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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.
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.
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.
would be not only more cost effective but less risky of an investment
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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 saw that documentary Already. I seem to remember they spent 30 million to make 300 million but it wasn't easy.
Terraforming is a pretty cool idea, but I think it should generally be reserved for planets that aren't already habitable.
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.
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.
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 $0.06 per kwh in Dubai. The wholesale price is likely about half that. Electricity is cheap because much of it is generated from oilfield NG that would otherwise be flared.
Oh, yeah, Brewster. Monty Brewster. Made million$ doing this.
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 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.
IF they're growing grain with it, that is.
Water use in UAE
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.
The best way to "green the desert", or at least slow down the browning, is to reduce CO2 emissions.
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?
Ken
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.
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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.
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.
But no wheat. Check it out. 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.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
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.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
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.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
You mean like this one https://www.waterworld.com/art...
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
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.
Wait wait wait.... Let me get this straight.... 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?
Did they teach any physics in your school? How do you think that iceberg is floating? *Hint*
displacement
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.
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.
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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!
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.
Californian farmers waste water because it's heavily subsidized. If they had to pay market value they would be more careful.
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.
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...
(I'm not the person you replied to)