How much water is on Earth?

This question raises more questions, as I found out on a USA government website called USGS – Science for a changing world. I already knew what they said in there, that the oceans on this entire planet are made up of 97% of saline water “on, in, and above the Earth”.

So what can we drink? Where in the world are communities missing out on tap water? It seems that there are 785,000,000 people who don’t have access to easy drinkable water. That’s around 10% of the entire population! Where do they get their water from? WHO gave information which you can read – but only if you are interested. Which you should be, because if you’re in Aus and usually have lots of water to drink and use, you should feel very sad for those in the world who don’t have what we have.

In Australia there are six large (and a lot more smaller) approved and working desalination plants. The Sydney plant will double its size, possibly this year, providing 30% of the drinkable water to the Sydney population.

Desalination started in Australia after the drought of 1997-2009 which ran many towns almost out of fresh water. Australian engineers had seen what Israel is doing, and has been doing since the 1990s. According to the Scientific American website, Israel “now gets 55 percent of its domestic water from desalination, and that has helped to turn one of the world’s driest countries into the unlikeliest of water giants.”

Perhaps that will be what Australia can become, when this country is so much dry land. The ABS showed, in 2008, that 16% of the water consumption was to households when the majority of it was to agriculture – 59%. The rest of it was 13% to water suppliers and 12% ‘other’, which is mining, manufacturing and anything else. By now I suspect that the water required for agriculture has risen, but there are no current details from ABS. There also should be an essential percentage the fireys use on bushfires right now.

In 2017 researchers into desalination found out about “the invention of a graphene-oxide membrane that sieves salt right out of seawater.” Perhaps, when usable, these would provide tap water to the other 785 million people who don’t have taps for drinkable water.

But what I wonder about is, by the flurry of population increase, perhaps desalination either used now or the graphene-oxide membrane suggested for the future or anything else that scientists come up with can actually run this entire planet out of water. When would or could that happen? Year 2050? Year 2200? Year 2500? Think about it!

I’m just very happy I’ll not be around even by 2050.