Drought in our Future

War isn’t the only thing that threatens human survival–an even bigger threat is lack of water. Despite the fact that Australia is experiencing incredible floods right now, the country endured many years of drought. There’s more drought in our future, which also means more war, but scientists are scrambling to solve the problem and may have come up with some solutions. The United States and many other heavily populated countries face a growing threat of severe and prolonged drought in coming decades.

Scientist Aiguo Dai thinks that most of the Western Hemisphere, along with large parts of Eurasia, Africa, and Australia, will be at risk of extreme drought this century. He says, "We are facing the possibility of widespread drought in the coming decades, but this has yet to be fully recognized by both the public and the climate change research community. If the projections in this study come even close to being realized, the consequences for society worldwide will be enormous." Australia has endured some incredible droughts in recent years and water engineering researchers there have developed a model to estimate potential urban water supply shortfalls under a range of climate change scenarios.

And since so much of the world’s population relies on rice, they have developed a new drought-tolerant form of it. Much of the water we drink in the future may be recycled wastewater. One way to clean up our drinking water: ZAP it. Researchers developed a new concept in water treatment: A low electrical voltage is applied to microbes to help them quickly and efficiently remove pollutants from mining, industrial and agricultural wastewater. The patented process replaces tons of chemicals with a small amount of electricity that feed microbes with electrons. Tests have shown that the electrons accelerate how quickly the microbes remove pollutants such as arsenic, selenium, mercury and other materials, significantly reducing the cost of wastewater cleanup.

It’s a long, hard path to solving the problems of climate change, but it’s necessary to follow this path, step by step, for our children’s future. When it comes to the future of this website, there’s only ONE thing to do to save us: Subscribe today!