I haven't been posting much because I've basically been smugly sitting back on my butt waiting for the market to take care of a bunch of the problems we're going to face even before peak oil arrives in a hard way around 2015. But it's nearly the summer and I've been thinking a little about what the world would look like if we had to run it off of electricity derived purely from renewables. We don't of course because we have brickloads of nuclear and shale gas as well as unconventional oil (which will of course eventually peak and decline but not today or next week or next decade even).
So let's get to the meat:
Doomers basically say we're screwed no matter what we do, so let's ignore them. Detractors on the other hand are not religious fanatics (generally), just highly conservative late adopters. The type of person who still buys CDs instead of downloading music from itunes for example.
So anyways. Let's take a look at the question above.
Well, let's establish some baselines. I have previously established that in certain areas we already have par with fossil fuels for solar and wind but let's assume that they are 2X as expensive.
So we're still stuck right? Because the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow?
Wrong. The missing but implicit assumption that isn't talked about is this: we could store the energy in batteries or salt mines or whatever, just that it's EXPENSIVE to do so.
Well what does that mean? Well let's take Vanadium flow batteries as an example. They add between 1.5X to 3X the cost depending on whose figures you take.
So that means if we're being uncharitable to renewables we are looking at 3X to 6X the cost of current electricity if we use the most expensive means of storage.
So let's take a look at that.
Right now in North America, the cost of a kilowatt hour varies between about 10c and 25c.
Let's look at the most inefficient electric vehicle: the Volt. It has to carry around a gasoline engine in addition to it's electric motors (something like the leaf would be better but let's use the Volt as our baseline).
The Volt uses 8 KW/h of electricity to drive 40 miles. That's a reasonable comparison to a gallon of gas in a car that size. So the equivalent of a gallon of gas for a Volt at today's prices is between 80c/gallon and $2 a gallon. That's compared to close to $4 a gallon for gasoline/diesel based vehicles (ignoring the fact that most North American vehicles only get 15-20 mpg but let's ignore that inconvenient fact for now).
So if it costs 80c a gallon at 10c per KW/h then using our estimate for the most expensive storage methods we're looking at between $1.20 per gallon and $2.40 per gallon equivalent. Still cheaper than today's gasoline prices.
If we take the high end at 25c per KW/h as being $2 per gallon then we're looking at between $3 and $6 per gallon.
Now $6 a gallon will have most North Americans weeping in their beer but most of the rest of the world is ALREADY paying more than that TODAY .
To be sure if Americans had to pay $6 every 40 miles driven I doubt there would be so many trips to the ocean or the mountain or stupid trips like driving to NYC from the midwest to pick up some furniture and then back again. But North Americans being resilient folk would figure out how to get around minor problems like that and continue on their merry way.
On another note: one of the problems with Solar Panels Cost right now is that most of the material is wasted during the deposition process. It would be nice if someone could come up with a way to reduce wastage so that the costs could drop. Especially since the Chinese (as is their right) have hiked prices on rare earths to try to force high tech manufacturing to move to China (where the internal price is lower). Anyways, as it happens one of the technical departments in an Oregon university (I forget if it's OSU or PSU) has developed a process to use a type of inkjet printing which should reduce costs. Now if we take the word "most" (as in most of the material is wasted) to mean merely 51% of the material is wasted then we're looking at a 50% drop in materials costs. As materials costs for solar panels are about 2/3 of the final store price, we're looking at a 33% reduction in price for the end consumer. Not too shabby, considering that we're already at par with fossil fuels for the Southern States and Mediterranean Europe.
Interesting times.
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
Tuesday, 10 May 2011
Doom by Apocalypse when
Just a short post today.
I recently found on the internet a fairly interesting doomer book called "Apocalypse When" by a professor named Willard Wells. He references someone named Carter and I wonder if this is the Carter of the famed Carter Catastrophe. I'm going to debunk it but I won't go into too too much detail because the incorrect assumptions are so glaringly obvious as to be laughable.
Basically the gist of the book is that this professor has supposedly calculated the probability that civilization will crash and the probability that humanity will go extinct.
Most of his assumptions are actually quite reasonable except two.
1. The more civilized you are the more likely you are to go extinct.
2. The higher level of technology you have the more likely you are to go extinct.
In fact his thesis seems to be that the survivability of the human race ultimately depends on a major catastrophe that wipes out a large chunk of the population and thus in theory removes the man made extinction events which will wipe us out entirely.
