for-want-of-a-drink

,单击此处编辑母版标题样式,单击此处编辑母版文本样式,第二级,第三级,第四级,第五级,2015/5/22,#,For want of a drink,First paragraph,When the word water appears,in print,nowadays,crisis is rarely far behind.,Water,it is said,is the new oil:a resource long,squandered,now growing expensive,And soon to be overwhelmed by,insatiable,demand.,Aquifers,are falling,glaciers vanishing,reservoirs,drying up and rivers no longer flowing to the sea.,Climate change,threatens,to make the problem worse.,Everyone must use less water if,famine,pestilence,and mass migration are not to,sweep,the globe.,In print:,已经出版,Squander:v.,浪费，挥霍（金钱，时间）,Insatiable:adj,a,不知足的，无法满足的,Aquifer:,蓄水层,glacier,：冰川,vanish,：消失,reservoir,水库,threaten:,威胁,famine,：饥荒,lack of food for a long time,Pestilence:,瘟疫,sweep,扫,The language is often,overblown,and the,remedies,sometimes,ill-conceived,but the basic message is not wrong.Water is indeed scarce in many places,and will grow,scarcer,.Bringing supply and demand into,equilibrium,(,使供需达到平衡,)will be painful,and political,disputes,may increase in number and,intensify,in their,capacity,to cause trouble.To carry on with present practice would indeed be to invite disaster.,Overblown a.,过分夸大,remedy n.,处理方法,Ill-conceived,考虑不周到的,/scarce,缺少，,scarcer,更加不足,Equilibrium,：均衡,intensify,：加强,Why?The difficulties start with the,sheer number,(,巨大的数量,)of people using,the stuff,（水资源）,.When,60 years ago,the worlds population was about 2.5 billion,worries about water supply,affected relatively few people.Both drought,（旱灾）,and hunger existed,as,（正如）,they have throughout history,but most people could be fed(feed,过去式,)without irrigated(,灌溉,)farming.Then the green revolution,in an inspired combination of new crop breeds,（品种）,fertilizers and water,made possible a huge rise in the population.,The number of people on earth rose to 6 billion in 2000,nearly 7 billion today,and is heading for 9 billion in 2050.the area under irrigation has doubled and the amount of water drawn for farming has tripled.The proportion of people living in countries chronically,（慢性的，长期的）,short of water is set to rise from 8%at the turn of the 21,st,century to 45%century to 45%by 2050.,Farmers increasing demand for water is caused not only by the growing number of mouths to be fed but also by peoples desire for better-tasting,more interesting food.Unfortunately,it takes nearly twice as much water to grow a kilo of peanuts,（花生）,as a kilo of soybeans,（大豆）,nearly four times as much water to produce a kilo of beef as a kilo of chicken.With 2 billion people around the world about to enter the middle class,the agricultural demands on water would increase even if the population stood still.,Industry,too,needs water.It takes about 22%of the worlds withdrawals.Domestic activities take the other 8%.Together,the demands of these two categories quadrupled(,变为四倍,),in the second half of the 20,th,century,（在,20,世纪的后期）,growing twice as fast as those farming.,Meeting that demand is a difficult task.One reason is that the supply of water is finite.The world will have no more of it in 2025 or 2050 than it has today,or when it,lapped,（拍打）,at the sides of Noahs Ark.This is because,the law of conservation of mass(,质量守恒定律,),says,broadly,that however you use it,you cannot destroy the stuff.Neither can,you,readily,（,without much difficulty,）,make it.If some of it seems to come from the skies,that is because it has,evaporated(,蒸发,),from the Earths surface,condensed,（浓缩）,and returned.,Most of this surface is sea,and the water below it-over 97%of the total on Earthis salty.In principle,the salt can be removed to increase the supply of fresh water,but at present,desalination(,脱盐,),is expensive and uses lots of energy.,Of the 2.5%of water that is not salty,about 70%is frozen,either at the poles,in glaciers or in permafrost.So all living things,except those in the sea,have about 0.75%of the total to survive on.Most of this available water is underground,in aquifers or similar formations.The rest is falling as rain,sitting in lakes and reservoirs or flowing in rivers where it is,with luck,replaced by rainfall and melting snow and ice.There is also,take note,water vapor in the atmosphere.,