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Russian Desalination Plant

Have you ever heard the term “Desalination” before? This is becoming a hot topic (pun intended) for populations and their growing drinking water needs. In a nutshell, Desalination means taking the salt and unwanted minerals and materials out of either sea water or other water. This process requires heavy machinery and infrastructure as well as a great deal of energy. But making drinkable or “potable” water is extremely important because many rivers and wells for getting fresh water have either been exhausted or have become polluted. Desalination is a also a way for countries that have access to ocean water but are basically deserts to get drinking water. There are several methods for desalination but the basic process is that water is heated up and the steam is collected. The collected steam condenses and then becomes drinking water. The primary way that desalination occurs today is a method called Multi-Stage Flash Distillation CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE. Desalination is often combined with power generation. This means that the excess energy produced by a power plant would be used to give energy to a nearby desalination plant. This process is called Cogeneration.

Desalination is a technology that needs to be worked on and advanced if we are going to satisfy growing water consumption needs in California and Worldwide. I predict that water usage and disputes over water rights will become a major point of contention in regions like eastern Asia and Asia Minor. Wars in the near future probably won’t be fought over oil or land rights, but rather for water. Desalination technology could be used to diffuse tensions and quench the thirst of growing countries, like China. The reason why more focus needs to be put on desalination is because the main byproduct of desalination, SALT, is extremely toxic if not dealt with properly. Changing the salt content of regions of the ocean can cause fish to die. So more effort needs to be put into perfecting desalination technology if we want it to be a solution for our water needs.

Desalination technology can be extremely profitable. Right now California is working on a large desalination plant near San Diego. The drinkable water produced by this plant will be able to be sold to other communities. Since water resources are going to become more scarce as populations grow, especially in California, then it would make sense that the price of water will rise. So investing in desalination plants may be a good idea. I definitely would rather live in a community that was able to generate its water supply, rather than relying on some other community for my water.

California Unemployment Rate SOURCE: California Employment Development Department

California Unemployment as of April 2010, is a whopping 12.6%! That is a huge number. If you think about it, one in every ten people who are California Residents are out of a job. From the looks of the graph to the left, it doesn’t look like this trend is going down anytime soon either. What are some of the causes for this? Well, one major cause that I see everyday when I walk down the street or visit shopping malls would be how stores are constantly closing. I’ve noticed a great deal of stores being closed in malls like Irvine Spectrum and an even higher amount of closings at The Block in Orange. When stores close, people loose their jobs. But store closings are often related to business and retailers unable to pay for their leases or monthly rent. When stores don’t make enough money for their business to be profitable they are either forced to relocate to less expensive locations, or close all together. Now, some business are designed on bad business models and are doomed to failure, but others are good businesses that are hit by the hard economic times. It doesn’t take too much analysis to realize that if people are loosing their jobs, then they will be less likely to purchase things that aren’t completely necessary or on the top of their “wants” list. This drop in spending in turn causes stores to get less foot traffic and some eventually close, which in turn means employees of those stores loose their jobs. When you take into account that our National Debt is growing every day, and that our money is loosing purchasing power due to inflation, the situation for California’s economy seems pretty grim.

So where is California’s Unemployment situation heading? My guess is that we are moving toward an obviously stratified society. What I mean by this is that California will have different levels of wealth and jobs that will become so clearly differentiable by earning potential, that it will almost seem like California will have some sort of Caste system. Has anybody else besides me noticed how many people with Masters Degrees work retail or at coffee shops like Starbucks? Something is happening to our economy. And it is going to get even worse. People will have to struggle to even get entry level jobs because of competition. And it seems that computer and robotic automation of jobs is just sucking up even more employment. Only the jobs that are too complex for computers and robots to do are available for people.

I predict that soon, not having a job will become very normal. People will just move in with family members or quadruple up in rooms and live as long as they can via income from the state. We are already seeing people of all ages go back to school. I took a math class a few months ago at OCC and the class was PACKED with people. Some people think that the economy is going to bounce back and that housing prices will give things a boost. I really doubt it. I think our economy is basically staring itself in the face and realizing that it has serious restructuring to do.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing a new kind of poverty. Not poverty where you see tons of people on the street, but a poverty where people exist on very little money per day and yet they still have cell phones. I imagine a kind of wierd lower class where people don’t appear to be poor by their clothing or acessories, they in fact have lots of stuff, but they just don’t make very much money.