He seems to be ignoring history. Primitive peoples are remarkably unable to deal with natural disaster and he seems to be saying that primitive peoples will survive just by being spread out, because they don't have any other advantages.
In fact archaeological evidence shows that human beings have been around as homo sapiens for at least 200,000 years and pre-humans have been around for 2 to 3 million years.
His assumption, however doesn't hold up though because he's basically saying that a large human population sustained by artificial means is more vulnerable to the rug being pulled out from under it than a sparse primitive civilization does.
70,000 years ago there was a large volcanic event that virtually wiped out the entire human race (which probably numbered around a quarter million to a million at the time) and reduced it to some 2,000 individuals. I make that a 98% wipeout worst case.
Now let's consider a scenario like "the road" whereby all crops and food animals are gone. Civilization collapses of course and almost everyone starves (not the cannibals eeek!). Even here, however, civilization is clearly superior to primitive states because of storage technology. All over the planet there are stores of canned goods and seeds et cetera. Moreover there are also stores of *knowledge* in the form of libraries et cetera. Any putative collapse isn't going to go all the way back to primitive times since the infrastructure, the seeds et cetera is *still there*. Thus any so called collapse of civilization is simply a delay until civilization pops up again. But civilization in and of itself generally increases human wellbeing, not decreases, so short of a scenario whereby the entire planet is converted into gray goo (which has also been debunked elsewhere) any putative man-made disaster isn't going to do much worse damage than the event 70,000 years ago and in fact is very likely to do less. I'm including, by the way, a full scale nuclear exchange and nuclear winter et cetera in this. Not everything would be destroyed and especially not knowledge. There is civilization and knowledge *everywhere* on this planet. Civilization will be very resilient to destruction.
So, sorry doomers, I don't buy it. It's a nice book but it's basically doomer porn. For the record, according to the assumptions, we have 72 years left until DOOOOOOM. But then again we are facing olduvai doom RIGHT NOW according to the dieoff crowd and we are facing limits-to-growth doom in about 15 years.
It makes me laugh though it really does. It's like the global warming doomers. Allegedly all co2 being added to the atmosphere can only cause *bad things* to happen and good things never happen. If you design your model to say one thing always then obviously you're going to get the result you want. But a model is not in fact a scientific experiment. It's an animated hypothesis with built in assumptions and is not valid for testing science AT ALL. One example is that global warming will cause everywhere to get drier and thus crops will fail et cetera and WE WILL ALL DIE. Sadly for those raving fruitbars it turns out that increased carbon dioxide in the previous super greenhouse actually made things wetter. Hmmm. I'm thinking that will in fact *increase* the crop growing range and allow us to grow more food. So now we will have to deal with all the tornadoes et cetera that this will cause. Well duh. Build *underground*. Anyways I digressed.
Basically neither us as a species nor our civilization is doomed, though the doomers themselves are all sweaty praying for our destruction.
Ain't happening.
A big fart in the general direction of the doomers. I will now go back to ignoring you again.
I recently found on the internet a fairly interesting doomer book called "Apocalypse When" by a professor named Willard Wells. He references someone named Carter and I wonder if this is the Carter of the famed Carter Catastrophe. I'm going to debunk it but I won't go into too too much detail because the incorrect assumptions are so glaringly obvious as to be laughable.
Basically the gist of the book is that this professor has supposedly calculated the probability that civilization will crash and the probability that humanity will go extinct.
Most of his assumptions are actually quite reasonable except two.
1. The more civilized you are the more likely you are to go extinct.
2. The higher level of technology you have the more likely you are to go extinct.
In fact his thesis seems to be that the survivability of the human race ultimately depends on a major catastrophe that wipes out a large chunk of the population and thus in theory removes the man made extinction events which will wipe us out entirely.
He seems to be ignoring history. Primitive peoples are remarkably unable to deal with natural disaster and he seems to be saying that primitive peoples will survive just by being spread out, because they don't have any other advantages.
In fact archaeological evidence shows that human beings have been around as homo sapiens for at least 200,000 years and pre-humans have been around for 2 to 3 million years.
