Water Shortages Could Affect 5 Billion People By 2050, UNESCO Warns (theguardian.com) 106
About 3.6 billion people are estimated to be living in areas with a potential for water scarcity for at least one month per year, and this number could rise to as many as 5.7 billion people by 2050, according to a report published by UNESCO [PDF]. From a report: The comprehensive annual study warns of conflict and civilisational threats unless actions are taken to reduce the stress on rivers, lakes, aquifers, wetlands and reservoirs. The World Water Development Report -- released in drought-hit BrasÃlia -- says positive change is possible, particularly in the key agricultural sector, but only if there is a move towards nature-based solutions that rely more on soil and trees than steel and concrete.
"For too long, the world has turned first to human-built, or 'grey', infrastructure to improve water management. In doing so, it has often brushed aside traditional and indigenous knowledge that embraces greener approaches," says Gilbert Houngbo, the chair of UN Water, in the preface of the 100-page assessment. "In the face of accelerated consumption, increasing environmental degradation and the multi-faceted impacts of climate change, we clearly need new ways of manage competing demands on our freshwater resources."
"For too long, the world has turned first to human-built, or 'grey', infrastructure to improve water management. In doing so, it has often brushed aside traditional and indigenous knowledge that embraces greener approaches," says Gilbert Houngbo, the chair of UN Water, in the preface of the 100-page assessment. "In the face of accelerated consumption, increasing environmental degradation and the multi-faceted impacts of climate change, we clearly need new ways of manage competing demands on our freshwater resources."
So what you are saying is... (Score:2)
...Everyone gets to enjoy "Raw Water".
I look forward to the part where we all move back into caves.
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It's about the failures of urban planning, and negligence of the water cycle. Cities are basically deserts with water impermeable soils. That means floods if the water accumulation is not carefully accounted for in and around every property. Trees have been successfully used to restart the water cycle in already arid lands that have been stripped for firewood and are now suffering from desertification and drought.
Another example can be found in agriculture and land management. Diverse fields with multiple p
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As will Global warming, Over Population, Hunger, Pollution ...
Get the idea?
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Every single one of those can be traced back to overpopulation. The impact of population growth on per capita recoverable rainfall is far greater than global warming. There's three likely ways forward. Mass migration (globalist preferred option). Asia and Africa needs stop shitting out so many children (least likely). Mass die offs (most likely). Regardless of global warming.
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I apologize that someone modded this as flamebait, when it's the absolute truth. It's not just Asia and Africa, but the entire planet is becoming over-populated, with new settlements in places that can't sustain the population growth. It's a problem everywhere. Sadly, your citation of Asia and Africa makes you sound racist.
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Ultimately, the resources are finite. Space itself isn't useful. For each human, there's a need for water, and food, and where to put their waste and poo. We've already caused the climate to change, what new disaster do you want next?
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That works, perhaps short term. You still haven't addressed the near geometric growth of the population. This earth is finite in size. Years ago, I was able to take a trip around the entire planet in a series of flights. I started in the states, went to Singapore, then to London, then back. Much of the planet is mountains, deserts, and ocean.
I saw huge globs of plastics in the ocean. Lots of people living in arid climates.
It's babies, a basic biological drive. There are too many of them. It's not sustainabl
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Significant portions of the planet have birth rates below replacement levels. In some places, this is masked by immigration, and in some it will be a while before the population levels actually decline from it. This happens pretty much everywhere women get education, opportunities for employment, access to birth control, and where the society is sufficiently stable that a 1-year-old is very likely to mature. Lack of this is most common in parts of Africa and Asia, which is why the population increases t
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And I suppose we don't educate women in the USA, where the birthrate is very steadily climbing, and has been for 200years+, since the invasion.
And also why the global birthrate is up, not down, save for just a few countries (Japan as an example, acknowledged). You can't blame it on Asia and Africa. Yes, the numbers are high there, but they're largely high across the planet, and the geometry continues with the up arrow, not the down arrow.
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Alternately, you could type "us birth rate by year" into Google, and look at the chart that pops up at the top. In that case, you'd see that the US birth rate went significantly down from 1960, hit the present rate about 1975, and has stayed pretty steady since. That would save you from publicly claiming that the US birth rate has been climbing for 200+ years.
Given that you're wrong on your first claim, I don't feel the need to dig into the others.
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Actually, Climate Change has been linked to increased rainfall in many areas. ...
FTFY
Hasn't it been shown that a lot of the increased rainfall is usually in all the wrong places; where it can't be easily used.
Off hand I can think of a few places where they don't seem to be getting that wonderful increase in rainfall. Southern India. Sub-Saharan Africa, California for the ten years preceding this year and last year. Etc.
I wouldn't want to bet my ability to survive on a throw of the "some places get more" dice.
