Unchecked groundwater extraction and climate change have dried continents significantly over the past 22 years, with 101 countries now losin
Continents have lost so much water since 2002 that they have surpassed ice sheets as the biggest contributor to global sea level rise, a new study reveals. Almost 70% of this loss is due to unchecked groundwater extraction, which removes water from deep aquifers and eventually transfers it to the ocean, researchers found. Together with rising rates of evaporation due to climate change, this has caused rapidly drying "hotspots" to merge into four "mega-drying" regions, the scientists said.
As we have many times remarked, the proportion of humans who live in cities is larger than ever, and most of the large cities are on the seacoast, where there is plenty water available if you have the energy to separate it from the salt. Nuclear power plants are ideally suited to provide desalted water, using distillation and heat from the bottom of the thermodynamic cycle for the “base load”, plus potentially reverse osmosis as a consumer of off–peak power.
This directly reduces the water used by cities. The power produced reduces the need to let water flow down through hydro dams, potentially making it available for other uses. The effects cascade up into the interior. All in all, it is deeply unfortunate that the Bolsa Island Project of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California did not go ahead in the 1960s, not only for the direct benefits to the Colorado river system, but also because it would have been a lead for the world to follow. As things are, we are still waiting for that first big nuclear desalting project.
