Am I Immune From Water Shortage?

Investing in real estate has always been about location, location, location. Water shortage too has a similar qualifier (all water problems and their solutions are local, local, local) that is compounded by the fact that no location is immune from water shortage.


A world rich in water - for some!
When currently used and  accessible water supplies are studied at a macro level, the conclusions might be:
- Approximately 50% of the world (the blue and grey areas in the map) does not have a water problem,
- If I reside in one of these water-adequate areas, I should not have to worry about water shortages, and
- If I live in the red, orange and green areas, I could experience water scarcity e.g.if I live in the southwest region of the US, then I could experience water shortages unless I have a way to transport water from outside to where I live or I choose to live in the vicinity of the right water transportation infrastructure.


The devil is in the details

Source - NRDC

A county-by-county map of the United states supports the macro-level conclusion that the southwest region of the of the US is prone to water shortages. However, assuming that predictions of Climate Change turn out to be accurate, the map says a lot more:
- 412 counties (marked in red) spread all over the US will experience water supply shortages and some of them are in water rich areas like Florida.
- Only 30% (929 out of 3141) counties would be immune from water shortages in the future i.e. the vast majority of the US population will need to deal with water scarcity by 2050. 


The water-immune are few in number!

Source - 

A map on global distribution of human population identifies that a very large percent of the global population will experience water shortage because of where they live.
In these areas, every city dweller knows that 24/7 supply of fresh water is unheard of today. Every city dweller also knows to plan their day around their need to stock up with water whenever it becomes available.

5.5 Billion people have experience with Water Shortage

80% have experience with water shortages
Image Source - atlas1. wikispaces.com

When the global population is tallied by where they live, nearly 80% of the people on Earth live on a near-daily basis with not having enough safe freshwater when they need or want it.
Faced with freshwater shortage, their options range between:
- Adopting the resigned attitude that justifies using unsafe readily-available water, and
- Arranging their daily schedule around the gathering of necessary amounts of safe freshwater.
For these 5.5 billion, water is a personal local challenge.
- The remaining 20%, nearly 1.5 billion people, mostly have water for the taking whenever they so desire. 

Can Motion Assist in Changing Water Vapor Into Liquid Water?

Water differs from every other resource (except, maybe, air) in that water is the only resource that needs motion to maintain its authenticity. Water's need to be in motion is so great that water seems self-driven to move - movement is ingrained in water; talking about water implies talking about something that is always moving.
Still Waters Run Deep

Rocks revealed in a flowing river
Source - alaska-in-pictures.com

Still Water
Source - me.ncrs.usda.org

This proverb commonly means that a person showing a calm exterior should be handled with caution because the calmness does not reveal anything (positive or negative; good or bad; liked or disliked) about that person. This proverb's origin is the observation that moving water reveals a lot about what's in the water while stagnant water does not reveal any information and, thus, anything dangerous will not be known.
Stagnant water

Source - warrencountymosquito.org

Stagnant water holds a severe risk to health of humans. Living hazards (to humans) breed profusely in water that is not in motion.
We seem to be programmed to avoid stagnant water through its impact on our senses: stagnant water is cloudy and we cannot see what's in it; stagnant water has a foul smell; We can also usually see dirt and debris on the surface of a body of stagnant water
Whirlpools
Water never moves in a straight line especially when flowing through narrow paths. Water molecules seem to fight each other to move into the space that a molecule in front of them vacates as it moves forward. 

A top view of a Whirlpool
Source - dailymail.co.uk

This "fight" between water molecules, to move into the vacant space before them, somehow initiates the spinning motion unique to a whirlpool. Whirlpools occur in lakes, in rivers, in virtually every body of water. All that is required is for the water to be moving. This movement most commonly occurs under the influence of gravity.

A Whirlpool as it appears from below
Source - spiralwishingwells.com

And doesn't the underside of a whirlpool look too much like a tornado?
Moving between States

Motion Changes Water between solid,liquid and vapor
Source - rmbel.info

Earth's Water Cycle uses motion to transform water between its three states: solid, liquid and vapor. 


Can we utilize movement to change water vapor in the air we breathe into liquid form whenever and wherever we choose to do so?

Can Biology Show Us How To Make New Water?

We accomplish what we convince ourselves to believe can be accomplished by us. Could we apply this maxim to increase water supplies through the development of a way to make NEW water?


