"in the next 10 years, 2 billion people will be living with absolute water scarcity"...see this map.

[dixiegrrrrl]

Last night's Vice show covered India's water problem and expanded to global water issues.
Edited to add: "in the next 10 years 2/3 of the world's pop. will live under "water stress" conditions".

They showed this map, which I got a screen capture of.

[yeoman6987]

1. So amazing when you think how much water Earth makes up

We just going to have to figure a way to process ocean water which may turn out perfect since it is getting deeper since the last of the ice is melting. I know and heard all the excuses but considering what we've done like going to the moon, flying and all the other feats. We need to think outside the box.

[RKP5637]

2. No idea what the solution is for this on a mass scale. Too many people in wrong environments

for survival. Unless a magical solution, migration seems the most feasible?

[BillZBubb]

5. Mass migrations usually lead to bad consequences.

[RKP5637]

7. Yep, definitely bad. n/t

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. Have you been following Europe's reaction to the hordes of migrants?

These migrants are fleeing wars, many are from Africa.

10 million or more migrants seeking water are gonna create a water shortage where ever they land, since the problem is increased water scarcity.

Vice looked at India's problem, a lot of it is due to poor sanitation polluting the available water, and could be fixed by the government.

Rationing water in California could have started before this year.
Mis-allocation of water is a huge cntributing factor in today.

[RKP5637]

11. Yep, and from what I've read particularly mis-allocation of water. n/t

[haikugal]

3. First thing to do is stop fracking our water....

[mmonk]

25. +1

[truedelphi]

4. K & R. What does the range refer to?

Is high meaning "high scarcity" ??

And low means "low scarcity" ??

Or is high meaning high amounts of water, with low meaning low amounts of water?

####

Then once I know that, i would still have to add, so many things they tell us about "the next ten years" turn out to be wrong.

In the late 1970's, we were being warned about a mini ice age.

And in the early Aughts, we were told that the Antarctic would go before the Arctic snow pack would. (That turned out to be just the reverse.)

In any event, one huge factor is how many volcanoes go off. Should we enter into a heavy duty volcanic age, we might have more water than we know what to do with.

####

Third factor that needs discussion - if you consider fracking, even places that might end up with lots of water, may not have any water that is drinkable or that could be used for irrigation. The Movies "Gaslands" and "Gaslands II" point this fact out and the movies have some very scary scary maps - I mean, even spots in the USA that don't have any natural gas to frack will be carrying the huge burden of letting pipelines go through their cities and rural areas. My home place of Northern Illinois falls into this category.

Irony abounds as well - Although here in California, the water police would get me for using my grey water on my tomatoes (grey water is supposed to be used only for grass or for flowers) it is totally okay for the Big Energy firms to convince farmers to use their fracking operation waste water on crops!!

[dixiegrrrrl]

15. Map is titled "water stress"

So the colors pertain to % of water stress in each country.
USA seems to have medium and extreme % of water stress.

[ToxMarz]

18. In the late 1970's, we were being warned about a mini ice age.

In the late 1970's, we were being warned about a mini ice age.

What were climate scientists predicting in the 1970s?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm

"The fact is that around 1970 there were 6 times as many scientists predicting a warming rather than a cooling planet. Today, with 30+years more data to analyse, we've reached a clear scientific consensus: 97% of working climate scientists agree with the view that human beings are causing global warming."

The 1970s Ice Age Myth and Time Magazine Covers – by David Kirtley
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/06/04/the-1970s-ice-age-myth-and-time-magazine-covers-by-david-kirtley/

"The entire purpose of this myth is to suggest that scientists can’t be trusted, that they will say/claim/predict whatever to get their names in the newspapers, and that the media falls for it all the time. They were wrong about ice ages in the 1970s, they are wrong now about global warming."


And in the early Aughts, we were told that the Antarctic would go before the Arctic snow pack would. (That turned out to be just the reverse.)


What's Holding Antarctic Sea Ice Back From Melting?
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/antarctic_melting.html

"In the 1980s, scientists discovered that emissions of refrigerants and accelerants called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) had depleted the ozone layer, especially over Antarctica. Ozone depletion, notorious for permitting more cancer-causing ultraviolet light to reach the surface, has a lesser known impact: It cools the stratosphere, the layer of atmosphere between 10 and 60 kilometers (6 and 37 miles) above the surface."

