Myths About Our Water Supply

For whatever bizarre reason, a large demographic of the world's population seems to think that we are "running out of water." I know several members of this demographic. This misunderstanding is not the fault of the believer, but rather the fault of a few myths in circulation. 

One of these myths is that by using water, you destroy it. While reading that, you'll probably think, "Well, of course that isn't true!" But the fact remains: There are quite a few who don't think about it enough to realize the falsehood. Taking a shower, for example, does not spontaneously split water molecules, nor does the water you used become waste. All the water you use in your plumbing is sent to a filtration plant and spat right back of your tap. So trying to calculate when we will run out of water based on how much you used in your shower just won't work, meaning you can't use the Renewable or the Non-Renewable Resource formulas.

Another popular myth is that the planet is drying up, and that's simply wrong. Water is the most sustainable resource around, because the act of using it is the beginning of the process that renews it. When water is used in plumbing, as said before, it's just put through filtration and used again for something else. When water is used elsewhere, it either sinks into the ground and evaporates, or flows to a body of water and evaporates, before it all gets dumped right back on your head. The largest source of freshwater is rainfall, and about 3 quadrillion gallons of the stuff falls to Earth every year.

So, the trouble is not a lack of water. The problem is getting all that water to the right places, because rain doesn't fall evenly across the globe. With all that said, though, it is clear that we aren't running out of water by using it, so we can't use the Non-Renewable or the Renewable Resource equations. 

In fact, if we were to put this in mathematical terms, the only thing we could confidently say is that if you use an amount of water a, received from the source of the water b, you've done this:

(b - a) + a = b

MAGIC WATER.

From: Chris