How long before we ran out of fresh water on earth?

Question

since we been told only less than one percent of earth's water is drinkable. so with many environmental issues, growing population, polution, etc. How many years do we have before we ran out of fresh water?

Answer 1

water shortage


expanding populations use more and more Potable water(world population has doubled in the last 50 years)
every year 70 million more people use water for drinking ,washing ,industry,going to the bathroom,and irrigation will increase with the expanding agriculture

if there is a global nuclear war this will slow things down but a llot more water will be poluted as a result.
if population growth does not diminsh we are in big trouble
we can not put a time on it

expanding agriculture that needs to keep up with the expanding populations uses the most ,,even more than the cities about 75% of all water reserves.

potable water is becoming more precious by the day
we will end up killing each other over Potable water
some people already are

WE MUST START
controlling populations ,
promote sweet water production,(Masive reforrestation)
and take care of what we got (Nature conservation)
,plus strong policing on usage,as well as economic usage of water in agriculture

Waterharvesting .WILL also help solve the problems


huge storages of water are getting lost due to global warming(melting Ice) as well as over and irresposible usage

93% of all f the planets water is salt
of the 7 remaning % of sweet water 75% was locked in glaziers,mountain snows and the poles,
a lot of this is now melted and has joined the salt waters in the seas gone forever as drinking water.

we on the land have about o,o8 % to play with for agriculture and drinking .

and many rivers and lakes are now contaminated ,

Deep under ground Carbon aquifiers are pumped dry ,by irresponsible egoistic and greedy farmers

.these Carbon Aquifiers do not refill them selves causing sink holes often a few miles deep.


(http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...
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better to pump surface underground water supplies coupled to WATERHARVESTING

the natural way of nature is to evaporate moisture for clouds and this gets blown to places with less water any way ,what obstruct the clouds from getting to deserts ,tend to be mountains that are in the way,
but generally speaking ,the normal weather patterns spread rain evenly over the planet to balance out the temperatures and humidity.

As far as catching rain is concerned ,we do this all the time ,and have done so already since Babylonian times,and is a part of the more advanced Agriculture,that existed with the Egyptians,Central ,and south American indigenous peoples,and many others ,today we call this water harvesting.

In Permaculture the rule is to harvest water to the point of Zero runoff.
this means that all of the rain that falls on an area is absorbed by the terrain and not a drop leaves it.

by building dams,ponds or swales, with interconecting ditches,
if there are enough of these ;the places ,where before the rain water ran over the ground into the rivers and on to the sea ,(in a matter of hours or days),It now runs into absorbant dams or swales and saturates the ground and eventually reaches subteranean water deposits ,taking many months to do so.
Or it fills up ponds that can be used for Aquaculture.
And so a convex situation that repels water is transformed in a concave ,absorbant one and turning the area in to a sponge.

in Spain and Portugal ,which still display many examples of the conquering Moorish influence,One can find many remnants of Waterharvesting,such as aquaducts and tanks underneath the patios ,which collect the rain water from the roofs ,to be used in dryer times.

in Arabia ,on a large scale ,land has been shaped to catch and lead,rain water into sandy areas or to agricultural lands.sand is almost as good as dams because it absorbs water and holds it.

to find out more about Water harvesting I recomend:
the Permaculture designers manual by Bill Mollison,which cost about 40 dollars.
and is the best all round book you can get.(tagiari publishing, [e-mail])
.
other writers that are on the internet are
david Holmgren
Larry Santoyo
Kirk Hanson

Masanobu Fukuaka has written ,
One-Straw Revolution
The Road Back to Nature
The Natural Way of Farming
http://www.context.org/iclib/ic14/fukuok...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/masanobu_fu...

Simon Henderson
and Bill Molisson.

a representitive of the concept in USA is
Dan Hemenway at [e-mail]
[e-mail]
http://barkingfrogspc.tripod.com/frames....
http://csf.colorado.edu/perma/ypc_catalo...

read Plan B by Lester E Brown.who is the director and founder of the global institute of Environment in the United states .he has compiled a report based on all the satalite information available from NASA,and all the information that has
come from Universities and American embassies WORLD WIDE ,
his little book--a planet under stress , Plan B has been trans lated into 50 languages and won the best book award in 2003. Source(s) I am a permaculture consultant for the department of Ecology for the regional government of Guerrero in Mexico

Answer 2

Fresh water consumption is already a major concern in many modern, developed areas; just ask the good people of Florida or California.

As campbelp2002 said above, fresh water is renewable via natural processes, this influx alone is insufficient to support the population in any large urban area.

There are many ways to produce potable water (that is, fit for human use and consumption) including waste water reclamation, and distillation. Gleaning fresh water from the ocean is incredibly inefficient in terms of energy, and a vast ammount of money is already being spent to research better ways to produce it.

As fresh water becomes more and more scarce as a commodity, it's value will rise and more money will be spent to produce it and make is more sustainable. Much like oil, it is unlikely that it will suddenly "dry up" one day, but there may be a point in the not-so-distant future when our water usage will have to be much more frugal.

Answer 3

We will never run out because fresh water is a renewable resource. Water evaporates from the oceans and rains down as fresh water all the time.

Answer 4

i dont think there is any more fresh water, thats why theres water treating plants

Answer 5

It's not going to happen, stop worrying.