Valuing Water
How much would it cost to lift 1.4 trillion tons from sea level to the top of a mountain (assuming it could be done at all)?
Let's begin with a child who has an appreciation of the value of water, though it's unlikely she receives any payment for her labour. This might be compared with the educational exercise of carrying water up a hill to replicate the work done by the Sun to fill hydro-electric reservoirs, only this is for real and done every day.
Every day, the Sun lifts roughly 1.4 trillion tons of water from the oceans. Annually, this is equivalent 505 000 cubic kilometres. If just one cubic kilometre is hard to imagine, think of it as 400 000 000 Olympic swimming pools (50 x 25 x 2.5 metres). Air currents powered by the Sun then move this water vapour to places where the Earth’s topography contributes to it falling back to Earth as rain filling lakes, streams and rivers from which creatures freely drink. Ever since the earliest single celled organism life on Earth has thrived sustainably on this bounty freely provided by the unimaginably hard work of nature. Having learned very little from their catastrophic historical undervaluing of energy, humans are about to make the same mistake with water.
The picture is an AI representation of a golf course near the Mediterranean coast in the south of Spain. It looks as though water is in abundance, but areas of Spain are undergoing desertification at an alarming rate. Golf courses are artificially sustained at great cost to adjacent landscapes that are drying out. The changes to the climate that have resulted from the profligate use of fossil fuels and subsequent undervaluing of energy are resulting in rapidly escalating changes to the way nature does its work. The Sun is raising increasing volumes of water from the oceans and the air currents (winds) are depositing it in increasingly unwanted quantities in places somewhat less convenient to the economies that humans have developed. Read more about desertification. Are these artificially watered golf courses symptoms of ignorance, the greed of vested interests, or just wilful lack of care?
On the left are the cooling towers of Didcot Power Station, no longer in existence as the UK is a world leader in replacing coal generation with off shore wind, - a major cause for celebration. On the right is a new data centre. Data centres need water for cooling at rate of 1.8 litres per kWh of IT load. Over 560 billion litres went on this last year and the requirement is rising rapidly.
It is evident that as soon as one problem is solved, another rises to take its place. This will continue happening until the work of nature, in this case in moving water from the ocean and desalinising it, is recognised and given a commensurate value.