Key Words
Taking the salt out of seawater to make fresh water
Desalination
Untreated toilet water that is full of germs
Sewage
How much of Qatar's drinking water comes from desalination
About 99%
The SDG about clean water and sanitation
SDG 6
AI data centres use water mainly to do this
To cool their computers
Having enough safe water at a fair price, and being ready for floods and droughts
Water security
Pollution from many places, like rain washing fertilizer off farms
Non-point source
The UAE emirate where a desalination plant shut down in 2019 because of an oil slick
Sharjah
Shared water that everyone overuses is an example of this idea
The tragedy of the commons
About how many AI answers use one 500 ml bottle of water
10 to 50
Wastewater that is cleaned so it can be used again
TSE (treated sewage effluent)
The very salty waste water that desalination sends back to the sea
Brine
About how long Qatar's stored drinking water would last
About a week
The three parts of the triple planetary crisis
Climate change, pollution and nature loss
Cooling that reuses the same water again and again
Closed-loop cooling
ULTIMATE QUESTION: What percentage of all the world's brine (salty waste water from desalination) comes from Qatar?
5.8%