Warming = less water = less food = more fire, famine and starvation/Is desalination the answer?

NVDL: It seems to me that desalination plants are the obvious solution. |Pipe seawater inland, desalinate, and your water shortage problem is solved. Isn't it so simple?

It's about energy, and energy = $

From Livescience.com: A typical American uses 80 to 100 gallons of water a day, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The entire country consumes about 323 billion gallons per day of surface water and another 84.5 billion gallons of ground water.

If half of this water came from desalination, the United States would need more than 100 extra electric power plants, each with a gigawatt of capacity.

Depending on local energy prices, 1,000 gallons of desalinated seawater can cost around $3 or $4. Although that might not seem like much, it is still cheaper in many places to pump water out of the ground or import it from somewhere else.

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com Warming temperatures can worsen droughts and China is among the countries already seeing reduced water resources. Here villagers in the town of Loudi dig through cracked soil in search of water for a well on Aug. 11, 2007. "T he changes in sea level, the changes in temperature, the impact on agriculture, the impact on water availability, the impact that comes from melting in the Arctic and opening up resources and extending growing seasons in some places, and shortening them in others. That is going to happen," he said. "All we can begin to do now is prepare to mitigate those impacts." Obama: Warming must be dealt with now NIC chief tells Congress of warming dangers U.S. military, nuclear sites at risk "Practical problems" from more severe weather includes "63 military installations that are in danger of being flooded by storm surges," he added. "The number of nuclear power plants that are so similarly vulnerable is almost as high."