If you want an image of all water on, in, and above the Earth, here it is
From the Interior Department, US Geological Survey website. See the full fascinating report here
The largest sphere represents all of Earth's water, and its diameter is about 860 miles (the distance from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Topeka, Kansas). The sphere includes all the water in the oceans, ice caps, lakes, and rivers, as well as groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant.
How much of the total water is fresh water, which people and many other life forms need to survive? The blue sphere over Kentucky represents the world's liquid fresh water (groundwater, lakes, swamp water, and rivers).
Do you notice that "tiny" bubble over Atlanta, Georgia? That one represents fresh water in all the lakes and rivers on the planet, and most of the water people and life of earth need every day comes from these surface-water sources. The volume of this sphere is about 22,339 mi3 (93,113 km3). The diameter of this sphere is about 34.9 miles (56.2 kilometers). Yes, Lake Michigan looks way bigger than this sphere, but you have to try to imagine a bubble almost 35 miles high—whereas the average depth of Lake Michigan is less than 300 feet (91 meters).
4 comments:
....and, that is the same amount of water that has always been on this planet. Nothing less; nothing more
.....finite, yessir. Now add the world's exploding population, total water consumed wasted and desecrated. Micro view hays county and the hill country. Wagons Ho!
It is not true that all that formerly fresh water is available for living things.
For instance, the millions of gallons of water mixed with deadly chemicals to frack each natural gas well, is polluted FOREVER, and the current method of disposal is to pump it deep into the Earth, out of sight, out of mind.
Gas drilling operations COULD use solar distillation processes on-site to recover the fresh water, but they have thus far decided that is too expensive, so they continue to pollute groundwater resources, draining aquifers for the sake of cheap energy. This water is lost to us, along with many other permanent degradations of water.
Fresh water is the only thing that separates us from rocks.
Since the third world low life humans are having babies every nine months and fifteen minutes, it looks like desalination is the route to take. Even with the population increases there is plenty of water, we will just have to stop the bickering and develop efficient low cost ways to tap the supply we have available. Since "climate change" is melting the ice caps, why not mine the ice in Arctic and Antarctic? Screw the Polar Bars they are killing the cute cuddly little seals anyway.
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