His assumption, however doesn't hold up though because he's basically saying that a large human population sustained by artificial means is more vulnerable to the rug being pulled out from under it than a sparse primitive civilization does.
70,000 years ago there was a large volcanic event that virtually wiped out the entire human race (which probably numbered around a quarter million to a million at the time) and reduced it to some 2,000 individuals. I make that a 98% wipeout worst case.
Now let's consider a scenario like "the road" whereby all crops and food animals are gone. Civilization collapses of course and almost everyone starves (not the cannibals eeek!). Even here, however, civilization is clearly superior to primitive states because of storage technology. All over the planet there are stores of canned goods and seeds et cetera. Moreover there are also stores of *knowledge* in the form of libraries et cetera. Any putative collapse isn't going to go all the way back to primitive times since the infrastructure, the seeds et cetera is *still there*. Thus any so called collapse of civilization is simply a delay until civilization pops up again. But civilization in and of itself generally increases human wellbeing, not decreases, so short of a scenario whereby the entire planet is converted into gray goo (which has also been debunked elsewhere) any putative man-made disaster isn't going to do much worse damage than the event 70,000 years ago and in fact is very likely to do less. I'm including, by the way, a full scale nuclear exchange and nuclear winter et cetera in this. Not everything would be destroyed and especially not knowledge. There is civilization and knowledge *everywhere* on this planet. Civilization will be very resilient to destruction.
So, sorry doomers, I don't buy it. It's a nice book but it's basically doomer porn. For the record, according to the assumptions, we have 72 years left until DOOOOOOM. But then again we are facing olduvai doom RIGHT NOW according to the dieoff crowd and we are facing limits-to-growth doom in about 15 years.
It makes me laugh though it really does. It's like the global warming doomers. Allegedly all co2 being added to the atmosphere can only cause *bad things* to happen and good things never happen. If you design your model to say one thing always then obviously you're going to get the result you want. But a model is not in fact a scientific experiment. It's an animated hypothesis with built in assumptions and is not valid for testing science AT ALL. One example is that global warming will cause everywhere to get drier and thus crops will fail et cetera and WE WILL ALL DIE. Sadly for those raving fruitbars it turns out that increased carbon dioxide in the previous super greenhouse actually made things wetter. Hmmm. I'm thinking that will in fact *increase* the crop growing range and allow us to grow more food. So now we will have to deal with all the tornadoes et cetera that this will cause. Well duh. Build *underground*. Anyways I digressed.
Basically neither us as a species nor our civilization is doomed, though the doomers themselves are all sweaty praying for our destruction.
Ain't happening.
A big fart in the general direction of the doomers. I will now go back to ignoring you again.
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
Abiotic Oil back from the dead?
I've always been intrigued by the possibility of oil having been formed by non biological processes. Especially since there are trillions of tons of methane out there in space such as on Saturn's moon titan. It stands to reason that there could be non-biological processes which are capable of converting methane into longer chain hydrocarbons.
Now some scientists at UC Davis, Livermore National Labs and Shell Oil Corporation have created a theory and functional computer based model which shows that long chain hydrocarbons could be formed at extreme pressures and temperatures under the Earth's crust at a depth of about 70 kilometers.
That said, as interesting as the science of this is, it in no way changes the fact that we have a flow problem: even if abiotic oil were real, then if we extracted it far faster than it was created, we'd still hit peak oil. So it's not a solution to declining production, just an interesting tidbit of science.
Now some scientists at UC Davis, Livermore National Labs and Shell Oil Corporation have created a theory and functional computer based model which shows that long chain hydrocarbons could be formed at extreme pressures and temperatures under the Earth's crust at a depth of about 70 kilometers.
That said, as interesting as the science of this is, it in no way changes the fact that we have a flow problem: even if abiotic oil were real, then if we extracted it far faster than it was created, we'd still hit peak oil. So it's not a solution to declining production, just an interesting tidbit of science.
Friday, 8 April 2011
Shale Gas to the Rescue?
As you know I've been writing a reasonable amount about shale gas and its potential to impact any putative decline in conventional oil production. Here's an interesting graph:
You will note two things.
1. The global resource of recoverable shale gas is some 5,500 trillion cubic feet (as compared with the nearly 900 trillion cubic feet to be found in the US.
2. With the exception of China (who though they are a competitor, they are not as outright hostile as some of our other competitors) most of the shale gas reserves are to be found in "friendly" nations.
