Engineering Firm Plans To Tow Icebergs From Antarctica To Parched Dubai (stuff.co.nz) 412
A Dubai-based engineering firm is planning to tow an iceberg from Antarctica to help provide fresh drinking water to the desert city's rapidly-growing population. Stuff.co.nz reports: The National Advisor Bureau (NABL), a private engineering firm, wants to schlep a glacial iceberg from Antarctica -- weighing approximately 100 million tons -- to Dubai, via an intermediate stop in either Perth, Australia, or Cape Town, South Africa. If the iceberg doesn't melt along the way, the firm will sell the water to Dubai's government. Dubai, which is the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates, is growing so rapidly that a solution to the city's looming water crisis must be found, according to the city's largest English-language newspaper, The Khaleej Times.
The company is beginning a pilot study in November to examine the feasibility of the iceberg-towing project. According to Alshehi, the firm will use satellite imagery to look for a suitable iceberg -- which he says should be between 2000 feet (609 meters) and 7000 feet (2.1 kilometers) long -- and then try and tow it to either Australia or South Africa. Once the iceberg gets to its first stop, it will be towed the rest of the way. Because icebergs are so heavy, the company will need multiple ships to assist with towing, and it will use the ocean's prevailing currents to their advantage. Alshehi told NBC that even if 30 percent of the iceberg melts on the journey, it will still be able to provide between 100 million and 200 million cubic meters of fresh water -- enough for 1 million people to stay hydrated for five years. Last month, Alshehi told NBC: "If we succeed with this project, it could solve one of the world's biggest problems. So if we show this is viable, it could ultimately help not only the UAE, but all humanity."
The company is beginning a pilot study in November to examine the feasibility of the iceberg-towing project. According to Alshehi, the firm will use satellite imagery to look for a suitable iceberg -- which he says should be between 2000 feet (609 meters) and 7000 feet (2.1 kilometers) long -- and then try and tow it to either Australia or South Africa. Once the iceberg gets to its first stop, it will be towed the rest of the way. Because icebergs are so heavy, the company will need multiple ships to assist with towing, and it will use the ocean's prevailing currents to their advantage. Alshehi told NBC that even if 30 percent of the iceberg melts on the journey, it will still be able to provide between 100 million and 200 million cubic meters of fresh water -- enough for 1 million people to stay hydrated for five years. Last month, Alshehi told NBC: "If we succeed with this project, it could solve one of the world's biggest problems. So if we show this is viable, it could ultimately help not only the UAE, but all humanity."
STOP ME IF YOU HAVE HEARD THIS BEFORE! (Score:2, Insightful)
I did. Decades ago.
Re: (Score:3)
I think that was the plot of the very last episode of Salvage 1 I can recall seeing back in the day. And I don't recall how it ended. I think we had to shut it off because it was time to eat.
Re:STOP ME IF YOU HAVE HEARD THIS BEFORE! (Score:5, Informative)
You're off by an order of magnitude. The earliest documented proposal is from 1825. [theatlantic.com]
Apparently, iceberg towing away from things (oil rigs, mostly) is pretty routine, and mature technology. Towing them to somewhere is a difference in scale only.
But history suggests this is mostly just another way of extracting money from gullible investors.
Re:STOP ME IF YOU HAVE HEARD THIS BEFORE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for being at least one person who is not just opining in complete ignorance like all of other 126 posts here (at this moment).
This is subject (towing icebergs for water) has been studied to death, anyone can Google dozens of studies done over the last few decades. There is nothing novel about the idea at all. This is the second such scheme posted on /. this year!
Slashdot should stop posting stories about "plans" to do this, and just post a story about someone who is at least about to actually do it! But then there would be no story to run.
Just another fraud (Score:5, Informative)
But history suggests this is mostly just another way of extracting money from gullible investors.
This. Towing icebergs around the globe is an old snake oil idea that someone dusts off every couple decades to try to sucker some "investors" out of some cash. It's an idiotic idea if you give it any real thought and have even a passing familiarity with physics and economics. It's like flying cars. It sounds like a cool idea and seems plausible enough at first to credulous people but the reality is that it isn't practical or economic and there are better solutions already available to us.
