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Engineering Firm Plans To Tow Icebergs From Antarctica To Parched Dubai (stuff.co.nz)
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."
I did. Decades ago.
I mean .... is it ?
Seriously, I should drive my 4 cylinder car less than twice a week so others can have this???
This sounds a lot like something that would make actual climate change in a highly negative way. Disruption of the natural flow of hot & cold currents much?
Multiple ships towing an iceberg of this size multiple thousands of miles... belching carbon into our atmosphere.... this sounds like a horrible idea. How about instead we don't build enormous cities in deserts. And accelerating the melting of the iceberg will raise sea levels that much faster.
I'm skeptical that this will go anywhere near as well as planned. I suppose if it doesn't work out, they can always park what they do manage to haul all the way there off of the world islands.
And sell the water to the government.
I wonder why that isn't the first choice?
Did the goverment of Dubai reject it? If so, why?
a cool project :-)
https://www.igsoc.org/annals/1... 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.
Brewster's Millions was a comedy - NOT a business think tank.
Dubai is very close to the Persian Gulf, which is a large source of ... wait for it ... WATER !
A reverse-osmosis plant could supply all Dubai's water needs. All that's required to make it happen is money, and Dubai has plenty of that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_osmosis_plant
This "tow an iceberg" idea reeks of bullshit. Even if it works, I'd bet the energy used in an RO ( reverse-osmosis )plant would be far less. And the RO plant would not involve nearly the element of risk that towing an iceberg over thousands of miles of open ocean would involve.
Either it's bullshit or it's a scam or it is a cover op for something else. End of story.
would be not only more cost effective but less risky of an investment
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Nowhere
http://whatson.ae/dubai/2017/05/yes-people-want-tow-icebergs-antarctica-fujairah/
In the USA, the anti-immigration position of Republicans seems cruel, but what is the Democrat's plan to prevent population overshoot? Deny the problem and hope it goes away? The irony is delicious!
-
How is the rejection of ILLEGAL immgrants "cruel" ? It's not cruel at all, and claiming it is cruel is utter idiocy or a goddamned lie which only an idiot
would believe.
Most countries which have had massive numbers of immigrants enter in the past few decades are realizing that there are significant downsides to having allowed it. The downsides include increased crime, people refusing to assimilate into the culture, and increased drain on government resources. Fuck anyone who thinks it's a good idea to allow anyone to immigrate. Experience contradicts this severely.
So an oil-rich Mideast country sells the oil to make the CO2 which heats the environment and melts the ice caps which then provides them with water.
Kinda like the guy who sells the opioids which addicts and destroys the lives of a generation and then patents a drug to help relieve the problem.
Gotta think one step ahead.
The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty 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.
Have gnu, will travel.
I would love to see the energy estimate for the fuel required to tow this, compared to desalination of the same volume of seawater, for example. A giant 30 story iceberg isn't exactly streamlined.
I guess they have not though of de-salination of the water that's right on their doorstep, and requires no shipping, just water filters?
A 100 million ton iceberg will provide pretty much exactly 100 million cubic meters of fresh water, if none of it is lost to melting en route. One cubic meter of fresh water weighs one metric ton. To get 200 million cubic meters of fresh water despite 30% melting away, you need a 286 million ton iceberg.
I saw that documentary Already. I seem to remember they spent 30 million to make 300 million but it wasn't easy.
Yeah, just ask the Native American tribes how much they regret letting all the white immigrants from Europe come over.
It will be much cheaper to harvest falling rain water into giant inflatable swimming pools floating on the surface and pipe that in.
What could possibly go wrong?
Terraforming is a pretty cool idea, but I think it should generally be reserved for planets that aren't already habitable.
Seems to me it would be a good idea to encase the iceberg in a container of some sort before towing it. By the time the reach Dubai any saltwater would be diluted to the point of not being a problem and they would get all of the fresh water to the destination. Build a solid wall that is tied into iceberg for towing with a flexible membrane under it to contain the water. Once the iceberg reaches Dubai all you have to do is pump the water out of the container.
Back in 1978:
Iceberg towed into Sydney Harbour.
Yeah, just ask the Native American tribes how much they regret letting all the white immigrants from Europe come over.