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8 x (2000/600) x 1000 ~ 25,000 gallons/2,000 sqft typical house ~70 gallons/day. Most places have more rain than Phoenix.
Re:2050? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dismissed as bullshit alarmist crap
May be alarmist, but certainly the cracks in the water infrastructure of large cities are showing...
Melbourne, Australia
Mexico City, Mexico
Cape Town, South Africa
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Jakarta, Indonesia
Certainly, we aren't running out of fresh water as a species. However, the fresh water isn't where the people are, and the infrastructure planning to adjust for fluctuations in historical rainfall patterns is lagging greatly.
The problems are likely technically solvable, but may be so expensive that they will serve displace populations (negative growth in mega cities). I don't think 5B people will die of thirst by 2050, but I can certainly imagine that 5B people wouldn't live where they might have been if it weren't for water issues.
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The problem with water shortage is that it is expensive to transport water to places where the shortage is. Combine it with the fact that people in most of those places are poor and you get a problem.
It's funny to me when somebody tells me to conserve water because of the water shortage in other countries. It's not like the water I save is going to be shipped to Africa, so, the only reason to conserve water is to save my money.
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desalination
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New Zealand has been maneuvered by treasonous governments into being a debtor nation while running a trade surplus (should be impossible, but that's where treason comes in). Your land has been sold to foreigners for baubles and thanks to international trade treaties it's almost impossible to take back.
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What we were sold was trickle down economics, and "all boats lift in a rising tide" and "user pays" all of which have been absolute disasters for working people and a huge cash grab for the wealthy, (also as you point out, wealthy foreigners).
When we "negotiate" international trade treaties, we have nothing to offer, as we gave everything away 20 years ago, which is one of
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As of this year, in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand a Chinese company is now extracting approx. 4 billion liters of water per year from our reservoir. Christchurch citizens had no say in the matter.
And shipping this water to China?
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It's funny to me when somebody tells me to conserve water because of the water shortage in other countries. It's not like the water I save is going to be shipped to Africa, so, the only reason to conserve water is to save my money.
Of course water isn't going to be shipped to Africa, but potable water has a pretty high carbon footprint. Also if much of your local water comes from natural aquifers, reducing the amount of water pumped out by a community reduces the general risk of local subsidence/sinkholes/etc...
There are other reasons to use less water than to simply save money.
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+1 Informative
(Out of mod points)
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Once Tech solves the problem, the price will come down substantially.
Heck there are some very well known places that have fairly good DeSal plants supplying water already. There isn't a huge need (yet) therefore it is still expensive.
Re:2050? (Score:5, Interesting)
Once Tech solves the problem, the price will come down substantially.
Heck there are some very well known places that have fairly good DeSal plants supplying water already. There isn't a huge need (yet) therefore it is still expensive.
De-sal plants currently have two big flaws, you need to be near the ocean and you need to dump the brine somewhere. Okay, brine isn't high-level nuclear waste, but there's a lot more of it than high-level nuclear waste...
There's some folks working on making commercial chemical product like sodium bicarbonate calcium chloride from the brine which can finance the processing of the brine. However, right now, people are mostly just dumping the brine (back into the ocean making it locally saltier or into evaporation pools that contaminate the land).
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Could the brine be transported out say a mile or two and be offloaded there, where the deeper water and stronger currents will disapate it more, and could the evap pools be build from non water permeable material, so it can be treated like nuclear waste or something?
I am sure someone has asked these questions before, I am not saying I am smarter then all the people who work on this stuff.
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There is no real "brine problem" with desalination. All of the salt in the brine was there originally. Desalination just temporarily separates the salt and the water, without changing the amount of either.
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There is no real "brine problem" with desalination. All of the salt in the brine was there originally. Desalination just temporarily separates the salt and the water, without changing the amount of either.
The "brine" problem is if you dump it back into the ocean, it takes more and more energy to desalinate. Eventually you can reach the point of "peak-salt" [theguardian.com]. Usually it doesn't get to that, but it is a problem you often need to think about...
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This is why you dump the brine somewhere that has an actual current, i.e. not right at the coast, and not in an inlet. That way, it gets dissipated over a large swath of ocean.
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A problem is the concentration of salt in the discharge is higher than in the ambient environment, causing local stresses to wildlife.
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This must be totally coincidental! Also, are you sure these are not fake news?
In other news, many people are too stupid to see a looming catastrophe when it stares them in the face.
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Dismissed as bullshit alarmist crap
May be alarmist, but certainly the cracks in the water infrastructure of large cities are showing...
