Let Global Public Play With Science!

Source - Financial Times Newspaper
dated 16 Nov 2012

A note I wrote was published in the Financial Times Newspaper on 16 November 2012. 

The contents of this note essentially describe the approach that is applicable to producing the progress we desire on every one of our most intransigent challenges in the twenty-first century.

This is also a key element of the approach being used to create the means to extract water vapor from the air we breathe.


The note can be accessed online at http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/750f8a06-2e8d-11e2-9b98-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2CPXvG8qL

Urbanization = Use Clean Water to Remove Dirty Water!

In 1950, with world population around 2.5 billion, there were just two cities (London and New York) classified as mega-cities because their population was more than 8 million each. In 2008, with the world population at over 6 billion, over 3 billion people lived in mega-cities distributed around the globe.
Migration to cities - Urbanization

Source - wikipedia.org

More than half the world's people live in cities today.
Meeting the concentrated water needs of these large numbers of people has led to the rise of urban institutions whose sole focus has been the supply and delivery of fresh water and of urban institutions responsible for removal of dirty water.
Clean water removes dirty water

Dirty and Clean Water
Source - trashwater.org

City dwellers use water differently than people living in rural areas.
In rural settings dirty water is left alone to either seep into the ground or evaporate into the air. Sometimes. to avoid it being a health hazard, dirt is added to the dirty water to absorb the dirty water and cover up its location.
In urban settings, however, the usual practice is to not allow dirty water to seep into the ground or evaporate into the air.
In urban areas, clean water is used to get rid of dirty water.
This increases the per-capita water requirements of city dwellers over people living in rural areas.
The most pronounced use of this practice is in the bathroom where water contaminated with human waste is flushed away by clean water.
Importance of Residential Water Consumption

Source - westbasin.org

Urban water is typically used for residential, industrial, commercial, and public purposes. In addition, minor amounts of water are used in urban settings for other purposes like fire-fighting, line-cleaning, and to make up system losses.
The largest amount of water is used in residences. For example, 66% of the total water, supplied by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, is used in residences of the approximately 15 million people living along the Southern California coast from Oxnard to San Diego.
This is 66% of an estimated 195 gallons per-capita per day. (source - paper titled "Determinants of Urban Water use" by W. Michael Hanemann).
It is estimated that over two-thirds of the residential supply (66% of 195 gallons per-capita per day) is clean water being piped in solely for the purpose of getting rid of dirty water!
Is there an innovation in clean water supply (like extracting water available in the local air) or in flushing away dirty water (like using composting toilets) - innovations that do not require the capital-expensive and costly-to-maintain water supply and waste extraction piping systems (both susceptible to leaks) of today?

How does Water exist in Air?

Water molecules in the air exist like sand, salt and sugar molecules exist in a salt-sand-sugar mixture. The compound H2O is free and stands alone like a component in a physical mixture not as a component in a chemical mixture
A mechanical Mixture

Each component stands apart
Source - tojojoling.blogspot.com

Each piece stands apart
Source - cookteen.com

In a mechanical mixture, each component exists separately from every other component.
In a mechanical mixture, each component can be separated from all other components through a process akin to separating all the pasta or the red candy.
Air is a mechanical mixture of elements and compounds
Elements in the air include:

Gas	Ratio compared to Dry Air (%)		Chemical Symbol
	By volume	By weight
Oxygen	20.95	23.20	O2
Nitrogen	78.09	75.47	N2
Hydrogen	0.00005	~ 0	H2
Argon	0.933	1.28	Ar
Neon	0.0018	0.0012	Ne
Helium	0.0005	0.00007	He
Krypton	0.0001	0.0003	Kr
Xenon	9 10-6	0.00004	Xe

Source - http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-composition-d_212.html
Compounds in the air include:
Water, Carbon Dioxide, Sulfur dioxide, Methane, Nitrous oxide, Ozone, Nitrogen dioxide, Iodine, Carbon monoxide and Ammonia
Water exists in the air in 2 forms
The water in air exists in two states: about 2% exists in liquid form while the remaining approx 98% exists in liquid form.
The task of extracting water from the air is mostly a task of extracting the vapor form of water from the air.

