"This is what your blog is for, Meredith!"

People. Are. So. Stupid.

This article, about how there is no such thing as the "water shortage" is probably THE prime example. It is only made worse that it's on a website about "SCIENCE."

You see, the earth is a closed system, so it's impossible to "waste" water, since it doesn't actually get lost or leave the system. It just goes to the oceans. And becomes undrinkable.

Oh, sure, you can desalinize sea water. And, yeah, it's expensive, but OBVIOUSLY you'd pay to get something you can't survive more than two days without. So what's the big?

Interestingly, the writer didn't mention how low-quality desalinated water is, or that the only countries who rely on desalinization plants for most of their water are the massively wealthy oil-states of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and even THERE, the cost is prohibitive to the states as well as their citizens.

Which means that most other arid nations, which are very poor (those in Africa, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, etc) will most certainly not be able to afford desalinization plants.

Then, of course, there are the arid, poor nations without any access to AN OCEAN. Who will have to pay even MORE for water when buying it from their similarly water-starved and possibly hostile neighbor nations.

And, an entirely other issue--the author treats water shortages as if they are not at all connected to global warming, which could not be farther from the truth. As the global temperature increases the power of our weather systems will intensify--creating both greater droughts and greater floods (see Atlanta, GO and the midwest, respectively)--and perhaps, as polar ices melts past the point of return, our weather systems may break altogether. In any case, droughts will intensify, and no matter what this moron tells you, when there is a drought in your area (such as most of the American Southwest) there is a shortage of water.

And when you are in that situation, you'll probably get pretty pissed at your neighbors for spraying it on their lawns. I think you'd say that they're wasting it.

Floods, too, can create water shortages. During Hurricane Katrina, flooding led to wholesale contamination of all of the water in New Orleans, meaning that all of the water that people needed for cooking, drinking, and cleaning had to be trucked in.

Live in a water-rich area, like the East Coast? Water shortages are going to affect us, too. Our water sources may not dry up, but the price of water will probably rise like the price of oil has, because all of the areas suffering from water shortages need to buy it from areas that are not in danger. And there are a hell of a lot of bottling facilities in PA, NY, and New England.

Please don't waste water. And please don't let anyone tell you that because we live in a closed system, there's nothing to worry about. Tell them to go take a thermodynamics course.

1 Billion people don't have access to enough water to meet their daily needs. Every single day. This means that they may have enough to drink and cook with, if they're lucky, but they don't have enough to wash with. Their clothes, their cookware, their bodies go unwashed for days, weeks at a time, leading to sores, disease, and shame (what would you do if you were simply unable to wash? To clean your clothes, your dishes?). This means 1/6 of the entire world population. Water for these people is so remote from their homes that they must walk 12 miles a day to retrieve it, making it impossible for women to work (and thus save money to get out of poverty) or for children, mostly girls, to go to school (also keeping them from escaping poverty).

I don't know how I can stress it. There is a shortage of water for these people. Desalinization plants aren't doing anything for them now, and probably wouldn't do anything for them if they existed. They can't pay for water because they don't, and have never had, money. When UNICEF tells you (rightly) that X number of people (about 1/4 the world--another 1/2 live on less than $2) lives on less than a dollar a day (or $300 a year) that number is based on how much they COULD get if they COULD sell the corn (or whatever) that they grow at market. But they can't sell that corn, a) because there probably is no market, and b) they have to feed their families with it, which they can do slightly better by eating what they grow rather than selling it at market and using the money to buy other food.

Aside from all that, even where there is no "shortage," exactly, there are other massive problems with water supplies.

2 Billion people have no access to sanitation. The water that they drink may be contaminated by chemicals (the Ganges river in India), by manure runoff from local farms, or many other forms of waste, including household trash and human waste. Therefore 1/3 of the world is constantly in danger of contracting one of dozens of water-borne and water-related diseases, such as cholera, malaria, dysentery, etc.

So, seriously. How, exactly, does this guy think that there is no such thing as a water shortage? And how does he think that desalinization is the solution?