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Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

science.org

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Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#151

Post by 908B64B197 »

mywittyname wrote: post #57
wombarly wrote: post #25

Here in the Netherlands they decided to increase the water level of our lakes by 5cm to handle the drought season this year. Since the amount of snowfall in the Alps was lower than normal. https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/nieuws/archief/2023/04/hoger-...

It must be nice to live in a country that manages their natural resources with an eye towards long-term sustainability.

It's a conscious choice the citizens made every day for the last century, just like America chose freedom.

What's the other countries excuses?

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#152

Post by throw_pm23 »

mywittyname wrote: post #57
wombarly wrote: post #25

Here in the Netherlands they decided to increase the water level of our lakes by 5cm to handle the drought season this year. Since the amount of snowfall in the Alps was lower than normal. https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/nieuws/archief/2023/04/hoger-...

It must be nice to live in a country that manages their natural resources with an eye towards long-term sustainability.

With all due respect, the Netherlands is perhaps the furthest a place can be from long-term sustainability. The place is a mix of monoculture + concrete.

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#153

Post by wombarly »

hbarka wrote: post #96
wombarly wrote: post #25

Here in the Netherlands they decided to increase the water level of our lakes by 5cm to handle the drought season this year. Since the amount of snowfall in the Alps was lower than normal. https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/nieuws/archief/2023/04/hoger-...

Do you have any news how Swiss lakes are affected?

No, I only really know this because it was in the local news a while ago and though it was interesting / related to the OP.

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#154

Post by HPsquared »

PeterisP wrote: post #138
HPsquared wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not staggeringly expensive, about 38 cents per day per person, apparently: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Costs Although that doesn't include irrigation.. EDIT: can even be economical for irrigation in some circumstances: https://www.fluencecorp.com/desalination-and-agriculture-les...

Something like 600 million people live below the poverty line, which with current inflation is at $2.15 per day; so for them a 38 cent per day rate means diverting almost 20% of their income just on water. For comparison, that's a much larger share than what USA residents spend on food (~13% of their income).

The figures assume a US citizen level of water consumption, someone on $2 a day would use much less than this.

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#155

Post by time_to_smile »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #147
LesZedCB wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Globally, natural lake volume declined at a net rate of −26.38 ± 1.59 Gt year the phrase you read said "Over half (53 ± 2%) of the large lakes experienced significant water losses" (emphasis mine)

Is 26.38 Gt a lot? There's 91k cubic kilometers of fresh water in lakes according to: https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/sci... And a cubic kilometer is basically a Gt, right? .98 Gt? So 26 / 91,000 = ~0.02% ? Is that a lot? If it's really 0.02% - wouldn't you expect something to be random noise? How do we know it's not random noise?

[flagged]

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#156

Post by adhesive_wombat »

MattGaiser wrote: post #140
goatlover wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but we're rather capable of building long pipelines to ship liquids across large distances.

It would require a lot of expansion for the required volume. A barrel of oil has about 159 litres in it. The Keystone Pipeline would have transported 1.1 million barrels if it were fully expanded. 174,900,000 million litres per day. The City of Phoenix by itself uses about 1 billion litres per day.

I was going to say "but that probably double-counts recycled water" and then I looked it up and recycled water is only 8% of Phoenix's water usage, and it's 10% nationally in the US.

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#157

Post by PM_me_your_math »

time_to_smile wrote: post #155
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 26.38 Gt a lot? There's 91k cubic kilometers of fresh water in lakes according to: https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/sci... And a cubic kilometer is basically a Gt, right? .98 Gt? So 26 / 91,000 = ~0.02% ? Is that a lot? If it's really 0.02% - wouldn't you expect something to be random noise? How do we know it's not random noise?

[flagged]

So we should have 100% faith in what we're being told in the article? If the author was trying to deceive then they wouldn't cite data that provided contradiction. Seems more like a religious approach than a logical one. There are papers, that were well cited, claiming there would be no sea ice by 2010, which never occurred.

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#158

Post by wasm123 »

Dennip wrote: post #49
pier25 wrote: post #26

We're going to need a lot of desalination plants powered by clean energy.

IIRC These can have thier own host of problems because the 'brine' byproduct doesn't mix well back into the ocean and can settle/pool and create marine dead zones. Although suppose that will be less of a priority if people are thirsty.

We had the same problem with power plants dumping hot untreated water back in the environment. This is why cooling towers are synonymous with nuclear power plants. This is an easy solution to fix, but like all engineering it costs extra. For power plants it was fixed through legislation. You literally have an entire oceans worth of water to reconstitute the brine. This was more problematic of older system using distillation.

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#159

Post by avgcorrection »

908B64B197 wrote: post #151
mywittyname wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It must be nice to live in a country that manages their natural resources with an eye towards long-term sustainability.

It's a conscious choice the citizens made every day for the last century, just like America chose freedom. What's the other countries excuses?

Freedom from what? Britain?

Re: Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

#160

Post by RajT88 »

Izikiel43 wrote: post #145
RajT88 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are considering using salt as a building material now: https://www.archdaily.com/994769/could-salt-be-a-material-of... When you have a practically free resource which is waste from a large scale industrial process, cottage industries to make use of the free waste sometimes pop up. It's a solvable problem.

Then your house melts with the rain

Article talks about that kinda. You have to read at least halfway through it.
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