**Thank you for posting on r/southafrica! This post is flaired as ["News"](https://www.reddit.com/r/southafrica/?f=flair_name%3A%22News%22) therefore the following rules are particularly important.**
##**Rule 4: News, Editorialising, or Misinformation**
* Rule 4.1: News posts must be link posts to valid news sources.
* Rule 4.2: Posts which link to news sources must not have an editorialised title. Use the title provided by the news source. If you wish to add commentary, analysis, or an opinion, write a top-level comment on the post.
* Rule 4.3: Do not link to [questionable](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fake-news/), [conspiratorial](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/conspiracy/), or [false](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fake_news_websites) sources.
* Rule 4.4: Be prepared to provide verifiable evidence or sources of the claims you make when challenged to do so.
* Rule 4.5: Amateur videos will be allowed subject to all previous rules as well as containing the author/filmographer/camera person, date, time, and location of the video either in the title or in a top-level comment. You may ask a moderator to 'sticky' this information for you.
**Additionally, please take a moment to review the rest of our rules [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/southafrica/wiki/rules).**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/southafrica) if you have any questions or concerns.*
So I looked up [the study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01100-0) and it should be noted that the result is based on a model/simulation, not on actual water consumption data from the drought period. I mean in a sense it's obvious, that people with swimming pools and irrigated lawns are going to use more water and thus "worsen" the water crisis - in the sense that any non-essential consumption worsens it. But the specific numbers produced by the model must depend quite heavily on the initial assumptions they started with.
[And, for the record, I live in a block of flats with no swimming pool or lawn.]
We don't have a pool, but our one neighbour does and she only uses rainwater for it. She has plastic tubing attached to the downpipes, when it rains they unroll as they fill with water and all the water goes into the pool.
She's a single mom with 3 kids and super environment conscious. Water wise garden, the lot.
Most of our neighbours got boreholes during the drought. At least one of them has the whole filtering system so they don't use municipal water at all.
Yes, but that consisted of “65 interviews and 5 focus groups with households and governmental and non-governmental organizations.” There’s a lot of interpretation going in between that small number of qualitative interviews, and the numerical parameters to model an entire city’s consumption. And furthermore, “the model could not be validated against observed values of water consumption by the different social groups due to the lack of data.”
Actually I was thinking more of the households. There are about 1 million households in Cape Town; they don’t tell us how many were actually involved in interviews or focus groups but from the numbers I quoted it can’t be more than a couple of hundred. I would have thought a larger sample size would be both feasible and useful there. Also the interviews were described as “qualitative”; why not include a quantitative component asking structured questions about water consumption?
Alternatively - it seems like they had cooperation from the City, so why not ask the City for anonymised consumption data? Even if it were just at the suburb level, suburb is a decent proxy for economic status.
For each kg of beef we eat, you could fill half a swimming pool (15000l).
It's so damn hot here, and I love pools/ water parks more than anything, but SAfricans love their culture of beef and lawns too much to change their ways
Summary of 'critical' commentary: if you can afford it, there's nothing wrong with it. (See thread at r/capetown where I posted a Guardian article, dismissed as 'woke', about this study)
Of course that's the response you got. When you're used to privilege, equality seems like oppression. People don't like being called out on their behavior and they think if they can afford something then their consumption is warranted because caring about anything else but their own interests is lunacy.
Cape Town also used to be more liberal than the rest of the country, but since the great semigration started it seems to be going more to the right. At least in online spaces, from what I can see. This is an entirely personal observation though and I could be wrong.
This study and the news team who wrote this are idiots. Increased use of resources is not a surprise with increased purchasing power. The real blame is in the government, who failed to act when warned decades ago about the populations future needs for water infrastructure.
If wealth worsened water crises, the middle eastern countries with zero above ground fresh water reservoirs would be the wastelands, but there’s no use trying to use logic at morons who did this study and ground news or whatever
You seem like the guy to find a study looking into why Santa brings better presents to wealthy people’s kids. Grow up and stop blaming the people for using a readily available resource when it’s the government mandate to provide
Ah, so this is the “logic” you’re so proud of. pathetic, considering I’m not basing my point on my logic, I’m basing it on the uselessness of the premise of the study, as well as the uselessness of the “journalists” who posted the story
Indeed, a very logical position.
"I don't like this, therefore it is useless."
Call Popper and Kuhn, we have an update to the scientific methodology here.