Melbourne, Australia
Mexico City, Mexico
Cape Town, South Africa
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Jakarta, Indonesia
Of that list, Melbourne has essentially solved it's problem with technology, money and good rainfall :-)
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Dismissed as bullshit alarmist crap
[Snip]
Certainly, we aren't running out of fresh water as a species. However, the fresh water isn't where the people are, and the infrastructure planning to adjust for fluctuations in historical rainfall patterns is lagging greatly.
The problems are likely technically solvable, but may be so expensive that they will serve displace populations (negative growth in mega cities). I don't think 5B people will die of thirst by 2050, but I can certainly imagine that 5B people wouldn't live where they might have been if it weren't for water issues.
I don't think it's that simple. There is basically the same amount of water in the ecosystem, but the human population is growing dramatically and our water usage (per head) has been growing steadily over the last 50 years, especially in the developed world. Fifty years ago most of the domestic water uses we take for granted now - e.g. dish washers, central heating systems, power showers - either didn't exist or weren't available to most of the population. And the use of water in industrial processes has in
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My objection is to the liberal usage of the year 2050.
Ireland will become the richest country (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry (Score:2)
Traditional and indigenous knowledge? (Score:4, Insightful)
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There are plants that have huge roots with lots of water in them, and they don't exactly advertise the fact on the surface.
Obviously, you don't go to that trouble if there's a convenient stream or spring handy. But in times of need or if you're off searching for Jenny Agutter's minge it could save your life.
Maybe that's what he means.
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They weren't foolish enough to settle where there was insufficient water in the first place.
Take Phoenix for example. 4.x million people, in the middle of a desert. The only way the city has any water is by bleeding the Colorado dry. In what universe does having such a large city in a *desert* make any sense at all?
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Make it a self-contained dome and recycle the water like a giant polytunnel agriculture project.
Re:Traditional and indigenous knowledge? (Score:4, Insightful)
Take Phoenix for example. 4.x million people, in the middle of a desert. The only way the city has any water is by bleeding the Colorado dry. In what universe does having such a large city in a *desert* make any sense at all?
A universe in which the 14 million people of Greater Los Angeles desalinate their own water, leaving a more than adequate amount for Phoenix and all the other inland users.
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https://www.popsci.com/how-la-... [popsci.com]
there ya go.
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There are ways to go about this that doesn't involve a lot of suffering and death. If we do nothing, the route is death by starvation, dehydration or disease. If we plan carefully and did something like a 1 child policy, then nobody has to die, we simply have a new generation that is smaller than the previous. Of course the religious nutjobs that run the world aren't going to allow such a thing, so either way it's going to be a war.
There Are 2 Obvious Solutions To This (Score:1)
Re:There Are 2 Obvious Solutions To This (Score:4, Insightful)
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I am an engineer, but this is not my area of expertise. However, someone should try to honestly answer your questions. The problem that you are getting at is "entropy." It is much easier to burn fuel, emit CO2, and allow it to mix into the atmosphere, than it is to separate it back out and capture it.
Entropy is a thermodynamics term that relates to the amount of "disorder." It is the scrambled egg problem. It is far easier to break the egg and scramble it (add disorder) than to unscramble it and reassemble
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To extract fresh water from sea-water, you have to separate the H2O molecules from whatever other crap has been dissolved. That includes virus particles and metal elements; salts, sodium, calcium, chloride, mercury, etc... First way is through porous membranes or micorpore clay filters. Then you have to force the water through these at pressure. That takes energy. You can try evaporating the water. That too requires energy to make the water reach 100C. Even if you tried to force the water into a vacuuum to
Lack of drinkable water, actually (Score:3, Informative)
A lot of commenters seem to not get that, unless you have a handy solar, wind or tidal powered desalination plant lying around and the capital to build one, living on the coast won't help, as the water is not drinkable. Diseases are spread in marshlands too, so being too near the coast can impact your fresh water supply.
Water desalinization needed (Score:3)
The Earth is constantly changing which means the old "nature based" ways will also become a nonviable answer. Thanks to climate change, we have vastly accelerated many changes which includes the location of available water resources. Our best bet is to work toward reversing the damage done and desalinate water using a water vapor distillation system (aka slingshot). Yes, these systems require energy but Sol provides us with more than enough energy for such systems.
We absolutely could stretch our water supply further but thanks to a tragedy of the commons coupled with capitalism, it simply won't happen without extreme enforcement measures. We already know that our politicians are spineless, so it's better that we assume the worst case scenario and create out own supply of fresh water.
Don't worry about it (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone see "The Big Short"? (Score:3)
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Stop F***ing living in DESERTS (Score:2)
Not BrasÃlia. Still on 7-bit ASCII? (Score:1)
The Guardian got Brasília right, so the 237th 8-bit ASCII character (Latin small letter i with acute) got lost in the copy-pasting.
How quaint. Care to elaborate?