A possible solution to water problems in some parts of Australia and in other coutries could the Australian Airdrop Irrigation system, where water can be extracted from air.

http://www.jamesdysonaward.org/Projects/Project.aspx?ID=1722

Water extraction from sea breezes is very very old technique. There are stations built from corrugated iron up along the Western Australian coast that are over 100 years old, and numbers of improvements have been made since. Any handyman can whack one together very cheaply, to provide at the very least plenty of clean drining water, or you can buy them.

But that begs another question I keep raising to little avail. While it is being argued that groundwater reserves are being depleted, and surface water is being "stretched beyond its limits" (whatever that means), plainly the atmosphere is still variably humid, and there is generally no shortage of rainclouds in season. There is still no noticeable decrease in precipitation.

To save an extended presentation here, please do log my submission against the Shire of Augusta-Margaret River's no-dams policy, at http://gilhardwick.com.au/dams_policy.php.

A brief summary relevant to the argument fror these purposes is, "The Shire of Augusta-Margaret River is situated within a dry summer, high winter rainfall region in the nominal range of 800-1200 mm and actual recorded range over the period 1900-2001 of 643 mm in 1911 to 1643.0 mm in 1921, yielding an average 1115 mm per annum. The average annual yield potential of fresh water from winter rainfall across the whole of the Shire of Augusta-Margaret River is a roughly uniform 1100-1200 l/m2, to the order of some 3,000 billion litres uniformly distributed throughout the district."

That is, in one very small shire alone, less than 50 x 100 Km in size, 3 cubic kilometres of surface water are lost annually through being allowed to simply drain away. Plainly the water is not a kilometre high, but it is in fact over a metre deep over the whole surface of the shire. Extrapolating that to the South West generally, we are still looking at 18 cubic Km per annum. It is well known that over 90% of precipitation on the Perth Metropolitan area is simply lost - again the rule of thumb is 5%, so even 8% is inevitably touted as a 60% gain not a 92-95% annual loss.

The argument for allowing all this water to be lost rather than harvesting it and ensuring supply is apparently that in some countries it has led to increased prices and water shortage. Like much of the theory routinely imported into this country and recycled for no better reason I can gather than the usual beating Australians over the head with it for something happening somewhere else entirely, what we do have in this country are statutary authorities well able to regulate such things, as we do everything else.

Refusing to allow dams to be constructed and water harvested in Australia because of some unfortunate situation somewhere else is typical of the warped political Newthink we are still being obliged to suffer in this country. There are not only Aboriginal people here who are expert in managing the landscape, there are many more of us who have now been here ourselves for many generations, have learned from them, and have further formally studied the place in infinitely fine detail at postgraduate level.

So, no, water is NOT a global problem, it is only ever a local problem. SOME people in the world face water shortages and diminished supplies, while MOST people have far more water than they possible require and simply let it run off. I grant that some countries rely heavily on water transport so there is a substantial economic benefit in canals and rivers, but to keep the water level high that still only argues for more dams as against more runoff.

In Australia we are in a peculiar situation in which we have more than abundant precipitation but over vast land areas, requiring extensive infrastructure development to harvest it. For this reason we do not rely on rivers for transportation, as we once attempted, but rail and road haulage. In the outcome, in Australia we use water instead to drink and for irrigation.

Read my submission again. Here, apart from the narrow band of Pacific coast, precipitation comes in generally from the west. The southwest and southern coasts benefit mostly from this winter monsoon while adjacent inland regions benefit more from lower rainfall summer patterns. The northern summer monsoon comes in generally from the northwest, but again generally only benefits the sparsely populated north.

What's interesting here is that, again apart from the narrow belt of Pacific coast where rivers flow easterly but which also supplies part of the Upper Darling system, our big rivers flow back westerly. Even the snow up in the ranges derives from atmospheric moisture coming in from the west, and the Southern Ocean in particular.

Back to Dale's good point, what does that tell us?

If we want to secure Australia's water supplies, apart from Queensland which has more problems with too much water than not enough, policy really does need to start addressing the Southern Ocean windfall (pun intended) as the sustainable long term solution.

As above too, in Australia, water like everything else is already democratised, except that as we already know representative rather than direct. The politics have long been resolved. What we need first are more well-trained hydrologists, hydrogeologists and engineers, and for the rest to sit back and relax while they work their magic. A few half-decent field anthropologists, demographers, rural landscape architects and planners would help too.

What we do need is for everyone else, worried more about themselves than the facts, to just get out of the bloody way finally. Anyone who wants to do some serious homework based on good scientific method and clear, apolitical and unbiased review of already readily available data, I'm sure will be made very welcome to comment.

I say that because the really very big problem we've been facing over the past 20-30 years is every stray bloke and his lap dog being invited to comment by the party hacks and activists looking for votes, such that the situation has become almost irretrievably clouded by chatter, white noise and endless drivel.

Our apparent inability to manage information, to manage debate, and to manage infrastructure development, is far more dangerous right now than any single water or precipitation management issue we are ever going to face.