vixstile

Probably not any time soon. I mean...what are you talking about? Water isn't going anywhere. Not unless we start shipping it out to space or something.

cheetah

Are you being serious or satirical? I agree that the water converters may not be on our backs soon, but I assume you are well aware of the general lack of enough potable water on this planet to continue to support the population indefinitely.

Jesse

What do you mean by "indefinitely"? Isn't water a self-renewing resource, in the sense it all goes back to the ocean and then rains down again to replenish freshwater supplies? It's not like oil where the world supply is constantly diminishing. Do you just mean that if the population continues to expand exponentially, eventually all the freshwater supplies in the world won't be enough to support the population?

vixstile

I think your DUNE reference threw me off. Why would we have to recycle our urine and sweat unless there was a huge water shortage on earth.

If we are going to worry about water, we should be worrying about the impact of polluted water on the environment. We can always purify water for drinking.

Fire Jack

There was a national geographic article about water usage. It mentioned that about 70% of the water was wasted, mostly by being badly used like for watering lawns, orchards, crops and the like. Nobody uses these vastly more efficient systems because it would be too hard, and water shrtages hasn't gotten that bad yet. Water is not the big fear, it's food. If topsoil is going that fast, or the ecosystem collapses, we may find ourselves living off very little food.

cheetah

Yes, exactly. And we aren't very efficient yet at using other sources of water, so when the water tables get lower and lower, we really will have to rely on that for our burgeoning population.

I disagree that food is the major problem. In The Diversity of Life E.O. Wilson talks about the hundreds of species of fruits and vegetables we do not even use, though they are nutritious and edible. True that food won't be available if the rainforests disappear, but it's there right now.

Jesse

cheetah:
Yes, exactly. And we aren't very efficient yet at using other sources of water, so when the water tables get lower and lower, we really will have to rely on that for our burgeoning population.

What's the reason water tables get lower? Is water from underground not self-renewing in the same way that water from lakes and rivers is? Also, do you know the figures on amount of freshwater available vs. the amount humans have been consuming over time? Intuitively it seems like if the available water supplies have been enough for the combined biomass of all land animals and plants for the last few hundred million years, human population would have to be pretty huge before it could make a serious difference. But I realize that humans use water for a lot of other purposes besides just drinking it themselves, like using it to maintain crops and livestock (which might make up a significant fraction of the combined biomass of all life on land by now, I don't know) so my intuition could be wrong.

cheetah

I would have to do some mroe research, but yes, essentially my understanding is that we are using ground water resources faster than they can be renewed. Humans do use a lot more water than other animals, kinda like Americans make a lot more trash than humans in less developed countries. I don't know any exact numbers, but maybe I'll consult my book again, or more recent sources. Another question is whether our water purification and desalination systems are up to the task. we know they are inefficient, but how hard will it be to make them more efficient? Hard enough to cause loss of life before we can fix it? Or more accurately, since many people, particularly in Africa die of hunger and thirst every day, HOW MANY people have to die of lack of water before it becomes important enough to fix? As a reminder of the importance of water, we can all survive on a lot less food, but you can't go a couple days without water. And growing food requires water, too. The basicness of water to our existence makes the lack of it really scary.

Phoenixstar

Wel as far as water shortage goes I live in Florida and down here the water shortage is a real thing. The aquiduct is not being replenished as fast as it is being used. Which may be the case in more heavily populated areas.

As far as energy sources, The storage of nuclear waste will become a problem after years and years of build up. So not only will you have an energy problem but also a waste sorage problem. The space on earth is finite. Solar power right now seems the best bet for never ending power for the present and immediate future. Thing is will government and the like put money into it.

Council

This planet is a remarkable thing. What is now a desert, used to be rich with vegetation and water. What is now an oasis, used to be a desert. Land masses, weather patterns, and vegetation are in constant flux. Billions of years of reshaping the landscape, relocations of bodies of water, atmospheric changes and glacier movements tell me that we humans, who have been here but a tiny spec of time, play an extremely insignificant role in the overall scheme of things.

Who knows? The entire North American continent may become a vast desert, or it may split into several fragments, with each fragment being an island in the midst of a new body of water.

Whatever happens, man has as much control of it, as controling the weather.....none.