Freshwater supply

The Earth from Space
Source - filterspurewater.com

Everybody in the water supply business "knows" three facts as forever being true:
1. The total amount of water on Earth is constant. 
2. Only a tiny amount of the total water is freshwater
3. Water is never destroyed like other natural resources are, e.g. oil is lost for ever when we use it. All our oil consumption process leaves us with are by-products that we cannot reassemble into oil.
The net result of this knowledge is that we don't try to make new water and we ridicule those who might propose manufacture of new water.
A Shift in Thinking!
What if the first two facts were seen and accepted as not being completely true? What if someone convinced us that they are not true? What if someone promised to pay us if we showed that they are not true? What if some of us convinced ourselves that we can indeed make water?
What if we simply concluded that the reason why we think that water cannot be manufactured is that no human seems to have figured out how to do it? or has been motivated enough to try to find a way to do it?

Man on the Moon
Source - en.wikipedia.org

Then our challenge is clear: We need to tell ourselves that we can make water and set ouralves on the journey to figure out a way!

Map of a Genome
Source - life.illinois.edu

Isn't this the same kind of shift in thinking that made it possible for man to walk on the moon? or map the genome of so many species? or accomplish the many other things that define our life today, like the Internet, mobile phones, the Global Positioning System (GPS) and all the other inventions we cannot seem to want to do without.

Metabolic Water
Metabolic water is our name for water that is made inside every living organism from the chemical reactions the organism uses to utilize food it eats.
The average human body produces between 350-400 ml per day of water. This water differs from the freshwater in streams and lakes only in the content of its dissolved substances - the most important of which are dissolved ions. The process of metabolism - oxidation of glucose derived from food - produces this NEW 350-400 ml of water in a day.
Nobody seems to know why the body does not or cannot produce New Water in larger amounts. What the scientific literature does reveal is that the human body is capable, under certain conditions, to produce more metabolic water e.g. when stressed as a result of a rigorous exercise regime
What if we said "we can!"
Do we really and truly know and understand "how" the human body and other living organism's make water from food they eat? If the answer is "yes, we know how" and if we passionately believe that we must find a way to synthetically replicate this process, then we will make the way real!
Biology as Technology
We know of a way! We know of a biological process that makes new freshwater!!!!! ... in quantity.
Biology is the technology that can provide us the way to accomplish what we cannot accomplish through physics or chemistry (see post dated November 2010)

Water Molecules React to Frequency of Microwaves

A singular property of water molecules is that they get excited (i.e. start moving) when hit with microwaves. Microwave ovens use this knowledge about water to cook food.


Microwaves

Light Waves
Source - chemwiki.ucdavis.edu

Microwaves are light waves with a wavelength of between 1 mm and 1 meter.
They carry a lot less energy than radio waves and are much less lethal than X-rays.
The frequency of microwaves is just right for water molecules, which absorb the energy in microwaves.
This absorption raises the temperature of water. Microwaves can raise water temperature to water's boiling point.
Microwave Ovens

A Microwave Oven
Source - globalmicrowave.org

These ovens raise the temperature of water in the food placed in the oven, and the heated water helps cook the food.
Microwaves are generally not strong enough to raise temperature of food molecules.
Microwave ovens are designed to spread microwaves evenly all over the food so that waves supply energy distributed equally within the volume of an oven.
Unevenly Cooked or Heated food
A common complaint about microwave oven cooking is that the food we heat or cook in it does not heat or cook evenly throughout. 
Water is the cause of uneven heating and cooking.
As microwaves only heat up water molecules, if these water molecules are not evenly dispersed in the food, the food heats up differently in different places, for example:
- Microwaved soup has a hot layer on top and a cold center. The hot layer on top is the result of the uppermost water particles getting heated the most because they absorb much of the microwave energy before the waves can penetrate deeper into the body of the soup.
- Sometimes the middle of food is cooked "first" in a microwave oven because there is a larger concentration of water molecules in the middle of many foods. The moist center heats up first and longer.
- Foods, dry of moisture, like cornflakes rice or pasta are difficult to cook in a microwave because these foods have little moisture that microwaves can heat up.
- Breads get hard in a microwave oven because microwaves evaporates the little moisture contained in bread and, thus, dry the bread into a hard crust.
Invention of the Microwave Oven

Dr Percy Spencer
Source - Gallawa.com

The original name for microwave ovens was Radarange.

An engineer, Dr Percy Spencer, discovered the impact of microwaves while he was developing radar technology that converts electricity into microwaves.
Dr. Spencer's employer, Raytheon, commercialized microwave ovens and sold the first one in 1947.
Today, 90 percent of US homes have a microwave oven.