By 2014, Israel's desalination programs provided roughly 35% of Israel's drinking water and it is expected to supply 40% by 2015 and 70% by 2050.[17]
Israel is not the only one: Saudi's program is huge.
Saudi Arabia has set a new world record with its desalination capacity destined to reach 5 million cubic meters a day. The Kingdom plans to build 9 water desalination plants on the Red Sea coastal city of Jeddah, at a total cost of more than SAR 2 billion, said Abdulrahman Alfadley, minister of environment, water and agriculture. The minister tweeted that the project to build the plants was ordered by King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The plants will have a total capacity of 240,000 cubic meters of water per day.
and they are cooperating with Israel for this, making the Iranians mad.
one of the back stories of the causes of Syria's civil war is a 2006 drought that affected a lot of farmers. President Obama once blamed the war on "global warming" and got laughed at, but what he meant was this drought.
the flip side of all these wars (which are blamed on religion but actually go back to at least 3000 BC and fights for resources) is that the locals also have a history not only of war and conquest but of trading. The Gulf states and Saudi and Yemen all were traders, again dating back to 3000 BC.
So trading with/ cooperating with enemies/the infidel is not something new.
Trumpieboy, a businessman, knows this part of history and has expertise in it. But when he fired TRex for being too friendly to Iran, I think he made a mistake.
another note: The Saudis might use nuclear power for their deslinization program. Why use nuclear power? For the same reason that Iran needed nuclear power: You might have oil, but you need to refine it to use it, and the refineries are overseas. So it's more cost effective to export oil and use cheap nuclear power to supply your people with electricity etc.
The downside of course is you have to make sure that they don't use the nuclear plants to make atomic bombs. So what's the future? Salt reactors? fusion?
Note three: the podcast discusses the huge gas fields off of Israel will soon make them an energy exporter. A game changer that has gotten little publicity.
Note 4: The Saudis have been pumping water to irrigate their fields but are running out of water from their aquifers. Some of the Gulf states were not just ports of call for ships but exported farm goods and still are sources of dates, fresh veggies etc.
Ghadaffi had a water pumping program to make the desert bloom... and the Sahara aquifers are huge. Alas, the area has been drying up since the end of the ice age and most of the articles about these projects are ten years old.
Note 5: Egypt is worried about dams upstream that might divert the Nile water from them.
Note 6: Lots of foreigners in the area: Including Pinoy OFW, Indians, Pakistanis and Egyptians. The Indians evacuated a quarter million of their people from Kuwait after Saddam invaded the place in 1990, and terrorized everyone there, but there aren't a lot of articles on all the other foreigners who were there at the time.
If the wars spread, it could be a disaster for a lot of countries economies.
So the Middle East wars are not merely about oil, but about water and growing their own food.
ah but CNN is more worried about a strippe who is blackmailing Trumpie boy and is unhappy that her first payout was too small.
Silly me, I thought blackmail was illegal.
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