ground seas
i was reading the latest fear mongering about the impending water crisis. we're consuming our fresh water supplies at unsustainable rates. huh. i wondered how much water exactly we pump from the ground every year. so i prayed to google. and they answered sorta vaguely. as is fitting for some cloud dwelling oracle. anywho, it's some 2000 cubic kilometers. give or take a factor of three. to put that in perspective, it's enough to raise sea levels by 6 mms per year. unfortunately, in the 15 minutes or so i dedicated to this line of thought i was unable to get more precise numbers. so the theory that pumping what's amusingly called fossil water from underground aquifers is raising sea levels at the observed rate, is in mythbuster parlance, plausible.