Recycling Water is Contributing to Global Warming (But There is No Alternative)

When climate scientists say they will save the planet with their silly little windmills if only us poor taxpayers will give them enough money are they taking the piss or just having a laugh.

Here’s a story about an often forgotten climate related issue, the need to recycle water.

It ought to be a no-brainer even for the dogma loving pedants of the climate science lobby. As populations increase, cities grow, homes and businesses use more energy, fuel stocks are depleted and water supplies grow ever more scarce in the world’s drier regions. While we can work around the other things for a limited amount of time, clean, pure water is essential to life, something like 70% of our bodies are water, water is the main constituent of every living thing and thus of all that we eat.

As pressure on supplies grows, as aquifers are drained and water tables are lowered, more and more municipal authorities are being forced to find ways to recycle waste water after treatment in sewage works to irrigate parks and other green urban space and in some cases even be returned to the drinking water supply. If you find that distasteful or too disgusting to contemplate, look at it this way: all the water we drink has been recycled, it rises as water vapour off the oceans into the atmosphere, forms clouds as the air cools, falls as rain over land and seeps into the ground to feed rivers and aquifers, be extracted, drunk, eliminated into water water systems and make its way back to the sea.

Intercepting the water part way through its cycle simply short circuits the natural process. What could be wrong with that? Well, quite a lot, actually, according to a new study, which concludes recycling water could increase global warming.

The research, published in a recent issue of the Journal” target=”_blank”>www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110106145429.htm”>Journal of Environmental Qualityconcludes that the practice emits three times as much nitrous oxide (NO2) aka laughing gas, a greenhouse gas about 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide – as treating the sewage-laden water and discharging it to a river or the sea in the usual way. What is more the research team from the Universities of Cincinnati and California, Irvine, calculate the practice is so common in the region around Los Angeles that it emits at least a thousand times more of the gas in the area than agriculture, the main source of nitrous oxide emissions into the atmosphere..

Add the fact that climate change is likely to reduce rainfall in the already low rainfall areas with high urban populations such as Southern California (Los Angeles and surrounding urbanisation) thus making water an even more precious commodity and strengthens the case for water recycling despite the greenhouse gas pollution it causes. Put all this into perspective and it becomes clear that even seemingly straightforward environmental problems are fiendishly complicated how complicated when all the relevant information is taken into account. Far too complicated in fact for those simple minded people who try to bring it all down to carbon dioxide.

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