-
Those Native Americans didn't have a chance because of the difference in the tech they had vs the tech the European invaders had.
So it was inevitable that North America would be invaded and "settled" by Europeans. However it is NOT inevitable that the US is going
to continue to be invaded by Mexicans. I have personally called ICE on over a dozen different illegals and some of them have already been
picked up by ICE. Fuck each and every one of them. If I went to Switzerland and tried to stay illegally, they would kick me out and I would not
blame them one bit. There are legal processes for immigration and those who flout those laws deserve no sympathy from anyone with a reasonable level of intelligence and common sense.
If you are from the US and you don't want to protect your country from an onslaught of illegal immigrants who will hasten the economic race to the bottom, you're no friend of mine, and if it comes down to it, you will even be my enemy. The majority in the US are fed up with illegals and we aren't going to let twerps like you stop us from dealing with it properly. If you want to be surrounded by Mexicans, move your sorry ass to Mexico.
So,why aren't the global warming nutters screaming about the removal of the ice? Common. You can't get rid of the ice in the extreme hemispheres any quicker than removing it. Then what are they going to complain about? Toothpaste and muscle relaxants?
Although many people do not think about Ice as a mineral, it is a mineral just as much as Quartz is. Ice is a naturally occurring compound with a defined chemical formula and crystal structure, thus making it a legitimate mineral. ... Snow crystals cling together to form snowflakes.
Seriously, I would love to see us move something that large. It would enable a number of other actions. I will say, that it would be best to have a small 1-10MW nuclear reactor to power several electric motors to drive this forward.
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.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What if on the way there it hits a ship and sinks?
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?...
Oh, yeah, Brewster. Monty Brewster. Made million$ doing this.
Won't it melt before it gets there?
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.
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.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
a Furturama episode.
Well, it does appear that you took an extra large helping of Dr. Duh's elixir. How is this any different. Towing an iceberg is towing an iceberg.
Learn what order of magnitude means moronic Texas trashmind.
This will more than offset the cost of shipping the iceberg. Charge a fee to let people crap on it. Considering where it's going, there will be a long line. Also, you can say it is already fertilized---ready for farming.
I got an email today from Prince Nasim Abid al Alim about this very topic. He says that my dividend for my investment in Iceberg water has been returned and that he needs my Bank Account and Routing number so he can deposit my profits from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Sincerely your Professor Farnsworth from Planet Express.
Just 3D print the iceberg in Dubai. Duh. Technology. Computers got better, remember?
Take enough of the wall holding the oceans in away, and we'll all leak off the edge! /s (?)
I have heard about these plans 20 years ago. I hope they are moving forward, not just rehashing some old dream.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
"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.
Ken
I hear the iceberg is 87% plastic so it probably won't water the populous for too long.
Futurama - Global Warming
#DeleteFacebook
They should just pray to allah to send water. Of course, they may have to fuck a kid first like their beloved Muhammad (pork be upon him) for allah to do it for them.
The Martian Way, published November 1952.
Earth wanted to stop supporting colonies on Mars, so they made up an excuse about Mars taking too much water away from the planet. So the colonists towed a gigantic frozen blob of ice from the asteroid belt, and offered to sell Earth water in trillion ton lots.
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.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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?
quit fucking in the desert.. i mean, quite literally.. QUIT FUCKING IN THE DAMN DESERT.
or i dunno. promote monogamy, allow women the freedom to choose their mates, choose birth control, end a marriage, etc, etc, etc..... forcing 20 wives to make babies and 20 boys for toys isn't conductive to responsible population control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
china transforms deserts to lush green lands
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
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.
**Life is too short to be serious**
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Why not? And in any case, someone else is the one fucking the bison in the ass.
If they put a bag around the iceberg while it's still in chilly water, it doesn't matter how much melts; you just have to tow the bag to the point of use. The main issue is preventing the bag from sinking due to fresh water's higher specific gravity than salt water.
- If the bag reflects sunlight it might slow the rate of melting.
- A siphon at the bottom of the bag could collect meltwater for separate shipment in tankers.
- Or if necessary just let the meltwater drain away.
