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Desalination is the process of removing salt and other minerals from seawater, making it suitable for human consumption and agricultural use. With the world's population growing and freshwater sources becoming increasingly scarce, desalination has become an important solution to provide fresh water to dry areas of the world. Desalination plants use various methods, including reverse osmosis and distillation, to extract salt and minerals from seawater. The process requires a significant amount of energy, but with advancements in technology, the cost of desalination has decreased over the years. Desalination can provide a reliable source of fresh water in areas where traditional freshwater sources are limited or unreliable. In many coastal regions, seawater is readily available, making desalination a practical solution to address water scarcity. However, desalination has some challenges, including the high cost of construction and maintenance of desalination plants, the environmental impact of discharging brine into the ocean, and the potential for negative impacts on marine life. Nevertheless, with proper planning and management, desalination can provide a sustainable source of fresh water to dry areas of the world, helping to ensure access to clean water for generations to come.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/09/28/desalination-saltwater-drought-water-crisis/

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Waves crash near the Carlsbad Desalination plant in Carlsbad, Calif. The plant, opened more than six years ago, transforms water from the Pacific Ocean into drinking water. (Sandy Huffaker/Corbis/Getty Images)

Anybody with a 5-year-old's knowledge of geography might come up against this conundrum: There's a water shortage in the Western United States. Right next door, there's the Pacific Ocean. Why can't we take some of that big, blue body of water and move it into the increasingly parched territory that borders it?
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The short answer, of course, is that there's salt in the ocean, which isn't good for people, plants and many other living creatures. But as shortages mount, there's increasing interest in the complicated process of desalination, or pulling out salt on a massive scale so that water can be put to use by the thirsty populations who live nearby.

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Wells are drying up in California. The Colorado River is thinning to a dribble. The levels of Lake Mead and Lake Powell - the two biggest reservoirs in the United States - are at record lows.

There is precedent for large-scale desalination: Persian Gulf countries such as Qatar have precious little drinking water, and they have invested in the costly technology needed to filter the salt out of saltwater and pass the cleaned-up liquid to their entire society.

"Desalination can be a sustainable way to replenish our water cycle," wrote the authors of a European Commission-backed study last year that argued for wider use of desalination around the world, in partnership with efforts to minimize its environmental impact.

But the process is energy-intensive, costly and complicated to manage in an Earth-friendly way. Here's what you need to know.

So what is desalinated water, anyway?

Desalination is the process of getting salt out of saltwater so that it's drinkable and usable on land. There are two main techniques: You can boil the water, then catch the steam, leaving behind the salt. Or you can blast the water through filters that catch the salt but let the liquid through. The latter is the more modern process, but both methods use a lot of energy.

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And is desalinated water safe to drink?

Generally, yes. Desalinated water, provided that it's clean, is perfectly fine to drink, and a lot of it is already being consumed both in the United States and abroad. San Diego inaugurated a vast new desalination plant about six years ago and is on the verge of approving another. Other plants dot the West Coast. Desalination has been in use in energy-rich, freshwater-poor parts of the world for decades - about half of global production is concentrated in the Middle East and North Africa. A United Nations-sponsored study from 2018 estimated that the world produces about 25 billion gallons of desalinated water every day - enough to fill the taps of 25 New York Cities.

But cleaning up the water isn't challenge-free. Salt isn't the only thing that hangs out in seawater: There's also often a lot of boron, which isn't good for crops and in large concentrations might be unhealthy for humans. And it isn't always easy to clean saltwater. Other contaminants can also get in.

" There is an urgent need to make desalination technologies more affordable and extend them to low-income and lower-middle-income countries," Vladimir Smakhtin, director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, wrote after he co-wrote the U.N. study on desalination. "At the same time, though, we have to address potentially severe downsides of desalination - the harm of brine and chemical pollution to the marine environment and human health."

Why do people get excited about desalination?

