Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Welcome everyone to Forward Thinking. I am your
Speaker 1: host Extraordinaire Jonathan Strickland, and I'm joined by my co
Speaker 1: hosts extraordinaire Joe McCormick and Lauren And today we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit more about water. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So when I was a kid, I remember hearing about
Speaker 1: water scarcity awareness. Uh at my school. Every now and
Speaker 1: then somebody would come in and tell us something really scary,
Speaker 1: like the hot dogs you're eating are going to give
Speaker 1: you cancer? Or well high school did you go to?
Speaker 1: This was elementary? Part of this explains a lot about you, Joe,
Speaker 1: I was very terrified of hot dogs for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they were so delicious. Getting back to water, though,
Speaker 1: we heard there was a problem with water, but there
Speaker 1: was a scarcity issue, you know, how do you get water?
Speaker 1: And our remember getting this impression when I was a
Speaker 1: kid that the water was going somewhere, like going away,
Speaker 1: like leaving right, that we're like, we're running out of
Speaker 1: water in the same way that say we're running out
Speaker 1: of coal, right, So, so like like there's one giant
Speaker 1: water tank somewhere and that level is going down and
Speaker 1: when it's out, it's gone exactly. But of course that's
Speaker 1: not true at all. We're not running out of water
Speaker 1: in the way we're running out of coal. But water
Speaker 1: scarcity is a huge issue. So what is the deal?
Speaker 1: So we have to understand things like regionalization. We have
Speaker 1: to understand how much water is accessible at any given time,
Speaker 1: how much of that water is usable, because just because
Speaker 1: you can access it doesn't mean you can actually use it.
Speaker 1: For instance, so we mentioned in an earlier podcast that
Speaker 1: that more than of the water on Earth, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of it is saltwater. So that's not not
Speaker 1: can't drink it, you can't use it in agriculture, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would have to process it first in order to
Speaker 1: use it, and of course that requires UH energy outputs.
Speaker 1: So if it takes more energy to make fresh water
Speaker 1: from saltwater than it would to get fresh water through
Speaker 1: some other means, then it doesn't make sense to use desalination. Right.
Speaker 1: But but really the issue with water scarcity UH is multifaceted. UH,
Speaker 1: Joe you you mentioned it in the script that you
Speaker 1: wrote for Forward Thinking, the video series UH that the
Speaker 1: law of the fresh water that exists out of that
Speaker 1: less than three. A lot of that is not even
Speaker 1: accessible to us because of where it is. That's true.
Speaker 1: A lot of it's locked up in ice caps or
Speaker 1: in glaciers. A lot of it is under the ground
Speaker 1: in places we can't access, or it's in tree bark
Speaker 1: and other people's flesh. So unless you're a sparkly vampire,
Speaker 1: I mean, water is everywhere, but there's only so much
Speaker 1: that we can get to and use in a way
Speaker 1: that's safe and helpful to the things we want to
Speaker 1: use it for. And once we have used it, it's
Speaker 1: a huge cost process to get it back to a
Speaker 1: usability point again. Right right, In other words, that scarcity
Speaker 1: thing that that leaving the faucet on for too long,
Speaker 1: it's not that that water is going away, it's that
Speaker 1: it's going to a place where it's going to require
Speaker 1: processing before we could ever use it as safely again.
Speaker 1: So that means that it's an energy issue, right. You
Speaker 1: can think about it kind of like laundry. Like when
Speaker 1: you wear a shirt or a pair of underwear, you
Speaker 1: don't exhaust it. It's not that you can never use
Speaker 1: it again. You haven't seen how I wear a shirt,
Speaker 1: But you've got to run it through a washing machine
Speaker 1: and a dryer and and then fold it or hang
Speaker 1: it up before you can use it again, right right,
Speaker 1: so that it requires energy before you can use it,
Speaker 1: at least in a socially acceptable way. Some people I
Speaker 1: know go a long time between washes. I've never met
Speaker 1: anyone like that at Dragon Conhor. Yeah, there's also a
Speaker 1: local scarcity issue. The world isn't going to run out
Speaker 1: of water. I mean, there's a closed system, and we
Speaker 1: can talk about that in a minute, but they're truly
Speaker 1: local water scarcity issues. And the water isn't leaving the planet,
Speaker 1: but in one particular place it might suddenly run dry. Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might have a natural disaster that causes a certain
Speaker 1: area of the of the planet to have less access
Speaker 1: to fresh water than did before, or just climate change
Speaker 1: over time can cause that to happen, or simply over irrigation,
Speaker 1: if you just take too much water out of the
Speaker 1: aquifers around you and you drain them dry suddenly, then
Speaker 1: you've got a big local agriculture problem. Sure yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is again we're not saying that the water
Speaker 1: is leaving. It's still on Earth. It's just no longer
Speaker 1: accessible in that particular area. And uh, and you were saying,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a closed system. That's a good point.
