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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.
climate problems aren't man made and it's probably a good idea when countries start to directly melt the pols,...
Wow! This sounds very similar to the plot of what was the last episode of Salvage I that I can remember seeing.
Now time to go see if Netflix has it; and if not Netflix, see if anyone has ever uploaded episodes to YouTube.
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".. and due to their vast density, they..."
Uhhhh, Icebergs are *less* dense that's why they float. I think the author means mass.
Dialectician. Archology.
Desalinization plant.
Wasn't this one of the ways to waste money in Brewster's Millions?
Vast density is what the guy who wrote that craptastic article has.
Or, are we trying to solve the polar ice melting by drinking it? Get rid of the evidence! Flushing ice cubes down the toilet.
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.
I didn't know it was that easy to steal a world resource.
American detected.
Normally that hunk of ice would be frozen in place in Antarctica, but thanks to the miracle of global warming those thirsty rich Arabs will have plenty of water.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
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...
Australia proposed exactly this suggestion about 25 years ago.
Then they started looking for ships powerful enough to move such a drag
Project died.
Surprise.
Do we need to expand UK or USA every time? No. So same shit here.
Just let 'em die of thirst.
People have been talking about doing this since the 1800s, . Nice to see this finally getting it done.
P.S. California take a note, it's almost certainly cheaper than building desal plants but 5 will get you 10, you'll still have to fight your loony environmentalists.
they could start the project after that chunk of Larsen C ice shelf breaks off. Maybe they could hire the Russians (attempt) to tow it with their nuclear powered ice breaker.
In that case an iceberg would sink. Its density is close to that of salt water, that's why it floats! Idiot!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Who knew there was an average size iceberg. Well presumably there is. But who knew that the actual average size was so well known.
Gotta be from the ACME Think Tank.
Table-ized A.I.
Sorry, but what do you mean by 'WTF'?
Why should a country or a person "own" the resources beneath them? Do people get mineral rights when they are born? The custom or system of allocating riches on this basis needs to change. It's clearly unjust.
BTW, I don't approve of inheritance either.
(||) Nehmo (||)
You know that more food creates more people. Then more people need more food.
This has a snowball's chance in hell of working... or something.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
a ) Emergence of New Tech(tm) to solve the problem!
b) The managing director expects to tire of playing golf in the desert within 25 years, and will reluctantly relinquish the water.
c) After 20 years of delays in the construction of desalination plants due to graft, the corrupt ministers will retire, thus leaving only a new generation of completely honest ministers, and the plants will be finished up within 5 years.
d) Everyone will have left the UAE due to other countries moving away from ICEs, regional strife, etc.
e) Mandatory 25-year water shortage. Sorry, they'd LOVE to fit it into their schedule next century, but darn, it's just too FULL.
f) Aliens. Somehow.
g) The Rapture will happen in 25 years so it'll be moot.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
This one is funny!!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
once and for all! https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
How fucking retardedly stupid are you? You're from redneck america, aren't you?
Funny how someone might become aggressive and full of contempt when faced with a simple mistake - I'm used to the acronym in another language since, like you, I'm not American.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Yes, they have many desalination plants, using several different technologies, and invest heavily in researching new desalination technology.
Desalination takes a lot of energy aka money. It should cost maybe 50% or 70% to tow the ice than to desalinate seawater.
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.
It's that arab country with cities that make New York and others look like third world shitholes in comparison.
Smells of BS. I Highly doubt it would be practical. Then again they are known for burning money just because and nearly anything can be done provided enough money.
Take a look at your subject line. Then imagine trying to respond to that with Zen calmness.
And now you know why they predict that the problem will simply go away in 25 years. With a spot of luck, in way less than that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Or, are we trying to solve the polar ice melting by drinking it?
No, this is to solve the problem of rising ocean levels.
In other shocking news, countries that grow a lot of food use a lot of water.
Also, countries that have more water use more water.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... None Like It Hot!
or none-English speaker, who might use a different acronym? But it gave you an excuse to express your bigotry. Hope it made you feel good.
Fifty knot winds for days on hundred foot high faces three hundred yards long don't matter? The winds push the tabular icebergs of the size mentioned about far more quickly than the currents move and in different directions. They have a high "sail to draft ratio" compared with the arctic icebergs.
An iceberg the size of a city on the other hand will act as you suggest, but nobody is planning to move any of those any time soon.
And now you know why they predict that the problem will simply go away in 25 years. With a spot of luck, in way less than that.
If people tow any appreciable amount of ice out of there then currents will be affected and it probably will be way less than that. I'll be sorry to lose Santa Cruz and San Francisco but won't miss Dubai.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think you meant to say James Cameron.
