This is a topic that has bothered me for a while, and always rankles whenever I hear someone spouting on about saving water...
I figured that we have a few environmentalists around here, and a few who are more informed than I about these concerns, so I wanted to ask this here...
My question is, why?
The simple truth, as I see it, is that our planet contains the same amount of water today than it always has... Water doesn't just "go away" when we use it... It merely passes into a new location... Possibly with some other things carried along...
However, the water never really leaves... It's always there to be used...
Now, our planet indeed may have lost some of its water during our early space travels when waste holds were emptied into space (although, I'd imagine that being in a rather close vicinity to the planet would result in the retention of that water in orbit (if it were released at the proper angle and speed), or it would be dragged back into the atmosphere entirely...
And in fact, our planet has most likely gained water over the eons, from space debris crashing to the srface... After all, a good deal of comets and asteroids are made of ice... The water from even burned up meteorites would still wind up in the atmosphere that disintegrated them...
So all told, this planet still has the same amount, if not more water than it ever has...
So why should we "conserve" it? We'll never run out...
Now, here comes the part where everyone will jump on me... "We're running out of usable water!"
Who says that water can ever become truly unusable? After all, unless it is molecularly changed, it will always be water, regardless of what's floating in it... And the water can always be purified from whatever is floating in it... Always (again, barring a molecular change, which can even be reversed these days)...
I suppose it now comes down to cost... Certain water purification methods might require too much money to make them feasible... So some water might end up being rendered unusable simply because no one wishes to spend the money to clean it...
However, doesn't anyone think that if it became necessary to do so, it would be done regardless? I mean, if it really came down to a matter of "spend money or everyone dies", who's going to hold onto the cash?
And heck, if it ever came to that point, money would no longer be a matter... I mean, no natural law says that anything should cost anything... If it had to be done, it could be done for free (at least monitarily "free")...
So again, why the big deal out of "conserving" water?
ID:188251
 May 29 2004, 10:04 pm
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SuperSaiyanGokuX wrote:
And heck, if it ever came to that point, money would no longer be a matter... I mean, no natural law says that anything should cost anything... If it had to be done, it could be done for free (at least monitarily "free")... Ok, let's make a deal. From now on, you work on purifying water for free while the rest of us work for wages elsewhere; let's just say game development, but really anything would work. So you produce water for us for free, but have to pay money to buy our games. Not fair, you say? Ok, we'll all split the work evenly. Everyone puts in 10% of their working hours into water purification. Which means productivity everywhere else goes down 10% across the board. Guess what happens when you try to supply the same number of people with 90% as much production. As it turns out, there is a natural law that says everything has to cost something. The law of conservation of matter fits pretty well: you can't make something for nothing. | |
The environment would purify water well enough on its own if people'd let it.
I'd say, less "conserving" water, and more "stop throwing your garbage into the water and turning it toxic muck". However, the real reason to conserve water is so that they can raise the price of electricity. (Go figure!) | |
We "conserve" water because we don't have much "useable" water. You say that water is water no matter what it has in it. Well that is true but did you ever stop to think that drinking to much of the "water with stuff in it" can kill you. If I recall we studided this is class Friday. The Earth is composed of 79% water and onlu like 7% of that is drinkable and the rest if you drink to much will kill you. But now that I got tha point across I still dont get why we have to "Conserve water" I mean the water we drink and [expletive deleted] in gets recycled....right? So all that 7% is getting recycled into the same 7%. So im still not sure why we should conserve it......
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Yeah, yeah... "No such thing as a 'free' lunch" and all that stuff...
I don't mean that it doesn't cost anything as in "no effort, no time, etc"... I'm speaking mostly monetarily (as I even added in the parentheses at the end of the quote you chose)... Sure, purifying water would have to cost something... But the price to be paid would simply have to be paid if it came down to it... If there was ever a crisis, then monetary concerns would be laid aside, and even time/work/effort/productivity in other areas/etc would be laid aside... It could be done, and it would be done... Sure, we don't want to get into that sort of situation, but the fact remains that it is possible... We'll never run out of water because of that... And to top it off, purifying water is relatively simple, since in most cases, all you've got to do is evaporate a quantity, and collect the now "magically" pure vapor to be recondensed... It automatically leaves behind the junk (most of the time... I'm aware that plenty of substances can remain even in water vapor)... Heck, this is the main way nature itself does it (as far as I know)... But regardless, my gripe is that people who tell you to "conserve" water come off like they want you to believe that all water you use (or waste) just goes away... "If you waste it, it's gone forever", "Turn off the faucet while you're brushing your teeth!", "Take showers instead of baths!", "Put a brick in your toilet tank so it uses less water!", etc, etc... When in reality, it simply isn't like that at all... Water is always water, and the water that goes down your drains will eventually wind up in a usable form somewhere... Or at least in a temporarily unusable form that can be turned into a usable form if the need arose... So I'm not saying that it would be something as simple as saying "poof, we've turned all of the unusable water into usable water", but that we don't really need to worry about it, because we're not really losing anything we can't gain back somehow when the need is great enough... Again, I realize that we don't want to get into that situation as it would require some sacrifices (I.E. more resources put into purifying water), and perhaps that's the motive behind the warnings, but I just don't believe that the "problem" is nearly as big as they'd have us believe... Nor that it would ever become that big of a deal... | |
No, no... My point is that water is always water, and the stuff can always be taken out of it...
