Japan Is Dropping a Gargantuan Turbine Into The Ocean to Harness 'Limitless' Energy

[hunter]

21. Within a few hundred miles of the ocean and at lower elevations...

...desalinization can produce water urban users can afford, but not farmers.

That doesn't help higher elevation places hundreds of miles from the ocean.

Farmers in the Upper Colorado River Basin and Upper Rio Grande are pretty much out of luck. However the actual politics settle out, urban users will get whatever water remains, leaving farms dry.

Albuquerque, for example, has an elevation of 5,300 feet and is about 500 miles from the Gulf of California, 660 miles from Los Angeles, or 750 miles to Houston. Pumping desalinated sea water uphill and across those distances is the major hurdle, not the desalinization.

In all cases burning fossil fuels to desalinate water is insane since fossil fuels are the root cause of this problem and will only make it worse.