Saturday, March 22, 2008

Only oceans...

Water: Under pressure. A Nature Special [Nature]... World Water Day is today: March 22nd celebrate we can worry about how little there is and how we can make that go round: "more than billion [sic] people around the world still lack access to safe drinking water and two billion have little or no sanitation. As water is sucked up by demands for food and energy, and its distribution on the planet is changed by climate change, what can be done to ensure water availability for the future?"

How much water is there on the planet?... ...less than 3% of that is freshwater. Of that, nearly 70% is in ice caps, glaciers, and permanent snow, and 30% sits in ground water.

The incredible facts and figures aren't encouraging. All of the World's rivers and lakes (and including that built up in the clouds...some of which is dropping in the violent hail storm that's above me right now!) carry less than 1% of the world's freshwater. Great graphic image on the Nature webpage - with picture credit to USGS - of the global water distribution HERE.

A few examples of more facts from the article: Enough water to go around?

70 liters: water needed to create a single apple
900 liters: water needed to produce a kilogram of maize
10,850 liters: water needed to produce a pair of jeans
15,500 liters: water needed to produce a kilogram of industrial beef

Makes one wonder but will it make anyone more careful with their usage? No.


Paul said...

The water and feed used in cattle farming is astonishing. What I don't understand is why desalination plants aren't more common. We've got one of those save water bags in the cistern and I don't fill the pond from the taps so I'm doing a little bit, but it's never enough.

Span Ows said...

I wondered about desalination plants...the bhint in the post title was intentional because tehre doesn't seem much option if the human race is going to survive we need more than the water that's available, especially with the world poulation set to double again within 50 odd years. The estimates say 9 billion by 2050 but I don't see how that can be right when it's doubled in the last 40/50 years so why should the rate suddenly slow by half?

Paul said...

If you read about Russia and Japan you can see there are problems in those two countries with declining populations. Although as we discussed a while ago the Muslims in Russia are doing their bit to keep things moving. There was a big celebration in Japan recently when the birth rate increased again. About five years ago their were forecasts that due to low fertility, costs of raising children and general apathy in Japan they had predicted (in typical Japanese fashion)that Japan would have cease to exist within a couple of hundred years.