Water Shortages

[ysabetwordsmith]

This article looks at how much of the world is water-stressed and how much more will become so by 2025 or so.  Remember: no water, no life, no exceptions.  All of civilization is based on water, because humans need it to survive.  Where there is not enough water, people first fight over it, and then they either die or leave.  They can't live where there is no water; the carrying capacity is limited by how many people the water can support.

So whenever you hear of a place running out of water, look at how many people live there.  Those people will either die or leave, and before they do either, they will probably get into pretty bad fights over the dwindling water supply.  Outsiders will likely give zero fucks ... until the leaving starts.  They really don't want that to happen.  They don't want foreigners trying to move in and live on their land and drink their water.

People should think ahead.  If you don't want to be overrun by millions of refugees, take steps to protect the global water supply while there is still enough of it for people to stay where they are.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

Potable water supply... plenty of water in some places, but not a drop to drink.

and if I'm not mistaken, a lot of the southern states, in particular the midwest and Gulf states, are about to discover the reality of that. What doesn't dry up, is going to be contaminated by rising sea levels.

[zesty_pinto]

Options like RO plants might need to be considered. Even fresh water aside, the whole plastic problem convinced me that we're going to need to pay more attention to the purity of it all.

In time, perhaps we will also deal with an outbreak of microbes that will "fix" this problem by digesting all the errant plastic we keep seeing everywhere... which will probably end up destroying polymer-made homes along the way and ruin our chances of making 3D printing a viable concept, let alone making byproducts that we still can't confirm yet.

In the meantime though, desalination needs to be considered. Especially for Lake Michigan which has constant problems.

[thnidu]

"RO plants"?

[zesty_pinto]

RO= reverse osmosis. A fancy term for the use of multiple filters to passively purify the water. Israel has an RO plant, for example.