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Note to the Guardian; don't try yet another BS left-wing guilt trip in the week Thames Water sends out its second half of the unmetered tariff billing, with average bills of £110.
We live on an island where it's taken a Conservative mayor to commission a desalination plant in just the one city, purely to keep water pumping and prevent any more summers of drought or extended hosepipe bans. "Hidden" water? Should we take that out of what we need to drink and live? Should we bin all our washing machines and wash by hand where we can't measure the amount used anyway? Meters for all so that then OAPs have to choose whether to heat, eat AND/OR wash and drink?
These bloody lefties love to criticise without ever coming up with a workable answer to anything.
That is a huge figure though. As a meat and dairy eater, having long showers, washing car, etc - I'm probably using more than my fair share of water anyway.
My point being we live on a bloody island we're surrounded by it and it falls all the time as you say. Your water supply will only ever be in danger if your home is flooded as demonstrated a year ago.
If you are being charged an average unmetered tariff of £210 (as I am) per year for water then frankly I'd put a fucking fountain up in the back garden if I wanted to - Granted the new owners are fixing my mains outside right now BUT Thames Water hasn't had a single Xmas/New Year period since I moved in my flat without bursts and leaks, and the old owners did fuck all about it and my bills never went down.
Even though I conserve water it's because I'm paying the gas bill to heat it. With no car to wash and even lumping in the washing machine, if I break 10-20 I'd be surprised, considering at one stage it wasn't drinkable and I was bringing in my own bottles.
Just not in the mood for silly season news today...
I may be completely missing the point here, but isn't it the case that water can never be lost from the water cycle.... I.e. it will always 'eventually' return to the beginning if you want to call it that. The most extreme example being, you drink water, some gets 'locked' in your body tissues, only to be released back into the soil (or air if cremated) upon death, and then it rejoins water courses to under-go evaporation, which then eventually results in rain, and then drinking water once again. So i hope they aren't going to turn this into an "OH MY GOD, water is going to run out thing" because that would be crazy talk.
On second thoughts maybe they mean we are using too much meaning that it is not readily available for others. That would make more sense. this is a thinking aloud post, i agree. Although this still doesn't mean levels of water are being depleted!
You're right monkey boy, water is not leaving the planet, but that doesn't mean that all the water that returns is drinkable. In India for example, a weak government has allowed factories to set up with few safeguards to use up water supplies to serve them, which pollute the rivers and render them undrinkable.
Double nine, I get what you're saying, but I think it helps to be aware of the current trend. One of the issues in the palestinian/israel conflict is the use of water, with palestinians accusing the israelis of diverting it to serve them which leads to palestinian crops failing. Water shortage is a key issue in Sudan's various conflicts.
In the meantime, we are happy to drink bottled water (not as happy as the French tho, they are obsessed)
The Earth contains around 1337 million cubic kilometres of water
Around 1420 cubic kilometres evaporates daily from land and sea
Only 1% of the Earth’s water is available for use
97% is in the sea, 2% is frozen
Of that 1%, 98% is used in industry, and only 2% for nutrition and health
Did you know?
Water is the only substance on earth found naturally in three forms – solid, liquid and gas.
A human can survive about a month without food, but only 5-7 days without water.
A dairy cow has to drink 4 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of milk.
Cold water is absorbed into the body faster than warm water.
Driving a car in the city typically results in the loss of as much as half a litre of water an hour which can trigger emotional changes that can lead to road rage. (Source: the National Mineral Water Information Service)
Even at rest skin the skin can lose up to half a litre of water into the atmosphere every day, and during hot weather it will lose even more.
Brain tissue is 85% water. Messages from the brain to everywhere else in the body are transported on ‘waterways’.
The air that we breathe out is saturated with water, through this we can each lose about one third of a litre of water every day.
A snowflake is made of a billion, billion molecules of water.
No two snowflakes are identical, but if you melt and refreeze a snowflake, it will refreeze into exactly the same pattern
