Precious

Posted on by Live & Learn

“One of the most boggling experiences I have is standing on a beach staring at the ocean.  It’s just a silly amount of water.  And then there’s all this water underground, and more in the atmosphere, and there are lakes and rivers and streams and marshes and swamps and snow and glaciers and ponds and puddles. So I’ve been thinking about all this water and how I don’t really have a handle on how much of it there really is.  It’s clear what needs to happen— I need to cube it.  I need to put all the world’s water in cubes so I can look at it all at once and grasp how much there really is…so if you took all of that water and put it into a huge cube, how big would the cube be if you place it on top of the U.S.?  A cube with a side of 693 miles, whose base stretches from Indianapolis to Denver.”

water cube on earth

97% of the Earth’s water is sitting in Oceans. A mere 3% of all water is fresh water…0.3% of the 3% of all fresh water is surface water (e.g., lakes, rivers)

And, if you were going to put all of the Earth’s drinkable water in a cube, how big would it be?  Its sides would be 29 miles long and it would fit into Rhode Island.

Surface Water - drinkable fresh water

“So I guess the big takeaway here is that the Earth’s oceans are nothing more than a thin film on the surface of the Earth, relatively speaking.”

Read more @ Wait But Why: Putting All of The World’s Water in a Big Cube

35 thoughts on “Precious”

    1. Very much so! Get this stat from the post: “you could cut out a smaller cube (8 mile sides) that contains all the rivers, streams, and brooks on Earth�the Amazon, the Mississippi, the Nile and all the rest�and another (6.5 mile sides) that contains all water inside of all of Earth’s living things. These would sit comfortably on top of Queens and Brooklyn.”

  3. Wait, wait. David, these are amazing visuals. I followed your link to the “Wait But Why” blog, where there’s a longer explanation, and many more great visuals. This is amazing stuff! Stop the presses!

    I’m sorry, but the journalist in me, and the cynic as well, is screaming. This is amazing information, if it is true. But to a journalist, specifically a retired copy editor, whose job it was to keep falsehoods out of the newspaper, this story and visuals have all the marks of a HOAX. I’m not questioning anyone’s honesty, but I am questioning the accuracy of the data. I’ll want at least a couple of other reliable sources to confirm and collaborate this information before I clear it for the front page, or any other page. I want to talk to “Wait But Why’s” COPY EDITOR.

    Many people refuse to believe in Global Warming and Climate Change. Well, I personally refuse to accept at face value that glaciers contain such a large portion of the Earth’s water as “Wait But Why” reports. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t water expand when it freezes? If all the glaciers melted, they would take up considerably less space than they do as ice.

    I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge that “Wait But Why’s” blog posting may be 100 percent correct. But not until I talk to his copy editor.

    1. Hi John. It may be. The visuals certainly hit me square on. Let me share another comment o the article that I found insightful as well:

      “Actually, I don’t like this visual — it doesn’t really convey how HIGH the cube is. At 693 miles, it’s more than 125 times the height of Mt. Everest! The issue is that, as ground observers, we have an exaggerated perception of the size of the things we see, relative to the size of the earth, especially tall things. Think about this: Take a big globe and put a coat of varnish on it; the thickness of the varnish relative to the globe is roughly the same as the thickness of the Earth’s atmosphere compared to the Earth itself*. At half the thickness of the atmosphere (5.5 miles vs. 11 miles), Everest is thus a tiny prick on the surface of the sphere. The point is that these cubes, while seemingly modest at their base, are by experience, INCREDIBLY tall � taller than our experience, almost taller than we can imagine. The importance of waitbutwhy’s visual is that it debunks our imagined perception of water as this infinite resource. It scares us. Thinking about it in human-scale terms, however, we realize that even the smallest cube contains quite a lot of water.”

  8. It’s fascinating to have water quantified in these visuals, David. It’s a resource that we’re incredibly cavalier about…until we’re reminded that the fresh supply is not infinite or a “given.” Looking at the hard facts rather than reading about them is truly compelling. Doesn’t hurt to be picked up by the scruff of the neck and shaken from time to time…..

      1. Indeed. I heard a story on NPR yesterday about the amount of bananas consumed in the U.S. and what countries like Costa Rica are doing to feed our insatiable maw. They’re pouring tons of pesticides onto the banana plants to ward off insects, fungi etc., and yes, they’re keeping the bananas alive, but they are poisoning their ecosystem. Cayman, for instance, are at the top of the food chain, and their tissues are becoming saturated with chemicals, all so that we can have a few more bananas. Sometimes ya just shake your head…..

  10. We have a cube of water in our backyard, a beaver pond. Our drinking water comes from a well. Our two hundred year old basement floods once or twice a year. Now why can’t all of this add to the value of our house?

  12. i am always horrified that, from time to time, there is talk of ‘selling great lakes rights’ to other places, especially living in michigan –

  14. Thanks, David. The graphic doesn’t seem right to me, either, but regardless of how you view the problem it emphasizes that water is precious. Here in our county, factory farms are ruining fresh water — in one township, 68% of the wells tested as unsafe to drink when a factory farm expanded it’s operation. Clean water is not a third world problem — it’s a world problem…

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