The Circle of H2O

water scarcity awareness. Uh at my school. Every now and then somebody would come in and tell us something really scary, like the hot dogs you're eating are going to give you cancer? Or well high school did you go to? This was elementary? Part of this explains a lot about you, Joe, I was very terrified of hot dogs for a while. Yeah, but they were so delicious. Getting back to water, though, we heard there was a problem with water, but there was a scarcity issue, you know, how do you get water?

And our remember getting this impression when I was a kid that the water was going somewhere, like going away, like leaving right, that we're like, we're running out of water in the same way that say we're running out of coal, right, So, so like like there's one giant water tank somewhere and that level is going down and when it's out, it's gone exactly. But of course that's not true at all. We're not running out of water in the way we're running out of coal. But water

scarcity is a huge issue. So what is the deal? So we have to understand things like regionalization. We have to understand how much water is accessible at any given time, how much of that water is usable, because just because you can access it doesn't mean you can actually use it. For instance, so we mentioned in an earlier podcast that that more than of the water on Earth, and there's

a lot of it is saltwater. So that's not not can't drink it, you can't use it in agriculture, right, Yeah, you would have to process it first in order to use it, and of course that requires UH energy outputs. So if it takes more energy to make fresh water from saltwater than it would to get fresh water through some other means, then it doesn't make sense to use desalination. Right.

But but really the issue with water scarcity UH is multifaceted. UH, Joe you you mentioned it in the script that you wrote for Forward Thinking, the video series UH that the law of the fresh water that exists out of that less than three. A lot of that is not even accessible to us because of where it is. That's true. A lot of it's locked up in ice caps or in glaciers. A lot of it is under the ground in places we can't access, or it's in tree bark

and other people's flesh. So unless you're a sparkly vampire, I mean, water is everywhere, but there's only so much that we can get to and use in a way that's safe and helpful to the things we want to use it for. And once we have used it, it's a huge cost process to get it back to a

usability point again. Right right, In other words, that scarcity thing that that leaving the faucet on for too long, it's not that that water is going away, it's that it's going to a place where it's going to require processing before we could ever use it as safely again. So that means that it's an energy issue, right. You can think about it kind of like laundry. Like when you wear a shirt or a pair of underwear, you don't exhaust it. It's not that you can never use

it again. You haven't seen how I wear a shirt, But you've got to run it through a washing machine and a dryer and and then fold it or hang it up before you can use it again, right right, so that it requires energy before you can use it, at least in a socially acceptable way. Some people I know go a long time between washes. I've never met anyone like that at Dragon Conhor. Yeah, there's also a local scarcity issue. The world isn't going to run out

of water. I mean, there's a closed system, and we can talk about that in a minute, but they're truly local water scarcity issues. And the water isn't leaving the planet,

but in one particular place it might suddenly run dry. Sure. Yeah, you might have a natural disaster that causes a certain area of the of the planet to have less access to fresh water than did before, or just climate change over time can cause that to happen, or simply over irrigation, if you just take too much water out of the aquifers around you and you drain them dry suddenly, then you've got a big local agriculture problem. Sure yeah. Yeah. So this is again we're not saying that the water

is leaving. It's still on Earth. It's just no longer accessible in that particular area. And uh, and you were saying, you know, it's a closed system. That's a good point. It's it's the water isn't leaving Earth, at least not in any great quantities. Oh wait, so if it's a closed system, how did it get here in the first place. Well, it turns out there's a giant faucet on the side of Mount Everest. Someone. No, that's totally a lie. Um. Well, that's actually a good question, and we don't know for

sure the answer. But I was reading something interesting that apparently now a lot of scientists think that much of Earth's water came from space. So aliens, No, not aliens with their big hoses. No, they're saying from asteroid impacts. Okay, alright, So asteroids, which I would assume have some asteroids have ice on them, collide with the Earth, and that ice ends up forming a lot of the water that's here on the planet. Right in in two thousand and ten,

we surveyed the asteroid themUS one of my favorites. Yeah, it's one of the best, and it was discovered to have a layer of frost on the outside. I see water, And so that confirmed that it also was found to have organic compounds, like carbon based compounds that some people believe could have given the building blocks that seated life on Earth. And and so we don't know that. Of course,

that's just hostibility, right, Um, it's a hypothesis, okay. But so that this this was all before life started on Earth. This was billions, This was about about four billion years ago, they think. So that water, however it got to Earth, whether it was through an asteroid impact or some other means. And again we don't know for sure, but it's it's one of the hypotheses that's that that scientists are are

thinking about. Uh, that water has been here on the planet since then, and that water has not gone anywhere, has gone through different phases. But the water that we have now is the same water that was here on the planet four billion years ago. It just keeps getting recycled through through the clouds and through rain and through rivers, etcetera.