Also: given that the US has been able to bring online the shale gas equivalent of about a million barrels a day of oil in the last two years by itself, it's reasonable to argue that globally, shale gas could bring online about to five million barrels per day equivalent each year.
That should about cover us for a 5% decline rate in the best possible scenario whereby we can do a smooth transition for appropriate uses to natural gas.
I suspect, however, that between increasing demand for energy and friction costs of moving to oil alternatives for appropriate use cases (such as long distance trucking or shipping), we're still going to see a bumpy ride, though perhaps not quite so bumpy as a total collapse as predicted by our doomer friends.
Maybe it's time to short sell the guns n ammo manufacturers?
You will note two things.
1. The global resource of recoverable shale gas is some 5,500 trillion cubic feet (as compared with the nearly 900 trillion cubic feet to be found in the US.
2. With the exception of China (who though they are a competitor, they are not as outright hostile as some of our other competitors) most of the shale gas reserves are to be found in "friendly" nations.
Also: given that the US has been able to bring online the shale gas equivalent of about a million barrels a day of oil in the last two years by itself, it's reasonable to argue that globally, shale gas could bring online about to five million barrels per day equivalent each year.
That should about cover us for a 5% decline rate in the best possible scenario whereby we can do a smooth transition for appropriate uses to natural gas.
I suspect, however, that between increasing demand for energy and friction costs of moving to oil alternatives for appropriate use cases (such as long distance trucking or shipping), we're still going to see a bumpy ride, though perhaps not quite so bumpy as a total collapse as predicted by our doomer friends.
Maybe it's time to short sell the guns n ammo manufacturers?
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Hydrocarbon producing bacteria
University of Minnesota researcher Janice Frias has cracked a key step closer to making renewable petroleum fuels using bacteria, sunlight and carbon dioxide.
Graduate student Janice Frias, who earned her doctorate in January, made the critical step by figuring out how to use a protein to transform fatty acids produced by the bacteria into ketones, which can be cracked to make hydrocarbon fuels.
Why this is different from other "biofuels" is that instead of generating biomass which is cooked into ethanol (along with the need to have vehicles that can run on ethanol), this process is a drop in replacement for standard diesel.
Ketones are especially useful because they can be dropped into standard catalytic cracking processes which generate standard diesel or other hydrocarbons as output. The inputs are only bacteria, sunlight and atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Given the political hot-potato of "climate change", there is significant interest in using carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to generate fuels. Using carbon dioxide as a source is a double win, because it's freely found in the atmosphere and removing it should be good for the environment.
The bacteria used in Synechococcus, which fixes carbon dioxide into sugars using sunlight as an input. These sugars are in turn passed as feedstock to another bacteria, Shewanella, which produces ketones as an output. The ketones are then cracked into hydrocarbons.
I don't know how scalable this is, but every little helps.
Graduate student Janice Frias, who earned her doctorate in January, made the critical step by figuring out how to use a protein to transform fatty acids produced by the bacteria into ketones, which can be cracked to make hydrocarbon fuels.
Why this is different from other "biofuels" is that instead of generating biomass which is cooked into ethanol (along with the need to have vehicles that can run on ethanol), this process is a drop in replacement for standard diesel.
Ketones are especially useful because they can be dropped into standard catalytic cracking processes which generate standard diesel or other hydrocarbons as output. The inputs are only bacteria, sunlight and atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Given the political hot-potato of "climate change", there is significant interest in using carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to generate fuels. Using carbon dioxide as a source is a double win, because it's freely found in the atmosphere and removing it should be good for the environment.
The bacteria used in Synechococcus, which fixes carbon dioxide into sugars using sunlight as an input. These sugars are in turn passed as feedstock to another bacteria, Shewanella, which produces ketones as an output. The ketones are then cracked into hydrocarbons.
I don't know how scalable this is, but every little helps.
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
What Doomers believe according to Wikipedia Mar 08 2011
Some Anonymous doomers have attempted to taint the comments page (and in the process make this blog into a carbon copy of the other doomer peak oil cesspool blogs and forums). Additionally they have tried to muddy the waters by claiming that no doomer really believes in dieoff or collapse or indeed any of the other typical doomeresque crazy-as-a-loon beliefs held by our doomer friends.
