You seem to think that a non-sequitur is factually false statement, when it is a statement that does not follow. Like when I say, Germany is saving water when it has a surplus, and you say "oh but some trees died of drought on that hill". Or if I say "this company earned a huge profit" and you say "How can that be when revenue for this product is 5% lower than last year?"
> 70% of potable water is groundwater in Germany. That's kind of not really jamming with the 97% claim, is it?
As to my source for the 3 percent figure:
"Water is not scarce in Germany, except for occasional localized droughts. Public water utilities extract only 3 percent of total renewable water resources in Germany, or 5.4 billion cubic metres out of 182 billion cubic metres annually.[7]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...
As to your claim that if 70% of that 3% comes from ground water, then it is impossible that the water extracted be only 3% of the total, I would merely point out this is another non-sequitur.
FYI, ground water is just water from aquifers fed by rain as it enters more porous rock. Sometimes the water stays on the surface and you get a river. Sometimes the water seeps into the rock and you have an aquifer. The majority of rain enters aquifers.
Now it is completely irrelevant whether you are taking water from a river or an aquifer as both are fundamentally the same thing. Most nations take water from aquifers. That does not mean that the water is non-renewable or not coming from rain.
What matters is whether the total new water coming in is less than the water being taken out. The remainder will fill up the aquifer, and when the aquifer is filled, it will wash out to the sea or exit underground somewhere else. And the way you can measure these things is if the aquifers are increasing or decreasing or staying the same. Guess what the situation is in Germany? Yup, you have more frequent flooding as aquifers are saturated, meaning that they are not even able to absorb above average rains very well. This means people are dying in order to feel righteous for saving water. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/flooding-in-germany-europe-deat...
https://www.isciences.com/blog/2021/09/22/europe-water-surpl... Summer 2021 has been Germany’s wettest in a decade according to the nation’s weather service. Precipitation in July was 40 percent above the 1961-1990 average and 25 percent over 1991-2020 for the month, resulting in flooding and landslides that claimed 180 lives.
Ground water rising to dangerous levels in Berlin: https://www.economist.com/europe/2014/04/05/the-moisture-dow...
"Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the groundwater level has risen by over half a meter." This is because, amongst other reasons, former East Berliners, price-shocked by the market rate for water and looking to save their money, and former West Berliners, motivated to conserve resources in the name of environment stewardship, both cut back quite drastically on their daily usage. Indeed, contemporary Berliners are now using only two-thirds of what they should be."
As long as the aquifers are not being depleted, then the nation as a whole has a surplus of water. That is true for Germany. A huge surplus. This is true even if the total coming in is variable (shocker!) and that variability causes variability in vegetation (another shocker!). It's still true that Germany has a huge, huge surplus. Every year.
Seriously, is this hard to understand? The world doesn't follow principles of empathetic magic, where people need to punish themselves each time they hear about something bad on the news. There is zero benefit to curtailing water consumption in a water-rich nation, and in fact this causes real harms in damaging the water delivery system:
https://www.dw.com/en/german-water-conservation-impairs-sewa...
"Germans' well-intentioned efforts to use less water at the household level are causing problems for some of the country's sewage treatment authorities. Water conservation has been so effective that there's not enough water being flushed through sewage pipes, meaning that the system often becomes clogged and pipes tend to corrode due to the air in them."
"In Cologne we have major problems because it is a very flat city," he said. "Water has to flow for very long distances, so by the time it gets to the treatment center, it is already very stagnate." Disinfecting this water requires heavy use of energy and chemicals, which in turn disturbs the ecological balance. So in end effect, saving water can actually defy the purpose of preserving the environment, said Weyand."