There is not a lot of water as you thought it would be
Image: Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; courtesy of the USGS
If you have read Charles Fishman’s book The big thirst, in which he did a compelling exploration of water on earth, there is a shocking statement telling us that even though the ocean seems to be inexhaustible but, “the total water on the surface of Earth (the oceans, the ice caps, the atmospheric water) makes up 0.025 percent of the mass of the planet that is 25/10,000ths of the stuff of Earth”.
In simple English he means “ If the Earth were the size of a Honda Odyssey minivan, the amount of water on the planet would be in a single, half-liter bottle of Poland Spring in one of the van’s thirteen cup holders.”
This whole statement is translated by the illustration from the USGS , showing the comparison between the size of a sphere that would contain water to the size of the earth. And that is not much what we thought it would be.
Via Bldgblog
