What evidence do you have of this? Or are you simply throwing a little insult my way?
So, the water "crisis" is that we have too little water AND too much water?
Thanks, but I'm aware of that. Are you claiming I'm not? If so, what evidence do you have of this?
That's all very interesting, thank you. What's your point?
In what way? I thought your previous post was discussing the food "crisis". Do you do most of your food production in cities?

By the way, is there a "global food crisis"?

Cato - you said:

However I had already said:

you said:

based on this statement, after I had already outlined that there was flooding in some parts, but drought in others, it would appear that you don't understand much about how flooding and drought can affect crop production.


the water crisis being discussed here is that there is too little water in many places. However, I mentioned food production which is affected by flooding also. I did so to put concerns about water scarcity into the context of a wider world. There are people for whom a water crisis means a lot more than the concerns we may have.


you had said:

In my post I was referring to drought in Africa as well - not just in Australia. If you don't want to appear stupid, try to frame your questions to me around the content of my posts.

you asked (and I repeat this

I provided you information that indicates Australia is NOT so dry as you appear to imagine. We have higher than average rainfall than many US and European cities, yet in the previous post I mentioned that we are having to worry about severe water restrictions in our cities. over a decade we have had to introduce measures to restrict our consumption of water.

This suggests that the dryness we are currently experiencing is NOT the norm.

You seem to be under the impression the whole continent is a desert. Deserts we have, but there are many regions which have a higher rainfall than you experience, and some of those are experiencing drying. You know that I have discussed this before.

Cato, if you want to behave as if you have a reading comprehension problem, then perhaps you shouldn't get miffed if I suggest you don't know much about the land, or that Africa isn't in Australia.

I did refer to the food crisis, however I was also talking about water restrictions in cities. - and it was this in particular I was talking about in the Australian context.

I had said: This was in general referring to cities (I mentioned capital cities). I don't imagine you are so ignorant Cato, that you think Melbourne is a village set among wheat fields.


On food supplies:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...=rss&feed=news

http://www.theage.com.au/news/nation...419973051.html

http://nqr.farmonline.com.au/news/na...5pc/81389.aspx


http://www.haver.com/comment/080225F.JPG



Finally Cato, if you can't be bothered reading my posts, then don't bother responding to them. You might think you're being a smart arse, but your strategy is lazy, and reminiscent of a three year old. In an adult it is not cute, nor clever. Your comprehension levels are better than that, and you are able to have a more honest discussion and are capable of asking better questions.

You wrote:
No qualification as to food production.

Now, what were you saying about context?

I'll ask again, Is there a global water crisis?
Uhhh, I did frame my question to you around the content of your post. Did you happen to look at what I quoted? Does it mention anything about Africa?

Even if it did, how would that indicate I believe Africa is in Australia? Am I supposed to respond to everything you write? Am I supposed to disagree with everything you write?
Ahhh, then I guess starting a statement with, "Living on a dry continent...." would be kinda' misleading, eh? But I don't have to take your word for it. I can just do a quick little Wiki search:

"The climate of Australia varies widely, but by far the largest part of Australia is desert or semi-arid – 40% of the landmass is covered by sand dunes.... Rainfall is highly variable, with frequent droughts lasting several seasons thought to be caused in part by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.... A 2005 study by Australian and American researchers [1] investigated the desertification of the interior, and suggested that one explanation was related to human settlers who arrived about 50,000 years ago.... Compared to the Earth's other continental landmasses Australia is very dry. More than 80 percent of the continent has an annual rainfall of less than 600 millimetres, only Antarctica receives less rainfall than Australia."

So, perhaps you're right. I should've made it clear that I didn't believe Australia to be the driest continent on the planet - Antarctica is drier. And I should've made it clear that you have only been worrying about water for perhaps the past 50,000 years.

Here's some more recent drought data:

"MAJOR DROUGHTS IN AUSTRALIA"

1864 - 66 (and l868)
1880 - 86
1888
1895 - 1903
1911 - 16
1918 - 20
1939 - 45
1958 - 68
1982 - 83

DROUGHTS IN AUSTRALIA OF LESSER SEVERITY

1922 - 23 and 1926 - 29
1933 - 38
1946 - 49
1951 - 52
1970 - 73
1976

I didn't mean to imply that Australians have a drought every year, and I apologize to anyone who may have been mislead by my question. Allow me to rephrase:

Has there ever been a continouse period of more than 10 years in the past 50,000 years when Australia has not had to worry about water?

Yea, Daisy, Australia's just like the US and Europe.
Definitely not normal for anytime prior to recorded history. I think. Well, maybe.
This is classic, Daisy. You open your post by berating and insulting me for not realizing your post was about food production; now you berate and insult me for not realizing your post wasn't about food production.

You're awesome!
Ahhh, the faintest hint of a compliment. I'll cling to it always. Now, let's get back to you calling me an immature ignoramus.
"...far from falling off, global food production has continued to increase.

Demand, not supply, is the motor of the current food inflation. A growing taste for meat and dairy in newly prosperous parts of the world is one important factor."

