400 years later, out of context, you sound like an idiot. One can find similar quotes in the works of Francois Rabelais and Thomas More. You don't see a lot of power companies plugging electrodes into giant potatoes.
Similar problems attend the implementation of planet-sized magnifying glasses.
But don't worry, desalinating seawater isn't as tough as you think. Desalination was one of those wacky concepts that the popular-science writers of the 1950s told us would change the world. OK, so some of those ideas actually came to pass. We wouldn't think this if we lived in Riyadh. Even though it's hundreds of miles inland, Saudi Arabia's capital gets half its water supply from seaside desalination plants.