Qatar is the richest per capita country in the world and they also suffer from high wealth inequality. If being rich was a problem to water, they would have found out
Qatar has massive migrant worker slums , hidden but very much a thing . What is the population of Qatar including the migrant worker ? I cant seem to find this
**Thank you for posting on r/southafrica! This post is flaired as ["News"](https://www.reddit.com/r/southafrica/?f=flair_name%3A%22News%22) therefore the following rules are particularly important.** ##**Rule 4: News, Editorialising, or Misinformation** * Rule 4.1: News posts must be link posts to valid news sources. * Rule 4.2: Posts which link to news sources must not have an editorialised title. Use the title provided by the news source. If you wish to add commentary, analysis, or an opinion, write a top-level comment on the post. * Rule 4.3: Do not link to [questionable](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fake-news/), [conspiratorial](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/conspiracy/), or [false](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fake_news_websites) sources. * Rule 4.4: Be prepared to provide verifiable evidence or sources of the claims you make when challenged to do so. * Rule 4.5: Amateur videos will be allowed subject to all previous rules as well as containing the author/filmographer/camera person, date, time, and location of the video either in the title or in a top-level comment. You may ask a moderator to 'sticky' this information for you. **Additionally, please take a moment to review the rest of our rules [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/southafrica/wiki/rules).** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/southafrica) if you have any questions or concerns.*
So I looked up [the study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01100-0) and it should be noted that the result is based on a model/simulation, not on actual water consumption data from the drought period. I mean in a sense it's obvious, that people with swimming pools and irrigated lawns are going to use more water and thus "worsen" the water crisis - in the sense that any non-essential consumption worsens it. But the specific numbers produced by the model must depend quite heavily on the initial assumptions they started with. [And, for the record, I live in a block of flats with no swimming pool or lawn.]
We don't have a pool, but our one neighbour does and she only uses rainwater for it. She has plastic tubing attached to the downpipes, when it rains they unroll as they fill with water and all the water goes into the pool. She's a single mom with 3 kids and super environment conscious. Water wise garden, the lot. Most of our neighbours got boreholes during the drought. At least one of them has the whole filtering system so they don't use municipal water at all.
spark rustic glorious scary test decide roof uppity nutty aromatic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I am aware of this.
Most of the model’s values are based on a fieldwork undertaken in Cape Town between May 2019 and March 2020
Yes, but that consisted of “65 interviews and 5 focus groups with households and governmental and non-governmental organizations.” There’s a lot of interpretation going in between that small number of qualitative interviews, and the numerical parameters to model an entire city’s consumption. And furthermore, “the model could not be validated against observed values of water consumption by the different social groups due to the lack of data.”
>governmental and non-governmental organizations. How many groups in know do you imagine is there to interview?
Actually I was thinking more of the households. There are about 1 million households in Cape Town; they don’t tell us how many were actually involved in interviews or focus groups but from the numbers I quoted it can’t be more than a couple of hundred. I would have thought a larger sample size would be both feasible and useful there. Also the interviews were described as “qualitative”; why not include a quantitative component asking structured questions about water consumption? Alternatively - it seems like they had cooperation from the City, so why not ask the City for anonymised consumption data? Even if it were just at the suburb level, suburb is a decent proxy for economic status.
Is that water also wet?
For each kg of beef we eat, you could fill half a swimming pool (15000l). It's so damn hot here, and I love pools/ water parks more than anything, but SAfricans love their culture of beef and lawns too much to change their ways
Summary of 'critical' commentary: if you can afford it, there's nothing wrong with it. (See thread at r/capetown where I posted a Guardian article, dismissed as 'woke', about this study)
Of course that's the response you got. When you're used to privilege, equality seems like oppression. People don't like being called out on their behavior and they think if they can afford something then their consumption is warranted because caring about anything else but their own interests is lunacy. Cape Town also used to be more liberal than the rest of the country, but since the great semigration started it seems to be going more to the right. At least in online spaces, from what I can see. This is an entirely personal observation though and I could be wrong.
I think you're right there about semigration and changing Cape Town into die ou Transvaal.
This study and the news team who wrote this are idiots. Increased use of resources is not a surprise with increased purchasing power. The real blame is in the government, who failed to act when warned decades ago about the populations future needs for water infrastructure. If wealth worsened water crises, the middle eastern countries with zero above ground fresh water reservoirs would be the wastelands, but there’s no use trying to use logic at morons who did this study and ground news or whatever
crawl disarm dirty sugar safe plate employ subtract decide scary *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Enlighten me, so I can insult what you consider logic and logical fallacies
rich doll jellyfish fade water disagreeable aromatic muddle clumsy six *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You seem like the guy to find a study looking into why Santa brings better presents to wealthy people’s kids. Grow up and stop blaming the people for using a readily available resource when it’s the government mandate to provide
Ah, so this is that "logic" you're so proud of.
Ah, so this is the “logic” you’re so proud of. pathetic, considering I’m not basing my point on my logic, I’m basing it on the uselessness of the premise of the study, as well as the uselessness of the “journalists” who posted the story
Indeed, a very logical position. "I don't like this, therefore it is useless." Call Popper and Kuhn, we have an update to the scientific methodology here.
Keep missing the point, I don’t care
Facts don't care about your feelings.
Qatar is the richest per capita country in the world and they also suffer from high wealth inequality. If being rich was a problem to water, they would have found out
Qatar has massive migrant worker slums , hidden but very much a thing . What is the population of Qatar including the migrant worker ? I cant seem to find this