Monday, September 25, 2023
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Some facts about water
Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the torrents in the southern desert. Those that sow in tears shall reap rejoicing.
As I’m writing there are thunderstorms pounding Austin, big ones, filled with hail and heavy winds and pouring rain. Hurricanes and tornadoes and tropical storms are all around us. In Sunday School yesterday we prayed for rain. Here it comes.
I’ve been typing up statistical facts about water on the earth from a great kids’ book we found at the library: Our Well – The Story of Water on Earth. Written in 2007, it might have been written yesterday. Take a look. (Look especially at “who has access?”)
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Earth is the only planet that has liquid water and is therefore the only planet that can support life. Without water, nothing on earth can survive.
All the water on earth comes from just “one well” – that is to say, every ocean wave and every raindrop is part of this global well. Water from an American faucet, a well in Kenya, or a river in India are all the same water.
The amount of water on Earth has never changed. It has been the same since the earth was created. The water you drank today may have rained down on the Amazon rainforest five years ago. A hundred years ago, it may have been steam escaping from a teapot in India. Ten thousand years ago, it may have flowed in an underground river. A hundred thousand years ago, it may have been frozen solid in a glacier. And before that, it may have quenched the thirst of a dinosaur.
Total water
Almost 70% of earth’s surface is covered with water, and there is water under the ground as well.
Where is the water on earth?
Oceans 97.23 %
Icecaps & glaciers 2.14%
Groundwater 0.61%
Freshwater lakes 0.009%
Inland saltwater seas 0.008%
Moisture in the soil 0.005%
Water in the atmosphere 0.001%
Rivers 0.0001%
Add it up: there is more water in the atmosphere and soil than in all the rivers on the earth.
97% Saltwater (unusable) Oceans are salty because rivers flow into the sea, rivers which have collected salt from rocks and soil. As ocean water evaporates, the salt is left behind.
3% Freshwater (usable) But 99% of this is trapped in glaciers, underground or in the atmosphere. So 1% of 3% is usable.
Here’s an analogy: if a tanker truck represents all the water on earth, then a large bathtub repressents all the freshwater. Nine (just 9) pop cans is all the freshwater from the tub that we we can use.
Water in nature
The constant movement of water is called the “water cycle.” Water evaporates from bodies of water, as well as from plants and animals. I rises into the air as water vapor, which cools into droplets called condensation, which gather into clouds.
By the way, the average white cloud weights about twice as much as a blue whale (300,000 lbs x 2 = 300 tons). When the cloud gets too heavy, we get hail, snow or rain.
It takes about 1 million tiny water droplets to make just one raindrop.
An average birch tree drinks 80 gallons of water from the soil each summer day.
Tomatoes are 95% water.
Apples are 85% water.
Seeds contain only 5-10% water.
Plants, like animals are mostly water. Jellyfish are 95% water. Frogs and earthworms are 80% water. Dogs, elephants and humans are 70% water.
How do humans use water?
10%: Homes – cleaning, cooking, drinking, flushing toilets, bathing
¾ of water is used in bathrooms. 1 toilet flush uses 3 ½ gallons.
Each of us drinks average of drinks 2/3 gallon per day.
21%: Making everything from computers to cars, including generating electricity and making gas.
Heating and cooling in factories, washing away waste, steam to run machinery.
Water is an ingredient, for example in lotions, shampoos, chemicals and drinks.
It took 34 gallons of water to make your bike.
It takes 30,000 gallons of water to make your car.
Water is used to make food, clothes, paper and ink.
69%: Agriculture – water for crops and livestock.
It takes 49 gallons of water to produce 1 glass of milk (water for cow to drink, grow food for the cow, and process the milk).
1,375 gallons of water go into making one fast food meal (burger, fries and soda).
Every day all the world’s livestock (cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, chickens) drink 160,000 tanker trucks full of water.
The average person on earth uses 6 times more water than a hundred years ago.
Who has access?
16% of people (more than 1 billion people) have to walk more than 15 minutes to get water, just to get a few jugs, enough to drink, cook, clean. (A bucket of water weighs around 22 pounds.)
Distribution of water is not the same, even though the amount of water stays the same, often because of huge differences in rainfall. So other families can’t get water even when they walk.
20% of the earth’s men, women and children do not have access to enough water. Nearly 300 million people in Africa do not have access to enough fresh water.
China and India are home to 1/3 of the world’s population, but have access to only 10% of the world’s freshwater.
North America has 1/3 the population of Africa. But that 1/3 uses 3 times as much water as the population of Africa.
Buckets of water that we use per person per day (1 bucket = 2.6 gallons)
North America 55 buckets
Russia 27½ buckets
Poland 14 buckets
India 7 buckets
Nepal 3 buckets
Haiti 1½ buckets
Ethiopia 1 bucket
Predictions
By 2025 1 out of every 4 people will live without enough water.
By 2050 4 billion people may be living without enough clean water.
More people use more water, but they also need more space.
Houses, buildings and roads gobble up wetlands and change the ways the water flows.
Pavement and concrete prevent rainwater from refilling underground water supplies.
Remember, there is no more water now than when the earth began. And there will be no more water 100 years from now, when the population may be closer to 10 billion than 6 or 7 billion or 8 billion, as it is now.
Pollution
Wetlands are nature’s water treatment plants – they absorb chemicals and filter out pollution and waste. When we build on them, we remove them from their natural use.
Water becomes polluted by waste from industry, agriculture and homes, and it rises into the atmosphere, then to fall into surface water and groundwater. Our actions may be overloading water’s natural ability to clean itself.
Polluted water in the atmosphere can fall as acid rain or snow thousands of miles from its source, as far away as the Arctic.
Water dissolves more things than any other liquid, so in nature, water is never really pure. It almost always has something dissolved in it.
Every day 2 million tons of garbage are dumped into Earth’s water – 15,000 boxcars full.
80% of all sickness in the world’s humans is caused by unsafe water. Animals and plants get sick too.
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Some of us, even in the United States, know our communities are running out of water. Our lives depend on the water, as does every other life in all the world. God gives us what we need, and we are responsible to take care of it.
Simple enough to say, but very difficult to accomplish, especially when we take the gift for granted.
I think of what Portia said to the judge in The Merchant of Venice: “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, upon the place beneath.”
Have mercy on us, O Lord.
(Isaiah 55, Psalm 145, Philippians 1, Acts 16, Matthew 20)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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