By Miriam Fauzia : yahoo – excerpt
Freshwater is essential to all life on Earth, but water shortages brought on by climate change, pollution, and increased human demand make that resource harder and harder to come by. Water scarcity impacts over two billion people around the world. According to UNICEF, that number could balloon to half of the world’s population by 2025. Nearly half of the United States’ 204 freshwater basins are projected to have monthly shortages by 2071, according to one 2019 study.
Of course, there is one insanely vast source of water that covers 70 percent of the planet: the ocean. Through a filtration process called desalination, unusable seawater is converted into freshwater. It’s a method that has been employed mainly in the Middle East, but also increasingly in water-stressed parts of the U.S., particularly California.
How to Weaponize Our Dying Oceans Against Climate Change
One major problem desalination systems face is the fouling of equipment caused by salt buildup, which requires a device’s parts to be cleaned regularly or replaced entirely if damaged. In pursuit of a solution, researchers at MIT and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China have developed a solar-powered desalination device that avoids salt buildup and could provide a family with continuous drinking water for only $4…(more)
SF CEQA 