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Water crisis coming in 15 years unless the world acts now, UN report warns

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Re: Water crisis coming in 15 years unless the world acts now, UN report warns

#31

Post by Lethe101 »

Something that bears mentioning when you read this type of report:

If something is 10-20 years in the future in these types of models, this has:

a) Already happened unless b) there are major changes / interactions that scientific models have not had factored in while c) Anthropic actions cannot change this, but it can change x+n where X is original time and n is the 'down ramp' from your curve.

For instance: if your Co2 is 400ppm now, then the effects have already happened 20-50 years into the future. It can be made much much worse through events before you hit that time (let us say either Yellowstone or the entire of India / China buying a car per family) but your actions in the interim are merely altering the effects after time X.

In the case of water we can say: model presents X+n time > if action: such as massive investment in desalination and/or new osmosis materials (positive to time change) minus climate impacts we've not noticed yet (negatives to time change) where n is less than continued effect without any other imputs.

This is a rather loopy way to say:

People think of these types of announcements as future based predictions: they're not, they're present events if (and only if) your models don't change.

[Note: this isn't to say they're scientifically incorrect - but this inability to understand time in these types of reports fuels a lot of ignorance from both "sides" of Climate / Ecological debates]

Re: Water crisis coming in 15 years unless the world acts now, UN report warns

#32

Post by r00fus »

ido wrote: post #7
phkahler wrote: post #4

They point to population growth as a contributing factor, yet they never suggest anyone do anything about that. How about free birth control to anyone who wants it? How about permanent birth control to any adult who wants it? I'd say free to anyone below some income level since the middle class can afford it anyway. With increasing productivity we don't have jobs for all the people anyway, why not encourage making le…

Population growth rates world wide have already plummeted in recent decades and continue to do so as more developing countries industrialize. Current predictions point to stabilizing world population at 9 billion and the starting to slowly drop. In the most developed countries we have seen lower than replacement rates for a long while now.

Amusingly, this is the population posed for 24th century earth in the movie "Star Trek: First Contact". Nice to know they didn't pull the numbers from thin air.

Re: Water crisis coming in 15 years unless the world acts now, UN report warns

#33

Post by tracker1 »

phkahler wrote: post #4

They point to population growth as a contributing factor, yet they never suggest anyone do anything about that. How about free birth control to anyone who wants it? How about permanent birth control to any adult who wants it? I'd say free to anyone below some income level since the middle class can afford it anyway. With increasing productivity we don't have jobs for all the people anyway, why not encourage making le…

...or a global plague... something similar to the black plague, or some of the really bad flu epidemics... without the risks from infectious disease, humans are pretty much un-checked.

I'm not suggesting that we actually engineer such a solution, but the fact is there are too many people on the planet, and the population is only growing... Eventually the real perceived value of life will decrease, and more militant solutions will start presenting themselves.

It's not popular, and my only hope is I don't live to see things get really worse.

Desalinization really should be something under much heavier research than it currently is. As should farming with less water usage, as well as cross-country water pipelines.

Re: Water crisis coming in 15 years unless the world acts now, UN report warns

#34

Post by eikenberry »

phkahler wrote: post #4

They point to population growth as a contributing factor, yet they never suggest anyone do anything about that. How about free birth control to anyone who wants it? How about permanent birth control to any adult who wants it? I'd say free to anyone below some income level since the middle class can afford it anyway. With increasing productivity we don't have jobs for all the people anyway, why not encourage making le…

When you say free you don't mean free. Free means no one pays for it which means no one spends time making it. If anyone has to spend any time making and/or distributing this birth control it isn't be free by definition.

Re: Water crisis coming in 15 years unless the world acts now, UN report warns

#36

Post by auganov »

makmanalp wrote: post #16
phkahler wrote: post #4

They point to population growth as a contributing factor, yet they never suggest anyone do anything about that. How about free birth control to anyone who wants it? How about permanent birth control to any adult who wants it? I'd say free to anyone below some income level since the middle class can afford it anyway. With increasing productivity we don't have jobs for all the people anyway, why not encourage making le…

I wonder if there are strategic reasons behind this - do the US and European countries fear a growing China and India and feel the need to compete, for example? Are there military or economic incentives to having a large population today as there used to be a millennium ago? I'm probably going to go with no, but who knows?

