2 Birds, 1 Iceberg

Factual Questions
1

So in a non-lucid moment today, I began to ponder the possibility of using melting icebergs to address drought conditions in some areas.

Global models indicate that ocean levels will rise significantly once a certain threshold is hit, likely around 100 years from now. But what if the ice that provides these models has already been repurposed for communities with drought conditions?

While it is true that all roads lead to the ocean, maintaining somewhat contained water recycling systems could slow that flow. If water is dumped somewhere directly east of the Rockies, it could take long periods of time to cycle all the way east, especially if much of it is stored underground or with minimal exposure to the evaporating rays of the sun.

So assuming that the average freight ship can haul 140,000 tons of cargo, and that a ton is comprised of 240 gallons, an average ship can haul roughly 33 million gallons. The average American uses 100 gallons of water per day, but given scarcity, I would bet we could get that down to 33 gallons.

So we are left with 1 million human/days of water per haul. How much does it cost to send a ship to gather the ice and bring it back? $5 million? I have no idea. That is a totally arbitrary number. Also, add in the processing plant to allow it to melt, then train freight.

What would we be looking at as an average cost per person? What if not all the water hauled to a community was lost when it was used? Water return is a contained system. How much could be filtered? How much could be contained underground? What would the upkeep be to maintain a reservoir like Lake Mead in low times? What about a water pipeline from processing plants on the coasts? Cheaper than rail travel?

Crazy idea? Yes. But is it also stupid? Probably. But please inform me as to why. Even if we wouldn’t solve the inevitable tidal wave to Manhattan, as Hollywood has led me to believe, how come this couldn’t provide relief to Africa and other drought spots?

Also, at this point it is implied that screw the polar bears and penguins. We’re talking people stuff here.

2
3

It’s been considered:

4

I thought IBTimes was going to be Iceberg Times and was amazed at how specialized magazines are.

5

It’s not a stupid idea. It’s mainly too expensive and your iceberg will melt and/or fall apart before it gets where you need it. People are working on it though.

6

To be honest, right after firing up the Google Admin box to find out how much a container ship holds and how many gallons comprise a ton, I did search for “icebergs for clean water” and found some of those articles.

I doubt many people who ask questions on here are concerned about the actual question, as you all seem able to fire one off at Google or Wiki. The utility of this site is more about being able to have a discussion on the topic.

That said, I don’t think this will get any traction until the economic scale tilts into the favor of supplying this as a service. At that point, will there be any ability to stem the tide, in a literal sense? My guess that a thousand freighters working a thousand years would not be able to make a dent on the world’s ice sheets.

Also, to address a previous comment, I’m not sure the melting of the ice would be a concern if they could design a boat that uses it as both cargo and ballast. Or piggybacking your idea of using a small vessel to tow the iceberg, they would need to develop the technology to contain the iceberg so that even if it melts, it stays contained in a giant iceberg condom. I’m sure the engineering on that would be insanely tricky, but in my mind I pretend you can just put a giant ziplock bag around it.

7

In poor countries, drought is more of a distribution problem than a resource problem. You can haul in all the water you like, but how do you get it to remote farmers with unirrigated fields? There is a massive amount of infrastructure involved, and if there were resources to build that infrastructure, we wouldn’t have those problems in the first place.

8

You’re estimating a cost of $5 million to haul 1 million gallons of water. That’s $5/gallon wholesale (not to mention the inevitable retail markup) or more than the cost of a gallon of gas. Surely, desalination would be more efficient at making potable water.

9

The problem is cost, since desalination plants exist. They’re expensive, but less expensive than hauling icebergs. So, fix that problem and people will consider the iceberg approach.

10

Also, you’re not just planning to drag icebergs from the poles, you’re planning on pumping (or hauling) it from the cost inland.

We already have plenty of fresh water in some places, but not enough in other places. The problem is that unless we can use gravity to move water from one place to another, it’s absurdly expensive. It takes energy to pump water. Lots of energy. OK, not very much to pump your drinking water to your home, or for your shower and washing machine and even watering the lawn.

But the real use of water is for agriculture, and that requires millions of gallons of water. They don’t even use “gallons” when talking about agricultural water, they use “acre-feet”–an amount of water that would flood an acre of land one foot deep. That’s 325,000 gallons. It costs serious amounts of fuel and equipment to pump this amount of water, and agriculture in the US uses millions of acre-feet annually.

Even if we had a free supply of fresh water at the coasts–and we do in lots of places, they’re called rivers–it would be insanely expensive to pump that water back up to the hills and mountains and let it trickle down again. The aqueducts that we currently use are uniformly gravity fed, we take water from the mountains and move it to the valleys, with perhaps a few tiny pumping stations to move the water over one hump to where it can be moved via gravity again.

Of course, using the water we have more wisely, preventing runoff, using drip irrigation and cultivating crops that use less water, we can easily cut our water usage radically.

11

I’ve heard numbers less unfavorable than that. For one thing, a small iceberg might be five million tons of ice, rather than five million gallons of water.

And I heard another idea. Make a large plastic bladder about 400 feet long and perhaps fifty feet wide. Fill it with fresh water and then tow the floating bag to an area needing clean water.

12

[ QUOTE=Dewey Finn;17373352]I’ve heard numbers less unfavorable than that. For one thing, a small iceberg might be five million tons of ice, rather than five million gallons of water.

And I heard another idea. Make a large plastic bladder about 400 feet long and perhaps fifty feet wide. Fill it with fresh water and then tow the floating bag to an area needing clean water.
[/QUOTE]

Again, in real life-threatening droughts the “area needing water” is thousands of acres of land with zero irrigation and no pipes or canals anywhere, splayed out across vast areas of difficult terrain with few roads. Nothing you do can solve the problem of drought for farmers that rely entirely on rainfall.

13

In some dialects, “bird” can mean “girl”, so the thread title could be read as “2 girls, 1 iceberg”.

14

Yea, I think the OP knew that.