lake-level in any measurable way; and we'd have to keep doing it for literally decades before we got to Cali-levels of fucked by global warming.

Re:Alaska

[NicBenjamin]

But the question wasn't "Are they gonna be in some trouble?" Everybody's in some trouble (except Alaska and, mayhaps, the Great Lakes). It's "Are they in more trouble then everyone else?"

And the cities of the Pacific Northwest are probably fine, because that constant mist of rain off the ocean probably won't change, so in theory they don't *have* to ration water (they almost certainly will anyway because Portland). The interior is less fine, but it's not really more un-fine then Idaho, the Imperial Valley, or any of another half-dozen places.

Re:Alaska

[CanadianMacFan]

Closed system? So that big river (the St. Lawrence) extending to the Atlantic has been filled in or dam put in?

Re:Alaska

[NicBenjamin]

[joke] That bits on your side of the border. It's your problem. [/joke]

That was hyperbole. Niagara Falls does exist, but in terms of the bit of the lakes that the US uses, almost none of it is anywhere near the Falls. It's very easy for most American cities to use up their water supply because the place water goes is not a place you can easily get freshwater from. Phoenix's mostly goes to the sky as evaporation, and will come down somewhere that is not Arizona, LA and NYC send theirs to the ocean. Cities on rivers tend to send it downriver. But Chicago actually gets it's water from the same place it discharges it's wastewater. Detroit (which is downlake two Great Lakes, Lake St. Clair, and a couple rivers from Chicago) both gets it's water from the lake system and gives it back to the Lake system. You don't get to a point where the US Side of the border actually loses a gallon of water somebody uses until you hit Buffalo.

That means it takes a lot more water-use before we use up the lake.

Re:Alaska

[mcswell]

Yeah, I'm wondering about that premise in the original article: (all?) dry areas will get drier, and (all?) wet areas wetter. How do we know it won't be the other way around? This can only be the prediction of a model, and the predictions from models, even the short term/ local ones, thus far don't strike me as very good. In particular, predictions about winter snowfall and hurricane seasons seem to have been way off for the last 10-20 years.

Re:Alaska

[mcswell]

Florida has been under water restrictions for decades. And it's surrounded by water on 3 sides. Just not potable water.

Couldn't have anything to do with its 3-fold population growth over the last 50 or so years, now could it?

Speculation on top of speculation

[Crashmarik]

Oh well, I suppose people with very stable and safe lives need to find something to fear.

Re:Speculation on top of speculation

[garyisabusyguy]

"Those who fail to plan, plan to fail"
-Sphinx

Re:Speculation on top of speculation

[Crashmarik]

Sorry, tax payers never said that. The saying is "A fool and his money are soon parted" .

I am sure they have said that.

Re:Speculation on top of speculation

[LessThanObvious]

The only thing we have to sell, is fear itself.

That's messed up

[fustakrakich]

By 2040 we should have all that crap sorted out. If there are any shortages, it's because some corrupt bastard is mucking up the works. There is absolutely no longer any technical reason to suffer shortages of any kind anywhere.

Re:That's messed up

[Anonymous Coward]

some corrupt bastard is mucking up the works.

Why would you think they would be any fewer in 2040?

Re:That's messed up

[MightyMartian]

I'm assuming you're talking about desalination. That requires a lot of energy, and there's no way short of a revolution in fusion technology that you could use that to produce enough water for irrigation of any significant amount of stable land. And you're still left with the problem may users of aquifers are suffering; way to much salt.

A succinct change in rain patterns will almost certainly turn land now under cultivation into semi arid lands, without sufficient fresh water to reverse the problem.

Re:That's messed up

[hawguy]

By 2040 we should have all that crap sorted out. If there are any shortages, it's because some corrupt bastard is mucking up the works. There is absolutely no longer any technical reason to suffer shortages of any kind anywhere.

