Mountainous stretches would survive along the Caribbean coast and in Central America.” South America: “The Amazon Basin in the north and the Paraguay River Basin in the south would become Atlantic inlets, wiping out Buenos Aires, coastal Uruguay, and most of Paraguay.In California, San Francisco's hills would become a cluster of islands and the Central Valley a giant bay.” In North America: “The entire Atlantic seaboard would vanish, along with Florida and the Gulf Coast.It notes it would literally redraw the global map. If we continue adding carbon to the atmosphere, we’ll very likely create an ice-free planet, with an average temperature of perhaps 80 degrees Fahrenheit instead of the current 58.” The article notes that if all the ice on land melts and drains into the sea, it would raise sea levels 216 feet. “There are more than five million cubic miles of ice on Earth, and some scientists say it would take more than 5,000 years to melt it all. According to National Geographic the Risk from ice melting is a huge risk to global populations. If we can find (and finance) a sustainable means to balance water over-supply and under-supply then not only can we tackle the symptoms of climate change and water scarcity but also establish a more stable equilibrium pricing (hence investable market) for water. Total damages from drought in 2019 were $23 billion, ranking as the 12th highest year for drought losses since 1975.Link: The previous record was seven, set in 2018. Meanwhile, according to the global consultant Aon, eight billion-dollar damages were recorded due to droughts in 2019, the highest number on record. Eventually, a person dies of dehydration. Monstrous.Ī 2016 UNEP report noted “demand for water will exceed supply by 40 per cent in 2030, the report says, forcing governments to spend $200 billion per year on upstream water supply as demand outstrips cheaper forms of supply - up from historic averages of $40 to $45 billion.” Link: To get rid of all the salt taken by drinking seawater, you have to urinate more water than you drank. Human kidneys can only make urine from water less salty than salt water. In other words somewhere between 10 to 37 billion litres of water just to allow our populous to survive.
Total daily water intake: 3.7 litres (15 cups) for the average adult male, 2.7 litres (11 cups) for the average adult female and 1-2 litres for children. Meanwhile global water consumption is spiralling as the world’s population rockets towards 10 billion. Salty oceans cover 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. The total volume of water (including ice) is not itself the problem but the poor distribution of it globally, the conversion of ice to water and the ratio of saltwater to fresh water, which stands at about 50:1. Water: Either there’s too much or too little. “Water water everywhere / nor any drop to drink” as the saying goes in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1798 lyrical ballad ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. At one side of the planet fresh and sea water literally has a value of less than zero at the other end it can be priceless, literally the difference of life and death. It leads to the dichotomy of over-supply and under-supply. In other words significantly more extreme and less habitual weather conditions coming at us all at once. Like the tentacles of the great Kraken, multiple threats emerge from the climate emergency the simultaneous melting of the polar ice caps and mountain snow caps leading to flooding, storms and artic vortices (‘snowball effect) coupled with water inequality, scarcity, drought and fires. Solving the rising Sea Level Crisis with Water Scarcity. The overall volume of water is increasing as stored polar and mountain level ice melts due to rising temperatures yet climate change is driving ever more extreme droughts, water shortages leading to drought and fires.’ Unlike the greatest commodity (most likely breathable air possibly gravity or solar radiation but not oil or gold) water suffers from sharp regional variances in both over-supply and under-supply. ‘Economically, water is the most misunderstood of all the natural commodities.
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