The water on this planet that is considered "unusable" can always be turned into usable water... The reason we're not really doing that is because it requires resources (money, time, etc)... However, if the need arises, it can and will be done... So there's really nothing to worry about as far as I'm concerned... But now that you mention it, you're right... The "limited" usable water we have now is pretty much cycled through over and over, anyways, so we're basically just sitting dead-even... Of course, some of our used water winds up getting certain dangerous chemicals poured into it that makes it harder to clean, but it can still be done... | |
SuperSaiyanGokuX wrote:
The reason we're not really doing that is because it requires resources (money, time, etc)... However, if the need arises, it can and will be done... But we are! My dad has to "travel" on Nucleur Submarines quite often, and all the water they use comes from "unuseable" water. They have showers, toilets, drinking water, and it all comes from the sea. Not only that, but the process of getting clean water also provides oxygen for breathing, and oxygen for the electric motors when they need to be stealthy and other purposes! ~Ease~ | |
I meant on a public, commercial scale... The average citizen's water supply isn't purified that way...
But yeah, I know we are doing that in some applications (one of which is on those amazing nuclear subs... given a good enough supply of food, can't they remain submerged for months at a time?) | |
Yup, in fact the ONLY thing they are limited by is food, unless they go to war, in which case Ammo limits it a bit too! Heh, I wouldn't like to charge into battle with no ammo, no matter how much food I had! But if Subs can do it, it really can't be too hard to make it commercial as well.
~Ease~ | |
SuperSaiyanGokuX wrote:
nuclear subs... given a good enough supply of food, can't they remain submerged for months at a time? I believe someone told me once that they can stay submerged for up 5-6 months. | |
I agree with you on all this "Why conserve" stuff, but reading through this made me consider: If we're coming "dead-even" all this time, that's bad! Because our population isn't dead-even! It's growing! And growing! And growing!
Right now: Water: ================ People:================ 100 years later: Water: ================ People:============================= Erm, all sorts of other dangerous, deadly things will probably have happened in 100 years, eh? | |
They [b]could[/b] stay even longer, but they don't because that just wouldn't be fair on the crew. Remember, the crew are never really "off-work". They have to work long shifts, and even when it's not their shift they can easily be called back to work if it is needed. The longest my dad has been submerged was a month, then they gave him a day on land, then another month submerged. But imagine, if you had a submarine with 0 weapons, and only food stocks, they could most likely last for a year or so! Of course, they would only last physically, I'm almost certain that they'd all leave the journey completely insane!
~Ease~ | |
Leftley wrote:
SuperSaiyanGokuX wrote: U can't make somthing from nothing. Not for... but in any case if you even did for which its not. You could get lots of stuff besides just money from doing work. Not being able to get somthing after doing somthing is practically impossible, which is why that law states as it does. As so the concept of zero also has to do with that. You cant get somthing from nothing but you can get nothing from somthing. | |
Tell that to Charlotte NC. 90% of the polution in the air is causes by cars. Not factorys, not airsal cans. Cars. Last time I drove to charlotte, it was raining, my windshield was covered in an acidic goo. All from cars.
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I conserve to save me money. Less water I use, the less I have to pay. If you city water (from a water tower) you have to pay a filtering price with your bill (most likely). Now, it is the end of the world to leave the water running while you brush your teeth, hell no. When people do these things during droughts, they we have a problem. I used to live in a town that had to buy water from another city to keep supplying water to the townspeople. As you can see, wasting water can be problem some, even if the world doesn't end because of it.
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Heh, in Mexico City the car fumes are so bad that each day you stay there your lungs are damaged with the equivalent of 40 (might be 60/20, I forgot!) cigerettes! That's a lot, whether is is 20/40 or 60!
~Ease~ | |
SuperSaiyanGokuX wrote:
Yeah, yeah... "No such thing as a 'free' lunch" and all that stuff... What you are describing is comunism. It sounds great in theory, everyone does what has to be done, and everyone reaps the rewards. In practice, it never works. I'd tell you to look at the former Soviet Union for an example, but we have a better example close to home. The online gaming community is a perfect example and you can see it in any game at any time. There are always a few people who attempt to exploit the system for personal gain; sometimes with no further motivation than to annoy others. If it does come down to putting more money into water purification, corporations will do it for profit. Already a huge chunk (more than 10% if I recall corectly) of Coca Cola and Pepsi's revenues come from bottled water. Have you ever even looked at your water bill? You are already paying for drinkable water. As the supply of water decreases, the price will increase. Believing it will magically become free is incredibly naive. | |
If it does come down to putting more money into water purification, corporations will do it for profit. Already a huge chunk (more than 10% if I recall corectly) of Coca Cola and Pepsi's revenues come from bottled water. Along those lines... these days, I generally say "No thanks" to many drinks that are on tap (like Sprite) because you can taste the city's water underneath the flavouring. It's gotten to the point where I won't drink pop unless it comes from a can or bottle, and I never drink water unless I've run it through my Brita filter first (which, unfortunately, doesn't fix the taste that well, even though it does give peace of mind). | |
the stupid "conserve water" started with some one not wanting to pay too much on thier water bill. and then someone else heard them say something about conserving and jumped to conclusions. or at least thats what i think happened.
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Simply put, it's just something else to whine about. =P
Sort of how our cars are "polluting the ozone", when infact they really don't do that much pollution as those nasty old environmentalists like to stuff our heads with.