Water, Water Everywhere...............

"Water water everywhere! Nor any drop to drink!" The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Sooner or later I was gonna have to talk about this. I was going to have to rationally address our world's water shortage. I hate to slap you in the face with this, but there isn't one. There are simply too many people.

Our planet has a finite amount of water. It comes in many forms. In liquid form we have oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, springs, etc etc. All of those forms of liquid evaporate into gas particles which attach themselves to small particles of dust in the sky and become clouds. They get full and we get rain or snow or hail and whalla!!, we have liquid again. And then of course, we have ice. The ice is what has everyone in an uproar. The bottom line is, that the amount of water we DO have gets recycled in various stages, but worldwide, we ALWAYS have the same amount. There IS no shortage of water. You can't make more.

But, you may say, "I'm having a drought!" Look again my friend. Check any world weather map and I promise you that someone else is having a flood. Nature has a way of putting water where it wants it or NEEDS it. The problem is, we think it oughta go where WE want it. Seems a little short-sighted doesn't it? At the risk of sounding Obama-like, we have to start thinking more globally.

Ok, so maybe what we're really worried about is USEABLE water.....you know, the stuff we can drink! Thats a horse of a different color. There is little doubt that the water we have available to drink or use for consumption is at risk. Please tell me this doesn't surprise you. As our population continues to grow, there will be more competition for consumable water. And since there is a FINITE amount of water, we have to think about how it gets used, and by whom.

I'm going to ask you to think about something that most people avoid. Consider every other species on our planet. It doesn't matter whether it's amoeba or white-tailed deer. What happens when the habitat they depend on for survival becomes overcrowded? In other words, what happens when they've exhausted their resources? There are too many deer for this corn field or that meadow or whatever. I'll tell you what happens. The herd moves or the population starts to die off to adjust to available habitat. Moving is a short-term solution because ALL the herds move to a place of plenty and before long you have the same problem.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the same goes for humans. Our earth has finite resources whether it be water or oil or coal. Once it's gone, it's gone. We can prolong the agony some by moving to say, Mars, but eventually, we're gonna run out. I know I know. It's probably millions of years......maybe. My point is this. We're going to eventually have to die out in order to compete for those resources. Sure, not in my lifetime, but it's coming. We can drink less, irrigate less, build electric cars (which are ultimately powered by coal), or a hundred other things that will make it all last a little longer, but in general, we aren't going to put a dent in it. Not if you look at the big picture.

There are countries on this planet that actually try to control population by placing limits on the amount of children people have. In America we cry at the injustice of all that. I too, think it's wrong, but you have to admit it's at least something that should come up in a brainstorming session. Basically, controlling our population isn't gonna happen. Even if we had some success, it wouldn't matter in the long run. Besides, nature will take care of it.

But lets get back to that ice everyone is so worried about. Our glaciers are melting at an alarming rate. The rate at which they are melting is accelerating. Of course it is. Put an ice cube on your counter top. The more of it that melts, the FASTER it melts. It's physics. There is less "ice" to keep it frozen and so it melts faster and faster until it's water. Not a hard concept. It's the same with our glaciers. The one we all hear about all the time actually covered Kansas as little as 11,000 years ago. It didn't start melting yesterday. It's been melting for centuries and the more of it that melts the faster it's gonna melt. Go ahead and try to stop it. You can't. Put every PhD on the planet to work on this problem and they'll fail. I wonder if it ever occurred to anyone that the glaciers are melting to provide more fresh water to a growing population. It's Mother Nature at work.

Ok, so all this melting is going to raise sea level and huge quantities of land mass are going to disappear. In addition to that land mass, densely populated areas will be lost. The "herd" is going to have to move inland. And now that "herd" of people is going to be competing for the same resources in a yet smaller area until those resources are gone. You know what happens next. Mother Nature will introduce a disease or bug of some kind to thin the herd. I'd love to hear someone try to prove me wrong on this. In fact I'm kinda counting on it.

If we had unlimited resources this would all be a mute point. But even land is finite. If you had all the water and oil and food you could ever dream of, we'd still be at war over where to live within a million years or so. We aren't gonna win this one......not in the long run.

Take a good long drink of cool water. Irrigate your crops and share what you have with a friend. Lets make sure everyone has enough to drink while we still have some left. All the technology on the planet won't cure this problem. Generations from now it'll all be over. It has to be.

Don't hate me for this. If I'm wrong, why is NASA looking for other planets to inhabit?