09 Jul '17 21:59>
Originally posted by EladarI mean like all of it. Where do you think it will end up? Does water magically vanish when you drink it, use it for irrigation or on 'drought thirsty land'? Or does it end up somewhere?
You mean like people drinking the water? You mean like irrigation for farming? You mean like to drought thirsty land?
I'm sure there are plenty of places around the world that could use extra water.
So am I. But how much water exactly, and where does it end up?
I'm sure there are plenty of farmers and ranchers in Washington that would love free river water to help with the problem.
Its not free, or they would have done it already.
We need to be consuming more water before it reaches the oceans.
There are a number of problems with the idea:
This has been done in many places until the rivers run dry. Then the people near the coast complain because they now have no water. Or it has a negative impact on the fish that use the rivers etc.
Where does the water go? Some will go into the ground and fill up the water table - not a bad thing. But much will evaporate and back into the global water cycle. It is true that part of current sea level rise is because of water table loss from irrigation. But that is also countered by all the lakes we have created around the world.
But the reason people have depleted water tables, is it is cheap to do so. It is expensive to move water over vast distances.
Would it be nice to ship water to the Sahara and create new agricultural lands there? Its being done in Egypt. But even that idea has problems including cost, saltification and more.
But the main problem with your idea is that it would have to be done on a vast scale world wide to have any measurable impact on sea levels and would probably never be enough to counter total sea level rise from unchecked global warming.