Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Equivalent_Ad_8413 t1_j2bsrb0 wrote

Why would we run out of water?

I can see having massive shortages of fresh water, but that can be easily fixed with money and power.

10

Codametal t1_j2bu7om wrote

I don't know how true the Blue Gold documentary is, but they estimate we'll run out of fresh water in about 50 years as population grows and more water is needed.

5

Zmemestonk t1_j2bvfy1 wrote

This is true in general. There are a few places around the world that are approaching day zero of water supply. It’s a solvable problem but needs more focus

6

Codametal t1_j2bxbsb wrote

I agree. When I was very little, I use to naively think that we can just ship snow from the poles for water. Like sending trash on a rocket to the sun. Or packing some sunshine into a box and ship it to a cold place, or vice versa.

Humans are great at solving problems. It's getting them done is the difficult part. Or sometimes, getting people to listen to start with.

3

Honest_Switch1531 t1_j2c55z6 wrote

Where I live (Perth, Australia) we ran out of available fresh water 15 years ago. Now about half of our water comes from desalination powered by a wind farm.

https://www.watercorporation.com.au/Our-water/Desalination

5

Codametal t1_j2ccw7s wrote

I was wondering where the concentrated seawater goes. I guess that could offset the fresh water coming from the melting glaciers. Very interesting. Is desalinated water considered fresh water, or processed water?

"Seawater desalination is four times more energy intensive than groundwater collection and over 40 times more energy intensive than water sourced from dams."

And all that energy has to come from somewhere. The website doesn't say, but does each plant have its own wind farm?

2

s1ngular1ty2 t1_j2buukm wrote

We can't run out of water. You can make fresh water from sea water. There is zero chance we run out of water.

Not many places do this now because it's expensive but if we don't have a choice it will be done. It's still far cheaper than doing anything in space.

4

Codametal t1_j2bwvsd wrote

Desalination requires a ton of energy and money. As is with everything else on the planet, governments won't move until it hits the fan. We live in a world of over consumption of resources. I agree there is plenty of sea water in the world, and with the icecaps melting, it's a good idea to take as much of it as we can to make it into drinkable water to just maybe keep the oceans from rising. But from the stand point of 2022, we will run out of fresh water if nothing changes. They've known about this impending issue for almost a decade now and not much has been done about it. I wish it weren't so, but it is what it is.

2

SleepingJonolith t1_j2bwyfg wrote

Also the global population is expected to peak in the next century and then start a steady decline, possibly as soon as 2064.

2

Codametal t1_j2bycuo wrote

Wow. Did they speculate how the decline will happen? People having less babies?

2

VexillaVexme t1_j2c12cf wrote

There’s a pretty natural curve as societies become educated and more industrialized, you see infant mortality plummet and overall birth rate drop (there’s a collection of different causal reasons for the drop in birth rate). Negative percentages for a while, then (we assume) stable within a margin of error year over year.

What this means is that we should see various societies level off or decline a little before stabilizing. The only area that really looks at the flattening of population growth as a desperate problem is modern capitalist economies, where you need an ever increasing supply of cheap labor to continue pushing the holy line upwards. A differently structured economy would likely not care much about a stable or stably decreasing world population.

3

SleepingJonolith t1_j2c1c86 wrote

Exactly. Basically as countries develop and get more educated people tend to have less babies. According to Wikipedia 48% of countries already have under a replacement birth rate including all of the European Union. Empty Planet by Darrell Bricker discusses the phenomenon.

2

Psychological_Wheel2 OP t1_j2btdaf wrote

I’m sorry that’s my bad I meant in a purely hypothetical manner, earlier today I read a passage from a friend of mines book and it mentions some alien civilization running out of water, and I couldn’t justify going to war over something so relatively “common” as in the components to make water are

3

Zmemestonk t1_j2bv66a wrote

It does have some dangers to it but if aliens are intelligent enough to travel to other stars to steal water they could probably make it

5

Justisaur t1_j2bzddh wrote

Just as a counterpoint, we will not have any water sometime after 100 million years to 1 billion years. (I've seen a lot of different estimates, which seem to keep getting revised to shorter and shorter times.) Of course we'll have a bigger problem long before that as at that point the surface will be hot enough to boil the water away, which is way beyond what we can survive.

1