Out of interest I decided to check the verifiable source of the truth: Wikipedia.
The results are pretty bleak: if wikipedia is correct and you're a doomer, it's time to hunker down in your basement awaiting the zombie hordes which will be created by a malthusian collapse of the population down past "carrying capacity" of the earths "depleted soil" which can "only be supported by oil-based-fertilizers."
Eeeeek!!!
As of March 8th 2011, The Wikipedia entry for doomers has the following to say:
"A convinced Doomer believes that the Green Revolution will collapse at the end of cheap oil.[1][dead link] According to Doomers, humanity will be in a state of overshoot after oil depletion makes modern farming methods economically unviable. Various academics have calculated that our numbers would then far exceed the carrying capacity of the earth. For example: they believe our situation is comparable to bacteria in a petri dish with cheap oil as the human growth medium. As the “growth medium” is consumed and runs out the “bacteria” dies off.
Doomers also hold a wide range of theories about the collapse of complex societies and systems.[2][dead link] The influences of Thomas Malthus and the Club of Rome are present in the doomer movement,[3][dead link][4][dead link][5] as are some of the more recent works by Joseph Tainter who wrote The Collapse of Complex Societies in 1988, and Richard C. Duncan who presented his Phd The Peak of World Oil Production and the Road to the Olduvai Gorge in 1989 (now known as the Olduvai theory.) The lectures and DVD by Albert Bartlett, Arithmetic, Population and Energy is also highly influential. (See below for online video streaming of the lecture he has been presenting and refining for over 30 years.)
The common concerns are that of overpopulation leading to resource and energy depletion, soil degradation and environmental destruction all culminating in agricultural collapse and famine. Some Doomers estimate that the anarchic collapse will be so catastrophic that population levels may fall below the levels prior to the industrial revolution — possibly below 2 billion. When trying to calculate the extent of the postulated dieoff, the most extreme doomer will also take into account that the existing eco-infrastructure is massively supported by oil based fertilizers and that we will not only hit peak oil but peak phosphate and peak nitrogen simultaneously. When oil production starts to decline the productivity of the soil will drop far below that of pre-industrial times and thus a drop down to 2 billion is optimistic. This kind of doomer will also ignore technology and dismiss it with commonly believed ideas such as "wind farms cost more energy to build than they get out". This common refrain is generally applied to all technology solutions since it is assumed a priori that a population crash is inevitable."
Out of interest I decided to check the verifiable source of the truth: Wikipedia.
The results are pretty bleak: if wikipedia is correct and you're a doomer, it's time to hunker down in your basement awaiting the zombie hordes which will be created by a malthusian collapse of the population down past "carrying capacity" of the earths "depleted soil" which can "only be supported by oil-based-fertilizers."
Eeeeek!!!
As of March 8th 2011, The Wikipedia entry for doomers has the following to say:
"A convinced Doomer believes that the Green Revolution will collapse at the end of cheap oil.[1][dead link] According to Doomers, humanity will be in a state of overshoot after oil depletion makes modern farming methods economically unviable. Various academics have calculated that our numbers would then far exceed the carrying capacity of the earth. For example: they believe our situation is comparable to bacteria in a petri dish with cheap oil as the human growth medium. As the “growth medium” is consumed and runs out the “bacteria” dies off.
Doomers also hold a wide range of theories about the collapse of complex societies and systems.[2][dead link] The influences of Thomas Malthus and the Club of Rome are present in the doomer movement,[3][dead link][4][dead link][5] as are some of the more recent works by Joseph Tainter who wrote The Collapse of Complex Societies in 1988, and Richard C. Duncan who presented his Phd The Peak of World Oil Production and the Road to the Olduvai Gorge in 1989 (now known as the Olduvai theory.) The lectures and DVD by Albert Bartlett, Arithmetic, Population and Energy is also highly influential. (See below for online video streaming of the lecture he has been presenting and refining for over 30 years.)
