2013 - Year of New Sourcing through Imagination, Ingenuity and Invention? Why Not?

Source - un.int

On March 21st the world celebrated World Water Day 2013.
The day's theme reflected the theme already proclaimed at the beginning of 2013: Year of Water Cooperation.
World Water Day - Over the years
World Water Day has been observed since 1993.The themes for World Water Day have been:
2013: Year of Water Cooperation
2012: Water and Food Security: The World is Thirsty Because We are Hungry
2011: Water for cities: responding to the urban challenge
2010: Clean Water for a Healthy World
2009: Trans Waters
2008: Sanitation
2007: Coping With Water Scarcity
2006: Water and Culture
2005: Water for Life 2005–2015
2004: Water and Disasters
2003: Water for Future
2002: Water for Development
2001: Water for Health
2000: Water for the 21st century
1999: Everyone Lives Downstream
1998: Groundwater – The Invisible Resource
1997: The World's Water: Is there enough?
1996: Water for Thirsty Cities
1995: Women and Water
1994: Caring for our Water Resources is Everybody's Business

Source - epa.gov

World Water Day has never emphasized New Water Sources:

- How to find them

- How to tap them

- How to deliver water from them to where it is needed by humanity or by nature

This missing empasis is especially tough to accept when we know that

(a) water exists everywhere

(b) everything contains water

in either solid, liquid or vapor form

What History tells us

Source - blog author

* Over 10,000 years ago, humans dug a well to obtain freshwater from an under-ground aquifer.

* Over 7,000 years ago, humans invented irrigation to deliver freshwater to their crops.

* About 5000 years ago, humans built a 15-foot high barrier to stop a river and create a lake from which they could extract freshwater at will.

* Nearly 2,000 years ago, humans created waterwheels to raise freshwater to elevations higher than that of lakes and flowing rivers.

* Some 150 years ago, humans invented indoor piping which was soon followed by the in-home boiler to supply domestic hot freshwater.

These inventions, of course, comprise only the very top tip of the iceberg of human ingenuity applied to obtain, transport and use freshwater from known bodies of water.

None of the above actions were accidental or done without intention or taken to satisfy intellectual curiosity. All of these actions were taken in the face of adversity. The people, they are always individuals never organizations, who made these inventions had their backs to the wall of water scarcity. They had to eradicate the real possibility of everyone they knew dying from lack of fresh water.

Searching for Water is NOT a new Task

As the dates clearly indicate, our search for freshwater is not a search new for us. Throughout our history, we have repeatedly reached the uppermost limits of the amount of freshwater readily available from water sources we know, either because our numbers grew too large or drought arrived. We have on a regular basis covered the distance, literally speaking, to find new sources of adequate freshwater supplies. There is now a large body of evidence that supports the notion that freshwater scarcity was behind human migration out of Africa 135,000 years ago. Other major human migrations, like the one 9,500 years ago in Chile were also in search of freshwater.

When freshwater supplies diminish and we must find new sources of supply, the promise of human ingenuity is a historic proven success story.

2013 - The Year of Water Exploration?

We Have Never Run Out of Any Natural Resource! (2 of 2)

The Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stones. It ended after 2.5 million years when humans came up with a suitable replacement, known as "metals" and a new age, the Metal Age, began somewhere between 4500 and 2000 BCE. This transition of "ages" is an example of human ingenuity with "science" at its core.
What is Science?

Science
Source - asiasociety.org

Science, to me, is human understanding of something "that is." This something exists and we can explain how it has come about to be. 

Science
Source - dorchesteru3a.wordpress.com

In some cases, our understanding is so detailed that we can also create the "that is" through human action i.e. artificially. 

Applying science - the knowledge that allows us to test and break constraints imposed by nature - has led to our developing innovations like artificial light to eliminate darkness and new seeds to raise yields so that we can alleviate hunger.

Science has been repeatedly used by us to find a way to alleviate scarcity by developing new sources of scarce resources.

Natural Fertilizers (guano) to Chemical Manures
In 1898, Sir William Crookes, incoming president of the British Academy of Sciences, spoke of people dying in large numbers starting in the 1930s. He explained how farmed and re-farmed soil was loosing fertility and how this loss would cut food production unless a synthetic "chemical manure" was quickly available to replenish spent soil. This replenishment, he said, would produce enough food for the world's growing population.

The Haber-Bosch Process
Source - chemwiki.ucdavis.edu

This call motivated many to create chemical manures. Fritz Haber succeeded in discovering a process in 1909 that extracted nitrogen from the air we breathe, to create ammonia, the first synthetic fertilizer.
This discovery and invention of the Haber-Bosh process is in use all over the world today. If it were shut down everywhere in 2012, over 3 billion of the world's 7 billion people would starve to death regardless of their economic and social stature.

Natural to Synthetic Rubber
Malaysia and Indonesia provide much of the world's natural rubber supply. Japan conquered Malaysia and Indonesia in the early years of World War II and stopped exports of natural rubber. This led to a 90% drop in supply of natural rubber, a necessary military ingredient. 

Synthetic Rubber Manufacturing
Source - ame.org

This supply reduction motivated the US government to push and finance development of synthetic rubbers. 
Creation of synthetic rubber was not a new activity. As early as in 1879, Bouchard, a European scientist, had created a form of synthetic rubber. 
The push by the US brought urgency and resources for the creation of synthetic rubber in vast quantities. 
Synthetic rubber turned out to be better than natural rubber in some ways. Synthetic rubber's resistance to high temperatures is so much better than that of natural rubber that natural rubber uses have declined ever since.

Finding New Freshwater Supplies
Freshwater is a near universal solvent, but also exists within much of nature's creations. Our bodies are ~64% water. Water exists "dissolved" in soil, in the atmosphere and many other places. 
Can we use science, in particular, our understanding of 'water' and how it exists everywhere on Earth, to develop new sources of freshwater? 
There is only one way to get the answer! Especially today, the unsafe and audacious act, but the right one on freshwater, is to issue a call for ways to "increase" water supplies, say, by tapping the continuously replenished ocean of freshwater in the atmosphere.