Science Forums 2

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Star30

You are so right. In primitive times the people would pack up and move to find food, to hunt. [/url]

Thanks

I'd like to see us pack up and move NY Toko cairo or even Sydney.

A World of Thirst
Poor sanitation. Pollution. Wasteful irrigation. The planet's freshwater supply is terribly managed
By Bret Schulte
Posted 5/27/07

Over the course of the past 40 years, north Africa's Lake Chad has shriveled to one tenth its earlier size, beset by decades of drought and agricultural irrigation that have sucked water from the rivers that feed it—even as the number of people whose lives depend on its existence has grown.

In 1990, the Lake Chad basin supported about 26 million people; by 2004 the total was 37.2 million. In the next 15 years, experts predict, the incredible shrinking lake and its tapped rivers will need to support 55 million. "You don't have much room for error at this point," says hydrologist Michael Coe.
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The population growth has coincided with a 25 percent decrease in rainfall, with global warming very likely a factor. As oceans store more heat, the temperature difference between water and land dissipates, sapping power from rainmaking monsoons.

At the same time, desperate people are overusing wells. Coe recently concluded that water supplies in the basin are "stretched to their limits, and future needs will far outstrip the accessible supply."
. . .
. . .
In a report issued in November, the United Nations declared water "a global crisis," announcing that 55 member nations are failing to meet their water-related Millennium Development Goal target, agreed upon in 2000, of halving the proportion of people without clean water and sanitation by 2015.
. . .
One percent. Just 3 percent of the world's water is fresh. Of that, most is locked in the ground, glaciers, or ice caps.
That leaves about 1 percent for the world's 6.6 billion people.

Wasteful Irrigation, Poor Sanitation, and Pollution Plague the World's Freshwater Supply - US News and World Report

Date:25/03/2007

Climate change, pollution, over extraction of water and development are killing some of the world's most famous rivers including China's Yangtze, India's Ganges and Africa's Nile, conservation group WWF said on Tuesday.

Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi
Date: 25/03/2007

Another first for the UAE was highlighted at the Middle East Power & Water Conference 2007, with the seven emirates edging near the top of the global index for the highest water consumption per capita.

"The UAE has 114 water dams with a joint capacity of 118 million cubic metres of rain water.
Meanwhile, desalination pants for both drinking and industrial use provide an annual supply of 950 million cubic metres,"

Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi
(How much does all the extra dam-lakes, desalinated water, flood irrigation etc being used by agriculture and sweated & peed out by a few billion extra people effect global warming over the last 50-100 years? (Water vapour humidity is the major GHG. Has anyone ever measured it like we do CO2?)