What does this have to do with the water "crisis"? I mean, I could understand if production was falling off because of a lack of water, but that's not the case, is it? Furthermore, is it a "crisis" that more and more people are getting wealthier and wealthier, thereby enabling them to eat more and better food?

(There's also a little blurb about how appeasing the environmentalists and their "crisis" du jour has lead to higher food prices, but we won't go into that.)
Ahh, Malthus redux. Or, would that be Malthus redux, redux, redux, redux.... And this warning from a journalist (who's hawking a book) no less?! My god, save yourselves!
More of the same - rising wheat prices. Is this the "crisis", Daisy? That food prices are rising?

You realize that more and more people are eating more and better food than at any time in history, don't you? You realize there is more food, at cheaper prices, than at any other time in history, don't you?
Pretty graph. Adjusted for inflation?
I'll just stick with these questions:

Is there a global water crisis? What is the nature of this crisis? Is there a global food crisis? What is the nature of this crisis?

I appreciate your concern, but I'm kind of a simple guy. If that makes me immature and ignorant, then I can be happy with that. Maybe after you answer the questions above I can move on to more complicated questions. Ooooh!

Most cities in the US drink treated sewage.
Only the first city or town on the river gets the pure water, the next city gets to drink the sewage from them, and so on down the river.

Boston is the only city of over 15,000 that has water suitable for drinking without treatment, and it still gets some treatment.

__________________
“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

Response to Cato:



yes I did write: you said: however this is the context in which I said that:

you said:


I would suggest that rather than take my word for it - google "global water crisis"


In the post you are referring to here I said:

Again, I will repeat the context:


you said:

see what you were in fact responding to, above - in which I mentioned Africa (and other places) in relation to food issues

if you respond to what I have said IN CONTEXT you won't create the impression that you have poor knowledge of basic geography


I said:

you said:

I don't disagree the continent is dry - as is clearly implied in what I said - HOWEVER there are many parts of Australia that have high rainfall. Australia produces upwards of 15% of global wheat exports annually. We also have a range of other produce that requires varying (including high) rainfall.

you said:

yes it is a dry continent, yes we do get droughts, but there are numerous sources that can tell you this is the worst drought on record.


you said:

Probably not. And maybe not where you are, either. But I'm not sure why this should mean we needn't be concerned about how we use water, or why we shouldn't be concerned about food production. There's greater demand for water now than 50,000 years ago.

you said:

The figures I supplied indicated that Australian cities were not that much drier (if at all) than many US cities, and some cities in Europe. If you look at my original post I was saying :

prolonged drought affecting even cities is causing us to rethink the way we use water. In actual fact, up until relatively recently we hardly worried about water usage.

when I said

you said:

its widely acknowledged here in Australia that this is the worst in recorded history. Do you think we should keep using water as usual and then some day say "oh dear! what happened to all the water?" - or do you think it would be prudent to think about how we use it.

What would you recommend we do if water were money?

should we just fritter it away on everything in sight - or should we use it to plan for our future?


you said:

I think you need to improve your reading comprehension skills if you think this is what is going on.

you said:

thank you !



On food supplies:

World Food Situation: Home

FAOSTAT

I don't disagree that demand for biofuels is having an impact, as is changing diet in many parts of the world (a kilo of meat uses far more resources to produce than a kilo of grain), and the incredible wastefulness that exists in the west.

however that aside - as can be seen from FAO, weather (or climate if you prefer) is also playing a part.

you said:

yes. this certainly may be a crisis. maybe not to you and me, but we are among the luckiest people on this planet in terms of access to resources - we might grumble about the price of a loaf of bread, but for a sizable part of the world, it will be far more serious than that.

is this universal?

you said:

yes - and I am sure you can google it.

see the FAO data. their website is very informative.

Daisy,
I was going to address your posts, but after reading the two replies you made to me, and the other post at "Widespread Global Cooling" you made recently, I've determined you're just not worth it.

You used to be. You used to be rational. You used to support your assertions with research. You used to be able to debate without ad hominems. I can see that's no longer the case, and it makes me sad. Not only because rationality on the left is getting harder and harder to find, but for the simple reason that I used to like you.

I had hoped in addressing you again I might be able to get a little of that old Daisy to come back. But I see now you're only interested in calling me names and making me prove your theory. Both of which are tactics of those whom I will not debate.

So, good luck in all you do. I hope some day you rediscover whatever peace that allowed you to debate with maturity, intelligence, and reason in the past. I wish you only the best in all you do.

Goodbye.

Thank you for your kind words Cato.

I know from other threads that you take an interest in economic matters as well, and I guess I don't see you applying the same logic here.

If I look at this thread: Well, duh. I see you arguing that people should be more responsible in how they use their money, so that they won't fall short when it comes to necessities.

For me, issues over water etc are one and the same.

Both my parents lived through the depression. I grew up in a household where you turned lights off when you left the room. You only had the television on when you were watching it. If you were just going out to buy a couple of things, you would walk to the store. You didn't waste anything.

When I became an adult I followed these values, I always thought about petrol consumption as well as the type of car that would most suit my needs, and to think about walking, cycling or public transport for some journeys. I thought about long term cost savings more than the environment when I built my first home.