It can take a decade or longer to do an environmental review, get permits, and build a large desalination plant (and decades more to build a nuclear plant to power it). Building a dam or large reservoir can take even longer (and still needs time to fill).

While some progress will be made, don't count on the problem being solved in 25 years.

Re:That's messed up

[kenwd0elq]

Any major change in rain patterns will likely cause water shortages in SOME places and water surpluses in others.The desert Southwest of the United States was probably fertile and green 700 years ago; after all, the Anasazi had a civilization of SOME sort then, and there hasn't been any water around in the last few hundred. Everything goes in cycles; don't expect that every change will be a bad one.

Re: That's messed up

[Laconique]

I find it even more painful that much of Africa is not using that much water. That's only because the corruption and the lack of infrastructure. Richer countries, though with some exceptions all around, find it affordable to use a lot

Re:That's messed up

[kenwd0elq]

So you're saying that government is the major impediment to progress? I agree!

Re:That's messed up

[fustakrakich]

I'm assuming you're talking about desalination.

There is that. The bigger issue is transportation. There's plenty of water, just not where we need it at the moment. And we have to restore contaminated water. Time to build some big-ass, nuclear powered tunnel boring machines, and pipe it around like oil, gas, and battery acid. And after bailing out the bankers, I don't want hear anybody crying that we don't have the money. There's plenty of that also, just not where we need it at the moment...

Re:That's messed up

[MightyMartian]

And what if that rainfall change leads to greater rainfall on one side of a national border and far leads arable conditions on the other? Imagine of large swathes of the Midwest are rendered unsuitable for large scale agriculture, because rainbelts have moved into Canada. Suddenly the United States' food security is in a foreign country's hands.

There are serious geopolitical ramifications of male changes in rainfall patterns.

Re:That's messed up

[MightyMartian]

Read about the water wars in California and neighboring states when the Colorado River was tapped to turn desert into oasis. Any jurisdiction that imagines it is just going to wholesale grab another jurisdiction's water is likely in for a rude surprise. Now imagine if those jurisdictions are in different nations.

Re:That's messed up

[fustakrakich]

We can always do a reenactment of the War of 1812... on location... with live rounds...

Re:That's messed up

[fustakrakich]

Yes, it is disturbing when war is the cheapest and easiest way to acquire water. It's happening in the Middle East also.

Re:That's messed up

[hawguy]

So you're saying that government is the major impediment to progress? I agree!

No, its the under educated voters that vote on emotion and sound bites rather than issues. Oh yeah I guess the people and the government are one and the same.

Re:That's messed up

[Z00L00K]

License to procreate would be a step ahead.

Re:That's messed up

[Z00L00K]

Or move people to where the water is?

Re:That's messed up

[RabidReindeer]

Actually, a lot of that area was underseas a few million years ago, but what difference does that make here and in the near future?

It's strongly suspected that a lot of the Mesoamerican civilization collapses (Olmecs, Maya, etc. were related to rainfall changes.

And a change IS a bad one if it happens to punish where you live.

Re:That's messed up

[Crashmarik]

You Americans and your "might makes right." Just remember, they might burn the White House again.

How much do they want to do the job ?

I am pretty sure if you put it on kickstarter you can probably hit stretch goals for the capitol and all of K street.

Re:That's messed up

[Dog-Cow]

You imply that would be a bad thing...

Re:That's messed up

[mentil]

short of a revolution in fusion technology

Luckily, that's only 20 years away. 2040 is 25 years away. Disaster averted.

Re:That's messed up

[Barsteward]

Once the heavy reliance on fossil fuel is over, they could convert the oil pipelines to water pipelines. As most of the oil producing countries are desert like, the roles could be reversed.

Re:That's messed up

[Torvac]

shortage =====> profit

Re:That's messed up

[CrimsonAvenger]

That requires a lot of energy, and there's no way short of a revolution in fusion technology

Or, y'know, building a bunch of nuclear plants.

Or, y'know, taking advantage of all that newly available sunlight to build large-scale solar stills.

Or....