I am quite confident there are no actual plans to do this. It's just an old scam that I've seen several times already in my life and I'll probably see again a few more before I die.
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What seems odd to me about the whole concept is why tow it all the way even if you did want the water. Surely it'd be easier to tow it to either the nearest landmass and convert it to water there before shipping it on, or design something to convert it to water at sea and then use tankers to get the water from there to the destination? It's not like
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Actually, when ice floating in water melts, the overall water level does not change at all. That's how flotation and water displacement work.
Your 3rd grade child can demonstrate for you, in your kitchen, with an ice cube [amazon.com] and a red plastic cup. [amazon.com]
Anybody who tells you otherwise is looking for investment dollars, but has nothing to sell.
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Sometimes slow government is a good thing (Score:3, Informative)
You think Donald Trump has destroyed the planet? How?
I dislike Trump about as much as anyone you'll find but no he hasn't destroyed the planed nor is he likely to unless ($diety forbid) he finds some way to start a thermonuclear war. He has done some damage and he'll probably do more but this is one of the cases where government moving slowly actually works in our favor because it limits the amount of damage any one administration can do in 4 or 8 years.
Re: STOP ME IF YOU HAVE HEARD THIS BEFORE! (Score:4, Informative)
Carbon footprint of this? (Score:2, Interesting)
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How about just cutting the icebergs and just shipping it by chunks? I wouldn't know how feasible this is at all however versus just towing the icebergs themselves.
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If you're going to ship the iceberg by chunks, you might as well just send a ship full of fresh water from the much-closer tropics. Either way, I suspect desalinization is more economical.
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No one posting here on /. should have to ask that question.
The answer is melting. Heat intake is through the surface (x squared), while total heat required to melt depends on the volume (x cubed). Larger volumes melt more slowly.
Re:Carbon footprint of this? (Score:4, Insightful)
When you want to keep something frozen you want it bigger not smaller. The amount of heat needed to melt something is proportional to its volume but the amount that can actually be added is proportional to the surface area. As things get bigger volume increase much faster than surface area so larger the block of ice more chance it has of reaching Dubai without melting.
Interestingly this is also why Europeans who evolved for cold climates are larger in size . Heat loss is proportional to Surface area while core heat is proportional to volume so bigger bodies can survive better in cold climates. Of course in hot climates its more efficient to be thin and short.
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Heat loss is proportional to Surface area while core heat is proportional to volume so bigger bodies can survive better in cold climates. Of course in hot climates its more efficient to be thin and short.
Here you go. You just disproved the reality of climate change in the United States, esp. the South [stateofobesity.org]. ;)
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what, and not amazon glacier?
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Multiple ships towing an iceberg of this size multiple thousands of miles... belching carbon into our atmosphere.... this sounds like a horrible idea.
Then use nuclear powered ships. Or use nuclear power to desalinate the water off their shore. Or do both. There's other ways to get power than from oil. Lot's of them don't "belch" carbon into the air, that includes nuclear power.
How about instead we don't build enormous cities in deserts.
Where should they go? You got a spare bedroom to rent?
And accelerating the melting of the iceberg will raise sea levels that much faster.
You failed physics, didn't you? There's at least four different ways that's wrong that I could come up with in a few seconds of thinking about it.
This will be interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
This really is ... (Score:5, Funny)
a cool project :-)
For those interested in the physics... (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.igsoc.org/annals/1... [igsoc.org] has several interesting papers related to this subject.
The short summary is that we really don't have a good feel for the feasibility of this, so it seems like an experiment worth trying.
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That's the worst argument for trying anything ever. "We really don't have a good feel for the feasibility of fucking this bison in the ass, so it seems like an experiment worth trying"
Pretty sure that's the origin story for "buffaloed".
Cowards do as cowards are (Score:2)
Why not? And in any case, someone else is the one fucking the bison in the ass.
Brewster's Millions (Score:3, Informative)
Brewster's Millions was a comedy - NOT a business think tank.
desalination plants on the coast (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:desalination plants on the coast (Score:4, Interesting)
Energy costs are no problem.
