Desalination (and political suicide?)
Another short one. I tried to abandon poli-sci over fifty years ago, but here I am… old and staring down toward the end of the tunnel, and sucked back into the swamp (thanks DD).
I saw an interesting article on the PBS website with the catchy title “What you need to know about desalination, a growing source of drinking water as scarcity deepens” that prompted me to follow-up on an earlier post, and try to link it to our rapidly evolving current events.
With my seriously limited and distracted adolescent mind — thanks Susie, but you have always been worth it — I originally assumed that early efforts to extract fresh, potable fluids from the sea were merely a matter of evaporating the salt water and then condensing it back into the liquid phase… and hopefully catching the drops into a glass to drink. And that obvious effort is likely what the primitive efforts entailed.
(Indeed, the evaporation/condensation steps in the water cycle are how the earth keeps its water clean. Are you worried about fresh water for your kids? DO NOT spend any extra time stressing about how to clean the water — it cleans itself every time it changes phase. Wanna give meaningful help? Focus on cleaning the atmosphere the rain falls through and the land it falls upon! Keep your eyes on the main target.)
Anyway, I eventually grew up and my thoughts evolved, and I finally realized that there are better ways to accomplish this most critical of cleanings in a much more efficient way, and at a scale sufficient to water the plants and peoples that are desperate for the fluids.
From the PBS article:
Most modern desalination plants rely on a process known as reverse osmosis. Seawater is forced at high pressure through a semi-permeable membrane that allows water molecules to pass through while blocking most salts and other impurities. The result is freshwater on one side and a highly concentrated salt solution, known as brine, on the other.
(An inconvenient environmental question at this point: What the hell happens to the brine? Al Gore may appreciate the query, but his approval doesn’t really get us to an answer, does it? My gut-level assumption? Most (all?) of it is pumped into the ground. “Out of sight, out of mind” is the time-honored aphorism. Yep, it may suck, but what are we gonna do? No matter where you put it, the earth is where it’s gonna end up anyway.)
Well shit (Trump dropped the no-longer taboo F-Bomb this morning, so I guess I’m free to say whatever I want) — no matter where it’s put, this pretty much takes care of the first half of the title of this rant. But what about the “political suicide” parenthetical? Sorry about this, but as I mentioned in an earlier post about camels and straws and such, I’ve finally been pushed across my “red line” and do not feel the need (nor the desire) to hide my light under a bushel any longer. If this gives you trouble, stop reading now.
Still here? Good!
Our president came out a couple of days ago and said that if Iran didn’t cave into his (not America’s!) demands, he was going to “bomb them back to the Stone Age, where they belong.” Still not my version of Christianity, but so it goes.
He went on and on as only T-47 (and T-45 and “The Donald” before that) can do, but buried in his diatribe were threats to Iran’s civilian infrastructure; including bridges, power plants and — you guessed it — the critical desalination plants many in the region rely upon to stay alive.
Power plants, desalination stations, oil wells, roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
They are the foundations of civilian life in Iran, and their destruction by American and Israeli forces would cause widespread suffering among the country’s 93 million people — and in most cases would be considered a war crime under international law.
Yet President Trump has repeatedly threatened to do exactly that, with the aim of sending Iran “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,” as he put it in a speech on Wednesday.
(I get so confused — I must be a dummy. A couple weeks ago he was justifying attacks on Iran’s leadership to support the country’s civilian population, but is now threatening to destroy their infrastructure. If you can follow the logic here you are one hell of a lot smarter than I am!)
On Easter weekend, he wrote online that “all Hell will reign down” on the Iranians unless they met a deadline of Monday to make concessions or open up the Strait of Hormuz to ship traffic, adding, “Glory be to GOD!” (Please note that he has since Taco’s out and put it off until Tuesday. Also, it should have been “rain” as opposed to “reign,” but grammar and spelling have never been important to his truths. Sorry, but I’ve read (and scored) way too many essays over the past fifty years to miss this one.)
But no matter what his struggles with English diction may be, any premeditated (and publicized) attack on civilians — most especially their water supplies — has for half a century been considered a “war crime.”
Does he even care? The optimist in me would like to think he at least marginally recognizes his personal risk here: his “truths” of the past day or so have dropped the specific water threats. But the damage may have already been done in the long term of history — nothing that gets online can ever be completely erased. The sentiment may not bother him in the heat of the moment, but the damage to his legacy could be terminal depending on oh-so-many other machinations being attempted as we speak.
Personally, and speaking only for myself, I no longer give much concern to his legacy…
Happy Easter!
