Global Warming? Water Shortages?

Question

I don't care if it's real! I don't care if it's a hoax! I care about the misuse and mis-management of the worlds resources by the few greedy business owners and the selfish people who have no respect for our planet. Common sense tells you that if you take and take without replenishing the resource ie the Rain Forests and Water supplies (I'm talking to you Georgia!) these things will happen. I'm from Athens, Georgia (currently residing in Las Vegas, Nevada) and right now the city of Atlanta and many other parts of Georgia have a severe water shortage which didn't have to happen. Everybody wants to talk about the problem but no one seems to have the power to do anything. What do you think can be done to help cities that are dealing with water shortages (if even temporarily). Any answers are appreciated.

Answer 1

Sheesh - Relax.  Lake Lanier was at it's lowest level since 1980.  Since then, the water level has gone up, the drought is no longer severe, things are returning to normal as they always do.

The lake levels are from numerous causes, one not by "global warming".

The population of Atlanta has increased, adding over a million more people to the city in the last 10 years, increased release of the water from the reservoir to help protect endangered species in the waterways in Florida, and a drought that lasted all of last summer.  All this while there has been no increase in capacity of the water supplies.

Now new agreements have been reached with Alabama and Florida that reduce the amount of water taken from the lake, more and steady rains fill the rivers that feed the lake, and a greater awareness of water use has the water levels rising.

This is old news rehashed to keep the panic going longer than it needs.  Something that you see often as a tactic by the believers.

Answer 2

1) reduce use. (which will otherwise rise due to population increase if nothing else).

a lot of this is reducing waste, which is always A Good Thing.

2) reuse resource.

a) i'm a big fan of separating toilets, collect the urine separately, dry out for storeable high nitrogen (and a bit of phosphorous) fertiliser. this also makes the sewage much easier to treat, taking less energy. this will balance the energy used to process the urea and the extra collection service.

i would guess there would be a considerable overall energy and cost gain over that used to make the equivalent amount of artificial fertiliser and  treating the unseparated sewage.

b) reuse the water. well, we do it here. treated water is released back to the water source (reservoir, river, estuary).

anyone going ewwwww gross, its not, the water is so highly purified it is often cleaner than the water it is joining.

3) find other sources.

a) rainwater collection is pretty easy on most buildings.

b) pipe it in from elswhere. problem here is how far you going to have to do it.

c) desalination? sorry i dont know how far you are from coast.

desalination could be a great tool for balancing power demand to production of renewable power. with a decent size reservoir, you could have overcapacity at the de-sal. plant, and use off-peak cheaper power rather than pumping 24/7.

most of these will have to involve gov.; to change building regs and give grants, and initiate the big projects.

extra expense will be resisted by builders and owners, as humans inevitably favour an immediate gain over a discounted one.

Answer 3

water desalinization?

Why don't we tap into that?

Isn't Vegas worse off than Atlanta right now?

And where is this rain forest in GA?

Answer 4

Water shortages tend to be driven by growing populations of cities and sometimes by short sighted governments.  

A growing city will tend to outgrow it's infrastructure and it's difficult to upgrade water mains as they are usually burried under roads.

Answer 5

Forget Atlanta or whats happening over seas, look in our back yard first. Over development is draining Sydney's water supply. Sydney has the biggest underground water supply on earth, the rich use it for bore water, but the water is pure and can be drunk, instead they fill their pools with it and hose their gardens. Multy High rises going up every where, Where a block of land falls developers redevelop and flats & units up they go, two more environmental aspects: more rubbish tossed in the streets and more strain on the water supply so obviosly  its bad Government management, too stingy to spend the dollar or justify desalination plant we dont need when fresh water runs abundantly beneath them that is used for bore water. The best bore water there is all located in the Canterbury shire part of the Oberon River System

Answer 6

the mismanagement is caused by the tree huggers & the epa in the court system.

the army corp of engineers has to release 3.2 billion gallons of water a day(5000 cubic ft. per second) into the chattahooche river from lake lanier to insure a type of freshwater mussel is not endangered. regardless of how low the water supply is.

just another example of the environmental n**i's turning off the sprinkler then screaming, "global warming is causing the grass to turn brown".

another world wide example is in todays yahoo news.

in Brazil it takes 61 cubic meters of water to produce 1 unit of energy from biomass.

in the Netherlands it only takes 24 cu. meters of water per unit of energy. (cant find accurate numbers for the U.S.)

the oil companys use 1 (one) cu. meter of water to produce the same 1 unit of energy.

so I guess we can expect when we go into large scale production of bio fuel, a fresh water shortage will be the next sky is falling panic.

Answer 7

This is a terrible problem.  Its not just a matter of Global Warming, but also overuse and misuse.  Overpopulation plays a huge role.  Half the world is without an adequate water supply.  There are shooting wars already, as in Darfur.  Georgia is not the only dispute over water rights across state borders.  Arizona and Iowa are among the others involved in similar disputes.  What it come down to is there isn't enough to go around, even with conservation.  One half of the world's people are without adequate water.  You may find my response to another member on this informative.  I gave here some links.