Actually the ideas for this have been around for a long time, and are all existing technologies. First you cover the iceberg with an insulating cover, like a tarp, that reduces the melt rate. The water from the melting ice provides the impulse to move the iceberg, with some external engines to slowly direct its course. Once near its destination, tugboats take over.
Finally, you take advantage of the ocean currents when you can.
You also need a suitable dock for an iceberg, with an ice processing facility and a lined, covered freshwater lake for storage. Then pumping stations and pipelines to pump the fresh water inland.
Because about 90% of an iceberg is under water, you harvest it from the top.
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. If 1 million people each use 10 gallons of water a day, then 20 billion gallons of water would take care of the water needs of 1 million people for more than five years. For 10 million people, it would last 200 days. It really is a lot of water.
This concept puts me in mind of “Rocks, and Ice - and Men.” Which is a chapter of “The Americans - the National Experience” by Daniel Boorstin. It seems that after the Revolution, an enterprising New England sea captain heard about how valuable ice would be in Jamaica (which was wealthy with sugar cane). So he tried hauling ice from New England to Jamaica, and altho the initial experiment wasn’t profitable for lack of infrastructure and market familiarity, soon it became a major shipping market.Thing was, it was impractical to harvest iceberg ice; if you tried it you stood a wonderful chance of sinking your ship. So they were ultimately making money shipping ice pretty much worldwide. The reason they were able to harvest so much ice was that the Little Ice age - which was in full force during the Revolution - didn’t peter out for some decades. So every winter the lakes in NE would freeze hard and deep - and horse-drawn saws were used to cut up the ice into rectangular blocks which could be efficiently stored in purpose-built ice warehouses, and stowed on a sailing ship.
20,200,000,000 Gallons
90 Gallons @ Person @ Day (Estimated is 80-100@Day so I picked the middle)
1,000,000 People*90. Gallons = 90,000,000 Gallons
10,000,000 People*90. Gallons = 900,000,000 Gallons
20,000,000,000/90,000,000=222.222222222222222 Days
20,000,000,000/900,000,000=22.222222222222222 Days
And those numbers don’t include any Camels.
However, goathumpingterrorscum only bathe a few times a month so it might be a wash...
PS- Y’All check My math please.
Is this cover for only the part above water? Seems like the vast majority of the melting would be in the submerged portion, as the iceberg is towed through warm seas.
Why not build a new class of ultra-large tanker ship? Mine fresh water from arctic ice shelves or bergs in situ and transport it anywhere in gigantic tankers. Since their only cargo is water they can be single-hull. They could have a number of isolated internal tanks, with rinsing systems built in. For the sake of structural stability you could keep it loaded at all times, with seawater on deadhead trips and then fresh water on cargo runs.
The means of propulsion would be whatever is most cost-effective, in terms of turnaround rate and cost per mile. This kind of ship would never enter a harbor or pass through locks so the form factor could be whatever works engineering-wise for a truly vast scale. At both ends of the trips it would connect to deepwater offshore terminal facilities like some present-day supertankers do.
Obviously this scheme would require building facilities in the arctic to mine and melt ice, running pipelines offshore to terminals, and at the destination(s) building storage capacity sufficient to contain several ship-loads of water.