False claim Earth can produce infinite clean water
The claim: Water scarcity is an illusion because ‘we have unlimited water’
Water scarcity impacts communities, wildlife and agricultural systems across the U.S., but an Instagram video claims the problem is an illusion.
The video shows a man wearing a life vest while floating in what appears to be a reservoir or lake. A caption briefly superimposed on the video says: “Why we are never running out of water.”
The man claims that “we have unlimited water” created through the combination of hydrogen and oxygen “deep within the Earth.” Purportedly, this new water is constantly emerging at the surface.
“It’s hard to get the point across to many people in the U.S. that the Earth makes water,” reads part of the Aug. 27 Instagram post’s caption. “We can access it and solve our problems. Clean, virtually infinite sources of water are right under our feet.”
The post garnered nearly 4,000 likes in two months.
But it is wrong. Earth does not have unlimited water, and the total amount of water on the planet stays fairly constant, according to researchers. Water scarcity occurs, not because there is less total water, but because water becomes less available in specific places due to overuse, drought or pollution.
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Earth is not an ‘unlimited’ source of new water
The Instagram user who posted the video sent USA TODAY links to articles that report the discovery of large quantities of water in Earth’s mantle.
This water is not in liquid form. Instead, it is trapped as its component hydrogen and oxygen molecules within minerals.
Some of this trapped hydrogen and oxygen can combine to form water and rise up to the surface through geological processes such as volcanism, Brandon Schmandt, an associate professor of earth and planetary science at the University of New Mexico, told USA TODAY in an email.
However, “that still does not mean there is an unlimited supply,” Schmandt said. “Plate tectonics also returns some surface water back to the interior … so, it’s not a one-way street from the deep Earth to the surface. It’s a cycle, and that cycle is pretty much in balance and has been for a large fraction of Earth’s more recent history.”
John Ludden, president of the International Union of Geological Sciences and professor at Heriot-Watt University, also told USA TODAY that Earth’s water is finite and cycles between the mantle and surface.
“The Earth does not form new water per se,” he said in an email. Moving mantle water to the surface at a “rate to stop droughts is a silly concept.”
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Pollution, drought and waste disrupt human access to water
Even if Earth could produce an “unlimited” supply of new water, that wouldn’t necessarily stop drought and water scarcity problems. This is because water scarcity occurs when clean freshwater becomes less accessible in specific places.
“In general, there is enough fresh water on the Earth’s surface, but the problem is getting it to the right places when needed,” said Ludden.
For instance, climate change is generally making drier areas have less precipitation and wetter areas have more, Gregory Pierce, co-director of the Water Resources Group at the University of California, Los Angeles, told USA TODAY.
And the fact that excess water is falling somewhere else doesn’t help the areas that are getting drier.
“If there’s a drought in Kansas, a flooding in Louisiana doesn’t help because there’s no way to move that water to Kansas,” Matthew Rodell, deputy director for Hydrosphere, Biosphere and Geophysics at NASA, told USA TODAY in an email. “Water is not easily transported long distances by other than natural processes – atmospheric circulation, rivers, etc.”
Water scarcity can also occur if local groundwater sources are polluted or “overdrafted,” meaning water is removed faster than it naturally replenishes.
“There is less water available in a lot of places because we’ve mismanaged the groundwater so much, either we’ve overused it – overdrafted so much that the storage space that used to be there is literally collapsed and we don’t have that space available anymore – or we’ve polluted the groundwater,” Pierce said.
Pierce also said that while some areas have untapped groundwater very deep underground, accessing these stores is costly.
“If you’re willing to pay an astronomical amount for a marginal supply, there’s more available,” he said. “But generally we actually need to use less groundwater and manage it better rather than going deeper and doubling down on unsustainable practices.”
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Our rating: False
Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that water scarcity is an illusion because “we have unlimited water.” The total amount of water on Earth doesn’t change significantly even as water cycles between the mantle and the surface. Water scarcity occurs when water is less accessible in specific places.
Our fact-check sources:
- Matthew Rodell, Sept. 19, Email exchange with USA TODAY
- Gregory Pierce, Sept. 20, Phone interview with USA TODAY
- Jamie Macy, Sept. 20, Email exchange with USA TODAY
- John Ludden, Oct. 10-13, Email exchange with USA TODAY
- Yuanming Pan, Oct. 8, Email exchange with USA TODAY
- Brandon Schmandt, Oct. 23, Email exchange with USA TODAY
- PolitiFact, Sept. 7, No, there isn’t an unlimited supply of water being made underneath the Earth
- Politico, July 6, The Southwest is bone dry. Now, a key water source is at risk
- Bloomberg, July 15, California’s idle crop land may double as water crisis deepens
- Vox, Aug. 20, 2021, The West’s megadrought is so bad, authorities are airlifting water for animals
- U.S. Geological Service, accessed Sept. 19, The natural water cycle
- USA TODAY, July 12, 2014, Water discovered deep beneath Earth’s surface
- New Scientist, Jan. 27, 2017, Planet Earth makes its own water from scratch deep in the mantle
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