WATER, WATER everywhere, and not a drop to drink

...thats the quote that popped into my head when I saw this dramatic illustration.


Pale Blue Dot
All the water on Earth would fill a sphere that was just 860 miles in diameter. Jack Cook/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution


If you combined all of the water in the planet’s ice caps, glaciers, rivers, lakes, aquifers and oceans, it would fill a sphere 860 miles in diameter. That volume, some 366 million trillion gallons, hasn’t changed in millennia, nor will it change in the foreseeable future. What will change, as the planet becomes hotter and more crowded, is where this water appears and in what stage of the hydrologic cycle. And those changes will present us with many oddly conflicting challenges.

article Popular Science July 2012

Drinking Water resources

Less than 1% of the world’s fresh water (or about 0.007% of all water on earth) is readily accessible for direct human use.

Water is essential not only to to personal health, but also to healthy economic, geopolitical, and environmental conditions around the world. Yet due to population growth, climate change, and mismanagement, the need for adequate, affordable drinking (and irrigation) water is a growing international crisis.

The UN estimates that by 2025, forty-eight nations, with combined population of 2.8 billion, will face freshwater “stress” or “scarcity”.

WATER, WATER everywhere and not a drop to drink?.

Seabird Survival?

Many seabirds (such as albatrosses, petrels, and shearwaters) spend months and even years at sea soaring over the world's oceans without ever approaching any land mass. So the question naturally arises, "What do seabirds drink?" The answer is, "seawater."

The next question that naturally arises is, "How then do they survive?"

Seawater has a much higher concentration of salt than that found in the body fluids of most animals, including mammals and birds; therefore, when seawater is ingested, the osmotic balance of these animals is upset. Mammalian kidneys, in order to flush the body of excess salt, must use one and one-half times as much fresh water as the amount of ingested seawater. Without fresh water, dehydration of body tissues ensues, and in most cases, death follows. Avian kidneys, being much less efficient than mammalian kidneys,1 must use an even greater amount of fresh water to rid the body of seawater. Thus, seabirds would encounter the same fate if they had to rely solely on their kidneys to maintain their body's osmotic balance.

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Water, Water Everywhere . . . And Not A Drop To Drink