"Since 1980, the strength of the polar vortex has intensified by about 15 percent due to ozone depletion. The loss of ozone caused atmospheric pressure to decrease over the Amundsen Sea, thereby strengthening the winds on the Ross Ice Shelf, according to NASA Goddard scientist Josefino Comiso, coauthor of a recent study that models the connection between ozone, wind speeds, and climate in the Antarctic."

Its not that the science is wrong so we should just wait and see, it's that we keep adding new man made pollutants that change the stakes and can't be anticipated.

[truedelphi]

23. Look - the New York Times itself wrote in August of 1974 of the dreaded mini

Ice Age.

https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/1970s-ice-age-scare/

Scroll down a bit.

You will see several articles, over the span of 1974 to 1976, copied verbatim for the first paragraph in each of the pertinent New York Times article.

It is easy enough for "skeptic" websites, now given the gift of 20/20 vision that comes with hindsight, to come out and say this or that. But no one who was anyone on the issue was saying the reverse.

Geology professors, including the one who taught a course I audited at Univ of Illinois, were talking about it.

And I am hearing that we are entering an age of mass volcanic eruptions. Whether for instance, Yellowstone goes off next year or in a hundred years, that cannot be predicted. But volcanoes that were previously considered to be dormant have recently gone up in smoke, taking out the underlying community of humans, flora and fauna along with them.

Both my spouse and I now follow news about Chilean earthquakes quite religiously, as the "dormant" volcano we now live quite near was always considered to be the "sister" volcano of one of those "dormant volcanoes" that unexpectedly erupted in Chile in the past five years.

USGS now has sensors on the shoulders of Mt Konocti, the volcano near our home.

[Pooka Fey]

6. Really scary map.

Mass migrations are already in effect for multiple reasons, and will only worsen due to drought, with massive Geo-political and social instability as a result.

For example, how will the entire population of the USA manage to live East of the Rockies when the West is no longer habitable?

[RKP5637]

8. It will likely be unsustainable. n/t

[RKP5637]

9. Here is a video on this for California.

[dixiegrrrrl]

17. ooohhh...cool...thank you !

[erronis]

19. Powerful video. This is likely to be an example of what will happen throughout the US

Not to mention when migration from the rest of the world tries to find harbor on our shores.

Not that they are "our shores" any more than Europe belongs to some northern white people. When the going gets tough, we're all going to be in this together, even the ones hiding in gated communities.

[awoke_in_2003]

12. And what water there is...

will soon be undrinkable if we don't change the way we do things.

[daleanime]

13. +1

[dixiegrrrrl]

16. Yes, the show covered that issue with India....( don't watch when you are eating)

I a really impressed with Vice show.
Happily it can be seen on Youtube too.

[jtuck004]

14. Nice dark red spot right over the wheat-growing reservoir in the U.S. n/t

[Bosonic]

20. Water stress in (semi) arid regions. Hmmm.

[calimary]

21. How does that quote go? "Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink."

Found it!

“Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.”


― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner


http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2156-water-water-everywhere-and-all-the-boards-did-shrink-water

[glowing]

22. Many of the oil hot spots.

[valerief]

24. Fracking uses up water and makes it unpotable. Solar energy anyone? nt

[truedelphi]

28. For some reason, Gov Jerry Brown can issue decrees stipulating that average folks

Must immediately give up 25% of their useage.

But fracking interests can keep fracking? WTF?

[niyad]

26. k and r. it has been known for quite some time that the next resource wars will be (indeed,

already ARE) about water. thank you so much for posting this!

[True Blue Door]

27. Humankind is long overdue for a rational water system.

At this point in our development, there's simply no excuse to depend on rivers, aquifers, and snow melt on a planet whose surface is 70% covered in water.

Once we have the affordable renewable energy in place (almost certainly PV solar, since that's the most scalable), we can begin to build out seawater desalination infrastructure along coasts and pipe to continental interiors. The water would then be recycled as much as practical, and the energy of its downhill descent in pipes and storm drains would be efficiently recaptured with turbines.

With that system, water will never be a problem again. In fact, it would be more abundant than has ever been the case in human history, and we could turn deserts into conifer forests if we felt like it. But it will take quite a while to establish, so there will be problems in the meantime.