Lets hope all passenger liners stay clear of those tugged icebergs. It would be Titanic all over again...
Not always so. The UAE consumption is about 3 times what it is here in Finland and we've got roughly 733 times the amount of renewable water resources than UAE thanks to a high amount of freshwater lakes and rainfall. The population sizes are also roughly the same (5,5 million here here, 5,8 in the UAE).
Adjusted for population size we've also got over double the renewable water resources compared to the USA, yet we use about 1/5th of what the Americans use.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
No. Only a small part of an iceberg is generated by freezing of seawater; most of the water arrives in the form of snow. Even the freezing of seawater is a natural salt-removal process involving the behavior of crystal lattices.
How does that comparison look when eliminating farming? Does Finland account for direct draws from rivers/lakes as much as the US? What other leveling considerations should be factored?
Nope. You're thinking of sea ice, which forms in salt water. Icebergs are formed by glacial calving or ice sheets that originate on land.
But even sea ice is less saline than seawater, because the freezing process expels brine. But because sea ice is flat like a pancake it has a larger surface area to volume ratio.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Care to share your photos of irrigated fruit, vegetable, and grain crops stretching off to the horizon in Finland's fertile Central Valley?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Normally that hunk of ice would be frozen in place in Antarctica, but thanks to the miracle of global warming those thirsty rich Arabs will have plenty of water.
If it is frozen in place, it isn't an iceberg. Thanks O'Bama!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Depends what your definition of IS is?
I never claimed we have such. Agriculture here uses a lot less water than in most countries because we don't need irrigation nearly at all thanks to the amount of rainfall. Industry is the heaviest consumer of water.
Of course climate effects consumption, which is why the US food production takes so much more water, understandably. We also import more food than the US, and of the total water footprint of Finns, about 47 % is 'hidden' abroad. How much that number is for the US I'm not sure, but probably smaller.
My whole point was just that the simplification of "more water available equals more water used" is not true, because other factors, especially climate, effect the need for water a lot.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Someone must have watched Brewster's Millions -- where this was treated as a crackpot idea.
Where do they propose to "hold" this five year supply of water? Seems like they'd need to build a really big holding tank, about a 3 billion square foot tank (there are 7.48 gallons of water in one square foot)... By my back-of-envelope, sure to be proven wrong, calculation that would mean a 7,745 foot square box, fifty feet tall to contain the 20 billion gallons.
Ken
No worries we will use petro-dollars to buy it to offset global warming. ....oh wait
It is a silly comparison. Sweden/Denmark/Finland use relatively little water because the get a lot of rain and do not need to irrigate their crops. In the American West, nothing grows without irrigation. So of course we use more water.
They are using money made from fossil fuels, which cause global warming.
They might not have the money if it weren't for fossil fuels.
Because of the fossil fuel use, they will less icebergs to choose from.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Nice post. Your 3am back of the envelope calculations inspired me to do a few of my own.
I googled around a bit, to see if hitching a ride on any of the numerous Coriolis-driven boundary gyres in the world's oceans would be feasible.
Based on my own BotE calculations, the UAE team might be planning to hitch a ride on the Western Australia boundary gyre. This gyre flows north along the west coast of Australia at an average annual velocity of of .27 m/sec, which is near the .3m/s you calculated. This means they wouldn't need propulsive force. They would only need to give it the occasional nudge to keep it in the current.
Once they reached the equator, they might need some force to get to the North Equatorial gyre (but only for a few hundreds of klicks, not thousands), whose average annual velocity of .13 m/s would then carry them almost to the Gulf of Aden.
I'm thinking that if the Coriolis forces in the ocean are replacing a significant chunk of the propulsive force that you calculated as necessary, then the overall cost per liter would be quite a bit lower. In fact, it would be significantly lower than desalinization.
Well it's literally the first sentence of the article if you wanted to go that far...
I'm straight, so I'm actually glad about San Francisco.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Who is to say the UAE should get this water? Are they making efficient use of it or will it be squandered growing luscious gardens in all those luxurious buildings they have? I didn't think the war over water resources would begin so soon.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I'm straight, so I'm actually glad about San Francisco.
The gays aren't going to drown, they will move. Right now their concentration in San Francisco improves your odds everywhere else.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This was the first mission for Salvage One after they returned from the moon!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Interestingly enough, bringing an entire ice asteroid to a hitherto very dry planet was not considered an ecological disaster waiting to happen...
In those quaint times — the novel is from 1952 — human progress was not deemed "dangerous"...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What is IS?
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
In the American West, nothing grows without irrigation.