Re:That's messed up

[jez9999]

That requires a lot of energy, and there's no way short of a revolution in fusion technology that you could use that to produce enough water for irrigation of any significant amount of stable land.

What about fission?

Re:That's messed up

[gsslay]

By 2040 we should have all that crap sorted out. If there are any shortages, it's because some corrupt bastard is mucking up the works.

One thing we're never likely to suffer any shortage of is corrupt bastards mucking up the works.

Re:That's messed up

[drinkypoo]

Or, y'know, taking advantage of all that newly available sunlight to build large-scale solar stills.

Or....

...using solar-thermal heat pipes to pump water from the ocean into deserts, there using it to grow algae for biofuel feedstocks. Any excess water is simply spilled over into a salt pan, and replenishes groundwater.

Re:That's messed up

[nomadic]

Plus you've got to figure out something to do with all the salt you take out.

Re:That's messed up

[Spy Handler]

I'm assuming you're talking about desalination. That requires a lot of energy, and there's no way short of a revolution in fusion technology...

Maybe he was talking about desal, but what I wanna talk about is giant flying fan blades. Compact fusion generators in the sky, turning giant fan blades. They can blow rainclouds into areas that need rain and away from areas that have too much rain.

Farfetched? Only the compact fusion generator part. If we have those then the possibilities are endless.

Re:That's messed up

[MightyMartian]

Apart from the fantasist part of giant floating fans, fusion-powered or otherwise, this is still taking water from one place and moving it to another. What if the people who live in the place with "too much" rain (whatever that may mean) don't think they receive too much rain. What if they don't want to see their water taken, whether by big pipes, big fans or magic transporters?

Again I repeat that there are serious geopolitical issues to moving water from jurisdictions that may have an apparent plenty to jurisdictions that do not. It's likely to get bad enough when you talk about moving water from one area of a country to another. The water wars of the 1930s over Southern California's seizing of neighboring areas' water would probable be tame when compared to, say, trying to seize the Pacific Northwest's water reserves (whether in clouds, lakes or rivers).

Now let's imagine that going across international boundaries. What if, say, Canada did not want to take part in any scheme to move vast quantities of water to the US Midwest beyond what systems like the Red River system move? Wouldn't your giant fusion fans essentially be theft of another country's natural resources?

Re:That's messed up

[fustakrakich]

Those pipes are way too tiny. We need to make mile wide rivers and tunnels.

Re:That's messed up

[david_thornley]

Desalinization also tends to produce water at sea level, and in many cases the irrigation is needed at considerably higher altitudes. Moving that much water uphill is also going to take a lot of energy.

Re:That's messed up

[david_thornley]

Assuming we keep up the necessary funding, what will we have in 2040? How expensive will it be to build a fusion power plant, and how much power will it produce? I've heard "too cheap to meter" before.

Re:That's messed up

[Curunir_wolf]

There are serious geopolitical ramifications of male changes in rainfall patterns.

Look, I know it's popular among the social justice crowd to blame all kinds of ills on "the patriarchy", but, you're not really coming off as credible to blame the dominant gender for orchestrating where the rain falls.

Re:That's messed up

[Curunir_wolf]

I'm assuming you're talking about desalination.

There is that. The bigger issue is transportation. There's plenty of water, just not where we need it at the moment. And we have to restore contaminated water. Time to build some big-ass, nuclear powered tunnel boring machines, and pipe it around like oil, gas, and battery acid. And after bailing out the bankers, I don't want hear anybody crying that we don't have the money. There's plenty of that also, just not where we need it at the moment...

It's not like this is a new problem. Solutions were developed as far back as the 1960's, and many politicians promoted those plans as early as 1978 and warned of the dangers of doing nothing. But nobody listened. And it kept getting worse, and still nobody wanted to invest in it. There just wasn't enough corporate profit in it, politicians can succeed by ignoring it, and there is simply no stomach in the US electorate for taking on some pain to alleviate future problems.

