Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumMulticompartment Depletion Factors for Water Consumption on a Global Scale
I won't have very much time to discuss this paper: Multicompartment Depletion Factors for Water Consumption on a Global Scale Eleonore Pierrat, Martin Dorber, Inge de Graaf, Alexis Laurent, Michael Z. Hauschild, Martin Rygaard, and Valerio Barbarossa Environmental Science & Technology 2023 57 (10), 4318-4331.
I'm heading to a scientific conference tomorrow and am really pressed for time, but I thought I'd point the paper out, and offer some graphics, as our boom and bust extreme weather with respect to water gets wilder as we continue to do nothing meaningful other than engage in jaw boning and wishful thinking to address climate change.
From the introductory text:
New integrated approaches and tools are needed to address the challenges posed by multiple, and often conflicting, water needs for humans and ecosystems. (10) Several tools and methods have already been proposed to tackle these issues, including water footprinting, (9,11) planetary boundaries, (12) integrated water resource management, (13) life cycle assessment (LCA), (14−16) and environmentally-extended multi-regional inputoutput analysis. (17) The integrated nature of hydrological systems requires that the assessment of environmental impacts of water consumption differentiates between water compartments to reflect distributions and renewability levels among water sources. (18) Different compartments interact with varying strengths and over a wide range of geographical and temporal scales with other components of the Earth system, such as the atmosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere. Evaluating the ecological impacts of water management decisions, therefore, requires accounting for the hydrologic processes that determine the relationships between surface and subsurface waters, as surface water, soil water, and groundwater influence one another. (19) Existing life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) models for freshwater consumption characterize the associated damages to ecosystems and human health. (8,14,20−24) However, the interlinkages across water compartments are rarely considered, except for a few studies modeling the recycling and transfer of evapotranspiration and LCIA models quantifying potential impacts on ecosystems...
Some evocative graphics follow.
The first gives references to the various interplay of factors effecting the water supply and environmental and ecological consequences of those factors.
The caption:
In the second graphic, the blue colored areas in the world maps in the top row is "problematic" - representing higher consumption - in the rest of the columns below, the red color is "problematic."
The caption:
Table 3 from the paper gives the state of many of the major river systems on this planet.
The table's caption:
Note that this data is from the last half of the 20th century. Trust yourself to assume that in the 21st century we're working overtime to make everything worse, much worse.
Don't worry. Be happy. "By 2050" we'll all be tooling our way to Mars in one of Elon Musk's hydrogen powered rockets.
Or else we'll be remembered for what we are and what we did, to wit, as I say often: History will not forgive us, nor should it.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend.
Baked Potato
(7,733 posts)some of the words in your scientific postings.
The next step is
can I comprehend a modicum of your point
.
Next step, yess
. I see a little of what you are saying
. Bravo!
Well, thanks!
Baked Potato
NNadir
(33,368 posts)...topics about which I knew next to nothing.
It's a worthy exercise.
My advice to my sons is to conduct oneself so as to be the dumbest guy in the room as often as is possible. If one does this, one can have hopes of someday being the smartest guy in the room, not that this is necessarily desireable.
You're going about it in the right way.