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Living with a waning drinking supply has long been a fact of life for many countries. In the Western world, it’s a new, yet serious problem.
I’ve been really harping on our smoky air lately. Now I think I’ll go back to water—for the simple reason that one out of five people on this planet don’t have one drop of clean drinking water. We of the Western World have taken our water for granted, until recently that is. But there’s nothing like watching a bunch of water-grabbing foreigners make deals with small town officials to wake us up a little.
Speaking of water, I got a very timely email from my friend Larry today: “Why Can’t We Manufacture Water?”. In this article, Joshua Clark poses some interesting questions: Water is mostly there for the taking, just hanging out in fluffy accumulations of water vapor (clouds) up in the skies. Why can’t we just harvest our clouds instead of waiting for it to rain? Or better yet, in this day of high tech particle smashing, why can’t we ram two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom together to make some water?
Three reasons: It’s dangerous to fool with Mother Nature; it requires expensive outputs of energy; and, oh yea, did I mention it’s dangerous? To drive these points home, all we have to remember is the Hindenburg Disaster of 1937. No one actually knows the actual cause of this explosion. Most theories are grounded in the extreme volatility of Hydrogen. Life wouldn’t be complete without another viewpoint on the subject, however.
That’s why I’m offering the opinion of hydrogen-lover Greg Vinson—a man who roasts his marshmallows with Hydrogen, a man who is dedicated to debunking the myth of this misplaced element, a man who says Hydrogen is Magic !!! The truth is, Vinson is but one of the many who believes that our most common element (Hydrogen) is the clean replacement answer to fossil fuels. More on this subject at a later date. Right now I’m pursuing the idea of water mining for the masses.
With this in mind, let’s get back to the Hindenburg and Hydrogen. No one argues the fact that one of the side-effects of this explosion was pure, sweet “warm rain” falling down on shocked bystanders. In other words, the ill-fated blimp carried over seven million cubic feet of hydrogen and wound up as half a million liters of water, give or take a couple hundred. This doesn’t sound like much water for my money, though; which brings me to an obvious conclusion: The creation of enough water to make a difference would require a complex, possibly dangerous, large-scale explosion of Hydrogen, much like the Big Bang.
Wait a minute, now. Did I say dangerous again? Isn’t that exactly what the internal combustion engine is all about, folks? Barely controlled, dangerous repeated explosions of gasoline to make your car, truck, motor boat, lawn mower, chain saw, etcetera have a little git up and go? Oh well, no one can deny that yesterday’s ridiculous sounding ideas are today’s widely accepted practices. Perhaps when water becomes scarcer, and multi-national corporations own most of the sources, exploding Hydrogen to make clean water will be just old-hat.
Until that day, what about good old fashioned cloud-seeding? China’s sure having a field day making it rain over their arid crop lands. The fact is, Beijing Weather Controllers plan to blast storm clouds with silver iodides–the idea being to milk them of all their moisture before Olympic Opening Day; that way there will be a perfect blue sky day on 8/8/08, eight being the auspicious number for prosperity in Chinese Numerology.
China had better be careful, though. A ‘hand of god” deluge would not make for an auspicious Olympic memory. The Chinese have more success at all forms of control, but I’m sure they are aware of the British Air Force’s horrendous attempt gone awry. During a secret cloud seeding experiment of 1952, RAF pilots dropped payloads of dry ice, salt and silver iodide into the clouds. The side-effect was a deluge of 90 million tons of water coursing through the village of Lynmouth in just one day. Uprooted trees formed dams; two rivers combined; boulders destroyed buildings and Brits were carried out to sea at the speed of 40 mph. This peculiar man-made disaster was dubbed ‘the hand of God” until 2001, when the BBC uncovered first person accounts from RAF pilots who implemented “Operation Cumulus”. Oh well. No use crying over spilt milk/ water/ hydrogen.. etc..
How about safer methods of making water from thin air?
Happy to say, people are on it, folks! Max Whisson uses the power of the wind to collect water—as much as 2600 gallons per day, the only problem being enough capital to back his project and the need for refrigerant coolant. Jonathan Wright and David Richards have similar ideas, but their windmill uses wind power exclusively.
As kooky as all these methods sound, we still have to do something. There’s not enough clean water to go around and water, like oil, will not last forever. There’s no water hailing from outer space, at least not that I’ve heard of.
Speaking of space. I’m supposed to be using this space to tell you more about SendOutCards: how easy it is, how fun it is, how inexpensive etc. But I’ll just say this––people sure are happy when they get one of my personal sendoutcards, but they are even happier making their own.
Laura, signing off.
p.s. want to see our sunset?