So here we are. Carly Fiorina called out Jerry Brown for decades of needing infrastructure and the blockage of any progress by back-to-nature ideologically opposed to dams, canals, even reservoirs in California, so nothing got built and their paying for it now.

And no, it's not like "Climate change" where huge investments are maybe going to mitigate some warming, how much and whether any of it will work is questionable.

We have proven, practical solutions for storing and transporting water and, yes, even desalination where it's needed (just check out the projects in Dubai). But nothing happens. Worst drought ever in California, and what does the leadership say? Saving water for the future is "utter ignorance". Really? Seems I remember ancient Egyptians even knew enough to store food in case of famine.

Re:That's messed up

[LynnwoodRooster]

We make a deal with Idaho for their potatoes...

Re:That's messed up

[fustakrakich]

Carly Fiorina called out Jerry Brown for decades of needing infrastructure...

Heh, so much for setting an example while she had control of HP. The biggest reason people don't want dams, canals, etc, is because they know there is shoddy, corrupt management behind it (is it ironic that these are people they elect? Maybe not). Obviously that is the wrong tactic. They just need to demand competent, transparent oversight. If people take interest the problem is solved. There need not be any undue sacrifice. Just a visit to the therapist...

We can only 'mitigate' the warming by polluting less. But now since it is happening anyway, we'll have to move everything not meant to be submerged a few miles inland or put it on the roof. That seems to be a simple truth. We should probably get on with it, so we can pace ourselves and do it nice and slow. Also, companies that make truck tire inner tubes might want to ramp up production a bit. Floating down 5th Avenue, listening to Gene Kelly will be the new pastime.

Re:That's messed up

[CanadianMacFan]

Well, since Canada as a nation didn't come into being until 1867 no Canadians could have burnt down the White House in the first place. So, yes it was some British troops that the Americans were fighting in 1812. And a bunch of locals that kicked their asses back across the border.

Re:That's messed up

[mcswell]

Why do you think MightyMartian is a fake name? I thought everyone knew they had a climate crisis on Mars centuries (if not millenia) ago, and the subsequent drought is why they dug the canals. The CO2 in their atmosphere was a too-late attempt to increase the temperature before global cooling, er climate change, took over. The canals and the oases that Schiaparelli and Lowell saw in the late 19th century dried up during the early 1900s, giving rise to the dust storms that confronted the Soviet Mars 2 and 3, and American Mariner 9 probes in the early 1970s. MightyMartian is doubtless one of the survivors, sent to warn us about climate change. (The notion that Mars was attacking was due to a bug in their translator.)

strife in israel and palastine?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

So...water shortage might cause Israel and Palestine to have issues, then?

Re:strife in israel and palastine?

[houstonbofh]

Israel? You mean that place we were talking about not long ago with all of the new desalination plants shipping water to other countries? That Israel?

Re:strife in israel and palastine?

[skaag]

I was going to say that the report is out of date. Israel have already solved their water shortage problems, forever, and they have so much to spare that they have begun exporting water to neighboring countries. I believe this could work in Israel's favor, as they forge a path to peace with the region.

Re:strife in israel and palastine?

[Z00L00K]

Meanwhile the Dead Sea shrinks every year.

Re:strife in israel and palastine?

[skaag]

That is not just a man-made disaster, it's a crime. The companies doing this should be held accountable, but it's such a Banana Republic, I don't know if that will ever happen.

Re:strife in israel and palastine?

[RabidReindeer]

I believe this could work in Israel's favor, as they forge a path to peace with the region.

So when do they stop bulldozing and start forging?

And yes, I know the Palestinians are launching rockets. The best way to achieve peace isn't tit-for-tat. Ask Ireland.

Re:strife in israel and palastine?

[Dog-Cow]

The problem with peace at the level of nations is that you need to nation-entities who are interested in peace(ful coexistence). When you find the second such player in the Israeli-Arab conflict, please let Israel know.

Re:strife in israel and palastine?