At its best, desalination is an attractive technology: It takes a relatively abundant but unusable resource, seawater, and turns it into something useful for freshwater-starved regions. And as time passes, it's becoming more efficient, less costly and more possible to fuel with renewable energy, easing the environmental impact. Eventually, backers hope, extracting the minerals from the high-salt leftovers will become economically viable, even though it's usually not right now.

At best, said the authors of the European Commission study, desalination can be "a far-reaching, climate change mitigating, water security solution."

Is desalination bad for the environment?

Opponents of desalination have long said that the technique isn't a panacea because it hurts the environment even as it cleans up water for human consumption. There are a few big challenges. Pulling saltwater into desalination plants can hurt fish and other marine life if it isn't done carefully. Then there's the energy needed to clean up the water, and the brackish, salty waste that is left after the clean water is filtered out.

Proponents of desalination "think it's table salt. They think the ocean can sustain the damage, but over 50 years, the ocean cannot sustain the damage, and neither can the atmosphere," said Susan Jordan, the executive director of the California Coastal Protection Network and a longtime critic of big desalination projects in her state.

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There's no question that desalination is energy-intensive. And if that energy comes from dirty sources, desalination can lead to a paradoxical outcome: It can unleash greenhouse gases, worsening global warming, increasing droughts and therefore the need for more desalination.

The most modern desalination plants use significantly less energy than their predecessors. And proponents are looking for ways to use renewable energy to power the process.

A separate challenge is brine, the hyper-concentrated, salty fluid that is flushed away from the freshwater. If it is simply pumped straight back into the sea, the dense substance sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor and suffocates marine life. There are techniques to spread it over greater territory in the sea, diluting its impact.

"We call it the blanket of death because it settles on the floor, and it kills everything," Jordan said.

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Can desalination solve the water crisis?

Alone, no. But it might help as part of a broader range of efforts to cut water use and increase water supplies. Its technologies are growing more energy-efficient, and there are new ways to reduce the environmental harm of the salty wastewater. And it could be used in especially parched parts of the world where water is desperately needed and where there are few alternatives.

"The benefits of desalination go beyond the single-use value of the water produced," the authors of the European Commission study argued last year, advocating for wider use of desalination in more-vulnerable and poorer regions of the globe. The technology can provide "plentiful water for human use, with all the benefits that entails, while helping preserve and restore ecosystems."

But in the United States, even proponents of the technology say desalination is likely to supply only a sliver of the American West's water needs in the coming years, leaving some of the biggest water users - notably the agriculture industry - to look for water elsewhere.

Los Angeles recently unveiled a $3.4 billion proposal to recycle and reuse its wastewater, for example, instead of treating the waste and pumping it into the ocean, as is currently done. Advocates say the change would significantly ease the pressure on the city's water sources farther north in California and the Colorado River - all without the need to lean more heavily on desalination.

"Conservation, recycling, all of those things are important first," Jordan said. "And if you can't solve your water supply problem, then that's when we say, 'Do desal, but do it right.'"

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Desalination can make saltwater drinkable - but it won't solve the U.S. water crisis

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The water in the ocean is a tempting resource. Removing salt comes with environmental and economic costs, though.

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The topic I chose was "affordable and clean energy". I chose it because I think its a topic with great relevance in our future because of the fact that our current fuels are limited and at some point they will come to an end. This specific topic will be greatly impacted by climate change because we need to produce clean energy in order to reduce the advance of the climate change, and prevent more damage to our planet

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The 4 greatest threats to the survival of humanity

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The mini-lecture caught my attention with its strong images of threats to our existence. I find it very impressive how humanity has reached the point where there are so many possible threats to our civilization.