- Once the bag arrives at the shallow waters near Dubai, it's okay for the bag to sink to the bottom as the ice melts. Fresh water can be extracted via hoses, again from the bottom of the bag, below the sea water which will presumably float to the top of the bag.
// DevsVult: The Machines Will It
No no no no.... This thing melts, and he knows it!
I had a sucky sig.
So much better than building a desalinization plant.
It would be too easy to do that in an area where there is a large body of saltwater nearby and tons of solar energy.
Seriously?
You do know Jethro convinced Uncle Jed in 1967 to back a plan to bring Icebergs to the Desert waaay back there.
Salvage 1 - the rust bucket to the Moon in 1979 also had a plot where they hooked up Salvage One trashcan boosters to an Iceberg to "drive" it to Saudia Arabia as a rocket powered boat.. and lost control of it.
This is a recycled Meme about every decade, Tom Cruise MI series probably should cover it.. Evil plot to clog the New York Harbor with an Iceberg to extort money from Wall Street.. negotiating with President Mr. "T" for an artful Deal.
So now Internet Tough Guy thinks he's a historian.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
That should work
Lol whoosh
How the fuck do you plan to get them to stop reproducing? People want to reproduce.. For many it's a strong drive... Your plan include forced sterilization?
Right.. They let us in here....
Your level of delusion is amusing.
Besides, you only get to own something for as long as you can keep it. There is no moral problem here. They lost it... I'll feel bad for them when all the countries of Europe revert to their original settlers. Lands change hands... What's yours today may not be yours tomorrow. This has been happening for 20,000 years. Get off that liberal soapbox, you're likely to fall and break your neck.
Chop down the Amazon rain forest. Burn the trees to make charcoal. Ship the charcoal to Antarctica. Burn the charcoal in Antarctica to melt some icebergs. Load the melted icebergs into super tankers. Ship the super tankers via Australia and via the Straights of Malacca to cross the Indian Ocean. Get captured by pirates in the Straights of Malacca. Pay a trillion dollar ransom to free the tankers. Proceed to cross the Indian Ocean. Get hit by a tsunami from an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra. The tankers sink, and all the melted water is lost. Return to the Amazon rain forest and repeat the process.
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Lands change hands... What's yours today may not be yours tomorrow.
Unless it's Israel, amirite?
Bible says that shit's theirs. Who are we to argue with the bible.
Not to mention one of the ideas suggested to Brewster in Brewster's Millions.
about 10 megajoule per m^3...While towing iceberg water may cost less energy by order of magnitudes for the same quantities, keep in mind that the total world desalinization plant output maybe 200 million m^3 per year, roughly the amount they expect to finally get non-melted at their goal port. 200 million m^3 of desalinization is 2.10^15 joules or about a 70 MW plant running 365/24, that is not even counting the replacement pieces. Assuming about 35 Mj/liter of fuel, if they consume with their scheme less than 570000 liter or about 715 tons of fuel, then they are energy positive.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
If you were smart, you could come up with a better plan than that. Are you smart?
Don't worry Dubai, you'll get plenty of water when the world melts.
The long dormant super bug gets unfrozen in to their drinking supply and suddenly there's a massive spread of an ancient disease that nobody can cure.
How and how much should the "world" charge them for this ice? Or should it be free for anyone? Or?
why do this, instead of filtering seawater, can't imagine that it would be more expensive or more difficult to do.
and it would be permanent, instead having to repeat this every 5 years.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Travesty means 'misrepresentation'.
I have heard about these plans 20 years ago. I hope they are moving forward, not just rehashing some old dream.
People have been bringing this idea up for at least 200 years. It's a romantic but thoroughly impractical (bordering on idiotic) idea just like flying cars, asteroid mining, etc that people keep bringing up because it seems plausible if you don't really understand physics and economics and don't think about it too deeply.
Scrooge McDuck did is successfully years ago :-)
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.
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.
but what would they do then? Planting no wheat? So no green, no change in humidity? No change in micro climate?
Yes planting wheat in a hot desert climate where wheat doesn't grow well naturally without major ecosystem transformations is a stupid idea. There is basically no way to make wheat grow near Dubai for less money (and resource inputs) than it costs to grow it in a location where wheat grows more naturally and ship it to Dubai.