[Dog-Cow]

two, not to.

Oops.

Re:strife in israel and palastine?

[Barsteward]

why desalinate more? just pump the excess water in the flood regions to the places that need it. its just the infrastructure that is required.

Re:strife in israel and palastine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually no: because Israel is almost completely dependent on hydrocarbon for energy production, which is absolutely unsustainable.
Burning oil or coal to desalinate water is a very short term solution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Israel

Re:strife in israel and palastine?

[Sun]

Yes, it's horrible, but it has nothing to do with the water shortage.

Shachar

Re:strife in israel and palastine?

[Z00L00K]

Well - it has to do with water shortage because the water from the Jordan River is used for irrigation.

Re:strife in israel and palastine?

[JazzLad]

Maybe he meant the Arabs?

Re:strife in israel and palastine?

[caseih]

Israel and Palestine have been having strife over water for decades. Israel diverts nearly 100% of the Jordan river now, mostly for its own agricultural purposes. To add insult to injury this water is piped right through the west bank to Israeli farms and communities in the south. Palestinian farms and communities get less and less of this water as time goes on. And as the aquifers that feed the Jordan river fluctuate, guess who gets the short end of the stick? Certainly not Israelis. Water is certainly used as a passive weapon, that's for sure.

Re:Great

[Falconhell]

Except, of course that's a flat out lie, there was a magazine article, nothing else. The AGW deniers have been so thoroughly discredited they are reduced to making stuff up.

Re:Great

[MightyMartian]

Christ will this lying meme ever fucking die?

Spain is Europes garden

[Anonymous Coward]

Spain is covered in greenhouses, if they run out of water, Europe runs out of food, so you can pretty much expect desalination plants to be built in large scale.

I know they already are getting into solar in a big way.

Obviously...

[tlambert]

Obviously, it will be the ones with inadequate desalination plants.

Re:Obviously...

[houghi]

California is safe then with the salted almonds they grow.

More Fearmongering

[LordLucless]

Uh-huh. Here in Australia, we had one of these guys screeching about the perpetual drought Australia was going to be enduring. The government poured billions into building the biggest desalination plant in the country. Then the drought ended, the dams filled, and the desal plant is idling along, producing nothing, but costing half a million a day.

Re:More Fearmongering

[barc0001]

Weather *is* cyclical you know, and with climate change some places are going to be hit with even more aggressive patterns.

Or there could be other problems brewing. I'm not sure what the water table usage in Australia is, have you looked into it? It's one of those things that can be really bad when the water runs out but nobody thinks about because it's out of sight, out of mind. Just look at California - they've been drawing way more out of the aquifers than can possibly be replenished for decades and it's causing the actual ground to sink. One day not too far off those aquifers will be dry and then their entire agricultural sector will be screwed.

Re:More Fearmongering

[LordLucless]

Some rural areas might rely on aquifers, but the vast majority of Australia relies on man-made dams. I *know* weather is cyclical - as does everyone who's lived in Australia for more than a decade. Poems have been written about the juxtaposition of our "droughts and flooding rains". That's why I get cynical when people start screaming that the sky is falling, because we're in a part of the cycle they're not enjoying.

Re:More Fearmongering

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yes... darned those people trying to save fellow Australians from the 10 year drought with water rations and water reserves at less than 30% with no sign of the drought ending. You do realize if it had been a 15 year drought instead of a 10 year drought, you'd be praising that facility as a godsend, right?

The cost per day is even higher than you state, but to be fair -- the payments are mostly on the construction of the facility -- not actually the cost of maintaining the idle facility. It'll take nearly 30 years to pay it off, but after that, hey... you have a great facility should you need it... and you probably will.

With reservoirs at 80%, you've less than 1 1/2 years of water stored (assuming no rainfall at all). You're set for the next 10 year drought or longer, but go ahead and whine about the cost while you're not using it so I can tell you I told you so when you're living off of the water it makes during an upcoming 20 year drought.