Consequently I find that I haven't really had to make so many changes - although my ability to reduce my carbon footprint has been somewhat compromised by these decisions made over a lifetime!

To me - arguing for water conservation - to ensure we have water available for necessary purposes - is no different from arguing for economically responsible behaviour.

It appears that you see money as a completely separate issue. However, over a lifetime I have learned that being "environmentally responsible" on an individual level, and being "fiscally responsible" is the same thing.

I would encourage people to be both.

They only "crisis" in water is for one of the following reasons:

- Lack of development and modern infrastructure in the "developing" world
- Interference with market forces in the developed world

If water becomes sufficiently scarce, it will become economically vialbe to engage in mass desalinization efforts. We have no lack of water and good old market forces will increase supplies of distributable water if government gets out of the way!

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

There are two types of scarcity in natural resources: stock limits and flow limits. Only nonrenewable resources suffer from stock limits, but all resources suffer from flow limits.

A stock limit is the total amount of a resource that is available to use. Oil has a stock limit, because it is not being produced and cannot be recycled. Once it is burned, it is gone.

Water (and also things like food and timber) do not have stock limits because they are fully renewable. But they still have flow limits, because they can be renewed only at a finite rate. Using them at a rate beyond the flow limits results in depletion. The only way to use a renewable resource on a sustainable basis is to remain below the flow limit in use.

The biggest problem w/r/t fresh water is overpopulation. There are also problems with water pollution by industries, but these are easily correctable with sufficient political will; the U.S. has gone a long way towards doing so since the 1970s. But every person alive requires a certain amount of fresh water per year to live, not just for drinking but also for growing food. Plus, it's nice to be able to take a shower regularly, even if that isn't strictly speaking a necessity of life.

Because of overpopulation, we have exceeded the flow limit of water for quite some time now. We haven't experienced truly catastrophic water shortages because we have tapped underground aquifers that stored fresh water, some of them in huge quantities, but we are tapping these aquifers much faster than they are being renewed.

Desalination is not a solution to the problem because of the expense involved. It is no good to say that when the price of water rises then desalinized water will become profitable. That rise in the price of water means a rise in the cost of survival, which means a declining standard of living; also, unless you are prepared to accept wealth redistribution on a truly massive scale, it will also mean mass starvation among the poor even so. That there is enough water available (from whatever source) doesn't mean that everyone will be able to afford it.

The only solution is to reduce population, and that is exactly what is going to happen, by one means or another.

Scarcity in the economic sense is not the same as in the physical sense, the "flow limit" is not a long-term reality. While much of your analysis is correct in the short-term, it suffers from flat out false long-term assumptions. It ignores innovation (nearly a constant in historical terms) and substitutability, and changes in behavoir (it is the sort of short-term thinking that keeps saying that "ANWAR" isn't the "solution" because we won't get anything out of it for a decade, of course if we had started drilling there a decade ago, we wouldn't have such a "problem" today.

Yes, desalinization would be expensive now, but if it were "needed" (based on market pressures), the cost of doing it would plummet over time through both economies of scale as well as innovation.

Consider this, we will NEVER run out of oil. Why? Because of good old market forces. Long before we run out, the cost of extracting it will increase steadily, resulting in other alternatives becoming economically viable. In fact, if it were not for idiotic government policy, oil and energy in general would be far cheaper today than it currently is.

You should read "The Ultimate Resource" , it delves into the issue of long-term scarcity and elaborates on the points I am making

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

I've never liked the idea of doing something only after the fact, especially when while desalinization is certainly a long-term solution it'll do nothing to alleviate the mass suffering around the world in the short term. Relying on technology to solve all our woes is a bad idea, especially when we're the one who is causing the problem in the first place.

As for desalinization it self, I don't see such a system working smoothly or providing enough fresh water for that matter. Then there are the environmental effects of mass desalinization which are so far uncertain but pumping a massive amount of salt water out of the ocean on a huge scale is bound to have some kind of effect.

The only thing that will really work is an entire shift in thinking of how we use one of the most precision resources on the planet. At the moment those of us in the United States for example take it for granted. That isn't going to change over night either, though I must say Florida has done an excellent job in informing its citizens of water conservation. As well as Jacksonville, since in the coming years so many cities are going to be depending on the St. John River.

Its simple really, its cheaper to keep what you have. The more we poison that water with fertilizers, trash, and other man made chemicals the more we're simply shooting ourselves in the foot. Exposing ourselves to all sorts of health risks, killing off fishing, and damming the next generation.

It benefits us all to live with the natural environment that is earth, instead of against it. Unless you like spending lots of money, having cancer, and living in our own filth.

Louisiana is water-rich! In many rural areas, a well can be put in at around 100-150 feet and while the water is "rusty", it's potable. Many have artesian wells, also (usually around 1000 feet deep) though some have decided to tap them instead of leaving them free flowing. With three main aquifers in the state, I really don't see a "coming water crisis" like other parts of the country may experience. Just don't nobody come begging for our water though after y'all have made fun of us for so long!!!!

__________________


"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"