Desalination around the world- how other countries are making fresh water from the ocean

[nationalize the fed]

9. Priorities

The US is busy doing R&D on wiretapping the net and building the next series of drones, dropping Depleted Uranium on places like Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan while all of a sudden making Ukraine a "priority".

FACT SHEET: U.S. Crisis Support Package for Ukraine
President Obama and Vice President Biden have made U.S. support for Ukraine an urgent priority
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/04/21/fact-sheet-us-crisis-support-package-ukraine

All of the problems with RO can be overcome. It's just a matter of priorities.

For example:

Nanoporus Graphene Takes Another Step Toward Water Desalination Process
By Dexter Johnson IEEE Spectrum Posted 26 Feb 2014



About 18 months ago, I wrote about an MIT project in which computer models demonstrated that graphene could act as a filter in the desalination of water through the reverse osmosis (RO) method. RO is slightly less energy intensive than the predominantly used multi-stage-flash process. The hope was that the nanopores of the graphene material would make the RO method even less energy intensive than current versions by making it easier to push the water through the filter membrane.

The models were promising, but other researchers in the field said at the time it was going to be a long road to translate a computer model to a real product...

...It would seem that the MIT researchers agreed it was worth the effort and accepted the challenge to go from computer model to a real device as they announced this week that they had developed a method for creating selective pores in graphene that make it suitable for water desalination.

The MIT group collaborated with a team from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and researchers from Saudi Arabia, a country that has been quite active in trying to use nanotechnology to finding cheaper water desalination processes. They published their results in the journal Nano Letters ("Selective Ionic Transport through Tunable Subnanometer Pores in Single-Layer Graphene Membranes&quot ...

http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/biomedical/devices/nanoporus-graphene-takes-another-step-toward-filtration-applications

The Audacity of Action in Nanotech for Energy and Water
By Dexter Johnson IEEE Spectrum 25 Jan 2010

A recent story on how Saudi Arabia plans to use solar energy to power its water desalination plants is short on details and just plain confusing in some places with sentences such as: “The new nanotechnology for using solar energy to operate desalination plants was developed by KACST in association with IBM.”

I suspect what is meant by the above sentence is that they intend to use photovoltaics somehow enabled by nanotechnology to power their desalination plants. Despite the rather awkward syntax, it is clear that Saudi Arabia is intent on using nanotechnology to both help them meet their energy needs and provide their fresh water.

Two of the most critical shortages mankind faces today are water and energy. Nano-enabled processes have demonstrated some promise in easing the water issue and nanotechnology and energy seems to be the proverbial carrot to relieve our dependence on fossil fuels. However, only a handful of companies have had any success in bringing these solutions to market...

...With the Ogallala Aquifer continuing its headlong course towards depletion maybe water shortages, and even resulting food shortages, will be another impetus in addition to expensive energy costs for applying the technologies out there, including nanotechnology, that sit unused and undeveloped as the status quo is meticulously maintained.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/biomedical/devices/nanoporus-graphene-takes-another-step-toward-filtration-applications

Isn't it great that Ukraine is an "Urgent Priority" while the middle class is destroyed and drought takes its toll on the future food supply.

Whatever we do, we always return to the same problem. There are too many humans, and there are too many humans living in environments that would be very uncomfortable or deadly without imported water and air conditioning.

That's being a bit pessimistic, don't you think. We'll never make it out of the Solar System before the Sun explodes with attitudes like that. Once the US could do whatever needed to be done. Now it is concerned with hegemony and making places like Ukraine a "priority". Bollocks to that.