'A harbinger of what's to come:' NASA satellites show massive drop in global freshwater levels
'A harbinger of what's to come:' NASA satellites show massive drop in global freshwater levels
NASA satellites discovered that Earth's surface has lost enough water to empty Lake Erie two and a half times since 2015. And the problem could be here to stay.
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Where are they implying it went? Did it evaporate out into space? Was it absorbed into the earth's crust? Or is it just becoming unpotable - and if that, how does the change in earth's wobble that they use to make this claim imply that water has lost it's freshness?
There are over 8 billion people on earth. People drink, wash, and shit in multiple litres of water daily. Crops require water. Livestock requires water. We slaughter several edit:
Trillion (with a T)billion livestock globally each year, there is A LOT of livestock. Industry requires water. Industry is trusted not to hoard, pollute or waste water. Water processing and sewage reclamation requires well funded public infrastructure. The hotter our atmosphere is, the more water vapour it will hold.Just some ideas to get you started.
While I agree that water use for livestock it’s a problem. There aren’t anywhere near a trillion livestock to kill. Over dozens of years, maybe, barely, and a vast vast majority of them are going to be chickens.
In 2014 there were 21 billion chickens. A Trillion is 1000 billion. There were less than 1.5 billion cattle and just over a billion sheep the same year and those numbers don’t appear to change drastically. Pork production is down this year for example.
Oh hang on, that number might of been counting fish/sea animals too? Idk, I still can't remember where I heard 'trillion' on this, but the infographic on Our World In Data could get that number up there with fish included as livestock.
Including fish as livestock is not particularly relevant for making a point on fresh water consumption though, so you were actually still right to call me out on this.
Yeah it’s easy to exaggerate numbers, I have to catch myself often. Fish could get us close I suppose (shrimp almost surely, but counting each one is problematic).
20 billion chickens is still an insane number anyway. And with so much of the US in drought it’s tough not to let it keep me up at night.
Thank you for this! Memory is a fickle thing and I really appreciate you coming in with sources like this.
'Trillion' was such a such a sure figure in my head for annual livestock slaughtered globally and you made me realise that I can't actually remember where I got it from, which is kinda embarrassing.
I always assumed that it was a matter of a lack of infrastructure to do water processing and reclamation, and or just it takes time for water to cycle back around to being fresh water. I never thought about how a shift in climate means the air holds on to more water.
Goes to show, despite it being bad news, you really do learn something new everyday.
I understand the basic overuse and mismanagement :) All of these things are true and quantifiable to a point - But I did mean to ask how was this measurement indicative of a specific amount of despoiled water, if all that satellite measures is relative changes in gravitational motion. A re-read of the article and this segment seems to have answered the question - "dumping more rain in faster and more powerful storms that are more likely to run off than to seep into drier and more compact surfaces." which seems to mean it was indeed being absorbed instead of staying in sloshy bits on the surface or becoming atmospheric, therefore causing detectable gravitational wobble.
Thanks though, for the clarification.