From: Chen Yixiong, Eric (cyixiong@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Jan 22 2002 - 23:15:27 MST
During a lecture today about negotiations, the lecturer broached a topic concerning the water problem of Singapore. Singapore has only sufficient water within itself to supply half the needs of Singapore. The second water agreement will run out in 2061, and so Singapore currently attempts to negotiate another new agreement.
This may seem strange when the sea surrounds Singapore completely, from which in theory, an unlimited supply of water can flow. Expanding our viewpoint from Singapore to the world, we note that while 75% of the planet has water covering it, only about 3% of it does not have excessive salt. However, we can only use less than one percent of it with most of the rest locked up in glaciers and polar ice.
The problem definitely does not lie with insufficient water but with relatively expensive energy. If we obtain a source of very cheap and easily available energy, then we can solve our water problems easily by using distillation, reverse osmosis or other methods to extract water from the oceans.
(Note: This does not take into account the effects of pollution. Polluted water would probably require more energy to process.)
Nations in need of water concentrate on R&D to develop cheap sources of energy. A possible energy source that many people had neglected might lie with storm lighting, where we might develop techniques to use it to convert salt water into drinking water.
Without technical expertise, I hesitate to suggest using a scaled up version of an electrosis system that can mass convert water into its component hydrogen and oxygen as a lighting strike passes through it. Later, we can burn the hydrogen to get heat energy as well as clean water.
I hope that the people working on free energy projects do really succeed. [Refer to: http://www.msnbc.com/news/692199.asp] In this way, we can kill two birds with one stone.
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