Water, Obscurantism, and Denialism in the XXI Century

Obscurantism was the medieval tendency of the clergy to hinder knowledge and keep the popular sectors uneducated. In the XXI century, we cannot deny the scientific and technological obscurantism, which affects our progress as a civilization due to the lack of vision of our leaders or economic interests.?We have all the necessary information and scientific expertise. However, most people still believe that the water found in a bottle of mineral water from the Pyrenees differs from what we can purify from effluent or desalinated seawater.

Since their arrival on earth with the impact of comets and asteroids, the water molecules have remained intact, and the same amount that reached the planet remains; they have changed names thousands of times; ice, snow, food, plants, animals, even in us humans, since we are composed of more than 60% water.??Without water, there would be no life on the planet, at least in the form we know now.?The philosopher, Thales of Miletus, affirmed as early as the 6thcentury BC that water was the beginning of everything: the basic element of the Universe. Water produced all things; Plants and animals were nothing more than condensed water in various forms that turned into the water once they died.

The presence of water in the history of humanity is one of the keys to our development and evolution.?Civilizations were established and developed on the banks of rivers or in places with access to well water. Mineral water was used or consumed directly from its source, commonly known as “taking the waters” or “taking the cure,” Such sites were referred to as spas, baths, or wells.?Over time, people noticed health improvements by consuming well water, mainly due to better microbiological quality than surface water. They began to talk about the benefits of mineral waters until they became considered medicinal waters.?As this information traveled through different regions, the transport of these waters began packed in amphorae and clay jars, at first to nearby settlements, until they were transported by land and sea to distant places.?Then, in the nineteenth century, this phenomenon accelerated with the appearance of the mechanically made glass bottle.

We could say Europe was the cradle of mineral water, since the bottling and commercialization of natural mineral waters first began in Europe in the mid-16th century, with mineral water from Spa in Belgium, from Vichy in France, from Ferrarelle in Italy, Malvern water in the UK, and Apollinaris in Germany. The sophistication of mineral waters has come to catalog them by their Terroir, Term used by water sommeliers to differentiate the different profiles of minerals dissolved in water, their carbonation and alkalinity characteristic of the place of extraction, in addition to its packaging, where we find bottles made of 24 carat solid gold containing water from the islands Fiji with an approximate value of € 70,000 per liter.

Over the years, we have become accustomed to transporting water. One day, we stopped thinking about the impact of transportation; the more exotic the place of origin, the more we are willing to pay, as if that characteristic conditioned their quality.?It did not matter that with the appearance of purification systems, we could purify any type of water in any location and differentiate waters by their purity, not by their origin.??Today any water purified by a multi-barrier system (reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration, ultraviolet, ozone) produces purer water than that found in nature, where microplastics, PFAS, and other emerging pollutants of concern are commonly found.

Suppose we had to define water in the twenty-first century. In that case, we should determine it is a finite amount of energy, since it is the main cost component we need for extraction, purification, packaging, and distribution. Regardless of their origin. If we have competitive energy, water should not be a problem. Does it take a lot of energy to produce drinking water with new water sources?

It does not make much sense to talk about energy consumption if we do not compare and make it relative. When we talk about the energy to desalinate water, which is around 3 kWh/m3, many media outlets make it seem excessive, ridiculous, and exaggerated, giving an impression of being an inefficient technology when we consume an equivalent amount of energy when refrigerating our food than in supplying desalinated water for the same family. The exact amount of water equals 30 minutes of running a clothes dryer, 60 minutes of an electric stove, or 72 minutes of a microwave. No one doubts these processes, right? At least I have not seen it in the news. What if we relativize it properly and compare it with the bottled water we consume? It requires about 35 kWh/m3 (ANAEBE) only for its production without considering the distribution. Effectively, desalinating seawater consumes ten times less energy than bottled water without considering distribution and plastic pollution (due to the lack of good practices in the waste management of this material).?For this reason, we pay less than €0.001 per liter for desalinated water and between €0.25 to €5 per liter of mineral water, even if we continue to claim with the bill for the water that reaches our homes.

A much more controversial issue in some countries is desalinated water for agriculture since, in the face of the reduction or lack of rainfall; irrigators do not accept any extra cost no matter how competitive it may be, or even worse, they question the technology. When in most cases, they are exporting water, commercialized as virtual water (water footprint of agriculture). We could cite the case of California, a region with excellent water scarcity and is the state with the highest income from the export of agricultural products in the United States; Chile, the leading copper producer in the world, where mining accounts for 51% of its exports, has lost 6.4% of its production at the national level in the face of the drought, or Spain, which continues its internal struggle by trying to compare the cost of rainwater channelized into its rivers with desalination. On the other hand, regions such as the Middle East and North Africa, having not had the advantage of rainfall for more than 400,000 years, have successfully developed agricultural desalination.

Something similar happens with greenhouse gas emissions. We will need to produce food for the 10 billion people on the earth in 2050, we will need more water, and we need to take care of the environmental footprint. Considering that 1 kg of beef generates 60 kg CO2eq, 1 kg of tomato 1.4 kg CO2eq, and a desalination plant causes around 0.0005 kg CO2eq per liter, it is easy to deduce that the focus of this problem is outside the water. There is no doubt that we must continue working to make our water purification processes more efficient and friendly to the environment. Still, there is one indisputable issue: desalination is a sustainable way of reproducing the water cycle, and the environmental impact of food production is not due to desalination. As for discarding the reverse osmosis process, it returns 50% of the water you consume with 100% of the original minerals, just like the evaporation process in the natural water cycle.

We live in a time analogous to medieval obscurantism, centered on radicalism and confrontation, driven by fanaticism and underlying ideologies, regardless of whether the idea to be defended is born out of ignorance but from whoever promotes it. We blindly follow an influencer and have no problem questioning our scientific community that works for a better world without foundation. When I see our scientists at conferences presenting the solution to feed the world and only a few people attending, usually other desalinators, I realize that we still need to reach our goals as a society. They are the heroes who fulfilled the wish of our ancestors to replicate the water cycle, but like all heroes, they work in the dark regardless of the social reward.

The most advanced science is in nature. Today we celebrate that we can print food, that artificial intelligence can write for us, and many other developments. I believe that new water sources such as Desalination and Reuse deserve a place on the podium since very recently, a few Hundreds of years ago, our ancestors invoked the gods to ask for water, and we have achieved it without any sacrifice other than that of our scientific community. We just have to explain to people that the sun's energy is free for nature and not 100% free for us yet, although we already know we are close.

?#water #environmental #europeanunion #sustainability