People and people and velociraptors. That's right, folks. That healthy glass of water that you're drinking so that you can get up to the eight glasses per day or however many it's supposed to be at this point, that very well, may have at some point passed through the system of a dinosaur almost certainly did. Yeah, yeah, at least some molecules in there. You can tell there's a slightly gamy taste. No, No, we're all supposed to. Yeah, you guys have this obsession

with giant sharks. They're giant sharks. Okay, fair enough, But we're all supposed to drink about about at least half a gallon of water a day, all right, So half a gallon of water a day. Keeping in mind that water has been here on earth for billions of years. Then, first of all, when you really sit there and think about that, that's just amazing. I mean, that's just kind

of cool to me. The idea that there's that there's stuff that we encounter every day that has been here for billions of years, that we have our lives depend upon this, and it's easy to you know, just kind

of take it for granted. But this water, if if only it really could hold significance, like if the stuff it came into contact actually stayed with Yeah, I personally from the yeah now and I signed me up, I would drink way way, sir, to my daily allotment of water instead of say, coffee, if it was imbued with

megalodon power. Yeah, I honestly do not believe any of that is at all possible, which really, really you, I really do you want to go down this road, because we can talk about about tight trading things down over and over and over again until there's no discernible chemical left. But I really don't want to go into that, not not even in the incredible future, not even in the incredible But what is the future of water? I mean,

it's a pretty basic you know. Well, well, one of the the futures of water is the idea that if we ever decide to get off this rock, like if we ever decide to actually try and have either inter interplanetary or interstellar travel, then we have to find ways of using water in a very very efficient manner and being able to recycle water incredibly efficiently, particularly for a very long journey, because you're not getting more water once you get out there unless you're able to find a

source like another asteroid or even maybe a planet that actually has its own water supplies. So the future of water might involve mining asteroids water. That's not so far fetched. Actually, um, well, there's already a company called Planetary Resources that has announced plans to send up interceptors and mine precious metals and

water from asteroids, which makes sense. Again, if you want to talk about any sort of colony on another planet or on a moon, then you know, we we can't just pack up water from Earth and send it out for one thing so expensive, it's really expensive. It's it's ten ten tho dollars a pound to put things in space and half a gallon a day waterways what like eight point three pounds of gallons. It's it's pretty expensive

pretty quickly, that's ten thou pounds of pint. Yeah, it's it's definitely more expensive dollars a point, even even more expensive than going out and buying a bottled water. Fancy kind don't buy bottled water, um, But yeah, mean it's an issue where you also don't want to take the drinkable water on Earth and sacrifice it so that you can build a colony somewhere else. So mining asteroids is definitely one of those things that we should look into. Well.

Water in space is essentially going to be crucial. I mean, we're talking about water scarcity issues on planet Earth, the water planet, you know, the fact that for intent people on the water planet are affected by water scarcity issues. Think how big of a deal this is going to become once you're you're away from the water in the vacuum of space, where ten out of ten people will be affected by water scarcity exactly, Well by design, I mean it's you think about the the International Space Station.

What do they do about water? Well, I mean obviously that they accept some really expensive water shipments from Earth, but they've got to take really good care of the water they have. They have extremely advanced recycling systems that keep the water. They can't keep it all, They're always gonna lose small amounts of it over time and they have to get it replenished. But they do their absolute

technological best to retain whatever water they can. And what that means is just like we come back from a run and get a tall glass of megalodon blood. They sit up there on the International Space Station drinking their urine the vapor from their breath. Yes, now, granted all of the stuff has been processed. You're not just drinking their urine a little bit better than water world, right, right,

but it is going through a recycling process. But yes, there they have to recapture the water that they are expending, either through breathing or urination or whatever. And and then uh, you know or even you know, sweat, that kind of stuff. It's all stuff that has to be captured and recycled in a way to make it usable. Again, technology like this essentially has to be really good if you're seriously

thinking about long term space tress. And uh and like you mentioned, yeah, of course, mining water from asteroids is going to be a big deal. And that's actually more important, um than just getting the drinking water. The water we need for hydration and stuff like that. If we're really expanding, we need water for all kinds of things other than just drinking. Right, you can, um, if you can extract water from an asteroid, you could potentially manufacture rocket fuel

in space. That's pretty cool because it's hydrogen and oxygen. You can make your liquid hydrogen propulsion. Yep. Yeah. And uh and also I mean clearly you would need water for things if you ever, if we ever developed technology advanced enough to do something like terraforming of water, would

would be a key critical Yeah. Yeah, yeah, So obviously they're just going to be uh, you know, space space may very well be where where the water from Earth came from originally, like outside of the actual planet's creation space, may very well be where we look to to get water in the future, especially for when we're traveling out there and saying hello to distant neighbors. Not that I've received any phone calls or anything, No, they communicate telepathically.

Well anyway, it's really a neat thing to think about. And and yeah, I I encourage you all to sit back, relax, enjoy a tall glass of Megala don juice, uh, like like my co hosts are have in front of them, and uh. And you know, if you have any particular topics about the future that you find really exciting, something that you think we should address, I highly recommend you let us know. We have the Forward Thinking website up

and running. It's fw thinking dot com. You can find us on Twitter, you can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Google Plus. And we really want this to be a conversation. So guys, let us know what you're excited about and what you want to know more about. What what is it about the future that really has you uh energetic and ready to go? And it's just you've got to know more about it, because that's the kind of stuff that excites us. So let us know and we will taunto you again release him.

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