As far as being able to afford it I think the middle east is in the best position, Dubai is building islands in the ocean they have so much extra cash. The link below has a pic of their desalination plant. Since the Earth's oceans cover 75% of the planet I don't think there is a need to worry about them drying up. If that happened some other major climate change would kill us off first. I'm not saying we shouldn't conserve or that there is no problem, only that one way or another we will prevale. Just like any deadly virus, people adapt to their host and contiune eating off itAlistriwen;1969501; said:
. Eventually we will lose, the only way for humans and the planet to co-exsist is to decrease us. I'm guessing 90% would do it.Here is a US Gov't site http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/drinkseawater.html
Some desalination facts (from the bottom of the page)
- It is estimated that some 30% of the world’s irrigated areas suffers from salinity problems and remediation is seen to be very costly.
- In 2002 there were about 12,500 desalination plants around the world in 120 countries. They produce some 14 million m³/day of freshwater, which is less than 1% of total world consumption.
- The most important users of desalinated water are in the Middle East, (mainly Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain), which uses about 70% of worldwide capacity; and in North Africa (mainly Libya and Algeria), which uses about 6% of worldwide capacity.
- Among industrialized countries, the United States is one of the most important users of desalinated water (6.5%), specially in California and parts of Florida.