The cost of the plants would be no issue.
The only open question would be spare parts and servicing?
Re:desalination plants on the coast (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the solar potential of that area of the world, they could use solar thermal to power the desal plants, mine the brine for lithium and magnesium and use the sodium & potassium salts for thermal energy storage
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Given the solar potential of that area of the world, they could use solar thermal to power the desal plants, mine the brine for lithium and magnesium and use the sodium & potassium salts for thermal energy storage
Taking the whole area of the Middle East, the population there, the solar power available, and the drinking water that solar power could produce, then I would agree that solar thermal is possible as a solution. There's a huge problem, the people in the Middle East are a bunch of groups that don't get along very well. Politics prevent this from being feasible.
First, solar desalination is a big fat valuable target in case of war or terrorism. You can't put a solar collector in a bunker and expect it to wor
Re:desalination plants on the coast (Score:5, Informative)
Desalination is a big fat valuable target and a nuclear power station is not?
Have you seen a modern nuclear power plant? They are built under a concrete dome that's three feet thick, built to hold up to a plane crash. Those that are concerned about an act of war taking them out will build their nuclear reactors under a mountain. How does a nation protect a solar collector from acts of terrorism or war? Build that under a mountain too?
We're seeing nuclear power plants built into warships, that's how well they hold up in war. We've never seen a solar powered warship. We did see wind powered warships at one time, they don't work so well up against the nuclear powered kind.
Every desalination plant will be a target in war. To protect them would mean making them small, hardened, and therefore easy to defend. Solar power does not allow for this because they require things light, spread out, and therefore difficult to defend. Greenpeace has been on a mission to "prove" nuclear facilities around the world are vulnerable to terrorism. If that's true then why are the only terrorists trying to attack these sites members of Greenpeace?
But need a lot of energy... (Score:3)
Technically Illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty [wikipedia.org] prohibits the exploitation of Antarctica's resources based on environmental concerns.
Now it does say -mineral- resources and I don't think ice counts as a mineral, but still, I'd imagine the environmental impact isn't negligible. Specially if done in large scale.
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Re:Technically Illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
Edis Krad noted:
The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty [wikipedia.org] prohibits the exploitation of Antarctica's resources based on environmental concerns.
Now it does say -mineral- resources and I don't think ice counts as a mineral, but still, I'd imagine the environmental impact isn't negligible. Specially if done in large scale.
Nope. Doesn't apply, even if you can twist the legal definition of "a mineral" to extend to ice.
(NB - the legal and scientific definitions of a term don't necessarily have the same definition, nor do courts typically allow themselves to be bound - or even influenced - by the scientific one, where legal precedent to the contrary exists, because, as Mr. Bumble opines in Oliver Twist, "the law is an ass.")
An iceberg, by definition, is not part of Antarctica in any way, shape, or form. It is, instead, its own entity - a chunk of ice floating in the ocean. As such, the protocol in question simply doesn't apply, just as it doesn't apply to, for instance, snow in the process of falling on the continent - because that snow is strictly an atmospheric phenomenon until it hits the ground, where it instantaneously transforms into a constituent part of Antarctica, and can then be considered a "resource".
Objects floating on the oceans are subject to international maritime law, but not to treaties regarding land-based mineral rights treaties, so it's salvage law that would apply - and anything afloat that's not actively crewed is fair game, where that's concerned.
I'm surprised I have to explain this ...
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- and anything afloat that's not actively crewed is fair game, ...
That is not true since over 50 years
Actually today was a /. story about the first atlantic crossing by an unmanned sailing drone.
It will be hijacked ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It will be hijacked ... (Score:4, Funny)
Or it melts.
how much fuel (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:how much fuel (Score:4, Interesting)
They estimate the yield at around 150 million cubic meters. The energy cost to desalinate seawater is around 5 kilowatt-hours per cubic meter, including the process and other pumping and related costs. Assuming the energy cost is 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, the cost to desalinate the equivalent amount of water is 75 million dollars.
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In a desert it makes more sense to use solar thermal instead of a nuclear reactor.
