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HN community seems to really like desalination. Various innovations seem to hit the FP occasionally. I'll say this to the general sentiment. My 9th grade chemi

HN community seems to really like desalination. Various innovations seem to hit the FP occasionally. I'll say this to the general sentiment. My 9th grade chemistry teacher say 'your generation will face two major problems: xxxxxx and water'[1]. He's been a sage in my life, retired for about 1.5 decades. I say all this to attempt to say that 'this is refreshing' that this community understands that we are in an impending crisis of water. Onward! :) [1] - I'm a millennium and I won't reveal 'xxxx' because I'm not trying to incite anger but he was correct about 'xxx'.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago
xxx = pollution? energy? edit: or a certain political guy?
andromeduck 6y ago
My thesis in grade school thesis from ~17 years ago was that the two most important problems to by solved in my lifetime were going to be low cost, low emission and low land use energy production and efficient information processing and communication. I think desal is much less of a problem if we had a cheap, clean, and reliable source of energy to power it such as nuclear. Quality of life is strongly correlated with energy intensity.
- heimatau 6y ago
  I'm not entirely sure how but in the past two years, I've become a believer in the capitalism structure for the markets and that it's able to solve any given problem (including what you're saying). Capitalism just needs to get nudged into a direction and the solutions will be a product of markets. To elaborate my point, through government subsidies: - American has seen massive production of food (so much that we waste an insane amount every year) - Massive creation with minimal resources (via petrol innovation; even if y'all don't like it, it was an easy win for society and we're living with the second order effects) - Vehicle fuel efficient rise - Green revolution is almost profitable without government subsidies. I'm not an economist but the game theory does seem to playout in such a way, for the past century, to confirm 'we'll find a way, given a nudge in the right direction'.
  - andromeduck 6y ago
    You should check out the Decouple podcast :) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694
  - toiletfuneral 6y ago
    Capital has shown it will not fix climate change but only try and profit on the destruction. If free markets could solve healthcare or the island of plastic in the pacific, it would’ve happened. Literally nothing is getting better while corporate earnings increase, so wake me up when the market figures out how to respond to actual problems, not just automate away labor.
billfruit 6y ago
Also another thing I hear a lot of hype about is Atmospheric Water Extraction, but as of now remains longway from being practical at scale.
umvi 6y ago
xxx = misinformation
rbanffy 6y ago
We don't have a water crisis. We have a clean energy one. With abundant energy we could simply boil sea water to get drinkable water. The biggest problem of the various desalination methods are their energy cost, and this method to reprocess the brine is meant to offset it by extracting commercial value from the desalination residue. While it's great to make desalination commercially viable, we also need to remember our energy needs will not drop. I have the nagging feeling that the "commercial" part is what we'll need to solve if our species is to survive long term. In some matters, whether its commercially viable should not be a concern.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > With abundant energy we could simply boil sea water to get drinkable water. That still leaves you with either solid salt that needs to be disposed of (preferably, somewhere where it can't eventually leach out into groundwater) or highly concentrated brine which will kill anything near it.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    How much waste salt would we have compared to the amount of salt that we are going out of our way to extract or mine already? I mean, I literally pay money for sea salt at the grocery store.
    - enkid 6y ago
      How much salt do you use in a month? How much water do you drink?
      - hansvm 6y ago
        That's not really a fair comparison. There's easily 25x as much water vs salt in the ocean, and a 10x higher fraction of water usage is residential than salt usage. The break-even point you're pointing to is closer to 250:1, not 1:1.
        6y ago
inglor_cz 6y ago
xxx = Mass migration? Depends on where you live, it is already happening. And it is sometimes caused by long droughts, actually.
enkid 6y ago
Why do the x's keep getting fewer? Is the crisis a lack of x's?
- heimatau 6y ago
  > Why do the x's keep getting fewer? Is the crisis a lack of x's? Yeah. I ran out of ink.
klyrs 6y ago
I've got karma to burn, so I'll come out and address the controversy straight on. xxxx is the rarity of Charizard in Pokemon Go.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

xxx = pollution? energy? edit: or a certain political guy?

andromeduck 6y ago

My thesis in grade school thesis from ~17 years ago was that the two most important problems to by solved in my lifetime were going to be low cost, low emission and low land use energy production and efficient information processing and communication. I think desal is much less of a problem if we had a cheap, clean, and reliable source of energy to power it such as nuclear. Quality of life is strongly correlated with energy intensity.

heimatau 6y ago
I'm not entirely sure how but in the past two years, I've become a believer in the capitalism structure for the markets and that it's able to solve any given problem (including what you're saying). Capitalism just needs to get nudged into a direction and the solutions will be a product of markets. To elaborate my point, through government subsidies: - American has seen massive production of food (so much that we waste an insane amount every year) - Massive creation with minimal resources (via petrol innovation; even if y'all don't like it, it was an easy win for society and we're living with the second order effects) - Vehicle fuel efficient rise - Green revolution is almost profitable without government subsidies. I'm not an economist but the game theory does seem to playout in such a way, for the past century, to confirm 'we'll find a way, given a nudge in the right direction'.
- andromeduck 6y ago
  You should check out the Decouple podcast :) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694
- toiletfuneral 6y ago
  Capital has shown it will not fix climate change but only try and profit on the destruction. If free markets could solve healthcare or the island of plastic in the pacific, it would’ve happened. Literally nothing is getting better while corporate earnings increase, so wake me up when the market figures out how to respond to actual problems, not just automate away labor.

billfruit 6y ago

Also another thing I hear a lot of hype about is Atmospheric Water Extraction, but as of now remains longway from being practical at scale.

umvi 6y ago

xxx = misinformation

rbanffy 6y ago

We don't have a water crisis. We have a clean energy one. With abundant energy we could simply boil sea water to get drinkable water. The biggest problem of the various desalination methods are their energy cost, and this method to reprocess the brine is meant to offset it by extracting commercial value from the desalination residue. While it's great to make desalination commercially viable, we also need to remember our energy needs will not drop. I have the nagging feeling that the "commercial" part is what we'll need to solve if our species is to survive long term. In some matters, whether its commercially viable should not be a concern.

mschuster91 6y ago
> With abundant energy we could simply boil sea water to get drinkable water. That still leaves you with either solid salt that needs to be disposed of (preferably, somewhere where it can't eventually leach out into groundwater) or highly concentrated brine which will kill anything near it.
- philwelch 6y ago
  How much waste salt would we have compared to the amount of salt that we are going out of our way to extract or mine already? I mean, I literally pay money for sea salt at the grocery store.
  - enkid 6y ago
    How much salt do you use in a month? How much water do you drink?
    - hansvm 6y ago
      That's not really a fair comparison. There's easily 25x as much water vs salt in the ocean, and a 10x higher fraction of water usage is residential than salt usage. The break-even point you're pointing to is closer to 250:1, not 1:1.
      - 6y ago

inglor_cz 6y ago

xxx = Mass migration? Depends on where you live, it is already happening. And it is sometimes caused by long droughts, actually.

enkid 6y ago

Why do the x's keep getting fewer? Is the crisis a lack of x's?

heimatau 6y ago
> Why do the x's keep getting fewer? Is the crisis a lack of x's? Yeah. I ran out of ink.

klyrs 6y ago

I've got karma to burn, so I'll come out and address the controversy straight on. xxxx is the rarity of Charizard in Pokemon Go.