Posted on 07/06/2018 7:57:39 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Sloane suggests wrapping the iceberg in a textile insulation skirt to stop it melting and using a supertanker and two tugboats to drag it 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) toward Cape Town using prevailing ocean currents.
The iceberg... would be about one kilometer in length, 500 meters across and up to 250 meters deep, with a flat, tabletop surface.
Melted water could be gathered each day using collection channels and a milling machine to create ice slurry — producing 150 million liters of usable water every day for a year.
[Sloane] has a reputation for taking on the impossible after he refloated the giant Costa Concordia cruise ship that capsized in 2012 off the Tuscan island of Giglio, killing 32 people — one of the world’s largest and most complex maritime salvage operations.
...
“At this stage it appears to us that in fact the groundwater or desalination options are cheaper or at least equal cost price,” said Cape Town’s deputy mayor, Ian Neilson.
There are also questions on how the water from the iceberg will be channeled into the city’s distribution system.
Another problem is that there is no guarantee that by the time the iceberg is hauled to Cape Town, it will still be able to produce the promised volumes of water. Sloane’s plan is to tow the giant iceberg some 150 km further north to South Africa’s St. Helena Bay, where the cold Benguela Current keeps water at around zero degrees Celsius.
Once there, the iceberg could be anchored in an old submarine channel, suggests Sloane.
As the iceberg melts, water will be collected each day, pumped into tankers and driven to Cape Town. “It won’t sort out Cape Town’s crisis, (but) it will be about 20 to 30 percent of their annual needs,”
(Excerpt) Read more at japantimes.co.jp ...
Yes, but can antarctica afford any further ice loss? ;-)
I remember reading about this is the ‘Weekly Reader’ when I was in grade school.
They tow Icebergs all the time , to make Vodka
I remember this being proposed back in the late Sixties or Seventies, and everyone seemed to scoff at it..
I always thought it was something that should be tried.
Now, probably, they will get environmentalists out there in zodiacs chanting “SAVE THE ICE!”
It’s the lions.
They get real thirsty after they eat someone.
desalinization has become quite price-competitive, especially when done large-scale as Capetown apparently needs for the long-term.
I’m no physicist...but I’m curious. Once you get that ice moving, how do you stop it?
I assume the boats have brakes.
But what about the giant piece of ice?
It's worth a cost/benefit analysis compared to the new super-duper double osmosis desalinization at 58 cents per cubic meter. Get the Israelis to figure it pout.
There was talk back in World War II of building aircraft carriers out of ice (Pykrete). If someone had the money to build a factory in Antarctica, they could construct pykrete ships with actual engines that could deliver huge payloads of frozen fresh water directly to the shores of the afflicted countries. Drive it right up to a pier and start the transfer.
Maybe it would be cheaper to use an actual oil supertanker design (before it is used for oil) to sail to an ice pack, force-melt the ice and divert the runoff into the hold of the ship, then sail it back to the needed country.
Or, park such a tanker at the mouth of the Amazon and suck up fresh water at the source.
This stuff isn’t rocket science.
What about the penguins?
What are they gonna drink?
Gin and tonics?
Oh, I can see it now. A bunch of drunken penguins wobbling around lecturing the world about soccer.
I see what the headline writer did there! (”iceberg” + “floated”)
“I assume the boats have brakes.
I suggest you take a day off and go boating!
Salvage 1 used the idea as a plot at least once.
You beat me to it. Since we can't seem to measure any sea level change, we will create it. By gawd we will lower this damn sea level by hook or by crook.
the thing is that a single supertanker would not hold enough water to make a meaningful dent in Capetown’s needs An iceberg could be far larger. I would think eventually this or desalination would be the best options. Groundwater does not last forever
Bad assumption.
Boats don’t have brakes either.
That’s why you have to very careful moving a huge mass close to a dock or other object.
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