With All The Water We Have In The Oceans Of World, I Am Trying To Understand The Shortage?

Question

the "ecosystem" being what it is, why is there a "shortage" of water ?is it due to reduced rainfall in some areas or what ? a water shortage in places such as the United kingdom, Australia ? unheard of, maybe some clever clogg out there can explain it. If the ecosystem is not working then where is the water going ?

Hang on a minute, "I dont wanna sound all thick like ya know", but I know all about desalination plants etc, dont tell me that the water that falls as rainwater in the "cycle of things", is always "pure water" and not a drop from the Ocean come on now !

Oh Lord, I give up with this question !

hey sevenout, rain does fall in the oceans, rain is generally cleaned before we drink it ??????? was it nt recently reported that in the U.K sewage water will be re-cycled as drinking water ? so ????

Answer 1

There is lots of water in the world, but the vast majority of it is too salty to use, and much of the water that isn't salty is inconveniently located. In the US, the Columbia River dumps tons of water into the Pacific every day, while southern California burns for lack of water. Saudi Arabia, which is of course largely desert, gets some of its water from wells and some from desalinization of Arabian Gulf water; the desalinization takes lots of energy, but energy is one thing that is there in abundance. I was dismayed by answers to a question recently posted here about how to conserve water in Australia; the answers had mostly to do with reducing domestic consumption. But domestic consumption is trivial compared to industrial consumption, which is in turn trivial compared to agricultural consumption. so all of those answers were basically worthless: to make a real difference, you have to use more efficient methods for water in agriculture.

Answer 2

The shortage is of fresh water. Ocean water is no good for drinking, bathing etc. And desalinization is possible, but expensive. The ecosystem works fine, we are just overloading it with more crud than it can clean out before we want to use the water again, making it progressively dirtier every time we use it. Look at places like mexico and many third world countries, where drinking the water can give you all kinds of digestive tract parasites. That is from poor water sanitation, and it could happen in the first world if we are not careful.

Answer 3

the shortage like every else said is freshwater, not salt water. although rainwater does fall to the ground if it falls into the ocean it is useless, or in a field or in a lake that is already polluted, also if the rainwater is polluted it is useless. When i say useless it needs to be cleaned, also the salt water desalinization process is not good on a large scale as everyone thinks..it is very expensive and uses a lot of energy to accomplish

Answer 4

We're destroying the ecosystem at the same time that we're demanding more from it. One recent study stated that the entire world's fisheries will likely collapse by 2048.

The question should be: Why aren't there more shortages of water and other resources already?

Answer 5

Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink. To use the ocean water, we would need to have ways of removing the salt from the sea water in massive quantities.

Answer 6

We have a shortage of fresh water. Ocean is not fresh water. To change it into fresh water is a big price.

Answer 7

Because, most of the water surrounding us is to briny, and must be treated. Desalinization is a very expensive process.

Answer 8

There are shortages of FRESH water. Caused by drought and overpopulation.

Answer 9

It is simply because of waterpollution, caused by recless actions of our goverment. just for sake of money they allow factories that dump poisionous and toxies waste in our rivers. so yu see water shortage is caused due to our people's foolishness for sake of money.