#44 - Oceans Rising & No Water to Drink?
I keep hearing over and over again two very important issues that everyone needs to be concerned about, but no one seems to be doing anything about either of them.
Democraps keep saying how they are so concerned about the rising ocean levels and how within a few decades we are going to loose entire cities along our coasts due to icepack melt at the poles.
Here in Hawaii we are losing shoreline at an extremely rapid rate. Both Waikiki Beach on Oahu's South Shore and Sunset Beach on Oahu's North Shore are all but non-existent now as the erosion continues to sweep the sand from the beaches out to sea.
Waikiki, along with the main international airport in Honolulu was built at sea-level and a couple of the airport's runways were built on man-made reefs out in the ocean, all of which will be reclaimed by the ocean if it continues to rise.
While all of this is going on we also hear of record droughts hitting other areas of the country and around the world wiping out crops and leaving people with only bottled water to drink.
What gets me is that both of these problems can be resolved with the same solution and it has been sitting right under our noses for years but no one is taking the initiative to utilize it.
If coastal areas would install desalinization plants they would be able to remove salt from the ocean's saltwater and have clean fresh potable drinking water. Desalinization is nothing new, the technology has been around for decades yet we are still not putting it to use.
Here is a simple animated video that describes how one form of desalinization works. There are several variations available.
Coastal areas like California, Texas, and Hawaii have access to a never-ending water supply yet they deal with droughts over and over again because they simply refuse to tap into that abundant resource.
By removing saltwater from the ocean to use for drinking water we could keep up with rising ocean waters keeping coastal flooding at bay, and we would never have to worry about droughts again. Fresh drinking water could be piped to areas far away from the coast the same way that oil is piped across the country now.
With the water being moved inside pipes we wouldn't have to be as concerned about evaporation as if it were moved in canals above ground like California did to move water from the mountains in Northern California to the drier areas in the South.
There is also a third benefit option that we could utilize from ocean desalinization plants, Sea Salt. The animated video above shows how the sea salt is redeposited back into the ocean along with 60% of the seawater that it removed. This does not have to be the case, some of that salt can also be extracted from the salt water to be used for other purposes. Sea Salt is a very useful mineral, and is much healthier in food than iodized salt. It can also be used in Northern states through the winter to melt ice and snow from the roads.
The solution to all of these problems is already available, our government just needs to invest in building the desalinization infrastructure to make it a reality. But instead, here in Hawaii we would rather spend 12-Billion dollars on an elevated rail system and then say they have no money to build a desalinization plant.
These politicians need to get their heads out of their asses and think about what is more important.
As one of my emergency disaster options I have a portable desalinization still that turns seawater into freshwater for my family. Portable systems use either reverse osmosis similar to the system shown above, or a distilling process where the water is heated until it turns to steam and the steam is collected and cooled into fresh drinking water.
With a portable desalinization system, I will never have to worry about not having fresh clean water for my family to use. This freshwater can now be used for any purpose after a disaster then you no longer have access to a city freshwater supply like watering gardens, cleaning clothes, bathing, etc. If I am going to use it for drinking water I will further filter it through my Berkey water filter system just as I filter the city water now before consuming it.
My home is 300 feet above sea-level, so if our government and other countries do not invest in desalinization plants and the oceans continue to rise, at least I will not have to travel as far to reach the ocean to get my drinking water once it overtakes our coastlines.
Previous Episode:
Coming Episodes:
In upcoming episodes we will also take a look at "Water Purification & Sanitization" as well as "Vacuum Sealed vs. Mylar Bagged Food Storage". We will also take a look at the shelf-life of "Home Canned Foods" and the viability of using them in our emergency supplies. We will also have future episodes on Emergency Communications or EmComms.
Also we will have an episode on the need for a Wilderness First Aid training even if you live in a city. We will also take a look at the need for "Sanitation After A Disaster".
