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On freshwater | By Umbra Fisk | Grist Magazine | Ask Umbra | 31 Jan 2005: "About 70 percent of the Earth's surface is constantly wet. Of all that water, only 2.5 percent, or 8.4 million cubic miles, is not salty. Quite a bit of the freshwater is rather stale, since it's been stuck for eons in glaciers, ice caps, and Siberia: 5.9 million cubic miles, to be exact. Still more freshwater is too far from human settlement for our use. The accessible freshwater left over after all these caveats is less than 0.08 percent of the water on the planet. "