Wish Freshwater Scarcity was as Simple as the Fiscal Cliff !

The US Fiscal cliff and Global Freshwater Scarcity are quite similar but it is the differences that matter and push for a very similar remedy for both.
The US Fiscal Cliff

The US Fiscal Cliff
Source - healthreformexplained.com

The US faces a Fiscal Cliff on January 1, 2013 when a mix of spending cuts and tax increases go into effect unless a deal is reached between politicians in Washington DC by end of day December 31, 2012 - a little over 8 weeks from today.
The Freshwater Cliff, of course has two possible outcomes once the end of the 'ramp' is reached:
- Either gravity will take over and the US will drop down into whatever is at the bottom of the cliff and a number of unpleasant results will be felt
- or, the target on the other side will be hit and nothing with too extreme negative impacts will result.
The Global Freshwater Cliff

The Freshwater "Gap"
Source - World Economic Forum

While the fiscal cliff has either an acceptable or an unacceptable 'end', the Freshwater Cliff has NO END - the Freshwater Cliff only gets worse with time i.e. it has only a worsening prognosis. 
In the graph, the Freshwater Cliff is the dark area that continues to grow with time i.e. unlike the Fiscal Cliff, there is no target that can be defined like it can in the case of the fiscal cliff.
This essentially means that the "drop" from the freshwater cliff will continue forever till an effective remedy is found.
Representative impacts of the continuing increase in the "freshwater gap" include a combination of:
- more geographical areas experiencing shortages (droughts) and/or overwhelming supplies (floods)
- droughts and floods of greater severity measured in terms of their negative impacts
- greater uncertainty in freshwater supplies in more areas

The challenge, thus, from both the Fiscal Cliff and the Freshwater Cliff is the same: Find a remedy that ends the "fall off the cliff" quickly and with the least negative impact on life and livelihoods

Freshwater Security: A Community or a Global Issue?

The only way I got my mother to stop using the phrase "Finish your food. There are starving children in .....(you can fill in the blank with the name of your favorite nation)" was by gathering the courage to say "Why don't we send the food to them?" Of course, such a delivery never took place but this conversation clearly showed me that human communities are in some ways totally independent from other human settlements.
Super-storm Sandy's early legacy

Super storm Sandy turns lights off
Source - news.yahoo.com

When the storm hit, power and services were lost in many areas of New York. Today, nearly a week later, Lower Manhattan and Staten Island are like world's apart even though they are just 10 miles, as a crow flies, from each other.
Electric power and many other services are fully operational in Lower Manhattan but not yet available for many Staten Island communities.
To residents of Staten Island without electricity, Lower Manhattan is today a world away.
Rich and poor nations share borders

Asuper wealthy country inext to a not-so welthy nation
Source - churchworldservice.org

This feeling of being a world apart, when you are really only next door, also separates countries e.g. The wealthy US shares a border with the developing nation of Mexico.
As we are well aware, rivers cross country boundaries and a truckload of case law and agreements specify how much water each country can draw from these rivers.
This inter-dependency with freshwater is one ordained by nature
Freshwater is both a Global and a Local Issue
If New York figures out a way to be freshwater secure, it does not imply that Miami cannot also be freshwater secure. However, if New York industries starts spewing excessive amounts of carbon in the atmosphere, it can impact the climate in Miami, which in turn could alter rainfall patterns for Miami. Freshwater inter-dependency, if any, for New York and Miami is the result of them being interconnected by the Earth's atmosphere. What one does to its atmosphere can and is felt by the other. Thus, freshwater security is typically a local issue if the atmosphere cooperates. When it does not, freshwater can become a regional and even a global issue.