Visual proof of how over populated the UK is

[abroadhead]

Those figures look better

 

I think that overpopulatio is an issue though, or rather a lack of capacity for storing water in relation to population. We cannot store all the water that falls obviously so we store some in aquifiers, others in reserviors etc. What we are doing however is increasing the population and not making allowances in terms of water storage, especially in the south east. It's very difficult to increase an aquifier in size, and there are limits to the reservoirs you can place in none hilly terrain.

 

That's true. There hasn't been much in the way of major water infrastructure engineering for a long while, such as new reservoirs. Instead, there are other ways of managing water that are happening. First is a reduction in mains leakage - given the costs and the scale of the operation, this would take decades to reduce. There's also water efficiency measures - both domestically and also with agricultural irrigation.

 

Another is the development of Yorkshire Water's Grid - which can distribute water supplies all over the region to ensure a dry spell in one area does not result in local water shortages.

 

Another is the use of land management techniques to restore the natural sponge-like characteristics of peat and moorlands, which have generally been badly degraded. By doing so, parts of Dartmoor have avoided the need for new reservoirs by helping to restore the water cycle and maximise storage in the existing ones - also a relatively cheap option. Unfortunately they achieved that by privatisation of land, which is a whole other problem....

 

Water levels in London's aquifers have fallen so much over time that I think they are seriously considering desalinisation plants, which convert seawater to drinking water. Many parts of the world now use this, but it is extremely expensive...

 

There are also talks of using the restore Stroudwater Canal to transfer water from the River Severn to the Thames and London, mainly because of the objections to installing new reservoirs in Oxfordshire. I'm cautious about jumping to this big energy-guzzling engineered option which actually doesn't do anything to alter the damaged water cycle. When so much of the Thames' catchment is degraded, dried up agricultural land - by restoring this and returning moisture to the soils and aquifers, and being much more careful with new urban developments, we might have a much longer-term option.

[Cyclone]

It's even more complicated than that, water leaking from a pipe doesn't disappear or just teleport to the sea, it re-enters the ground water system at the point it's released.

 

What happens to grey water that is used in a house (washing the pots) into the sewerage system and off for treatment before being released again into a water course?

 

And if I go and water the grass right now (no need obviously, just hypothetically) then I'll use gallons of water, but it won't disappear, some will evaporate, some will soak into the ground and re-enter the water system.

 

There's not much I could do that would permanently remove the water from the water system.... Although if I lived by the coast spraying fresh water into the sea would remove it quite effectively.

[MrSmith]

True, it certainly wasn't an exhaustive water budget! If you make the simple assumption that the total amount of water evapourating from the sea, falling on the land, then flowing back out to sea remains fairly constant, then it just about works. There are additional stores of water also in the UK - such as groundwater, that are replenished on much longer timescales, and we use this extensively from drinking water or irrigation boreholes.

 

The total water usage is also simplistic too - the domestic use for washing, cleaning, cooking and drinking doesn't include all the leakage from pipes. The agricultural water use ought to be in addition to industrial water use as well. You are right that the rainfall ought to be included in the agricultural water use, and I'm not sure if that figure is in addition to or inclusive of rainfall inputs. But also most of the rainfall is evapourated quickly and falls again nearby - so there is plenty of double-accounting and errors on both sides of the equation.

 

I think what it does show is that the approximate ball-park proportions of the volume of water we use domestically pales is far exceeded by the volume of rainfall we get each year, which goes to sustain rivers and groundwater levels (if we manage it carefully and don't ruin the environment's natural ability to do this itself, which is what other posts have mentioned).

 

Thus drought in the UK is everything to do with local water management, and therefore something that could and should be tackled, rather than allowing policy makers to fob it off as some impossible-to-deal-with issue.

 

Some interesting figures would be the amount of rain fall each region of the UK needs to maintain all the living organisms apart from humans, the difference between those figures and the amount of rainfall in those regions would be the amount of water available for human activity in each region.

Managing our water would involve restrictions on where we build and populate, excessive rain in Scotland isn’t much use to London, unless we can get that water to London.

[tonyjackson]

We should do as China did. Put a restriction on one child per family until the population is down to a reasonable level.

 

Just out of interest, Cyclone, why did you refer to Chuck Norris?

I ask because Walker Texas Ranger has been a favourite programme of mine for quite a while.

[Cyclone]

It's a signature, I'm not making a specific reference to him now.

[Cyclone]

We should do as China did. Put a restriction on one child per family until the population is down to a reasonable level.

I assume you don't actually know what the birth rate in the UK is?

[Rupert_Baehr]

The birth rate is only one factor. There are 2 obvious other factors: lifespan and migration.

 

The population of England and Wales rose by 3.7 million in he last 10 years. The last census confirms that there are 400,000 more under-5s than there were 10 years ago, so although birth rates were falling, it appears that they are now increasing.

 

The population is predicted to grow to 77 million by 2050.

 

I've no idea who does the prediction and how they arrive at those figures but what if:

 

(a) Life expectancy reduces. - There have been plenty of warnings about increased early mortality caused, inter alia, by diabetes and obesity.

 

(b) People find they simply can't make a living in the UK. - Many may not be able to leave, but fewer may decide to go there.

 

© (For whatever reason, be it global demand, increased cost or any other) Food supplies are put under pressure, prices rise considerably and the standard of living of many people falls. - Would that not discourage immigration and encourage emigration?

 

There was a mass influx of Eastern Europeans a few years ago. They came to the UK because they thought there would be well-paid jobs. The Pound fell against the Euro, the jobs turned out to be poorly-paid jobs and many of the immigrants became emigrants.

 

(d) People feel that they are overcrowded and that their quality of life has been reduced severely because of overcrowding. No doubt many of those who could would leave.

[Cyclone]

I don't think the rising population estimate means that the birth rate is predicted to increase, it's entirely based on migration AFAIK.

[Rupert_Baehr]

From this article (dated Aug 2009):

 

According to the Office for National Statistics, there were 408,000 more people in Britain in 2008 than in the previous year. The overall population has risen by 2 million since 2001, to a peak of 61.4 million.

 

The increase was driven by a baby boom as fertility rates reached their highest level for 15 years. There were 791,000 babies born in the UK last year, an increase of 33,000 on a year earlier, and almost twice the rise seen at the start of the decade.

 

The average UK-born woman has 1.84 children – an increase of 10% in just four years – while women living here who were born abroad have about 2.5 children. The ONS figures show that nearly a quarter of babies in England and Wales in 2008 were born to mothers who came from outside the UK, most commonly women from Pakistan, Poland and India.

 

The overall fertility rate is now 1.96 – the highest since the 1970s. The last comparable increase was in 1962, when the population grew by 484,000. But the 2008 figures still lag behind those of 1947, when the postwar baby boom pushed up population levels by 551,000.

 

Immigrants (those who were not born in the UK) may well be having more children than women born here (some of whom may be the children of earlier immigrants) but it does seem that the fertility rate of women born in the UK is increasing.

 

The Chinese population control scheme may have done some good - but it has caused them more than a few problems, too. I understand that the Male : Female ratio is grossly distorted which could cause major societal unrest.

 

It is - or should be, IMO, up to each country to decide how (or if) it wishes to control its population. Each country should have the authority to do that - and each country should take the responsibility if they get it wrong.

 

If humans decide that they don't want to control their population, then 'nature' will probably do it for them. That may not be too pleasant.

[Cyclone]

Even at the new high rate of 1.96 that isn't sufficient to maintain our population if immigration/emigration balanced.

 

I was under the impression that the overall trend for number of children was on the decline though (over what time period I'm not sure).