Earth becoming a desert without climate deal, scientists warn

Washington Examiner ^ | Jan 01, 2018 | John Siciliano

[BroJoeK]

"The Israelis have actually pulled off an agricultural revolution a couple years ago.
They desalinate seawater for $500@acre foot, sell it to their cities for $700@acre foot, clean it to brown water standards for +-$300@acre foot "

The Saudi desalination plant at Ras Al-Khair is said to produce 1,025,000 cubic meters per day, which calculates to roughly 300,000 acre feet per year.
300,000 acre feet sold at, say, $500 per acre foot would generate $150,000,000 in revenues.
$150 million per year would pay principle & interest on a 50 year loan @3% of $4 billion, which tells us it's never going to pay for a $7 billion investment, much less $10 billion to include nuclear power for non-oil producing countries.

So there would have to be other revenues from, for examples, excess electricity & heat produced by the power plant, perhaps recreation income from water-theme parks, lakes & streams filled by desalination...

Dubious...
Unless, as you say, the cost of desalination could be reduced by a factor of ten.
But as I look at the photos, I see a lot of heavy metal and huge construction costs.
Even economies of scale would not reduce those as much as you'd need, I suspect.

But there's one other factor -- your figure of $500 per acre-foot is for minimally pure agricultural irrigation water.
According to this site, the real costs Israeli households pay for desalinated drinking water is upwards of $2 per cubic meter, which works out to well over $2,000 per acre-foot.
Such prices could generate enough revenues to pay for loans in the many billions of dollars.

[MomwithHope]

Maybe my sinuses will finally dry out.

[SoCal Pubbie]

I’ve been trying to tell that to dragnet for weeks but he won’t listen!

[dragnet2]

lol...Ya not only get no rain, but now ya live in a leftist illegal alien sanctuary. What a disaster.

[Toughluck_freeper]

They have it backwards.

Higher temps lead to higher precipitation and less drought.

Lower temperatures increase drought and desert conditions.

For example the North of Africa has become a desert over the last few thousand years as global temperatures have steadily decreased from ~7,000 years ago.

[SoCal Pubbie]

I hope you’re enjoying the rain. After all, it’s the rainy season! The last ten months, not so much.

[dragnet2]

When it does rain in S.CA it's a disaster. Even more massive traffic grid lock, accidents and then millions of gallons of oil, barf and pee run off the streets into the ocean, then they start shutting down the beaches due to contamination, then mudslides..

Yeah, the rain is wonderful in S. CA.☺

[SoCal Pubbie]

I hope you’re enjoying the rain. After all, it’s the rainy season! The last ten months, not so much.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Geez there’s no pleasing you!

[SoCal Pubbie]

So nice I had to post it twice.

[dragnet2]

Oh yes there is and I'll ping you when it happens.☺