Slashdot Mirror
UAE To Drag Iceberg From Antarctica To Solve Water Shortage Set To Last 25 Years (express.co.uk)
schwit1 quotes a report from Daily Express: The UAE, which is among the top 10 water-scarce countries in the world, hopes to help ease the stress of a drinking water shortage by towing an iceberg from the freezing Antarctica in order to create more drinking water. The National Advisor Bureau Limited's (NABL) managing Director Abdullah Mohammad Sulaiman Al Shehi says an average iceberg contains "more than 20 billion gallons of water" which would be enough for one million people over five years. Up to four-fifths of an iceberg's mass is underwater, and due to their vast density, they would theoretically not melt in the boiling climate of the Middle Eastern coastal line. Mr Al Shehi says it could take up to a year to drag the huge body of ice up to the UAE, and the project is set to begin in 2018.
Desalinization plant.
The UAE. Like where Dubai is, which has the worlds tallest building?
How fucking retardedly stupid are you? You're from redneck america, aren't you?
The water shortage is expected to last 25 years, and the average iceberg contains enough water for 5 years (for 1 million people). According to Google, the UAE population is currently ~9.16Million, meaning if all of the water were recovered, it would last about half a year if all water came from the iceberg. And they're planning on starting this project next year. They'd have to tow two average icebergs a year to supply everyone from it. Ok, maybe only like 10% of water will come from the iceberg, but it has to go through a water-treatment plant before it'll be used, presumably displacing capacity for processing other water that'd be run through it instead.
Source looks like a tabloid, by the way.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
American detected.
Would you have said the same if it was the UK or the USA? I know that many abbreviations might be unknown to people since they are highly domain specific, but the UAE (United Arab Emirates) should be pretty common knowledge to anyone having attended school or following media. Especially since it is one of the biggest and certainly riches countries in the middle east, quite controversial in several areas and ally to the USA.
So even if it is poor form to not write out abbreviations, what is next? The question "WTF IS s.?" as a followup to "Usain Bolt beat his previous record on 100 meter sprint. New world record 9.56 s." C'mon...
Do we need to expand UK or USA every time? No. So same shit here.
A country isn't some niche errata. You've also had nearly a half century to catch up. Not to mention that it's either older than you, or its birth represents news you obviously were not paying attention to.