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01 / 05
Desalinating Water Is Becoming “Absurdly Cheap”

Blog Post | Water Use

Desalinating Water Is Becoming “Absurdly Cheap”

Elon Musk schools Bill Maher.

Bill Maher recently interviewed Elon Musk. When Maher claimed that we are running out of water, Musk replied that “Earth is 70 percent water.” Maher shot back that “you can’t drink that.” Musk calmly replied that desalination is “absurdly cheap.”

How cheap is cheap? Energy Monitor notes that “globally, around 1% of the world’s drinking water is desalinated, but in Israel, that figure is around 25%.” Israel’s desalinated water comes from five desalination plants. The Sorek B plant has a capacity to desalinate 52.8 billion gallons a year and is contracted to produce water for $0.41 per cubic meter. There are around 264 gallons per cubic meter, so this puts the cost at about a penny per 6.4 gallons.

One hundred percent of the municipal water supply in the United Arab Emirates is desalinated. Dubai bloomed out of the desert with desalination technology. There are some 186 desalination facilities under construction or at the pre-construction phase around the world.

According to the website Filtration and Separation, in 2012, the cost to desalinate was $0.75 per cubic meter. In 2012, the average U.S. unskilled labor hourly wage was $10.87. In 2022, it had increased to $15.72. That puts the time price at about 4.14 minutes in 2012 and 1.56 minutes in 2022.

Put differently, in 2022 we were getting 165 percent more gallons of clean water for the same time price as was the case in 2012. Water abundance from desalination is growing at a 10.22 percent compound annual rate, doubling in abundance every seven years. These gains happened while we added 860 million people to the planet. Population was growing at a 1.14 percent annual rate, while desalination grew almost nine times faster.

The figure shows that nominal wages increased faster than the nominal price of water, leading to a decrease in the time price between 2012 and 2022.

We’re replacing salt with knowledge and turning a liability into an asset. Humans are exceptionally clever at innovating. Never underestimate our ability to adapt and thrive as long as we are free to discover valuable knowledge and share it with others in open markets.

This article was originally published at Gale Winds on 9/4/2023.

Nature | Scientific Research

NIH-Funded Science Must Now Be Free to Read Instantly

“From 1 July, researchers funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be required to make their scientific papers available to read for free as soon as they are published in a peer-reviewed journal. That’s according to the agency’s latest public-access policy, aimed at making federally funded research accessible to taxpayers.”

“In a laboratory outside Cambridge sits a remarkable ‘biological computer’. Its 200,000 human brain cells, grown in the lab, lie on silicon circuitry that communicates their synchronised electrical activity on a screen to the outside world.

The CL1 device, about the size of two shoe boxes, was developed by Australian start-up Cortical Labs with the UK’s bit.bio, in a bid to create ‘synthetic biological intelligence’ — a new form of computing that could offer opportunities beyond conventional electronics and other developing technologies such as quantum…

Early applications of CL1 are in neuroscience and pharmaceutical research, discovering how different chemicals and drug candidates affect the brain cells’ information processing.”

From Nature.

CNBC | Motor Vehicles

Tesla’s First Driverless Delivery of a New Car to a Customer

“Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the automaker completed its first driverless delivery of a new car to a customer, routing a Model Y SUV from the company’s Austin, Texas, Gigafactory to an apartment building in the area on June 27.

The Tesla account on social network X, which is also owned by Musk, shared a video overnight showing the Model Y traversing public roads in Austin, including highways, with no human in the driver’s seat or front passenger seat of the car.”

From CNBC.

Wall Street Journal | Science & Technology

The Holy Grail of Automation: Now a Robot Can Unload a Truck

“Loading and unloading a truck is backbreaking, mind-numbing work that retailers and parcel carriers have tried to solve for years. Workers may not stay long in these jobs. Summers and winters are particularly grueling for anyone stuck in a metal trailer, slinging heavy boxes. Injuries are common…

Boston Dynamics, has designed a robot called Stretch, named for its flexible arm that can reach the top corners of a trailer. With a vacuum gripper covered in suction cups, it can lift boxes weighing up to 50 pounds.

DHL now has a total of seven Stretch robots in supply-chain facilities in three states and has trained nearly 100 associates to operate them. In Columbus, Ohio, one Stretch robot that DHL staff named ‘Johnny 5’ unloads around 580 cases an hour, almost twice the rate of a human unloader.

DHL in May signed an agreement with Boston Dynamics for 1,000 more robots. United Parcel Service is also increasing automation at its facilities, including for loading and unloading trailers—a move that will help the company cut costs, UPS executives said in April. FedEx has been testing and refining the truck-loading process in one of its facilities with robotics company Dexterity since 2023. Walmart also has introduced robots that can unload a truck.”

From Wall Street Journal.

Wall Street Journal | Trade & Manufacturing

Amazon Nearly Using More Robots than Humans in Its Warehouses

“The automation of Amazon facilities is approaching a new milestone: There will soon be as many robots as humans.

The e-commerce giant, which has spent years automating tasks previously done by humans in its facilities, has deployed more than one million robots in those workplaces, Amazon said. That is the most it has ever had and near the count of human workers at the facilities.

Company warehouses buzz with metallic arms plucking items from shelves and wheeled droids that motor around the floors ferrying the goods for packaging. In other corners, automated systems help sort the items, which other robots assist in packaging for shipment. 

One of Amazon’s newer robots, called Vulcan, has a sense of touch that enables it to pick items from numerous shelves. Amazon has taken recent steps to connect its robots to its order-fulfillment processes, so the machines can work in tandem with each other and with humans…

Now some 75% of Amazon’s global deliveries are assisted in some way by robotics, the company said. The growing automation has helped Amazon improve productivity, while easing pressure on the company to solve problems such as heavy staff turnover at its fulfillment centers.”

From Wall Street Journal.