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Scientists Say Our Water Cycle Has Started Breaking Down
- Sakos 2y ago> That’s the conclusion of a new report published this week by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water—a group of leading scientists and economists formed in 2022 whose mission is to assess the state of Earth’s hydrological systems and how those systems are being managed. The results are not encouraging. The report finds that demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by more than 40 percent by the end of the decade, mostly due to stresses caused by climate change. We're marching ourselves straight into disaster that will affect hundreds of millions of people. Are we ever going to wake up and do something about it as a species?
- muthuh 2y agoDoesn't look like it :( too busy with our 'smart'phones.
- ok_dad 2y agoYea, we’ll use all the power useful for making clean water from the ocean for AI, and the shareholders will be so happy they can continue to extract value from those aquifers for a while longer :)
- ThrowAaaaway 2y agoIt's possible to use waste heat to evaporate water, to make drinking water from salt water, but it's unpractical to build datacenter on a shore, or pump salt water uphil to a datacenter.
- aspenmayer 2y agoSeems like Microsoft and Google are trying to make it work. How Oceans are Being Used to Cool Massive Data Centres [2017] https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-oceans-are-being-used-to-cool-massive-data-centres/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-oceans-are-being-used-to... Alternative Water Cooling Sources for Data Centers [2019] https://www.ashrae.org/technical-resources/ashrae-journal/featured-articles/alternative-water-cooling-sources-for-data-centers https://www.ashrae.org/technical-resources/ashrae-journal/fe... > While the temperature of surface ocean water can fluctuate seasonally, it can still be a valuable source of cooling. In hot regions such as the Middle East, surface seawater as high as 90°F (32°C) is used for condenser cooling with conventional systems. This is because even the higher temperature water is more efficient than air cooling and using potable water for evaporative cooling is not allowed due to water use restrictions. Feasibility study and multi-objective optimization of seawater cooling systems for data centers: A case study of Caspian Sea [2021] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2213138821005397 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22131... https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seta.2021.101528 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seta.2021.101528
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoEvaporating water is not the best way to desalinate water as it's inevitably energy intensive (though waste heat makes that less of an issue). It seems unlikely that datacenters will produce enough waste heat to supply populations with drinking water.
- card_zero 2y agoHave we ever done anything as a species?
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- EnigmaFlare 2y ago[dead]
- euroderf 2y agoDunno. Which alternative creates more shareholder value ?
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoIt seems like efforts to fix our problems are being deliberately sabotaged by wealthy corporations as they attempt to squeeze as much profit as they can before our inevitable civilisation collapse. Personally, I think the best way to make progress would be to remove the billionaires first as they are working against the majority's interests.
- OccamsMirror 2y agoThat's not cool, man. I'm totally planning on becoming a billionaire! How else will I be able to afford the bunker of my dreams to protect my family from the incoming calamity?
- jebebeebehhe 2y agoCommunism. (I say as a non-pejorative) I wonder if there is a way to make that work. Or decent socialism. Co-ops > Corps.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoI think there has to be some controls put on Capitalism as currently, all the incentives are for corporations/businesses to exploit natural resources as fast as possible with hardly any incentives to protect habitats (including ours).
- 0xEF 2y agoIt's called Accelerationism. Those with the resources to weather the collapse feel it is their duty to bring it about so they can restart civilization "correctly" this time.
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- EGreg 2y agoElon Musk is worried about “population collapse” in countries Perhaps he’s underestimating the amount of resources needed per person and the garbage each person produces Our planet had under a billion people for every century except the 20th and 21st, right? What was so bad about that? The idea that less human scientists, workers means less innovation, productivity is not necessarily true now in the age of automation and AI. The way I see it, people having less children across the planet may be the best way to rebalance this phenomenon. One third of arable land is desertified. Insect and other species are plummeting. The world is being converted to monocultures and farms. And we are here talking about having more babies for the sustainability of .. social security schemes?
- prolly97 2y agoUhu.. And how do we decide which people we don't want to exist? Is it last in first out? - "we were here first"? As one of the 8 billion on this earth, I'm rather happy being alive. And would love to give that gift to someone else. As many as possible, in fact. You're proposing a world where I should be happy not to have my siblings in my life. Which is absolutely insane. Your view only makes sense from the POV of those surviving or being the lucky chosen ones. I'd rather have my siblings + have to figure out how to fix issues with water supply etc. along the way, than not have my siblings and not have meaningful 'problems' to work on. We've solved harder problems. Throwing 7 billion people under the bus, because a problem seems a little hard, seems idiotic.
- rrrrrertt 2y agoLOL, there's so many people who hate being alive, you don't know if your kids will be happy or not. You are betting with an innocent's life, all for your self-satisfaction.
- card_zero 2y agoBalls, they're proposing a world where somebody else, who never had siblings, should be happy not to have siblings. It's nothing to do with people who are already alive or what they're accustomed to. I reserve judgement on whether this natural phasing out of 7 billion people (through natural deaths) is a good idea or not. Ideally, we'd cure death, which makes the plan unethical.
- karol 2y agoWe need to get everyone rich very quickly, because rich people don't drink tap water but bottled spring water, so no-one will be affected.
- tsukikage 2y agoRich people famously have giant lawns behind their white picket fences, which need watering. The /really/ rich have entire golf courses.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoGot to keep those microplastic levels topped up
- Zealotux 2y agoJoke's on you; I drink water from glass bottles only.
- card_zero 2y agoSo it's "breaking down" and "malfunctioning" relative to the water needs of the humans living in the affected areas. So this is not in fact any meaningful step change in the system, unless you see providing comfortable amounts of fresh water to all humans living in those specific areas as its purpose.
- noselasd 2y agoYes, pretty much.
- dash2 2y agoI don't know what water's purpose is in God's eyes, but I think from humans' point of view, we should try and make sure all humans have comfortable amounts of fresh water, and if that will become impossible, that's a problem.
- card_zero 2y agoUh-huh. I'm objecting to phrases that give the impression that something specific and terrifying is happening that might, for instance, kill all life, when what's really happened is that a quango released a report about the ongoing general decline.
- piva00 2y agoKill all life is absurdly hard to happen until the Sun explodes, life has survived multiple asteroid impacts, massive volcanoes eruptions, a global-scale oxidation event, so on and so forth. The discussion around climate change and breakdown of current climate cycles is always about what's survivable for our current environment and biosphere with humans in it...
- taylodl 2y agoMy bar is sustaining civilization, not just sustaining human life. It doesn't take much climate change for civilization to collapse. I'm fascinated by how rarely people think of that!
- Grandeculio 2y agoMaybe next the air will get tired of circulating and we’ll just have to take turns breathing.
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- rtpg 2y agoThere's some cruel irony in the planet getting hotter not just making it rain more and making rain happen on land. I do wonder what the state of desalination is. I have read a bit about brine management out of curiosity , but I really have a hard time understanding what can be done about it. If someone figured out how to make concrete from brine or something could we be doing a lot more desalination?
- demarq 2y agoSuddenly Mad Max doesn’t look like sci fi anymore.
- floppiplopp 2y ago"Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!" Immortan Joe, tech visionary and innovator
- gmuslera 2y agoNot just this water cycle will be disrupted, most of the other “stable” cycles on which the global ecosystem and the human civilization are based on will get disrupted too. Pushing the system off balance will make things harder to survive with, with our population numbers or with much less than that. And those disruptions also cause increasing effects, more humidity in the air also accelerates global warming, water vapor is also another greenhouse gas, a pretty powerful one.