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Or PV. It's a very good use of PV, since it can run when there is sunlight, shut down the desalination plant when the sunlight disappears, then just wait for more sun.
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You screwed up. Not your math, but the facts that you asserted.
The UAE is 86 BILLION m2. Not 80 MILLION m2.
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You want more nuclear facilities in the Middle East? Really?
In any case, I would be willing to bet that bids for solar power would be lower than nuclear. Providing power for desalination is an ideal application for solar power, because it is easy to accommodate the intermittent nature of solar.
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Windboure suggested:
the problem would be using direct energy such as oil, nat gas, etc to desalinate with. Instead, it should be waste heat from any electricity producing thermal system, but ideally, a nuclear reactor. Than add in solar for the low-end stuff.
Nope.
The problem with nuclear power is that reactors have to be cooled. That's why they tend to be sited on riverbanks, or on coasts that are swept by cold-water currents, such as the Humboldt Current. Dubai has access to no such cooling source.
"B...b...but the Persian Gulf!" I hear you mentally object?
Sorry. The Gulf is as warm as bathwater, which makes it a poor choice of heat sink for a nuke plant. Also, there's a pretty good chance the neighbors are going to object to the very real p
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Old news (Score:5, Funny)
Missing tag (Score:2)
What could possibly go wrong?
Maybe don't do this. (Score:3)
cool, but desalination is better choice (Score:4, Insightful)
Regardless, desalination is probably the better way. The reason is that multiple sites can be set up along the seas and have multiple continual sources of water vs. batching it.
Salination (Score:2)
The problem with desalination is you have all this brine left over that you have to do something with. If you are in the desert I guess you can just pump it into a sand dune and have it evaporate.
Or, to paraphrase an infamous Sam Kinneson bit - maybe they should move to where there is water.
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It has been done in '79 (on TV at least) (Score:2)
Back in the day a task like this required rocket engines built from junkyard parts cobbled together with wire and duct tape ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
What was that guy's name? (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, yeah, Brewster. Monty Brewster. Made million$ doing this.
Uhm (Score:2)
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Large blocks of ice last a surprisingly long time. Google ice houses, they used to cut ice off lakes in the winter and use the ice harvested months earlier on their lemnade. Of course, the ice houses were insulated, but we're talking six months of stroage.
Umm, melting ice caps? (Score:2)
So, after complaining for decades that the polar ice caps are melting, due to climate change, now we're just going to physically take the ice away? Good job.
Maybe we ought not be living in deserts. Seems hostile to me.
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Once it's in iceberg form floating in the ocean it's already out of the equation. It will be melting away in a few years anyway.
Global Warming: Or Non like it hot! (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Sincerely your Professor Farnsworth from Planet Express.
20 years ago (Score:2)
I have heard about these plans 20 years ago. I hope they are moving forward, not just rehashing some old dream.
Obligatory Futurama (Score:2)
Futurama - Global Warming [youtube.com]
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Damn, burni2 beat me to it.
I did search the thread for "Futurama" before posting, but... meh.
So who wants to bring up climate change now? (Score:2)
Hilarious. Why wait for them to melt? Let's tow one to a desert first. So can we now stop pretending that America is to blame for everything?
Good News Everybody! (Score:2)
Re:Is this a good idea ? (Score:5, Informative)
I mean .... is it ?
No. It is an idiotic idea. Most of the water in UAE is used for subsidized agriculture. Wheat (the local staple) does not naturally grow in deserts, so it needs lots and lots of expensive water.
Instead of importing millions of tons of water, they should be importing thousands of tons of wheat from countries with rain.
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Well, that rain thing was this year extremely uneven distributed over the ares of the planet where you could grow wheat or rice ....
Re:Is this a good idea ? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, that rain thing was this year extremely uneven distributed over the ares of the planet where you could grow wheat or rice ....
Wheat prices are a little above historic norms [macrotrends.net] but not by much.
Buying wheat would be way cheaper than shipping ice 10,000 miles through equatorial seas. For every tonne of wheat, they need 4000 tonnes of fresh water. This is far above the world's average because of low humidity, high temperatures, and sandy soil. Nearly all of that needs to be supplied by irrigation.