Geez, you're like the guy that complains about the cost of buying a generator he never uses -- 'til a hurricane knocks out the power for a week or two.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/engl...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:More Fearmongering

[LordLucless]

Sure. That's why we built all those dams in the first place - you store up excess capacity in the good times, and have it available in the bad times. Very simple, very low-tech, and much cheaper than a complex desal plant. The reason we built desal plants instead was that the powers that be had been convinced that rainfall was going away, and those plants don't rely on rainfall.

Re:More Fearmongering

[Jack Griffin]

If it's idle, what is the half a million per day being spent on?

Re:More Fearmongering

[LordLucless]

The cost per day is even higher than you state, but to be fair -- the payments are mostly on the construction of the facility -- not actually the cost of maintaining the idle facility. It'll take nearly 30 years to pay it off, but after that, hey... you have a great facility should you need it... and you probably will.

Or they could have built another dam, just like we have historically done to cope with droughts and population increases. They cost a fraction of the amount of a desal plant, both in construction and in maintenance, and can have enormous capacities.

Desal plants weren't built to deal with recurring droughts - we have them already, and we're already pretty good at storing and rationing water to deal with them. They were built because people were claiming that weather patterns were changing, and we would no longer be able to rely on rainfall to fill dams - and they pointed to the current drought as evidence.

Wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is not water shortage, it's human surplus.

Israel will probably be OK

[uri.shtand]

Israel will probably be OK. In the recent years, It invested heavily in reclaimed water and desalination facilities. It can already provide more then 50% of it's water from desalination and dirty water processing. The countries around Israel though, are not in such a great shape. Jordan buys water from Israel today, and would probably need to buy more in the future. Saudi Arabia might have some issues as well. Syria and Iraq are losing their infrastructures fast. It doesn't help that you have water on the other side of the country, if you don't have the infrastructure to move it... or the political stability to do that.

Re:I'm from Mongolia

[tlambert]

Desalination plants are also used for treatment of alkali water.

"A new report from the Asian Development Bank sent a warning signal to Mongolia that, despite its wealth of natural resources and pristine image, the country faces a severe water scarcity and quality crisis"

So if you can't fix the quantity, fix the quality.

Africa, corruption

[Anonymous Coward]

The most blatant corruption here are the so-called "free" trade agreements rammed down the throats of African nations (EU, I'm looking at you). They are killing local industries (just one example: they are swamped by cheap, disgusting leftovers from EU chicken industry because the "developed" nation's citizens can only stand breast and drumstick).

Water? The same: The likes of Nestlé and Veolia steal the water to re-sell it to the locals.

Now that's not to say that the local chiefs aren't corrupt -- but pointing at them from our "first world" couch totally misses the point.

Now excuse me, I'm going to barf.

Re:Africa, corruption

[DrXym]

Call this a wild and crazy supposition but I bet if you walked into any open market or supermarket in continent of Africa that you would find chicken for sale, either whole or in part. Live, slaughtered and refrigerated according to where you were looking. Maybe you think that the EU steals all the chicken breasts and Africa just gets buckets of scrag ends with flies crawling all over them.

Re:Africa, corruption

[Nrrqshrr]

Hey, still beats growing your chicken in the US, sending it all the way to China for "Processing", then getting whatever it is that you will be eating back.

Re:Africa, corruption

[DrXym]

Pure twaddle. Type in "chicken farm" and an African country of your choice. What comes back are links to large industries that specialise in such a thing. Why? Because there is a large demand for domestic and export meat in Africa as there is elsewhere. As there is for staples and other fruit and veg grown on farms.

In fact it's not hard to reports of people in some African countries complaining about cheap imports of chicken coming in from Brazil. Maybe you should have a good old wail about the poor set upon Brazilian chicken farmer and the greedy Africans who are exploiting him.

Re:Africa, corruption

[DrXym]

Fresh meat in EU countries say the farm of origin and even most fruit and veg. So I trust that stuff. There's a short supply chain that is traceable.

