Thread: Climate sceptic? Met 40,000,000 thirsty people

Originally Posted by Slunnie

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Things as simple as a rainwater tank on houses will go a long way. In my case, my 105,000 litre rainwater tank has never been more than about 30cm from full with the exception of when a hose burst and almost all of it pumped out. I've never drawn on bore water for the house.

We're in the inner city and installed 3 x 6000 litre tanks. We've only connected mains water to the cold sink taps (i.e., for brushing teeth and cooking) and everything else runs on tank water. With that arrangement we only use 30 litres a day of mains water, which works out at about 6 litres per person per day. It's also been years since I watered the lawn, as the grass appears to be very drought-proof.

I worked on a site fed from bores via RO plants.
We washed in it etc…

It was part of my task profile to analyse the water as we had to keep the Radiation content below certain levels

Originally Posted by vnx205

In Narrabri in the 1970s, it was standard practice to have three taps over the sink: hot water, cold water and drinking water (from the tank).

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Standard practice in a lot of places. I first encountered it in Roma, where the town water supply comes from bores. And has a substantial content of oil and gas (the first discovery of gas in Roma was in a water well drilled in the 1890s for town water). The stuff that came out of the taps was pretty repulsive, so nearly everyone had a water tank for drinking.

Originally Posted by Arapiles

We're in the inner city and installed 3 x 6000 litre tanks. We've only connected mains water to the cold sink taps (i.e., for brushing teeth and cooking) and everything else runs on tank water. With that arrangement we only use 30 litres a day of mains water, which works out at about 6 litres per person per day. It's also been years since I watered the lawn, as the grass appears to be very drought-proof.

Thats another really good point! All of my Garden is natives which apart from when tubestock have never been watered and the grass is all just pasture grass.

Originally Posted by vnx205

In Narrabri in the 1970s, it was standard practice to have three taps over the sink: hot water, cold water and drinking water (from the tank).

When I coated the inside of the tank with a product to deal with all the pinholes in the tank, I found an interesting collection of bird and frog skeletons.

I have mesh on the intake and outlet to keep all of those out as best as possible.

Reminds me of Birdsville. They had 2 taps, one was hot water and the other was hot water.

One or more of the towns round Augathella have hot water delivered to the houses, and if you want cold (well, as cold as it gets there in summer!) water you have to have a cooling tank if I remember rightly.

Originally Posted by AK83

In this country(that I really concern myself with) it is a fact .. verifiable fact, not from these biased illiterate journalists .. that global warming is leading to a wettening of the entire country(as an average). Some parts will become dryer, most areas are becoming wetter. This info comes directly from the raw data provided by the Beauro of Met. You only need to see this data for yourself.

That's partially true - there's heavier rain in the north of WA but the drying out of the South-West of WA (as well as the Wimmera and Central Victoria etc etc) is an established fact and of more relevance given where agriculture and our populations are.

Want to guess where the largest rainfall anomaly in Victoria is? In the catchment for the Thompson Dam ....

Originally Posted by Ronski

Here lies the real problem, no one is managing the population.
Consider this, 100 years ago, after WW1 the world population was around 1.3 billion.
Today we are surging past 7 billion, predicted to reach 15 billion around 2025 or 2030.

We have to be fed and watered, natural rain forests cleared for 'irrigated crops' to feed us.
Livestock has to be watered to feed us, not to mention filling the backyard pool in rich countries.
Huge increase in water demanding industries, to give us all the 'things we need'.

We are simply using more than the rains supply, don't fully blame the climate.
Verging on a disaster now, What about in 20 years?
Human behavior is what it is, do nothing until it happens.
So, how do we manage the world population? good luck with that.

You need not worry about that for too long. The population of the world is set tot dramatically decrease in a couple of decades. Most developed continents have a net loss in population, that is; less new people are being born than (will) die. The only reason we are seeing growth in those area's is because people no longer die at the top end ie people live longer but the replacement rate is down nearly everywhere except I believe Africa at this time. Some argue that the loss of such a large part of the population is an economic disaster in itself. Also 15 billion in 2030 is not going to happen. 11 billion is currently the peak and if I combine both sets of information it seems to suggest that after that 11 billion we might see a fairly steep decrease.

-P