Comradeship // Freechat

How many people are those island nations supporting through desalination?

"Globally, more than 300 million people now get their water from desalination plants, from the U.S. Southwest to China." https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-water-scarcity-increases-desalination-plants-are-on-the-rise

Do you really think that is anywhere near the same as creating enough water for ten of millions, hundreds of millions, or billions of people???

Yes.

Further, island nations ration water to an extreme degree,

No, they don't. I used to live on an island that got all its water from desalination plants and there was no rationing.

and they also don’t need to support agriculture to massive scales like mainland farms in Russia, China, or the US do.

But US and China aren't going to "run out of water". Not every place with water sources is suitable for large-scale agriculture either.

I said it was extremely expensive and nigh impossible to scale to a degree that the world could use it. The vast majority of countries could not afford the resources required for that, or sustain it for long at all.

It's very possible. Of course the majority of countries can afford it. It's not space travel. I suggest you do some research into the topic, and if you are going to make grand claims like "vast majority of countries can't afford it" you better have some facts and figures to back it up.

Those well and rivers are running dry. Have you looked at any research related to this?

Have you looked into research or sensationalist media articles? If water evaporates that means it is in the stratosphere and will come back down as rain. If a river "dries up" that means that water went somewhere else, probably deep underground.