Great picture of how much water and air we actually have

I found this wonderful picture showing how much air and water is on earth. It is a great visual of how little we actually have. This really goes to show that we have to protect our air and water instead of polluting them. We only have so much, and we have done a lot of damage already. It is not like once we start running out of usable air and water we can just run over to the next planet and pick some up. Once it is gone, we have to fix it or die. How much damage can earth sustain before it becomes irreversible? We are already seeing damage in ecosystems; species lost, and are feeling it in the fishing industry. When you make changes in the water quality and the salt content you change what can live in that water. The same goes with air. We have been destroying the world’s air filters when we destroy the rain forest and other plant life. The damage we are doing is no longer something that is going to be seen in a few 100 years. People used to excuse their polluting and uncaring about the damage by saying that it would take 100’s of years before it would have an effect on the planet, and by then we would have found a way to fix it. Well it seems that they were wrong. I don’t have an answer on how to change or fix this, just the observation that we are already seeing changes in our lifetime, what is going to be happening in our children’s lifetime?

Left: All the water in the world (1.4087 billion cubic kilometres of it) including sea water, ice, lakes, rivers, ground water, clouds, etc. Right: All the air in the atmosphere (5140 trillion tonnes of it) gathered into a ball at sea-level density. Shown on the same scale as the Earth. This picture and information about the picture was posted on Dan Phiffer.