It's the wholesale supply chain which is always the one which scares me. I remember watching a UK documentary where some health inspectors raided a premises packing "halal" chicken where there was no refrigeration and there was rotting meat sitting by the "fresh" stuff, all of which had already passed from another wholesaler in Denmark and might have passed through others before that. Scary stuff and presumably it would have ended up being consumed by somebody.

Re:Africa, corruption

[Curunir_wolf]

You are right that the African *farmers* are screwed badly by the EU CAP, but their industry and resources are more fucked by the USA and their governmental stability invaded by most of the first world (EU, USA, Russia, mainly). A strong Africa is not so easy to pillage or make beholden to you and a de-facto satellite state.

Talked to anyone from an African country lately? Obviously not. They aren't complaining about western countries these days (or Russia either). Ask them about the Chinese. Sure there are some niches of western companies trying to compete, but mostly they can't. It's loaded with Chinese companies. And they don't bother trying to hire locals.

The map surprises me

[Chrisq]

Water stress in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland? You've got to be kidding! Where I live if you put a water butt outside with an open top it will fill up over winter. That's not with a pipe coming from the roof or anything like that, its just with the rain going directly through the hole in the top.

Re:The map surprises me

[Malc]

The map doesn't break down countries, and they're all part of the UK. And there are areas of the UK that often have drought conditions, although no evidence of that exists this summer!

Re:The map surprises me

[Barsteward]

i think "drought" is a bit over the top for the UK if you compare it to real droughts around the world. a few dryer periods sounds more like it

Re:The map surprises me

[cellocgw]

i think "drought" is a bit over the top for the UK if you compare it to real droughts around the world. a few dryer periods sounds more like it

OTOH, there are some oceanographers who are watching the Gulfstream currents carefully. Should that flow ever relocate (the current candidate cause IIRC would be excess flow from melting Arctic ice), the Emerald Isle will go brown.

Re:Great

[Barsteward]

not while there are ignorant fools alive

eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"... as they forge a path to peace ..."

you must be talking about some other Israel I've never heard about, because the Israeli government hasn't genuinely sought "peace" from the day it was bandied about in the Balfour Declaration - the project was long ago high-jacked by Zionist racists.
The Golan Heights were "secured" by Israel specifically because of the water rights.
Israel have since built the desalination plants you speak of, but before that, they "resolved their water shortage problems" by simply taking it from others ...
Since then, we're all living on borrowed time ...

Re: eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the 1978 peace accords with Egypt and the later peace agreement with Jordan are myths? Or you're an idiot. I'm guessing the latter.

We have the technology

[areusche]

For water desalination using nuclear means. Sure it won't support industry, but it will support local drinking water supplies. One problem at a time. Overall I don't really care and such a calamity will spur nuclear research that should have been done years ago.

Israel on the list?

[hydrodog]

Israel currently or will shortly desalinate 100% of its water needs and is actually refilling its aquifers. So I'm not sure what the basis of the claim is. However, the desalination is using natural gas, not solar, so it is not long-term sustainable. Not all the damage has been undone yet. The dead sea has been falling by 1 meter per year for the last 30+ years because all the water coming into it was used for irrigation by Israel and Jordan. While I believe they have arrested or perhaps stopped the drop, they have not yet refilled it. There has been an interesting proposal to develop hydroelectric power with a canal from the meditteranean, and an interesting twist proposed by professor Dan Zaslavsky to generate all power needed by Israel AND Palestine with a single downdraft tower. Here is an article on this interesting concept in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Zaslavsky's claim was that such a tower would reduce the amount of water going into the dead sea by 90% due to evaporation, therefore they could increase the flow into the dead sea by a factor of 10, generating 20GWatts of power. The concept has never been tested at scale so no one knows if it would work.

desalination

[hydrodog]

