While the 100 drops breakdown is interesting, it is marred by the last entry - "A massive 50 drops out of the 100 wastefully evaporate." This is emotive and ill considered language - if there wasn't evaporation there would be no 100 drops of rain to start off with.

Agreed Candide, my daughter is in the hands of the eco "aware" school teachers during the day - this morning I had to educate her about the water cycle. Might have a word to her teacher as well this afternoon.

Her fear today was that even though the drought is clearly broken in Victoria, she is still worried about water shortages and "wasting" water.

I told her water has to be returned to the cycle, to get rain happening - so excess water, going down the drain, is NOT a bad thing, it goes back to the cycle.

The hysteria and pandering to green/eco activists is putting the fear of the absurd into children's heads - heaven help the activists when the young work out what is going on with all the propaganda. They will turn on the green fascists.

On the article, yes, we should be building many more dams.

I'm afraid building more dams is not the answer. We have managed to stuff up the ecology of the rivers basins by building dams. Look at what is happening on the rivers like the Murray, Ganges, Indus and Mekong. We need to lighten up our footprint on the landscape and reduce the number of beings on the planet. The foolish and the ignorant out there keep throwing derision at Malthus, but as time passes, his ideas seem to be coming to fruition.

David

I read Peter Andrew's book Back from the Brink last year and then wrote several articles about it on my blog, using photographs of my land to illustrate his teachings.
Australian rivers were never intended to flow in deep gutters all the way to the sea, but to break over their banks and water the land.
Settlers tried to tame the rivers and channel the water, which suited people who wanted more fresh water down river.
Settlers tried to prevent floods, but only made the floods bigger down stream.

“This is emotive and ill considered language - if there wasn't evaporation there would be no 100 drops of rain to start off with.” Says Candide.
For Europe, rate of rainfall exceeds its rate of evaporation which is (very roughly) 650mm per year. For Australia, the rate of evaporation averages about 1,500mm per year for our agricultural areas.
On Candide’s thinking, we should be wondering why we are not receiving twice Europe’s rainfall; and why Lake Eyre’s annual rainfall is only about 12 centimetres rather than the 3 metres indicated by evaporation.
Duncan Brown (Feed or Feedback) writes of the perils for irrigated agriculture where evaporation is higher than precipitation. His logic, and that of the authors of this article, have quite a bit going for them in reasoning for the adaptation of agricultural practices to suit landscapes married to climate. The language of the authors, and that of Brown, is of reality - sobering, not emotional

vkwhatever .. "I'm afraid building more dams is not the answer."

really, what is the answer then to water storage?

"We have managed to stuff up the ecology of the rivers basins by building dams."

Are you saying the problems on the murray Darling system are not due to irrigation overuse, but to building dams?

Look at what is happening on the rivers like the Murray, Ganges, Indus and Mekong"

What is happening on those rivers?

Is it due to dams?

"reduce the number of beings on the planet"

Won't happen, so we will have to adapt - at some point it will become more important to survival of the species, than to worry about the indulgences of the eco/green types who have political motivation.

BTW - did you ever find those people who "deny that the climate changes"..? Not that anyone denies the causes, but you were adamant you could find evidence on OLO pages that people actually denied that the climate changes?