A Dubai firm's dream of towing icebergs from the Antarctic to the Arabian Peninsula could face some titanic obstacles.
Where many see the crumbling polar ice caps as a distressing sign of global warming, the National Advisor Bureau Limited sees it as a source of profit, and a way of offsetting the effects of climate change in the increasingly sweltering Gulf.
The firm has drawn up plans to harvest icebergs in the southern Indian Ocean and tow them 9,200 kilometers (5,700 miles) away to the Gulf, where they could be melted down for freshwater and marketed as a tourist attraction.
"The icebergs are just floating in the Indian Ocean. They are up for grabs to whoever can take them," managing director Abdullah al-Shehi told The Associated Press in his Dubai office. He hopes to begin harvesting them by 2019.
[...] The firm would send ships down to Heard Island, an Australian nature reserve in the southern Indian Ocean, where they would steer between massive icebergs the size of cities in search of truck-sized chunks known as growlers. Workers would then secure them to the boats with nets and embark on a yearlong cruise to the United Arab Emirates.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by WalksOnDirt on Thursday May 18 2017, @01:16AM (1 child)
The icebergs are up for grabs now, but what about later? Will the UN lay claim to all antarctic ice and try to make people pay for it? Or will ice ships camp off the coast waiting to claim new bergs as they fall off the great ice sheets?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday May 18 2017, @07:37AM
What I think the world community has to be wary of is when expeditions starts to blow off pieces of ice when the natural supply isn't enough.