As half the world floods and half the world fries, it’s become increasingly clear that water is the key resource issue of the here and now. It’s no longer just the future we need to worry about.
While flooding is terrifying and dangerous, the bigger issue is the drying out of areas that are already arid. Wild fires expand. Groundwater drops. Lakes turn into holes in the ground. River beds shrink.
We’re seeing photos of these types of distressing images all over the world. They become more frequent as we encroach and expand our human habitat.
Put up more buildings, and everyone in that building needs to use the bathroom, drink water and wash their hands at some point. That doesn’t make the water disappear, as all that comes back to the sewers as wastewater and can ultimately be reused after filtration and cleansing systems are applied.
In contrast, water disappears at an alarming rate because we want to green-ify our world. We love to have the lawn looking sharp. We want to grow flowers where only cactuses should flourish. We plant trees in dessert sand. We farm in areas that don’t get enough rain to support crops. None of this is good. We continue influencing local environments in ways conducive to human ends. Our thoughts are not about longer term sustainability or what other creatures should live where we live.
Better minds than mine work on projects speak out to rectify some of these increasingly dire situations. Some will likely succeed, hopefully on a wide scale. Others could prove useless. At least the effort is being made.
When you talk about the coming water wars with people, many come up with two solutions: 1) Build pipelines from where the water is to where it isn’t, and 2) develop desalination techniques. Both hold potential, but also face pitfalls.
For pipelines, you’d have to get agreement from a water rich area to send that resource hundreds or thousands of miles away to where it is more needed. That is going to be a fight.
For desalination techniques, the issue is cost. It can be done, but it the price is astronomical.
Which puts us back to the question for those increasingly drought-stricken areas we see highlighted in red on the weather maps around the world, “Is there some other way to store/save scarce water so it can be used when needed?”
My two cents might sound weird. But who knows, perhaps it is workable. We can let the engineers decide.
Typically in extra dry areas, when it does rain, it pours. This runs off and overflows streams, roads, ponds. The water just runs off like a stray dog who sees fat squirrel.
What we need is a gigantic funnel. We should build these in climates where it is dry, but prone to thunderstorms, like west Texas. The huge funnel captures torrential rains, runs it through a filtration device, then pumps it into the local groundwater supply to recharge it.
This prevents future evaporation and rebuilds the water table. It allows the water to be used later for the surrounding communities, their ranchers and farmers.
We water our lawn, and after the soaking, it evaporates. That happens on millions of yards a day, on golf courses, college campuses, and the landscapes surrounding many businesses. We water and water and water.
That water is not going to be around forever. It gets depleted from lakes and groundwater supplies. It evaporates in hot/dry climates. If we don’t come up with some smart solutions, the human tribe is going to start migrating again, because if you take water and electricity away from the Southwestern part of the U.S., no one could live there.
We were nomads once, and could become nomads again.
While flooding is terrifying and dangerous, the bigger issue is the drying out of areas that are already arid. Wild fires expand. Groundwater drops. Lakes turn into holes in the ground. River beds shrink.
We’re seeing photos of these types of distressing images all over the world. They become more frequent as we encroach and expand our human habitat.
Put up more buildings, and everyone in that building needs to use the bathroom, drink water and wash their hands at some point. That doesn’t make the water disappear, as all that comes back to the sewers as wastewater and can ultimately be reused after filtration and cleansing systems are applied.
In contrast, water disappears at an alarming rate because we want to green-ify our world. We love to have the lawn looking sharp. We want to grow flowers where only cactuses should flourish. We plant trees in dessert sand. We farm in areas that don’t get enough rain to support crops. None of this is good. We continue influencing local environments in ways conducive to human ends. Our thoughts are not about longer term sustainability or what other creatures should live where we live.
Better minds than mine work on projects speak out to rectify some of these increasingly dire situations. Some will likely succeed, hopefully on a wide scale. Others could prove useless. At least the effort is being made.
When you talk about the coming water wars with people, many come up with two solutions: 1) Build pipelines from where the water is to where it isn’t, and 2) develop desalination techniques. Both hold potential, but also face pitfalls.
For pipelines, you’d have to get agreement from a water rich area to send that resource hundreds or thousands of miles away to where it is more needed. That is going to be a fight.
For desalination techniques, the issue is cost. It can be done, but it the price is astronomical.
Which puts us back to the question for those increasingly drought-stricken areas we see highlighted in red on the weather maps around the world, “Is there some other way to store/save scarce water so it can be used when needed?”
My two cents might sound weird. But who knows, perhaps it is workable. We can let the engineers decide.
Typically in extra dry areas, when it does rain, it pours. This runs off and overflows streams, roads, ponds. The water just runs off like a stray dog who sees fat squirrel.
What we need is a gigantic funnel. We should build these in climates where it is dry, but prone to thunderstorms, like west Texas. The huge funnel captures torrential rains, runs it through a filtration device, then pumps it into the local groundwater supply to recharge it.
This prevents future evaporation and rebuilds the water table. It allows the water to be used later for the surrounding communities, their ranchers and farmers.
We water our lawn, and after the soaking, it evaporates. That happens on millions of yards a day, on golf courses, college campuses, and the landscapes surrounding many businesses. We water and water and water.
That water is not going to be around forever. It gets depleted from lakes and groundwater supplies. It evaporates in hot/dry climates. If we don’t come up with some smart solutions, the human tribe is going to start migrating again, because if you take water and electricity away from the Southwestern part of the U.S., no one could live there.
We were nomads once, and could become nomads again.