Did you catch that?

Between 10 YEARS (not 10,000 years) and 21,000 years until groundwater is depleted in areas such as the North West Saharan Aquifer. The Sahara might sound far away, but the hard, cold truth is that it could be your city they’re referring to. Indeed, this kind of statement is the scientific equivalent of, “no one really knows what’s going on.” Scientists, by the way, are kind of lousy at sounding alarm bells. It goes against their general nature. The NASA article (below) is clearly trying to do just that without sounding too frantic. The problem is there’s a huge disconnect between the general public and the scientific community when it comes to communicating this type of warning. I’d put $20 bucks down that they were wringing their hands, debating at great length whether or not this report was too alarmist, emotional, etc.:

The average person, if they even bothered to look at this report at all, would probably shrug their shoulders and think, “Woo hoo – nothing bad is gonna happen for at least 20,000 years!” So many onion layers of wrong.

First of all, NASA’s reporting on this issue has been going on for years. They have been trying, albeit calmly at first, to suggest that potable water is becoming increasingly scarce. How scarce? That’s the terrifying thing. No one really knows. Changes in precipitation patterns, brought about by climate chaos, has made the guessing game even more dodgy. Additionally, the insane fracking “revolution” continues to mindlessly sweep the globe, probing for more fossil fuels to extract by any means whatsoever.

According to Green Prophet, this same aquifer in Africa, a region which is already suffering from food and water scarcity, is under siege by Shell Oil, which plans to frack 740 wells deep into this very same water source in Kairouan, Tunisia. And if Shell Oil carelessly disregards the environment when their every move is being watched here in the West, just imagine how reckless they are in Africa where they can sidestep even minimal safety procedures.

Calculations, based on Shell’s own data, indicate that the 20-40 year drilling life of a well in Tunisia will result in a crazy amount of water being wasted for Shell’s unnecessary endeavors. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, uses between 24 million – 500 million liters (per well) over the lifetime of each well’s drilling life. When that number is expanded to all wells under Shell’s ownership in just this one area in Tunisia, 17.76 billion to 370 billion liters of water will be used and made poisonous by Shell Oil over 50 years. That is equal to the amount of water consumed by the entire nation of Tunisia for the next 100 years at CURRENT population levels. Let’s go over that one more time:

Calculations, based on Shell’s own data, indicate that the 20-40 year drilling life of a well in Tunisia will result in a crazy amount of water being wasted for Shell’s unnecessary endeavors. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking uses between 24 million – 500 million liters (per well) over the lifetime of each well’s drilling life. When that number is expanded to all wells under Shell’s ownership in just this one area in Tunisia, 17.76 billion to 370 billion liters of water will be used and made poisonous by Shell Oil over 50 years. That is equal to the amount of water consumed by the entire nation of Tunisia for the next 100 years at CURRENT population levels.

And it isn’t just Tunisia which will be impacted. Algeria and Libya are also served by this water source. Political, economic, social and environmental instabilities are already crippling the region, and Libya’s troubles were only recently America’s troubles (and Halliburton’s opportunities).

Back to NASA’s article in the iFrame above. As you can see from their world map, parts of the United States are also perched atop unknowable groundwater resources, while this VERY precious resource is being poisoned and wasted by oil companies during the fracking process.

I know this is unpleasant. I realize that it’s more bad news. I beg of you…don’t “look away.” If you bothered to pull up this post in the first place, and THEN you took the time to read it to the bottom, then you are officially part of the solution.

Further reading:
Uncertainty in global groundwater storage estimates… July, 2015;

Cape Town (South Africa) is warned it faces riots as it prepares for “the worst crisis any city has faced since 9/11” with water due to run out by April 12th, January 29, 2018.