The common concerns are that of overpopulation leading to resource and energy depletion, soil degradation and environmental destruction all culminating in agricultural collapse and famine. Some Doomers estimate that the anarchic collapse will be so catastrophic that population levels may fall below the levels prior to the industrial revolution — possibly below 2 billion. When trying to calculate the extent of the postulated dieoff, the most extreme doomer will also take into account that the existing eco-infrastructure is massively supported by oil based fertilizers and that we will not only hit peak oil but peak phosphate and peak nitrogen simultaneously. When oil production starts to decline the productivity of the soil will drop far below that of pre-industrial times and thus a drop down to 2 billion is optimistic. This kind of doomer will also ignore technology and dismiss it with commonly believed ideas such as "wind farms cost more energy to build than they get out". This common refrain is generally applied to all technology solutions since it is assumed a priori that a population crash is inevitable."
Thursday, 3 March 2011
Dieoff by Peak Water
So could we conceivably see Dieoff (capital D) from "peak water" i.e. the death of industrial civilization?
This one is interesting in a morbid kind of way because to a certain extent there is in fact already shortage of water.
Looked at one particular way, that is.
Interestingly, however, industrial civilization has not collapsed due to localized water shortages anywhere in the world so at the very beginning of the post we have to say, "no 'peak water' won't cause the dieoff of industrial civilization".
But let's continue, because we're just interested in general in knowing about water "shortages" and how they are solved.
If we ask the question: what water are we potentially short of and what are the solutions, it gets a lot more interesting.
Also: water is not like oil. It's not a non-renewable resource. Quite the contrary. There is such a thing as the water cycle. This is a problem of how to extract the maximum possible for the flow.
Anyways, lets ask some questions.
Are there water *shortages*? If so, what shortages are there? Lastly, how can we conceivably address these water shortages?
Are there water shortages?
Some people and industries would certainly say so, but I'd like to point out that the planet is covered in water. Only 28% of the planet is land therefore the other 72% is covered in water.
Since that water is seven miles deep in places we have a lot of water on the planet. An estimate of the mass of water might be somewhere around one and a half times ten to the 18 tonnes. In English that's something like 1.5 billion billion metric tonnes of water.
So what is the problem?
Well, for us land based creatures, we generally speaking need fresh water.
Of the gazzillion tonnes of water only 2 percent of that is fresh water of which three quarters is locked up in the polar caps. And if the caps melt, that water will join the rest of the salty water.
So we have an abundance of salt water and much less so of fresh water.
In fact, what we have is a distributed allocation of water. Some places are water rich and others are water poor. We have wet countries like Canada and Scotland and dry countries like Saudi Arabia. Parts of the USA are dry too such as the southwest.
Now, left to it's own devices without any human interference (i.e. let's sit round the campfire, sing kumbaya and let everything be taken care of by the "ecosystem") people who live in dry regions are short of fresh water.
How is that a problem?
If the dry region is *rich* it's not a problem. They have options such as importing bottled water, paying for a pipeline or aqueducts from a wetter region (such as the california aqueduct), building desalination plants (such as the wind turbine powered desalination plant in perth, western australia), buying their food from regions with water so they don't have to grow their food themselves et cetera et cetera
-Perth Desalination Plant-
This one is interesting in a morbid kind of way because to a certain extent there is in fact already shortage of water.
Looked at one particular way, that is.
Interestingly, however, industrial civilization has not collapsed due to localized water shortages anywhere in the world so at the very beginning of the post we have to say, "no 'peak water' won't cause the dieoff of industrial civilization".
But let's continue, because we're just interested in general in knowing about water "shortages" and how they are solved.
If we ask the question: what water are we potentially short of and what are the solutions, it gets a lot more interesting.
Also: water is not like oil. It's not a non-renewable resource. Quite the contrary. There is such a thing as the water cycle. This is a problem of how to extract the maximum possible for the flow.
Anyways, lets ask some questions.
Are there water *shortages*? If so, what shortages are there? Lastly, how can we conceivably address these water shortages?
Are there water shortages?
Some people and industries would certainly say so, but I'd like to point out that the planet is covered in water. Only 28% of the planet is land therefore the other 72% is covered in water.
Since that water is seven miles deep in places we have a lot of water on the planet. An estimate of the mass of water might be somewhere around one and a half times ten to the 18 tonnes. In English that's something like 1.5 billion billion metric tonnes of water.
So what is the problem?
Well, for us land based creatures, we generally speaking need fresh water.
Of the gazzillion tonnes of water only 2 percent of that is fresh water of which three quarters is locked up in the polar caps. And if the caps melt, that water will join the rest of the salty water.
