I know we need to conserve water and such but why? Doesn’t it eventually flow back into the ground or evaporated and rained back down regardless of how it’s consumed, so it’s a cycle? Do we lose a bit per cycle?
In: 39
>I know we need to conserve water and such but why?
Because it’s very easy to use water *faster than the water cycle can replenish it* into the sources we take it from.
I used to live on the largest aquifer in the usa, that supplies water to multiple states and a huge amount of american farming industry. The aquifer is completely renewable and has zero problems to refill naturally with rainfall.
However the aquifer being totally fine doesn’t mean people will be fine. Current usage will have the ogallala aquifer empty in the next few decades, and it will refill naturally in a few thousand years. Like most enviromental concerns the earth as a whole will be fine but life as we know it and humans– not so much.
Some water resources are underground water reserves that very slowly recharge (or not at all in the case of certain deserts). So if your area relies on these, using more water than what comes in these reserves will deplete them. You can have the imbalance for years and years before the depletion has any impact, so politicians will just tell people to conserve water (on a voluntary basis) instead of taking actual measures that could upset people.
Sometimes it happens with lakes too, and lakes can shrink as a result until they’re dead.
But these are all local issues. Saving water in Chicago where water comes from giant lakes will have no impact on the Californian water reserves, let alone the ones in India.
imagine if you lived off the grid amongst some jungle society, and you were in charge of collecting water from different sources. but to do so, you had to setup the reservoirs, and boil it, and ensure there were no bad stuff in it because of contamination concerns from the villagers, just make sure it was clean for everyone. Then you see one of your villagers using the clean water to make sure his collection of handmade frisbee’s is clean, and you realize hes using the most water out of everybody.
He’s diminishing the clean water supply, and now you have to use more energy to make clean water.
now you realize some of your reservoirs are not collecting water as good as before, so you have to tell the villagers, ok guys water is a little tight. we are running out, no more frisbee cleaning either, until I can find better sources.
Another factor is the loss of glacial ice due to climate change. Many areas of the world are facing receding or disappearing glaciers which reduces the flow down to the easily accessible lakes and rivers.
The “explainlikeimfive” answer is “There is no water shortage, it’s propaganda”. The “explainlikeimten” answer is “There is no water shortage. It’s a Clean Cheap Local Water, shortage.”
The long answer is that there is the same amount of water on this planet as when the dinosaurs were in charge. The problem is that the clean water that can be consumed straight from the pipe is no longer located where it was when industries were created to direct that water to homes and businesses. A lot of water was connected to aquifers (especially farms, this is where a LOT of water was taken so that farmers would have cheap if not free water), and once you take that water out of the aquifers, it takes a LONG time to refill those aquifers and that time is measured in centuries or even millenniums.
The real reasons you hear about conserving water, etc., is that the water companies don’t want to reuse water. It costs a lot of money to clean water to a level that it is safe to consume, especially at the specific level that is required by U.S. regulations. It also costs a lot of money to build things like pipes, etc. to transfer water from where it IS available to locations where it ISN’T available. And then it also costs a lot of money to build reservoirs for storing water in areas that don’t already have reservoirs. So these companies rather spend money advertising/forcing water conservation, as pretending this will help is a lot cheaper than actually doing what WOULD actually help.
Already too long of a post, so just to close up, take a look at Israel and Saudi Arabia. Both countries have a horrible “available” water problem, and yet they have solved it by technologies including salt-water distillation and pipes/reservoirs. Do not let the water companies in the U.S. fool you in believing that water conservation is the answer.
I have a related question. I’m in a rural area on a well. Does it really matter how much water I use, i.e., longer showers? My gut tells me the well either will or won’t run dry in theory , but isn’t that underground water source always flowing? I feel my shower length won’t affect this and what’s gonna happen is gonna happen regardless.
The majority of water on our planet is older than the sun. We won’t run out. We may pollute a shit ton of it, and limit our supply of clean, usable drinking water or water sufficient for crops. Too many big corporations and industries run around unchecked by the law because our justice system is a pay-to-win circus.
Also let’s say you have a bunch of big cities around a Great Lake. And everyone used lots of water. So the cities build infrastructure that supplies that amount of water, it’s not necessarily “stored” in huge tanks or watered but if say 5-10 billion litres are used each day, plus probably another 20 billion in irrigation that’s 30 billion litres that aren’t in the lake, they’re not evaporating to rain elsewhere. They’re not reflecting the sun. They’re not altering the temperature of the surrounding area. It might only be day 0.01% of the water of Lake Ontario but even small changes in the environment can have a huge impact.
The amount of water on earth is relatively the same amount that has always existed.
Where are you getting the idea we are running out of water? Are you referring to drinkable or tap water in your area or water on earth?
Latest Answers