HOW MUCH
WATER DO WE HAVE? (Revisited)
by Anton
Antonio
May 27, 2015
With the
looming water crisis --- too much of it in Texas, USA and too little of it in other parts of the world… not to mention that lack of water supply has taken
the lives of over a thousand people in India --- we probably are wondering how
much water do we have and need. In
October 2014, I published a blog with the title: “How Much Water Do We Have?” (Please click on this link: http://antonantonio.blogspot.com/2014/10/how-much-water-do-we-have.html.) I’ve thought it best to repost the article
that I feel is very relevant to our present water supply problems lately. This will also give us an idea how water is
so important. Please read…
“HOW MUCH WATER DO WE HAVE?
by Antonio C. Antonio
October 16, 2014
The main difference between Earth and
the other planets is the presence of water. Water represents life or the
presence of life. It is common knowledge and fact that life evolved in
the aquatic habitat. Humans are also generally made of water… 65% of the
human body is water and man cannot exist without it.
Earth’s surface area is 510 million
square kilometers. 149 million square kilometers is land while 361 square
kilometers is water. This translates to 70.8% of the Earth’s surface is
water while 29.2% is land. This simply means that a majority of the Earth’s
surface is water and our planet is predominantly viewed as a liquid
planet.
This is great news, isn’t it?
Water, being a life-support element, perpetuates the existence of life forms on
Earth. But wait, and here’s the bad news… most of the water available to
us is unfit for human consumption. Although 70.8% of the Earth’s surface
is water, only 3.5% of this is fresh water which is actually consumable… 96.5%
is salt water and is unfit for human consumption. Other sources of fresh
water are water vapour which exists in the air, rivers and lakes, and icecaps
and glaciers; which, however, are quite difficult to estimate. All these
point to an abundance of water supply for humanity. But is 361 million
square kilometers of water usable?... hardly not.
The total water volume on Earth is
calculated to be 326 million trillion gallons and the total fresh water
available for human consumption is 11 million trillion gallons. The daily
requirement of an individual is 1 gallon; meaning, human consumption of fresh
water is estimated at 7 billion gallons on the assumption that the total world
population is 7 billion. Other consumption like industrial, business,
household and other related applications are not yet included in the total
daily consumption of 7 billion gallons.
Water consumption for survival and
life-support systems is understandable and acceptable. But the worrisome
consideration is the level of pollution that is continually being released into
the fresh water supply. I should mention that water acts as an effective
medium of pollutants. This definitely lessens the level of available
fresh water which is directly proportionate to the volume of fresh water
getting polluted every day.
A lot of people have attempted to
estimate the volume of fresh water for human and other applicable use… but
these largely remain to be “estimates”. The biggest failure in these
attempts is to estimate the volume of fresh water lost to pollution with the
passage of time. So, how much water do we have?
Just my little thoughts…”
(Please visit, like and share Pro
EARTH Crusaders or follow me at http://antonantonio.blogspot.com/)
REFERENCE:
Antonio, A. C. (2014). “How Much Water Do We Have?”. Retrieved on May 27, 2015 from http://antonantonio.blogspot.com/2014/10/how-much-water-do-we-have.html
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