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My name is Fabian del Castillo, I am from Cuba, and I grew up in Havana. My goal is to complete my bachelor's degree in psychology and then obtain a master's degree and a doctorate, for which I am completing my associate degree at Miami Dade College, specifically at Padron Campus. My main hobbies are video games, as I consider them to be a very varied and interesting form of entertainment, and partying with my friends, who are the most important thing for me along with my family. For me, success is achieving the goals that you set for yourself, no matter if they are simple or very big. I consider that one of my strengths is my mental strength, which has helped me through different difficult stages in my life, and one of my weaknesses is that I am inconsistent with some things. In the future I see myself achieving my goals and reducing my weaknesses.

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The first thing that caught my attention very early in the video were the images, which for me were really striking, especially considering what they represent for the communities shown in the video. The way in which something that at first glance seems simple as elevation above sea level can affect a community in so many different ways was really amazing to me. The statistics and data shown in the video also seemed to me quite shocking and worrying, they show a very worrying reality of which we should be aware of it. On the other hand, I consider that the population movement of people with better economy towards places with certain territorial advantages and the consequences of this movement is something completely normal in our society and it is something inevitable, and in my opinion in the long term something positive for the communities that are the target of this.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX8rv_natkw

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Which sunscreen should you choose? - Mary Poffenroth

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From "The story of Plastic" I chose the video called "Where Your Recycled Plastic Ends Up". The first thing that caught my attention in the video was the images of the gigantic accumulations of plastic in places where it shouldn't be, like small towns or next to forests. The video talks about how all the plastic was sent to China because this country controlled the recycling plants until they stopped receiving it. After all, it did not accept dealing with plastic from other countries but even with this America and Europe kept sending plastic to other regions of Asia, causing several problems. It is worrying the global problem today concerning recycling and as it is evident that the situation is out of our hands, we are not able to control the amount of garbage we generate and those who end up paying the price are the poorest and most isolated places.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHztd6k5ZXY

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A guide to the energy of the Earth - Joshua M. Sneideman

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This topic deals with the different alternatives for clean and renewable energies that are viable for our society representing a step backwards for our current state. It describes the progress of clean energy over the years and how its consumption has increased. "Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all" is the way the article defines itself.
https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal7

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I chose the video called "Why the US isn't ready for clean energy". In this kind of videos, the first thing that always catches my attention is all the information they present and how visual it is for the viewer. I also found it very interesting to see how difficult it can be to create all the necessary infrastructure to generate clean energy.

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Can 100% renewable energy power the world? - Federico Rosei and Renzo Rosei

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(project part 2) What do we need to have affordable and clean energy?

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(project part 2) What do we need to have affordable and clean energy?

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In this topic, we will explore the demand for electricity in recent years and how it has increased, the methods that are used to supply the demand, and what is needed to make these methods clean energy. We will also explore the advantages and disadvantages of the different energy sources used today and which of these are the cleanest and most practical. Myths about nuclear energy will be debunked. We will also delve into the process needed to replace fossil fuels as the main source of energy and instead use more renewable and cleaner methods that are accessible to everyone.

https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/energy/

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How much land does it take to power the world?

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Acording to U.S Energy information Administration: "Florida has no significant wind resources, onshore or offshore, and the state has no utility-scale wind-powered generating capacity". this is the main reason why there are almost no wind energy fields in florida.

https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=FL#:~:text=Florida%20has%20no%20significant%20wind,scale%20wind%2Dpowered%20generating%20capacity.

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How much land does it take to power the world?

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How much land does it take to power the world?

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Why are fossil fuels used?
Fossil fuels are used because of their high efficiency compared to other energy sources; they can generate more energy in less space. (2000 watts per square meter) They are certainly cheaper than nuclear, or wind energy and unlike the other alternatives their infrastructure has been in place for several years, so they do not entail new costs.

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The smallest solution to one of our biggest problems

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The smallest solution to one of our biggest problems

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What caught my attention in the video was the animation, how it manages to explain in a very simple way how something as common as plastic can become such a big environmental problem. Another thing that caught my attention was the amount of research and their proposals for solutions to this problem which seem to me quite hopeful.