There is no waste of water thanks to the handy dandy water cycle.
I've often wondered where people think wasted water goes. Do they fire it into the sun?
My well water comes out of the ground, and my septic goes into the ground. The only thing I can "waste" is propane, and I guess further to your water point, the handy dandy laws of thermodynamics keep waste at bay.
Let me educate you. It goes from freshwater aquifers to the ocean, where it becomes saltwater. A process that cannot be reversed without a metric shit ton of energy. In other words, we're pumping water into the ocean faster than the water cycle brings it back.
And then what happens when it rains, oh wise one?
Draining an aquifer faster than it is being replenished is an issue in some areas, but still doesn't amount to "wasting" water. And the only consequence will be the death of the people who relied on that over-used aquifer, and the subsidence of their land.
Water cannot be wasted. By your brilliant theory all the fresh water would be long-gone forever into the oceans, never to evaporate again.
We should do what we can to heat the globe so the oceans evaporate faster.
(I was 100% joking when I started the sentence, then dropped to about 99.7 by the time I had finished.)
In some places, sure. Most water in the US is taken directly from lakes or rivers.
The water in the ocean evaporates, converts to clouds, rains on the land, seeps into the ground and becomes well water all over again.
There is no waste. Only time.
Well if 2/3 of the planet is covered in bodies of water that are undrinkably salinated it is pretty easy for there to be water loss into an unusable state if you are removing it from aquefers that take years to replenish.
Primarywater.org
Interesting rabbit hole if you have time.
Do you think the oceans just stop when they reach land or do they permeate into the crust beneath our feet.. gradually being filtered and entering vast cavities which we can tap into?
I happened upon a mountain stream deep in the southern Appalachian mountains while gold panning. I wasn’t finding anything and I was getting pretty bored so I thought I’d follow this stream up the mountain and to its source. Lo and behold, a spring bursting from the seams of a massive boulder at 2,500 feet. Where was this water coming from.. how was the water table so high? I chose a week in the dry season and a day that hadn’t seen rain in at least 6 days. I bet you that spring will never run dry.
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