Speaker 1: It's it's the water isn't leaving Earth, at least not
Speaker 1: in any great quantities. Oh wait, so if it's a
Speaker 1: closed system, how did it get here in the first place. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out there's a giant faucet on the side
Speaker 1: of Mount Everest. Someone. No, that's totally a lie. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: that's actually a good question, and we don't know for
Speaker 1: sure the answer. But I was reading something interesting that
Speaker 1: apparently now a lot of scientists think that much of
Speaker 1: Earth's water came from space. So aliens, No, not aliens
Speaker 1: with their big hoses. No, they're saying from asteroid impacts. Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: So asteroids, which I would assume have some asteroids have
Speaker 1: ice on them, collide with the Earth, and that ice
Speaker 1: ends up forming a lot of the water that's here
Speaker 1: on the planet. Right in in two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: we surveyed the asteroid themUS one of my favorites. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of the best, and it was discovered to
Speaker 1: have a layer of frost on the outside. I see water,
Speaker 1: And so that confirmed that it also was found to
Speaker 1: have organic compounds, like carbon based compounds that some people
Speaker 1: believe could have given the building blocks that seated life
Speaker 1: on Earth. And and so we don't know that. Of course,
Speaker 1: that's just hostibility, right, Um, it's a hypothesis, okay. But
Speaker 1: so that this this was all before life started on Earth.
Speaker 1: This was billions, This was about about four billion years ago,
Speaker 1: they think. So that water, however it got to Earth,
Speaker 1: whether it was through an asteroid impact or some other means.
Speaker 1: And again we don't know for sure, but it's it's
Speaker 1: one of the hypotheses that's that that scientists are are
Speaker 1: thinking about. Uh, that water has been here on the
Speaker 1: planet since then, and that water has not gone anywhere,
Speaker 1: has gone through different phases. But the water that we
Speaker 1: have now is the same water that was here on
Speaker 1: the planet four billion years ago. It just keeps getting
Speaker 1: recycled through through the clouds and through rain and through rivers, etcetera.
Speaker 1: People and people and velociraptors. That's right, folks. That healthy
Speaker 1: glass of water that you're drinking so that you can
Speaker 1: get up to the eight glasses per day or however
Speaker 1: many it's supposed to be at this point, that very well,
Speaker 1: may have at some point passed through the system of
Speaker 1: a dinosaur almost certainly did. Yeah, yeah, at least some
Speaker 1: molecules in there. You can tell there's a slightly gamy taste. No, No,
Speaker 1: we're all supposed to. Yeah, you guys have this obsession
Speaker 1: with giant sharks. They're giant sharks. Okay, fair enough, But
Speaker 1: we're all supposed to drink about about at least half
Speaker 1: a gallon of water a day, all right, So half
Speaker 1: a gallon of water a day. Keeping in mind that
Speaker 1: water has been here on earth for billions of years. Then,
Speaker 1: first of all, when you really sit there and think
Speaker 1: about that, that's just amazing. I mean, that's just kind
Speaker 1: of cool to me. The idea that there's that there's
Speaker 1: stuff that we encounter every day that has been here
Speaker 1: for billions of years, that we have our lives depend
Speaker 1: upon this, and it's easy to you know, just kind
Speaker 1: of take it for granted. But this water, if if
Speaker 1: only it really could hold significance, like if the stuff
Speaker 1: it came into contact actually stayed with Yeah, I personally
Speaker 1: from the yeah now and I signed me up, I
Speaker 1: would drink way way, sir, to my daily allotment of
Speaker 1: water instead of say, coffee, if it was imbued with
Speaker 1: megalodon power. Yeah, I honestly do not believe any of
Speaker 1: that is at all possible, which really, really you, I
Speaker 1: really do you want to go down this road, because
Speaker 1: we can talk about about tight trading things down over
Speaker 1: and over and over again until there's no discernible chemical left.
Speaker 1: But I really don't want to go into that, not
Speaker 1: not even in the incredible future, not even in the
Speaker 1: incredible But what is the future of water? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty basic you know. Well, well, one of
Speaker 1: the the futures of water is the idea that if
Speaker 1: we ever decide to get off this rock, like if
Speaker 1: we ever decide to actually try and have either inter
Speaker 1: interplanetary or interstellar travel, then we have to find ways
Speaker 1: of using water in a very very efficient manner and
Speaker 1: being able to recycle water incredibly efficiently, particularly for a
Speaker 1: very long journey, because you're not getting more water once
Speaker 1: you get out there unless you're able to find a
Speaker 1: source like another asteroid or even maybe a planet that
Speaker 1: actually has its own water supplies. So the future of
Speaker 1: water might involve mining asteroids water. That's not so far fetched. Actually, um, well,
Speaker 1: there's already a company called Planetary Resources that has announced
Speaker 1: plans to send up interceptors and mine precious metals and
Speaker 1: water from asteroids, which makes sense. Again, if you want
Speaker 1: to talk about any sort of colony on another planet
Speaker 1: or on a moon, then you know, we we can't
Speaker 1: just pack up water from Earth and send it out
Speaker 1: for one thing so expensive, it's really expensive. It's it's
Speaker 1: ten ten tho dollars a pound to put things in
Speaker 1: space and half a gallon a day waterways what like
Speaker 1: eight point three pounds of gallons. It's it's pretty expensive
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, that's ten thou pounds of pint. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely more expensive dollars a point, even even more
Speaker 1: expensive than going out and buying a bottled water. Fancy
Speaker 1: kind don't buy bottled water, um, But yeah, mean it's
Speaker 1: an issue where you also don't want to take the
Speaker 1: drinkable water on Earth and sacrifice it so that you
Speaker 1: can build a colony somewhere else. So mining asteroids is
Speaker 1: definitely one of those things that we should look into. Well.
