• Question: Which do you think is more dangerous: Too much water (i.e. flooding) or too little water (i.e. drought)? Why?

    Asked by to Ben, Emily, Hattie, Jemma, Veronica on 13 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ben Butler

      Ben Butler answered on 13 Jun 2014:

      What a great question! I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer here, but if I was going to choose one, then I would say too little water is more dangerous.

      Water is essential for life… and humans can’t live without it! 60% of our bodies are made of water, and if there wasn’t any for us to drink then we’d be in trouble within a couple of days.

      Some countries around the world are already worried that they don’t have enough drinking water. Scientists around the world are trying to sort this problem out by coming up with ways to take the salt out of seawater to make it drinkable.

    • Photo: Jemma Rowlandson

      Jemma Rowlandson answered on 14 Jun 2014:

      Tough question! I had to have a think about this one. Neither is good but I agree with Ben, too little water is more dangerous.

      Water is essential for life, it’s why we all exist in the first place. Think of the number of different plants and animals you get in the rainforest compared to the desert! Without it every living thing on the planet would be in serious trouble.

      Liquid water is one of the things astronomers look for when deciding if a planet could have life or not. Europa, one of Jupiters moons is covered in ice but has liquid water underneath, so there’s a chance that maybe there’s alien life in our own solar system! Probably bacteria rather than some sort of shark-alien but it’s still life, and who knows what a few million years of evolution could bring.

    • Photo: Harriet Aitken

      Harriet Aitken answered on 15 Jun 2014:

      I think that’s a really difficult question to answer – I would say you would have to think about how long either problem would last…

      Too little water causes huge problems for many countries already, and as it is so important for plants, animals and humans long term drought would be very very dangerous.

      On the other hand, too much water can be equally as dangerous, a tsunami could destroy entire cities and create problems that take years to fix. Other things, like the availability of (clean!) water, become a big problem as often water supplies become dirty.

      So really both are pretty terrible! But I think too much water is more dangerous for a short time, while any long term drought would be a disaster. Thankfully there are lots of scientist working on both problems.

    • Photo: Emily Hayward

      Emily Hayward answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      Great question rainbow33! Both can be pretty dangerous…. ideally we wouldn’t have either situation, however sadly this isnt the case. There is no right or wrong answer and it could be argued both ways…..personally I think having too little water is more dangerous as its essential for life and almost everything is dependent on water. We need it to survive, and many industries also depend on it either during their process or for cooling things down. Although flooding can cause a lot of damage we can alter thing more easily to cope with too much water rather than not enough – the sea is full of water yet we use it effectively for trnsport (via boats) and also things can b built on top of it (offshore windfarms, pontoons etc.). Drought is very difficult to love in and I think causes a lot more deaths than flooding.

    • Photo: Veronica Celorrio

      Veronica Celorrio answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Well, I do come from a dryer country, so I can definitely say that too little water is worse.

      It is not just about plants and animals which need water to survive, but it is also about our necessities. It use to rain once a month in my home town is we were lucky, even less during the summer…so sometimes we were not aloud to use any tap water at all during certain hours of the day, meaning that no showering, no drinking water…

      So without a doubt, too little water is more dangerous!

Comments