So far we don't know what it costs to ship an iceberg so far.
It doesn't really matter because we do know it would be more than building an equivalent desalination plant. Seriously, this iceberg shipping idea is at least 200 years old and it's been shown time and again to be an unworkable and foolish idea. Far more sensible to build desalination plants and ship in the wheat (or other stuff) from elsewhere.
I hoped those desert countries simply would start a long term big "terraforming" project to make the deserts at least somewhat green again.
Why do you hope that? Those regions aren't deserts simply to inconvenience humans. They became deserts because of some complex climatic systems that we should only tinker with very carefully. Just because we theoretically can make a desert green doesn't automatically make it a good idea to do so. Do you have any idea what the second and third order effects of greening a large area of desert might be?
A lot of slaves.
The'll just tow another iceberg to the desert every now and then. Solving the problem once and for all!
Special Consultant to the project, Harry Broderick, commented that once the first iceberg had been delivered, they were going to head to the moon, and salvage all the junk that was up there.
I think you should consider coating your iceberg with thermally insulating, highly light reflecting particulates. This would decrease cracking and melting, and as a secondary technology could also be of great use for humanity. If you pre-seed glaciers while they are in antarctica with this sort of approach, they take longer to break off (so better water capture/albedo, better control), break where (think boat-shaped, or towable) and when you want, and can be applied in Greenland too.
-EngrStudent
first off aren't all the crazy liberals already complaining about the loss of ice on the poles? Second off why did anyone build a large city in the desert. Humans have been building near rivers since they started building settlements. In fact the reason they started to settle down was because they found a great spot with many resources near by. people said i was deft to build a castle in the swamp, but i built it anyway just to show them. That castle sank into the swamp. So i built a second castle ....
I think it's been tried at least once. Reading some very old issue of Pop Sci, they talked about one attempt. One or more tugboats tried moving a smallish iceberg and literally got nowhere. A mile-long one, probably will garner the same result. An awful lot of inertia and water resistance there.
Think of all the polar bears that will be displaced.
Develop a blimp large enough to lift the iceberg out of the water. The blimp is so powerful that it lifts the iceberg 10 km into the air where it is carried by the jet stream all the way to Dubai. But the jet stream changes course and carries the blimp all the way to New York City, where it stalls. The blimp has a Hindenburg accident while it is hovering over New York City, and the iceberg drops from the sky and lands on Manhattan Island, killing 100 thousand people and destroying the studios for Fox News. Donald Trump invites Fox News to move into Trump Towers. The American Congress impeaches Donald Trump for conflict of interest, and the incident is reported from the new studios of Fox News.
Or should I say, it'll be tried in 1,000 years time... and it won't work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cjx4gJFME0
Care to point out where he's wrong? The colonial settlers/invaders were always going to win. Muskets vs bows? The introduction of smallpox? The natives weren't pacifists, they may have not been as aggressive as they should have been to begin with, but the US wasn't sending out military to deal with Native Americans because they were so docile. It was bloody, but the Europeans had better tech.
I'm surprised three people missed the obvious sarcasm, so I'm hoping you aren't serious either.
What a coincidence. Dubai also plans to implement flying taxis.
Flying taxi's != flying cars. There already are air taxis which are just airplanes and helicopters which are functioning as a taxi service. Any vehicle can be a taxi in principle - taxi is a service description not a particular vehicle design. An air taxi is not the same thing as a flying car which is a vehicle design that can both fly as well as drive on roads. Flying cars are a practical impossibility in the mass market for a variety of engineering and economic reasons, not the least of which is that we have no power source with sufficient energy density to make them simultaneously economically viable and safe. (basically we'd need Tony Stark's arc reactor)
I'm pretty sure I read this story in 1952: The Martian Way , by Isaac Asimov.
...Except it was Mars that needed water, not Dubai.
...And they got their icebergs from Saturn's rings, not Antarctica.
But aside from that, totally the same plan.
~Idarubicin
I saw the headline and this quirky novel immediately sprang to mind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towing_Jehovah
Doesn't sound like a long-term solution to me, given that the polar caps are going to be ice-free any minute now...right? RIGHT??
Why would a rational person drag something rough and round through all of that water?