Speaker 1: Water in space is essentially going to be crucial. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're talking about water scarcity issues on planet Earth, the
Speaker 1: water planet, you know, the fact that for intent people
Speaker 1: on the water planet are affected by water scarcity issues.
Speaker 1: Think how big of a deal this is going to
Speaker 1: become once you're you're away from the water in the
Speaker 1: vacuum of space, where ten out of ten people will
Speaker 1: be affected by water scarcity exactly, Well by design, I
Speaker 1: mean it's you think about the the International Space Station.
Speaker 1: What do they do about water? Well, I mean obviously
Speaker 1: that they accept some really expensive water shipments from Earth,
Speaker 1: but they've got to take really good care of the
Speaker 1: water they have. They have extremely advanced recycling systems that
Speaker 1: keep the water. They can't keep it all, They're always
Speaker 1: gonna lose small amounts of it over time and they
Speaker 1: have to get it replenished. But they do their absolute
Speaker 1: technological best to retain whatever water they can. And what
Speaker 1: that means is just like we come back from a
Speaker 1: run and get a tall glass of megalodon blood. They
Speaker 1: sit up there on the International Space Station drinking their
Speaker 1: urine the vapor from their breath. Yes, now, granted all
Speaker 1: of the stuff has been processed. You're not just drinking
Speaker 1: their urine a little bit better than water world, right, right,
Speaker 1: but it is going through a recycling process. But yes,
Speaker 1: there they have to recapture the water that they are expending,
Speaker 1: either through breathing or urination or whatever. And and then uh,
Speaker 1: you know or even you know, sweat, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: It's all stuff that has to be captured and recycled
Speaker 1: in a way to make it usable. Again, technology like
Speaker 1: this essentially has to be really good if you're seriously
Speaker 1: thinking about long term space tress. And uh and like
Speaker 1: you mentioned, yeah, of course, mining water from asteroids is
Speaker 1: going to be a big deal. And that's actually more important,
Speaker 1: um than just getting the drinking water. The water we
Speaker 1: need for hydration and stuff like that. If we're really expanding,
Speaker 1: we need water for all kinds of things other than
Speaker 1: just drinking. Right, you can, um, if you can extract
Speaker 1: water from an asteroid, you could potentially manufacture rocket fuel
Speaker 1: in space. That's pretty cool because it's hydrogen and oxygen.
Speaker 1: You can make your liquid hydrogen propulsion. Yep. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: uh and also I mean clearly you would need water
Speaker 1: for things if you ever, if we ever developed technology
Speaker 1: advanced enough to do something like terraforming of water, would
Speaker 1: would be a key critical Yeah. Yeah, yeah, So obviously
Speaker 1: they're just going to be uh, you know, space space
Speaker 1: may very well be where where the water from Earth
Speaker 1: came from originally, like outside of the actual planet's creation space,
Speaker 1: may very well be where we look to to get
Speaker 1: water in the future, especially for when we're traveling out
Speaker 1: there and saying hello to distant neighbors. Not that I've
Speaker 1: received any phone calls or anything, No, they communicate telepathically.
Speaker 1: Well anyway, it's really a neat thing to think about.
Speaker 1: And and yeah, I I encourage you all to sit back, relax,
Speaker 1: enjoy a tall glass of Megala don juice, uh, like
Speaker 1: like my co hosts are have in front of them,
Speaker 1: and uh. And you know, if you have any particular
Speaker 1: topics about the future that you find really exciting, something
Speaker 1: that you think we should address, I highly recommend you
Speaker 1: let us know. We have the Forward Thinking website up
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Speaker 1: this to be a conversation. So guys, let us know
Speaker 1: what you're excited about and what you want to know
Speaker 1: more about. What what is it about the future that
Speaker 1: really has you uh energetic and ready to go? And
Speaker 1: it's just you've got to know more about it, because
Speaker 1: that's the kind of stuff that excites us. So let
Speaker 1: us know and we will taunto you again release him.
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