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Yeah,
but what would they do then? Planting no wheat? So no green, no change in humidity? No change in micro climate?
So far we don't know what it costs to ship an iceberg so far. I hoped those desert countries simply would start a long term big "terraforming" project to make the deserts at least somewhat green again.
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The best way to "green the desert", or at least slow down the browning, is to reduce CO2 emissions.
Re:Is this a good idea ? (Score:5, Interesting)
WTF are we talking about "greening the desert"? I mean, it's the desert - it wasn't a lush rainforest before the industrial revolution/age of the automobile, so why are we trying to make it something it never was? It's a stupid idea, it was always a stupid idea, and nothing Al Gore has ever has or will put on a powerpoint slide is going to change that.
Is desalination really so hard?
Can't Dubai figure out a way to, you know, conserve water?
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it wasn't a lush rainforest before the industrial revolution/age of the automobile
No, but much of pre-industrial Arabia and North Africa was grassland. What is now the Sahara Desert was once the breadbasket of the Roman Empire.
Desertification was driven partly by natural climate change over the millenia, but also by destructive agriculture and overgrazing. In recent decades, desertification has rapidly accelerated, and the most plausible explanation is AGW. The Sahara is expanding southward at a rate of 50 km per year. The Arabian Desert is also expanding and becoming dryer.
Re:Is this a good idea ? (Score:5, Informative)
No, but much of pre-industrial Arabia and North Africa was grassland. What is now the Sahara Desert was once the breadbasket of the Roman Empire.
No it wasn't. The Roman breadbasket was the Mediterranean Maghreb which is about as fertile now as it was then. In 2003 Tunisia alone produced 2.3 million tonnes of grain.The total amount of grain needed to feed the million people of Rome was 300,000 tonnes.
The expansion of the Sahara is almost entirely to the west and south, not the north where the Maghreb its.
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No it isn't.
Wrong tense.
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Desertification in north Africa is not caused by human civilization. It caused human civilisation. the drying of central north Africa is what drove hominids into the Nile valley.
CHINA has done it, go learn something (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
china transforms deserts to lush green lands
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The deserts there are all man made. Basically by cutting down the forests.
Anyway, we have the technology to make them green. So if a sheik want to make himself a name that will be remembered for the next millenia he could work on such a project.
Is desalination really so hard?
Yes and no. But what has that to do with my proposal?
Can't Dubai figure out a way to, you know, conserve water?
Ever been there? If a german would waste as much water as a dubaians does, he probably got hanged in public. Seriously, they
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Those deserts are deserts since 1000 years or more.
CO2 level changes wont change that.
You have to plant stuff and distribute water.
Global Warming is good (Score:2)
Most climate models show that Global Warming will lead to higher humidity and more rain in the Sahara and Arabia. It will also make land in the Russian Siberia and Canadian Arctic more valuable. Global Warming will be bad for California and North Europe. So if greening the desert is the aim , the gulf countries should provide cheap oil to burn.
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They aren't growing wheat. They are growing vegetables, fodder to produce milk, and fruits - all stuff that kind of makes sense to produce locally as they don't store well. Not grains.
Re:Is this a good idea ? (Score:5, Informative)
IF they're growing grain with it, that is.
Water use in UAE [fanack.com]
From the citation: Irrigated agriculture is the primary water consumer, with an average of around 60% of total water use
Also from the citation: Irrigation water is generally used in a wasteful manner, mainly through traditional flooding and furrow irrigation techniques and for cultivating low-value, high-water-consumption crops.
Re:Is this a good idea ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it's done virtually everywhere.
Although California's almonds get a lot of the bad press, depleting the desert aquifers to grow hay and corn to feed slaughter cattle is similarly wasteful.
Re:Is this a good idea ? (Score:5, Informative)
True.
The worst travesty by far are the alfalfa growers in California, that only exist because of water rights written into law 140 years ago. The crop is worth less than the cost of delivering the water used to grow it, it consumes 22% of all of California's water (as much as all the cities in California combined) and 2/3 of the alfalfa is simply exported to Asia. Yes the California tax payer is paying to have 14% of the state's water exported to Asia at a financial loss so that a small number of industrial farm operators can pocket some money.
