Peak Water ?
Last week, we discussed Peak Oil; Today, we look at "Peak Water."
Click for ginormous graphics
WIRED SCIENCE | Peak Water | PBS
cool
UPDATE: May 27 2008 8:08pm
A reader send in this report from Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), titled Saving Water: From Field to Fork Curbing losses and wastage in the food chain
Download Paper_13_Field_to_Fork.pdf
Source:
Peak Water: Aquifers and Rivers Are Running Dry. How Three Regions Are Coping
Matthew Power
WIRED MAGAZINE: 16.05 04.21.08 | 6:00 PM
Science : Planet Earth
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-05/ff_peakwater
Tuesday, May 27, 2008 | 02:30 PM | Permalink
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Global warming will change all that. With all the glaciers melting, sea levels rising, there will be plenty of rain and all will be merry.
Posted by: tyaresun | May 27, 2008 2:39:40 PM
It takes 20 gallons to make a glass of beer? Damn, I consume a lot of water!
Posted by: Mike M | May 27, 2008 2:45:46 PM
And next....Peak Air!
Posted by: Mr Reality | May 27, 2008 2:45:47 PM
Apparently, it takes about 2500 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol from corn
(http://www.polarisinstitute.org/cant_drink_ethanol)
Posted by: DL | May 27, 2008 3:05:05 PM
I live in the Midwest, and the states around The Great Lakes are signing a pact to protect the largest freshwater source from being exported West: http://www.glc.org/about/glbc.html
Posted by: BustaMove | May 27, 2008 3:21:17 PM
I live in the Midwest, and the states around The Great Lakes are signing a pact to protect the largest freshwater source from being exported West: http://www.glc.org/about/glbc.html
Posted by: BustaMove | May 27, 2008 3:21:35 PM
Now this is getting ridiculous!
Posted by: gbug208 | May 27, 2008 3:22:09 PM
Why is Australia looking so good? Last I heard they were dealing with a drought.
The difference between PNG and the bit of Indonesia (that is Indonesia, right?) that's on the same island is also interesting. I'd almost say that they just broke this thing up by countries, but the colors for Turkey are different between the Asian and European sides.
Posted by: daveNYC | May 27, 2008 3:27:48 PM
This might be a blueprint for how the "elite" plan on selling us peons THEIR water.
http://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/current.html
Posted by: samole | May 27, 2008 3:47:12 PM
Maybe we'll be able to trade water for oil soon.
Posted by: B | May 27, 2008 3:50:42 PM
daveNYC
Just because a country has a lot of water doesn't mean the water is where the people and/or agriculture are. Australia is a big place.
Posted by: Estragon | May 27, 2008 3:56:30 PM
Water, like beer, is rented.
It's one thing to say, it takes x gallons of water to make y. The burning question is where does that water go, and can we reclaim it before nature does?
Posted by: ReductiMat | May 27, 2008 4:01:40 PM
Hi, how can Asia consume 50% of the total and yet have only 29% of the resources?
It must be because resources are regional totals and much larger than yrly consumption.
I wish they'd somehow attached nominal values to the two pie charts.
But another question. Agriculture is by far the largest user of water (as the graphic points out). Experts, such as Lester Brown, point out that, in some sense, to export agricultural products is to export water. And to import food is to import water. Egypt is the #1 world importer in the world of wheat (much of it, one assumes, from the US since the US is the largest exporter). Well, Egypt doesn't have a lot of water and they have a relatively large population. The #2 world importer (again if memory serves) is Japan. This case is different. Japan has very little land that can be cultivated (the country is mostly mountainous). And on what land there is, it's mostly rice that's grown. Tradition of course, but also Japan's astronomically high rice subsidies. I lived in Japan for 6 yrs. There are a lot of bakeries; the Japanese like bread; and there's bread all over the place. Egypt lacks water, but Japan has money. And hence the two largest importers of wheat. And probably the US' two largest wheat customers.
Wonder if food=water is included in the Consumption pie chart (I'd guess not).
So anyway, what I can gather from the two pie charts is that Asia is consuming its way through its water reserves at a faster clip than any other region. Which is not surprising given its population.
pat
Posted by: patfla | May 27, 2008 4:31:13 PM
Yeah Australia is big, but they're also rich. Some quick Google-fu showed that they were in a drought from '02 to '08. If they were that hooked up with water then I would have thought there would be some big irrigation projects in the works.
The poster shows them being good to go until 2025. It might not be wrong, but I'm wondering if it's more 'pretty colors' than 'solid data'.
Posted by: daveNYC | May 27, 2008 4:42:32 PM
great looking graphics, but not so sure about their accuracy. today, there is the same amount of water on this planet as there was eons ago. hence, there is no concept such as "peak water." the only question is where is the water relative to population. this is not the first time nor will it be the last that populations have fought over water. water, or the lack thereof, is the primary reason for the civil war in darfur. the question is, do we globally solve the logistically problem between areas of population with disappearing water peacefully. history says that is not a good wager to go long on.