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
It's clearly Oil and Money are the most precious substances in the world... so let them drink that - looks like they have more than enough to go around.
This is stupid on so many levels. I mean...it isn't like the sea levels are not rising largely due to the polar ice caps melting, or anything. Desalinization is a much more sustainable proposition if you can't just move to somewhere else that already has fresh water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
--It's only stupid if it doesn't work. You can even do it for humanitarian reasons and not make money on it -- if it actually Does The Job and gives people a good supply of fresh water, it's still not "stupid." Mission Accomplished = Considered Successful
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
... dinosaurs. If there's one thing I learned growing up in the 50's and 60's and 70's watching TV, it's that something always goes wrong.
Question: if this becomes a regular industry, how many icebergs does it take to lower the temperature of the oceans?
Will this offset global warming?
Between global warming and "mining," icebergs, will we run out of icebergs?
Would we be better off if people asked similar serious questions about fossil fuels 160 years ago?
Well, mutual defense treaties are fine... I just don't buy this whole "we got here first, so it's ours for all time... blah blah blah".
Make allies, defend your shit.... If you lose, you lose.. Suck it up. If that's not how we are gonna look at it, then I suspect we'll be hearing from some Phoenicians on how they want their land back....
Could you please tell the court, who typed that response?
Could you also confirm that response was to Shanghai Bill who was responding to Angelosphere who was responding to Shanghai Bill who was responding to Angelosphere who ORIGINALLY replied to Shanghai Bill?
Would you point out to the court, who and which post, first stated "Global warming" and who responded on that very topic until proven wrong?
--It's only stupid if it doesn't work.
That's only a valid argument when something actually has been shown to work. Towing icebergs for drinking water is an idea that has been kicking around literally for centuries and has never worked nor has it been shown to even be economically plausible. When something is neither technically sensible nor economically viable then it is by definition a stupid idea.
You can even do it for humanitarian reasons and not make money on it
You think humanitarian activities are immune from economics? Even without the intent to make a profit no organization can lose money forever. Towing icebergs is stupidly expensive compare to already viable alternatives. Why would you do something needlessly expensive when you can accomplish the exact same goal for less and help more people in the process? Why would you tow icebergs when you could divert a river or install a desalination plant for less money? Hell, on an individual scale it is cheaper for people to just get up and move to where there is readily available water already.
Your argument is like the idiots who live in Las Vegas who periodically argue that we should divert the Great Lakes so they can continue to live in an inhospitable artificial desert oasis for... reasons. Just because we can do something doesn't automatically make it a good idea. Some places just aren't ever going to be comfortable places for people to live and we need to just accept that as reality and behave accordingly. If someone wants to live in a desert that's their choice but I see no reason to waste resources needlessly facilitating that questionable choice.
I think I was more pointing out the hypocrisy of the 'you get what you take' viewpoint with regard to Israel.
The contemporary Republican argument for throwing away the UN resolutions that call for a 2-state solution in Israel (land that was given to them, mind you, from the spoils of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire) is that Jerusalem was built by "the Jews", disregarding the fact that it has been controlled by "the Arabs" and occupied by "the Palestinians" for 450 years. The Israelis ran a good gambit- hoping that in time the political winds would change in the US, and someone would support their behavior. They seemed to have their finger on the pulse of the American Evangelical better than Americans themselves did.
BTW- the US does not have a mutual defense pact with Israel. Our current relationship with them being so tight is a new phenomena.
See Suez crisis.
The evangelical drool over Jerusalem being an inherently "Jewish" city is Reagan-era, when a bunch of megachurch pastors realized "The Jews" returning to Jerusalem was one of the requirements for the second coming.
Quotes used because I think the distinction between Israeli, Jew, Palestinian as they're used de facto are a bunch of bullshit.
They're all Levantines living in the Levant, and we've taken sides in a religious war that has ground to an apartheid stalemate, with the assistance of many hundreds of billion dollars of US aid in military equipment.
Even if this works, and they start running out of large icebergs, the next step will be to create more or larger bergs, by blasting them apart from the ice shelf with out waiting for them to break off naturally. They would have more success with additional desalination and possible treatment of waste water.
Beware of the Redittor who loans you a Sharpie.