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Unfortunately, it's done virtually everywhere.
Although California's almonds get a lot of the bad press, depleting the desert aquifers to grow hay and corn to feed slaughter cattle is similarly wasteful.
Not as wasteful as towing it from Antarctica!
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But no wheat [wikipedia.org]. Check it out. [nationsencyclopedia.com] What they are growing are stuff like vegetables, fodder to produce milk, and fruit crops, all stuff that actually makes sense to produce locally since they don't ship that well, or are specialty items, not tonnage crops like grain.
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You mean like this one https://www.waterworld.com/art... [waterworld.com]
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Good idea, but first make them release all the hostages their "justice" system has produced: the couple who kissed on the beach, the woman who was served one drink on the plane heading there, and all those Indian workers paid virtually nothing to build those towers for the elite.
Hmmm... (Score:2)
A good-sized iceberg might measure 3,000 x 1,500 x 600 feet. An iceberg that size contains somewhere around 20 billion gallons of fresh water.
A supertanker carries about two million barrels, or, 84 million gallons.
Assuming no water loss during ice melt (improbable) and subsequent water collection in the Arctic Circle, that's fuel for 238 supertankers + whatever energy is expended during the collection process... if you can tow and harvest the water, including melt losses, with less fuel consumption per harvested gallon than harvesting in the Arctic and subsequently shipping it, that's a win.
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You think that an iceberg that is floating in the water has not raised the level of the ocean (ever so slightly), but it will when it melts?
Slightly, yes, due to the fresh water melting into the salt water.
"Fresh water, of which icebergs are made, is less dense than salty sea water. So while the amount of sea water displaced by the iceberg is equal to its weight, the melted fresh water will take up a slightly larger volume than the displaced salt water. This results in a small increase in the water level."
https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com]
(I'm not the person you replied to)
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Because glaciers flow faster when they're not pushing against a massive floating ice shelf. And ice shelves melt faster when they're not surrounded by floating ice. And so on and so forth.
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Yeah, this was a scam back then, and there's little reason to believe it's not a scam now.
Are they looking for investors?
Are they hinting at extremely large returns?
Would it be a monumental feat?
Two out of three should be enough to make you walk away. Three out of three, well, let's just say that those who lose money on this will pay the stupidity tax.
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Disruption of the natural flow of hot & cold currents much?
Disruption of currents would be utterly negligible.
A far greater concern is the CO2 emissions from the fuel used by the tugboats.
They should use Skysails [skysails.info] to tow the berg with wind power.
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Because they already have a whole bunch of them. The majority of desalination in the world happens in Dubai.
It costs more and more to operate them, because they're increasing the salt concentration in the gulf.
They're still building more capacity.
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It costs more and more to operate them, because they're increasing the salt concentration in the gulf.
That's hysterical - it's like using a snow blower and you keep blowing the snow where you haven't cleared yet, simply adding to the snow yet to be plowed...
Why can't they divert the salt slur elsewhere?
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The water in the Gulf is 25% saltier than normal seawater. At some point it might be economical to bring in tankers of normal seawater to the existing desalination plants. At some point they will have to build a large pipe to somewhere that makes sense to build more desalination plants.
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Desalination costs about $0.50 per tonne (one cubic meter).
If they can move a 100M tonne berg for less than $50M, then it is may be more cost effective to use ice.
Desalination cost is very dependent on electricity cost, which retails for about $0.06 per kwh in Dubai. The wholesale price is likely about half that. Electricity is cheap because much of it is generated from oilfield NG that would otherwise be flared.
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"letting all the white immigrants from Europe come over" - you're adorable, and you have a childish view of the hospitality of the native americans.
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RIght, because that region has never thought about desalination until you mentioned it. Oh wait: https://www.theguardian.com/gl... [theguardian.com]
Towing icebergs from the south pole to the middle east is still bullshit of course.
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Once the ice is in iceberg form floating on the ocean it's as good as gone anyway. It's just a matter of how fast it's going to melt.