Angry-Gus

There always seem to be new techniques to reduce the capital costs and energy requirements of desalination for drinking and agriculture. Some are complimentary while others will need to compete for the investors and clients (some may be more practical in different applications depending on maintenance costs and other factors). But desalination is already cost competitive with distance pumping and drilling in many coastal markets. Combined with using cold deep sea water to: a) condense fresh water from the atmosphere into soil, keeping the roots cool (found to be beneficial to nutrient absorption) and minimizing re-evaporation and b) using salt tolerant algae and land crops like mangroves, a lot could be done with the many kilometers of coastal adjacent desert land. Now if a cheap means of moving water inland and up the land gradient could be developed the productivity gains for desert agriculture and biomass production would be massive. Nature does it with solar evaporation and condensation but misses large areas due to mountains and such. Seems to me there ought to be a way to create transparent pipes with back-flow prevention mechanisms to let the water vapor be directed inland toward specific places during the day and condense out at night but cost and potential theft seems to be an issue at the moment.