Obviously all the middle east is not going to cool down any time soon, and needs a desalination solution, or the current wave of immigration will look like a trickle. Ignoring for the moment the population boom which will destroy everything if they don't control it, the technical solution is nuclear power. A nuclear plant does not contribute to global warming, and the waste heat, applied to water, desalinates a lot of water. It's a productive use of all the energy from the plant instead of just 45%. Unfortunately, no one wants Arab countries to have nuclear plants given the current political environment. The risk of terrorism, or proliferation is huge. I think the article neglects Iran, which should be higher on the list. They are using 90+% of their surface water and are imminently in danger of running out. The minister in charge was predicting that 70% of the country could have to evacuate in just a few years. http://www.danielpipes.org/158...

Re:desalination

[Punko]

The generation of energy does contribute to global warming. What you are implying is that as the generation of power doesn't use fossil fuels, the waste products do not contribute to the greenhouse effect. However, 100's of megawatts of electricity will 100% turn into 100's of megawatts of heat. unlike solar and wind energy, nuclear energy is a net generator of heat. Solar and wind are heat energy neutral, as the energy is pulled from the environment, used as electricity, and then released as heat where the sun's energy was going anyway. The energy from the nuclear material never originated in solar energy smacking into the earth.

Re:desalination

[Punko]

I am well aware of the magnitude difference between the heat load from the total solar flux to the planet and the electrical output of a nuclear power plant. However, that still doesn't change the fact that the statement "A nuclear plant does not contribute to global warming" is incorrect.

Re:desalination

[david_thornley]

Similarly, the statement "my farts do not contribute to global warming" is incorrect. However, the amount of global warming nuclear power plants do is negligible.

Re:'Climatedot' again... are you sick of this yet?

[Punko]

With all due respect, this article indicated two factors leading to national water stress, the first is the currently recognized changes in rainfall patterns. The second is the political/population aspect to those nations. In many cases, it is not a total lack of water resources that will affect the population, but its distribution within the country and the lack of infrastructure or political will/means to match the distribution of water to the distribution of usage.

While many might focus on the "man-made" side of the issue regarding the changes in water distribution, the far far greater calamity is the 100% man-made factors that make up the political problems.

The US has unmatched monetary resources to easily manage the water distribution changes caused by changes to the climate, regardless of their cause. However, the political environment makes usage of those monetary resources to change the water usage distribution to match the future water resource distribution impossible. And sadly, there is next to zero chance of any change in the collective political will to alter US use of water to match future water distribution.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:A "condom" fixes all serious problems

[rubycodez]

Note the birth rate of middle class or wealthy people is much below the 2.1 children per couple it takes to have "break even" population. The poor and ignorant are the problem

Re:A "condom" fixes all serious problems

[fleabay]

The Duggars are not poor.

Re:A "condom" fixes all serious problems

[rubycodez]

do you also have opinion about where on scale of "ignorant 1 - 10" they might fall? I'd say about 12 myself

Re:My God, look: It talks - It really talks

[MightyMartian]

Christ, now you're stalking me?

Well, I guess I should feel lucky that I'm not a journalist or a journalist's camerman.

Re:STFU little online loser

[MightyMartian]

You know, you idiot, that you're posting as an AC.

By 2040, it will be solved

[rhyous]

By 2040, it will be solved.

1. California is building multiple desalinization plants to be ready by 2016. How many will the world have by 2040?
2. Recycling water is improving.
3. What if we put a pipe between the ocean and Death Valley. It is hot. The water would evaporate fast and a previous desert could become a giant inland see.
4. Pump water from ocean to Great Salt Lake in North America and Dead Sea. Keep them full and they will provide natural desalination by evaporation and rain.
5. Evaporation aids. Technology to cause more evaporation and thus more rain.

Re:Great

[Falconhell]

Man, give the stalking of Jane Q a break, it makes you look like a psycho, and instantly loses any respect for your words.

Re:Great

[Falconhell]

The point is it's not just them, your stalking means in I rarely read you posts thru, it too over the top man.