Posted by: surferdude | May 27, 2008 4:51:05 PM
how is it possible that spain would be with more water than france or england in 2025 ?? less water per capita in belgium than in australia at the end ?? i have never read a map with these conclusions about this subject...very strange
Posted by: mat | May 27, 2008 5:15:14 PM
DL,
From your link:
"To illustrate the potential problem, let's make a couple of assumptions ... let's assume the current trend continues, and corn remains the crop of choice to make ethanol."
BZZZZZT.
Wrong assumption.
~~~~~~
BTW, I noticed that both the Aston Martin and Corvette teams are utilizing cellulosic ethanol in their GT1 cars in the American LeMans series this year.
.
Posted by: VJ | May 27, 2008 5:35:58 PM
It would be interesting to know/see how much water is consumed in producing one barrel of oil from Alberta's Tar Sands.
http://www.vbs.tv/shows.php?search=alberta
Posted by: ceeinbc | May 27, 2008 5:48:12 PM
I agree with surferdude - "peak water" is not a useful concept.
The issues with water are distribution of water rights, physical distribution of the water, and water cleanliness.
The "peak water" term might be useful in some localized areas that currently depend on, and are depleting, underground aquifers. Even there, though, the "peak water" term is likely to mislead. A more useful concept would be sustainable draw on the aquifer (and the amount of the sustainable draw can be increased by human effort).
Posted by: ottnott | May 27, 2008 6:02:25 PM
I lived in Arizona for 15 years and made a deliberate study of water and usage. In addition to the colorado, 4 river systems flow through Phoenix. They supply the bulk of the water. The colorado is the back-up system. The water usage in the phoenix area is as follows:
#1 User: Agriculture (By Far)
#2 User: Residential Outside the house(Yes, Lawns, trees, etc)
#3 User: Recreation Industries (Golf)
#4 User: Industry
#5 User: Residential Inside the house
Arizona has a large water supply per capita. Probably larger than some areas where the landscape is naturally green. (the reason is the enormously large and unpopulated drainage area of the rivers in the SW)
The problem is how it's used, not the amount available.
Also, the picture in that video is reflective of a long drought. My sources tell me that the flow from the Colorado this year is at a 10 year high (I know, just one data point...). So, I think the media embedded some alarmism in those images.
Posted by: Dan | May 27, 2008 6:17:15 PM
Strickly speaking, water is almost never "used," just manipulated. Water just moves around the planet. In some places, the use more than they have locally available, like California.
In many cases, industrial uses of water are not "end" uses. For example, Iceland uses a great deal of its water to make hydroelectric power. Either way, power or no, most of this water goes to the ocean. It is not, ultimately, wasted. (It's diversion may have other environmental effects, but it is not wasted.)
Similar thing in the US Midwest. We use a lot of water for agriculture, but it either reenters out aquifers or is evaporated and "re-rains" on us.
This is not a fossil fuel kind of issue.
Posted by: Andy Reyburn | May 27, 2008 7:57:23 PM
As if we needed another reason to eliminate the Bush tax cuts for the rich!
Posted by: Muckdog | May 27, 2008 7:57:48 PM
Andy Reyburn -- It is a fossil fuel kind of issue. The Midwest's enormously important Ogallala Aquifer is being drawn down by agriculture much faster than it is recharging. Much of the water is "fossil water" that is 15,000 years or older.
Wiki: Present-day recharge of the aquifer with fresh water occurs at a slow rate; this implies that much of the water in its pore spaces is paleowater, dating back to the last ice age.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer
Posted by: Douglas Watts | May 27, 2008 8:13:12 PM
Water usually is not a form of potential energy, cannot compare to the combustion of
fossil fuels.
Water is plentiful and can be recycled as long as the energy needed is cheap.
Peak OIL > peak water.
Posted by: rickrude | May 27, 2008 8:53:42 PM
As was stated in the linked article, the situation is very complex, and therefore getting the information from those who understand it (i.e. hydrologists) to those who need to use it in making policy (i.e. the public and politicians) is a pretty daunting task. Dan (above) makes some good points about Arizona, where I live and practice Civil Engineering, so I'm pretty familiar with the situation. The peak oil - peak water analogy definitely isn't the best. Unlike oil, water is constantly renewing itself, even here in the desert. But like peak oil there is a tipping point where consumption exceeds "production." Here we call that "safe yield," and development is griding to a halt in the Prescott area because it's on the wrong side of that equilibrium (no thanks to us here in the Phoenix metro area "stealing" their water). It seems there are some common sense things that can be done that don't require too much public or political education to take place; starting with abandoning water-waste-promoting practices like "use-it or lose-it" that left the City of Tucson draining lake Mead to feed a questionably effective "aquifer recharge program," which amounted transferring water almost 400 miles in open channels to a pond sitting and evaporating in the hot summer sun; not that another Bellagio fountain water feature in Vegas would have necessarily been a much better use.
I think the lack of a cohesive water policy in the US is going to become more apparent as the years roll on and states and cities fight over water rights. I'm not sure why the article picks on Chandler, when there are cities with far bigger problems (Metro Atlanta and Las Vegas/Henderson/North Las Vegas to name a few), except that it makes a good read. Hopefully we, as a society, don't repeat the historical mistake of privatizing water any more than it already is. The failing power grid should hopefully give some pause to privatizing something that is clearly a public issue.
Posted by: Brendan | May 27, 2008 8:59:59 PM