I always had a feeling that most of China's "success" is just centralizing wealth of the whole country in a few places under governance of not so many people. With so many people you don't have to be terribly successful at reform to produce a bunch of impressive cities etc. Per capita it has a long way to go. We'll never know until/if China breakups into multiple countries (or something similar).

Re: Water crisis coming in 15 years unless the world acts now, UN report warns

#37

Post by __m »

phkahler wrote: post #19
josefresco wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the keys to "controlling" population growth is to bring people out of poverty. Most studies I read, show dropping birth rates as people/nations climb the economic ladder. Education, and health care also play a big part.

>> I think one of the keys to "controlling" population growth is to bring people out of poverty. That implies that poor people have a higher reproductive rate - which I believe is true. A shortcut is to offer birth control to poor people. Many of them don't actually want a bunch of kids, but when you're poor there's not much to do and sex is free. I agree it'd be nice to bring people out of poverty, but shouldn't we…

there is probably more behind that than boredom. Maybe they want many kids to support them when they get older.

Re: Water crisis coming in 15 years unless the world acts now, UN report warns

#38

Post by snowwrestler »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #18
josefresco wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the keys to "controlling" population growth is to bring people out of poverty. Most studies I read, show dropping birth rates as people/nations climb the economic ladder. Education, and health care also play a big part.

Since the original topic is the global fresh water crisis, wouldn't the increased per capita resource consumption from greater standards of living offset any gains in population growth slowing?

Not necessarily; there is sometimes quite a lot of surface water in poor areas of the world, but no reliable way to disinfect it. So you get wells dug next to rivers, because the well water is clean and the river is not.

Rising living standards create the capital, infrastructure, and stability to build water and sewage treatment plants to make better use of surface water.

In the developed world, much of the "population" problem is the location, not amount, of people. Lots of people have moved to Phoenix because of air conditioning and groundwater wells. Its population growth has been driven almost entirely by migration, not birth rate.

One potential solution there is to allow accurate market pricing of water. If it becomes progressively more expensive to live there as water supplies dwindle, people would stop building water-hungry golf courses and stop moving there. Unfortunately, control of the municipal water supply is often in the hands of the local government...who is not going to willingly vote to raise the price of water on their voters, and shrink their own city.

Re: Water crisis coming in 15 years unless the world acts now, UN report warns

#39

Post by digikata »

guyzero wrote: post #29
rhino369 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is talking about the water you use in your household. But that is a tiny faction of all water used in total. Industry and farming absolutely dwarf household consumption. A ton of water is used to grow Alfafia. There is no way it's profitable if you had to desalinate it first.

More realistically, California stops growing alfalfa and stops raising beef cattle altogether. That would free up enough water to water every lawn across the state.

Well, we should consider moving away from lawns too. They are the largest crop grown in the US.

http://scienceline.org/2011/07/lawns-vs-crops-in-the-contine...

Re: Water crisis coming in 15 years unless the world acts now, UN report warns

#40

Post by civilian »

tracker1 wrote: post #33
phkahler wrote: post #4

They point to population growth as a contributing factor, yet they never suggest anyone do anything about that. How about free birth control to anyone who wants it? How about permanent birth control to any adult who wants it? I'd say free to anyone below some income level since the middle class can afford it anyway. With increasing productivity we don't have jobs for all the people anyway, why not encourage making le…

...or a global plague... something similar to the black plague, or some of the really bad flu epidemics... without the risks from infectious disease, humans are pretty much un-checked. I'm not suggesting that we actually engineer such a solution, but the fact is there are too many people on the planet, and the population is only growing... Eventually the real perceived value of life will decrease, and more militant s…

Our population should cap out at 10billion: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g... and the ethical thing we can do to encourage that is to pull people out of poverty and give them education and tv.
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