Monday, January 16, 2012
Water Scarcity
Oil isn't the only resource that's scarce these days in North Texas. Restrictions are being placed on water use in cities all over the south in this unusually long drought. In Dallas, for example, the time of day that people can water their lawn is monitored and there is a limit on how many days a week lawns can be watered. Water is not a resource that we can just create more of. This scarcity of water, in turn, makes it more valuable to it's consumers (that's EVERYTHING by the way). Just the other day, our refrigerator was broken and we could no longer get filtered water out of it. Being as spoiled as I am, this was a big disappointment. I now had to drink tap water. After the refrigerator was fixed, I no longer took for granted my tasty filtered water. It's value increased much more to me, and that's what is happening to all of North Texas.
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4 comments:
You bring up a great example of scarcity…water. Water is the most precious resource (in my opinion) to humanity. We can survive weeks without food, we can survive 2-3 days without water. The most recent global population figure is estimated at 6,928,198,253 and the average individual needs 64 ounces of water. What global problems do you see happening in the future with water scarcity? Do you see or can you think of any viable solutions to help solve this problem?
Smith, with water being used at such a large amount, I see massive amounts of 'grey-water' being used and filtered through our sinks, toilets, etc.. One of the problems with Texas has to be that its prone to many droughts. To solve this problem could possibly mean buying water in large stocks and saving it for certain scenarios like the one Scott was in.
We are losing water daily due to massive droughts in the summer and summer heat lasting longer in general. If we do not conserve and keep track of our water consumption it will be one of our most limited items. This can lead to massive dehydration of athletes, numerous amounts of deaths in countries where water is already being used on the bare minimum and extreme competition over our most vital resource leading to chaos. Humans, animals and plants all rely on water in order to survive. With receiving rations of water in our near future people are bound to panic as to the fact they are used to getting as much as they please daily. Water rations would affect personal hygiene, plant life, animal life and humans abilities to constantly receive appropriate amounts of water to consume. Although it would be tough to go straight to minimum rations for families, if we could gradually put a number on amounts of water per family, we could work our way to a number that would help keep an acceptable supplies in reserve while still supplying people with a sufficient amount. Many people do not see a reason to worry about our water supply and believe we have an endless supply due to our oceans and natural springs. What they do not consider is that ocean water is not meant for us, it is meant to be the habitat of ocean life. If we were to begin to take ocean water to use for our means it would have a high cost.Ocean life would quickly deteriorate which would have a high price for communities that rely on income through tourist who visit the beaches as well as sea food business’. We must bring the attention to people that water is in fact a scarce item and we must do our best to conserve it as we do with out oil.
My neighbor had a broken sprinkler head in their front lawn and as you can imagine it flooded the streets daily for a long time. I can only imagine how much water was being wasted this summer to water the road during the drought. I think it is a great idea to have a time period to water your yard. Usually these are in the morning or in the evening to suppress the amount of water lost by evaporation during the day.
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