So we have an abundance of salt water and much less so of fresh water.
In fact, what we have is a distributed allocation of water. Some places are water rich and others are water poor. We have wet countries like Canada and Scotland and dry countries like Saudi Arabia. Parts of the USA are dry too such as the southwest.
Now, left to it's own devices without any human interference (i.e. let's sit round the campfire, sing kumbaya and let everything be taken care of by the "ecosystem") people who live in dry regions are short of fresh water.
How is that a problem?
If the dry region is *rich* it's not a problem. They have options such as importing bottled water, paying for a pipeline or aqueducts from a wetter region (such as the california aqueduct), building desalination plants (such as the wind turbine powered desalination plant in perth, western australia), buying their food from regions with water so they don't have to grow their food themselves et cetera et cetera
-Perth Desalination Plant-
There are endless ways to solve that particular problem if you have money.
What if you do not have money?
Well realistically we're talking about industrial civilization, whose main goal is to make money in the service of the economy. Those who are poor are of course the losers in the system and in any human system there are always unfortunately some losers.
In any case, what can be done?
Well many of the water "shortages" are in regions of the world with severely degraded soils due to overgrazing (such as by grazing the land with goats which notoriously eat almost everything and end up desertifying the land eventually). Additionally, many of the water "shortages" are in regions which are heavily overpopulated AND whose population mainly survive through erratic subsistence agriculture.
So... we essentially have 3 problems to overcome:
1. Desertification
2. Shortage of actual water supplies due to being in arid regions
3. Lack of industrial infrastructure leading to dependence on subsistence farming.
Sadly, there is not much to be done in poor regions if there are no funds since recovering land from the desert is expensive. It can be done but it's expensive and thus poor people can't do it.
Water shortages can be dealt with, on the other hand by conserving water and recycling it.
There are technical solutions to this such including water management whereby flash rains are stored rather than let evaporate away.
-Cheap Indian Water Storage System-
Additionally water can also be conserved by for example, instead of flushing it away into the ocean, wash your hands by dry alternatives or use chemical or hole-in-the-ground toilet facilities.
My main argument, however, would be to raise the living standards of the population so they could afford to trade and thus could take advantage of the available technology that could solve the problems.
Failing that, if the people continue to depend on subsistence farming the soil as it is and the lack of fresh water as it is will inevitably lead to not enough food and water to go around for the overpopulation in arid areas. Israel is a good example of a mid-income nation who has been able to reclaim some of the land back from the desert and has excellent conservation practises to the extent that they export food due to for example, the Israeli invention of drip agriculture which is a super efficient irrigation method. But again, these are rich people solutions.
-Israeli Drip Irrigation-
What would be required to solve that particular problem without building e.g. aqueduct infrastructure or expensive desalination plants (not even the cheap ones such as glass buildings with guttering built over shallow lagoons) would be to develop drought resistant crops and salt water tolerant crops for those who live near to the coast and have access to ocean water. That way, trade could be kick-started and industrial development could take place at a rate great enough to enable the population to buy what they need from further afield if it's not available where they live.
Saltwater crops are very interesting because Seawater has 80% of the necessary crop nutrients in adequate concentrations for crop growing. Thus the need for fertilizer would be minimized if saltwater tolerant crops could be developed.
There has been some limited progress in developing saltwater tolerant crops. One particular example is a hybrid version of a galapagus island cherry tomato which can be grown in a 70% solution of seawater. It will take further work before these tomatoes could be grown in 100% seawater, but progress is being made.
One other idea that springs to mind is the use of drought tolerant biofuel crops such as agave that could be grown in desert regions with very little water, then traded for food crops grown in water rich regions.
A harder solution is the political one: in overpopulated regions, they should try to balance their population by trying to move towards 2 children per family instead of more. Luckily, even there progress is being made since as of 2010 there are only a handful remaining of the 180 some countries whose population growth is higher than 2 children per family. Projections are for the population to top out at 9.5 billion around 2040 and then gently decline in subsequent decades.
In short, rather than water shortages, what we have is an uneven distribution of wealth due to uneven distribution of resources. That is nothing to do with any putatitve peaks caused allegedly by any "limits to growth" and instead is a feature of human society. I do not propose to try to solve it or to make it worse, instead I will point out that uneven water distribution will not cause the end of civilization as we know it.
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