Climate change and weather patterns change coupled with over a billion people in a country (roughly) the size of Argentina is bound to have water problems as per capita consumption grows with wealth.
Conservation + Desalination is the only way here.
Conservation + Desalination is the only way here.
So our actual consumption is far below even those 0.8%. But our problem with fresh water isn't necessarily that it's not enough but that it's very unevenly distributed and we tend to be very wasteful.
This being said how much desalination do we have to do until the brine (now 30% more saline than regular salt water) is significantly affecting the overall salinity of the oceans? Desalinating 0.2% of the ocean's water would give humans a 25% more fresh fresh water and the increase in salinity would be marginal.
Does anyone know if an increase that looks as minute as this (0.1% increase is salinity?) is actually a real danger to ocean life and/or currents?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_distribution_on_Earth
There are other aspects of desalination that seem far more critical, like the ones related to efficiency and the scale of the required infrastructure.
Some care is involved in doing this so as not to wreck nearby ecosystems, but the ocean as a whole is big enough to absorb a brine flow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_use_statistics_by_country
India's problem is overconsumption and population excess. Until India is able to reduce their population by 50% or more, their water shortages will continue to worsen. A sizeable decrease in their population will also reduce their power consumption needs, so they'll be able to close their coal power plants instead of opening dozens more.
In the U.S. for example climate change is leading to decreased rainfall meaning less runoff and less groundwater recharge. The southeast of the US is going to have some very serious water issues for the next generation, albeit not as soon as India.
Where are you getting this? It certainly doesn't agree with figures published by the government. [0] The aquifers that are dropping are dropping because of massive well pumping. The wildfires are because we've stockpiled understory fuel while building homes in fire-prone forests. Overstating the case for global warming will convince some people, but others will only grow more skeptical.
[0] https://www.drought.gov/drought/data-maps-tools/current-cond...
>Surface and groundwater supplies in some regions are already stressed by increasing demand as well as declining runoff and groundwater recharge. In some regions, particularly the southern U.S. and the Caribbean and Pacific islands, climate change is increasing the likelihood of water shortages and competition for water. Water quality is diminishing in many areas, particularly due to increasing sediment and contaminant concentrations after heavy downpours.
I find that people's skepticism regarding climate change has almost nothing to do with data and evidence and nearly everything to do with their personal politics, to the extent that I draw a causative link between right-leaning politics and "climate skepticism".
Your reply is "I'm not reading this, I did a fast google search instead?"
Oof owie, my intellectualism.
I shouldn't have to spoon feed you after I gave you an extremely high quality source.
But whatever:
"Climate changes pose challenges for an already parched region that is expected to get hotter and, in its southern half, significantly drier. Increased heat and changes to rain and snowpack will send ripple effects throughout the region’s critical agriculture sector, affecting the lives and economies of 56 million people – a population that is expected to increase 68% by 2050, to 94 million. Severe and sustained drought will stress water sources, already over-utilized in many areas, forcing increasing competition among farmers, energy producers, urban dwellers, and plant and animal life for the region’s most precious resource."
>Theobald, D. M., W. R. Travis, M. A. Drummond, and E. S. Gordon, 2013: Ch. 3: The Changing Southwest. Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwest United States: A Report Prepared for the National Climate Assessment, G. Garfin, A. Jardine, R. Merideth, M. Black, and S. LeRoy, Eds., Island Press, 37-55 http://swccar.org/sites/all/themes/files/SW-NCA-color-FINALw...
* reject evidence for non-sense reasons
* over reliant on public search engines for quick, contextless answers
* pedantry rather than discussion
* a complete and total inability to find any meaningful evidence for yourself
For the record, my original comment in this thread has always been about the Southwest, but since you're behaving as such an anti-intellectual bad actor, I'll continue spoon feeding you the data that you're clearly too lazy to even try to understand
"Freshwater supplies from rivers, streams, and groundwater sources near the coast are at risk from accelerated saltwater intrusion due to higher sea levels. Porous aquifers in some areas make them particularly vulnerable to saltwater intrusion., For example, officials in the city of Hallandale Beach, Florida, have already abandoned six of their eight drinking water wells."
>Obeysekera, J., M. Irizarry, J. Park, J. Barnes, and T. Dessalegne, 2011: Climate change and its implications for water resources management in south Florida. Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment, 25, 495-516, doi:10.1007/s00477-010-0418-8.
>Berry, L., F. Bloetscher, H. N. Hammer, M. Koch-Rose, D. Mitsova-Boneva, J. Restrepo, T. Root, and R. Teegavarapu, 2011: Florida Water Management and Adaptation in the Face of Climate Change. 68 pp., Florida Climate Change Task Force
That's just one way that climate change is negatively affecting groundwater in the US south east and how freshwater is becoming more scarce in America due directly to climate change
Have any more ignorance-fueling pedantry to use to avoid discussing the topic at hand?
Maybe you'll try reading a source? Nah, you'll just Google search it!
It also doesn't lead to groundwater depletion and the absence of well water. That's more or less independent of climate change. Well water is a semi-renewable resource. In other words, there's only a certain fraction of rain that will filter down to where the wells are pulling it from. If wells pull more than that the water table gradually drops until the wells run dry.
That's what is happening in India (and in a lot of other places.). They've drilled too many wells and depleted the ground water. Fixing climate change isn't going to help with that problem.
In India, a 22 per cent deficit has been recorded in pre-monsoon showers in the months of March, April and May — the second lowest in the past 65 years — and with monsoons delayed by a fortnight or so, daily temperatures have been sizzling.
In other words the once reliable monsoons are no longer that reliable.
From what I have read one of the reasons for this is the warming of the Indian Ocean, with that warming then resulting in changes to the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD).
That dipole has a big influence on climate, not only in India but across the whole region and as it changes so does the climate.
Of course in reality it's much more complicated since rainfall doesn't stay constant, and the changes in wind patterns and ocean currents have hard to predict consequences. But I think it's safe to say that rainfall will change, and at least for some regions it will make things worse.
you seem to be getting into full blown thanos mode here, probably you have seen this work somewhere before? can you please share?
India's fertility rate is at or below the global average and has been falling for decades. [1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/06/1040621
The more reasonable standard of living, healthcare and food more people get access to, the faster we’ll reach a balance.
If only there was a name for it...