The Ongoing Collapse of the World's Aquifers

www.wired.com...

The San Joaquin Valley was geologically primed for collapse, but its plight is not unique. All over the world—from the Netherlands to Indonesia to Mexico City—geology is conspiring with climate change to sink the ground under humanity’s feet. More punishing droughts mean the increased draining of aquifers, and rising seas make sinking land all the more vulnerable to flooding. According to a recent study published in the journal Science, in the next two decades, 1.6 billion people could be affected by subsidence, with potential loses in the trillions of dollars.

sucking up all the water down below is sinking the land above.
this phenomenon, I think, inspires a lot of global warming hysteria.

not mentioned is the effect on agriculture. places like California and the USA heartland are hugely dependent on aquifers and using them much faster than they're being replenished. USA gets a huge amount of its food from these two places.

thoughts?
any local info?

a reply to: ElGoobero

Great thread. This is an important topic which gets overlooked. I did a similar thread last year where I talked about the problem of rapid ground water depletion. Where the rapid use of groundwater before it can be naturally replaced is allowing freshwater to be replaced with saltwater. People don't see it because it's happening underground.

I'll try to find the link to the post.

ETA:

Here it is.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

originally posted by: lostbook
a reply to: ElGoobero

Great thread. This is an important topic which gets overlooked. I did a similar thread last year where I talked about the problem of rapid ground water depletion. Where the rapid use of groundwater before it can be naturally replaced is allowing freshwater to be replaced with saltwater. People don't see it because it's happening underground.

I'll try to find the link to the post.
Here it is.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

good thread.

yes, the salt water is coming in to replace the fresh water with obvious effects on agriculture (and people)

we've never come up with an easy way of desalinization. would be helpful.

a reply to: ElGoobero

So is this what is causing the sink holes, do you think?

a reply to: ElGoobero

New clean water sources are one of the biggest problems humanity will face in the coming century as our numbers continue to multiply.

As short of that stuff as we will be oil rather soon.

Ocean desalination plants offer up some hope but the technology and cost is not quite there yet to facilitate our numbers.

Yes very important topic!

Water good fresh water...


Good video showing what your thread is talking about:

vimeo.com...

originally posted by: SeekingDepth

Yes very important topic!

Water good fresh water...

Good video showing what your thread is talking about:

vimeo.com...

great video. quite accurate. recommended.

I live on Lake Michigan and I wouldn't hesitate to drink it. Go a couple of hundred miles north and it's crystal clear. lots of water in Michigan to fight over. Our city pumps it out then puts it back in a few miles away. The water treatment plant is much bigger than the sewer treatment one.

HUMMM

a reply to: mikell

And we will be Ground Zero in Michigan, when the water starts running out. Joe Biden will fix it don’t worry, I heard he knows a lot about aquifers.

This is an interesting post star & flag,Thanks for the OP

a reply to: SeektoUnderstand

Lead poisoning is no joke.

Same with Legionnaires disease.

Good luck with that one clean waters important.

A lot of aquafers have been there more many thousands and maybe millions of years. Some drain out and form streams and rivers, others are being sucked dry by big wells to supply cities and agriculture. Growing food sucks up a lot of water out of them, cows drinking water from a pond or grazing in fields do not deplete the reservoirs. If they eat grains all the time, then it can lead to water being used though, hay not so much.

a reply to: ElGoobero

Industrial scale desalination plants along coast lines could provide all the water you need, pumping them in is easy enough if they can do it for oil they can certainly do it for water but were is the profit motive so it has to be a government project.

The slurry created through the desalination process is also rich in minerals and can be broken down for those providing a viable alternative (on such a scale) to much mineral mining as well as providing all the salt you could ever use and more, sea water is filled with dissolved material's, metals and other minerals.


It is down to bad management on a global scale, geo engineering is never free, what affects one region invariably affects those surrounding it often very badly as well.

originally posted by: SeektoUnderstand
a reply to: mikell

And we will be Ground Zero in Michigan, when the water starts running out. Joe Biden will fix it don’t worry, I heard he knows a lot about aquifers.

This is an interesting post star & flag,Thanks for the OP

If I remember correctly, so will Africa. I have a faint memory of hearing that there was found a huge freshwater supply found underneath the Sahara.

www.bbc.com...

'Huge' water resource exists under Africa'

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: ElGoobero

New clean water sources are one of the biggest problems humanity will face in the coming century as our numbers continue to multiply.

As short of that stuff as we will be oil rather soon.

Ocean desalination plants offer up some hope but the technology and cost is not quite there yet to facilitate our numbers.

I thought all of the glaciers were melting. They are a great source of a huge amount of fresh water.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Naw mate its the big freeze thats in the post long term.

Fact of the matter is we live in an ice age, and its not receding.

The big picture is in the epoch mate people are not melting put it that way.

But fresh water sources will become problematic as the days go by.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: ElGoobero

Industrial scale desalination plants along coast lines could provide all the water you need, pumping them in is easy enough if they can do it for oil they can certainly do it for water but were is the profit motive so it has to be a government project.


It is down to bad management on a global scale, geo engineering is never free, what affects one region invariably affects those surrounding it often very badly as well.

desal plants are very expensive and energy-consuming. thats why we don't have zillions of them everywhere.

www.scientificamerican.com...

The problem is that the desalination of water requires a lot of energy. Salt dissolves very easily in water, forming strong chemical bonds, and those bonds are difficult to break. Energy and the technology to desalinate water are both expensive, and this means that desalinating water can be pretty costly.

It's hard to put an exact dollar figure on desalination—this number varies wildly from place to place, based on labor and energy costs, land prices, financial agreements, and even the salt content of the water. It can cost from just under $1 to well over $2 to produce one cubic meter (264 gallons) of desalted water from the ocean. That's about as much as two people in the U.S. typically go through in a day at home.

a reply to: ElGoobero

Vertical ground source heat pumps can adversely affect aquifers. When multiple holes are drilled 80 metres deep in a small area to provide expensive, environmentally destructive 'sustainable' heating for several houses the effects can range from contamination of the groundwater to major subsidence and structural instability of the houses. geothermal-energy-journal.springeropen.com...

a reply to: lostbook

Thats why China is hip deep in africa buying everything that isnt nailed down.

They are running out of fresh water, its why nestle refuses to stop pumping water out and shipping it to china.

Subsidence was a big deal for pretty much every coastal city in the past, most likely will be an issue in the future. Nasa and there other channels on YouTube and the net. Are actually better at doing instruction videos, then they are at the whole moon and space thing.

But most of the data on subsidence would not be possible without the satellites or shuttles in orbit to see it actually happening.

Here's one video on subsidence. Also shows why as icecaps or as the poles shift and places like Greenland become free of ice other places like California and other coastal cities will slowly sink. The whole draining the underground aquifers that California is doing, is just icing on the cake of what is to come.

originally posted by: Irishhaf
a reply to: lostbook

Thats why China is hip deep in africa buying everything that isnt nailed down.

They are running out of fresh water, its why nestle refuses to stop pumping water out and shipping it to china.

I wonder how long before it becomes economically viable to use tankers to transport fresh water
maybe from Africa to China.