the right wing CHOSE to make (climate) science denial a partisan issue many many years ago. you don't get a cookie for taking until 2020 to at least acknowledge there might be an issue (while probably still mischaracterising any serious attempt to fight it as too radical for the poor corporations that your elected officials work for)...

It seems plausible to me that a water shortage could be happening regardless of the broader issues related to what is often referred to as climate change. If even the climate wasn't changing (I'm not saying that it isn't), humans are still taking more water out of the ground. We are storing it in pipes, bottles, factories etc. There could still be a water shortage, even if carbon emissions had been zero for the last two decades.

I see the two issues (water shortage and the traditional divisive political issue) as not being necessarily related.

This post was edited by Kayeto on Sep 26 2020 01:07pm

In their defense, the media has been talking about water shortages for several years now. I'm glad that more people are becoming aware, but this shouldn't be surprising.

Yeah, I first heard about water shortages being a consequence of climate change over 10 years ago, while I was in high school. And in high school in bumfuck Missouri.

This isn't news and has been talked about for literal decades.

Anyway, we solve this by making renewables en mass so we have an energy surplus and use that surplus to desalinate.

Desalination is pretty horrible for the environment though. That should be a last resort.

No matter what intermediate solutions we achieve, desalination will eventually be necessary on a massive scale. The sooner we fix those problems the better off we will be.

Everything is about energy first and foremost. We can fix all environmental issues if we dump enough energy into it. The cost of energy is why things aren't economical, so when we have a surplus and the price goes down more things will become economical even after using more energy to solve the environmental challenges.

Not in the mood to really delve deep into this debate right now, just one thing: the shortage of fresh water is exacerbated by several factors, like waste, aging infrastructure, overpopulation, climate change, inefficient farming techniques, and many more.

Pretending that climate change is the sole reason mankind has a problem with fresh water is ridiculous.

didn't take long for the typical science deniers to strawman their way into this, in order to downplay the central role that climate change plays.
is it the only issue? of course not, it's hard to think of ANY problem of that scale that has one singular factor responsible for its entire existence. no one even remotely suggested that though, so it's pretty obvious WHY certain 'sceptics' pretend that's the argument they're facing. anti-intellectual scum really...

Maybe where you live in California, where it's a pressing issue but no it's not a nationwide issue that's talked about.




Basically this. I did some research on this last year. Some people assume that global warming will dry everything out. While partially true, not all regions will respond the same. Some will get wetter, some drier. The southwest of the US does and would still have issue even without global warming. It's an increasingly popular place to live. That means more water consumptions for food, drinking, sewage, etc.

Global warming will make it undoubtedly worse for certain regions, but not all, some northern altitudes stand to benefit from mild temperature increase.

Global warming will change weather patterns in such a way as to increase extremes. Dry places get drier, wet places get wetter. So some places will have increased hurricanes, monsoons, etc. etc. Other places will see less and less rain.

This will result in water shortages some places, and an excess of unpotable water in others.

Global warming makes this problem worse by messing up distribution and causing increasingly bad weather events where water isn't necessarily an issue.

Ultimately, we will have to use more energy for distribution and purification.