Iceberg towing is another perpetual idea: The Many Failures and Few Successes of Zany Iceberg Towing Schemes
Every few years for the past couple centuries, even before the large-scale cultivation of marijuana, this idea occurs to someone: What if we towed an iceberg from the poles, where there are no people, to some dry, populous place and then melted it into freshwater?
Heh, yeah, that idea was, uh, floated, more than once just among the Gulf States — had they been able to push the really big bergs from the Antarctic, there’s no way for the velocity to be high enough for the ice to remain ice during the hundreds of miles of 70+ F seas near the destination.
As long as we’re airing (ahem) views — using heavy lift balloons (capable of 1000 tons/tonnes or more, IOW, 10 yard/meter cubed of ice/water) to nab the bergs right out of the drink, and be able to contain them as liquid so there’s no loss during the flight, would probably work, but it seems as if that would be spectacularly expensive compared to modern desalination tech. It would be the only option for, say, refoliated the Sahara, and would still require Israeli-style trickle irrigation.