The American West grows meth-heads. There's also dryland farming...
Funny how someone reads contempt and sarcasm in written form and perceives aggression. The "aggression" might be there, it might not... but there's definitely plenty in your head. You're young, aren't you?
No doubt; too bad it's in the Middle East...
The UAE will have to be totally evacuated by 2025 by current estimates as it will get quite a bit hotter. In fact it will be too hot for human habitation. Hauling water is simply not an answer. Perhaps they could create some huge spray machines to mist large volumes of ocean water into the air in hope of cloud formation and a dropping of temperature near the ground level. The entire area of northern Africa will probably try to migrate to Europe. The wars that this will cause in some cases have already begun.
I don't know, maybe the fact that "fucking", "retardedly" and "stupid" were used one after the other would have provoked the sense that aggression was being used.
I tend to rant.
Windows 95 access fault?
It was Windows 3.0 - "Unrecoverable Application Error"
The UAE. Like where Dubai is, which has the worlds tallest building?
The folks in Dubai don't like The Flinstones, but the folks in Abu Dhabi do.
UAE gives out free trees and shrubs to anybody willing to plant them, even though they can't grow naturally in that climate.
In the American West, governments encourage water conservation and the use of landscape plants that don't require watering. When there is a drought, people get fined for watering.
UAE actually doesn't irrigate a lot of farms. They mostly irrigate artificial urban forests and luxury parks and yards.
The American West grows meth-heads.
It turns out you don't grow zombies, you grow humans, and then you infect them once they're grown.
If you infect them prematurely, grown nearly stops.
No! I did not suggest that at all! So you are just here to argue and are using nasty little tricks or is it just a memory lapse? I suggested that wind can not be ignored in the situation being considered here were the wind loading is quite extreme and the icebergs follow the wind direction far more than the current.
Do a google image search for "tabular iceberg" and you will get the picture. Wind just cannot be ignored in that situation as distinct from the north Atlantic situation.
He ment: "Whats To Funny?" A simple typo :D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
In the UAE water is a status symbol.
E.g. they have very special toilets: they are filled with water so high that when you poo, your shit is just gliding into it without making a sound or a splat. (probably close to 3 gallons ... roughly translating litters to gallons in my mind)
So what are they doing? Obviously first before you go to the toilette, you flush first. Using another 5 gallons to flush away the 3 already inside of the toilette. Then you do your business. Then you flush twice.
They need 15 gallons of water for a single toilette visit. In Germany that would be perhaps 3 or 4.
And obviously they don't reuse the water for agriculture but let it run (after treatment?) into the ocean.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
This is damn near identical to the plot of TaleSpin episode 9, "I Only Have Ice For You".
Furries make the internet go.
Considering that I only made one point, and you challenged it, there really is no question that you were pushing the line that wind doesn't matter. I really don't get why you play such silly games. "Gaslighting" is the trendy name for such petty attempts at bullying where you try to get someone to think different thing have happened before isn't it? What a stupid game. "Reading comprehension" indeed - WTF is this shit about trying to find some sort of weakness and pick on people? Are you really the age your username suggests or a petty and destructive teenager? Are you really surrounded by the sort of people where "reading comprehension" is an insult that people will take seriously - and if so why are you picking on them?
I really do not get the point of you jumping on a post to deny the obvious just to start some sort of argument. Is your life really that empty? Have you reached some sort of silly troll goal due to me typing out an indication of how utterly worthless you appear to be?
Go to an iceberg and claim it for the world! Stay there to protect it.
Fucking hippie.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What about desalinization of sea water?
Wouldn't that be cheaper? At least in the long run?
Oh! I get it! It's not our money they want; it's more climate change!
Since there is a bigger push for curbing CO2 emissions, the plan now is to further reduce reflective surfaces to promote global climate change.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Live near Lake Ontario where our municipal water is pumped from - a limitless supply of water considering it comes from the other 4 Great Lakes too. But hey - people want to live in drought-prone areas and hope the government will come to fix it. Have fun with that.
Here's the instruction manual for this: http://a.co/iddu7Wx
Anyone who feels compelled to broadcast their heterosexuality in a post about icebergs isn't probably all that hetero. Naturally a secret part of him is excited by the prospect of an army of homosexual refugees swarming his town.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Why are you wasting so much time on setting up a strawman to attack over such a trivial subject?
Projection now? Pathetic.
You stupid little game is an utter waste of time. Why are you still trying the "gaslighting" to pretend it never happened? Are you really that pathetic? Do you really crave feedback from the target of your pathetic attempt at bullying over something so utterly trivial so much?