In regards to capturing the water from an iceberg as referenced here, how about a pulling a gigantic, let’s call it kiddy-pool-shaped teflon bag under the iceberg? A cover to keep seawater from splashing in, a pump in the bottom to get rid of the incidental seawater as we’re starting. Melting during transit turns into a savings in melting the ice when we get where we’re going.
How much would a suitably tough material cost? Or is the very concept of “suitably tough” glossing over the main problem?
As an impartial investigator, I have always expected you to be sceptical and to thoughtfully weigh the evidence. So, it has been disappointing to me to see you beat the drum week after week for global warming.
The facts are that all climate models have shown temperatures rises far above the raw temperature data, and that nearly every temperature data set has shown the temperatures to have been remarkably steady for the past 15 - 18 years.
In addition to the temperatures not cooperating with the models, I am unaware of any global warming prediction that has come to pass. Some of the more ludicrous screeds include “the Arctic will be ice-free by 2015” and “children won’t know what snow is”.
So, Cecil, let’s show a little sound judgement here. Your continual support of the increasingly tenuous global warming alarmism is unwarranted.
The big bag of water is in water though. Heck, with salinity, it’s probably lighter than the surrounding medium. The bag isn’t carrying the water, just holding it separate from the saltwater.
Probably terribly expensive but I would think it would be easier and more feasible to build a pipeline from northern Alaska to the Pacific Northwest and just melt the icebergs where their at.
Not sure why you say that. One of the early papers from 1981 by James Hansen et al was revisited and found to be if anything a little conservative about subsequent temperatures.
Here’s the original graph, with subsequent (increasing) temperature superimposed. http://cdn.phys.org/newman/csz/news/800/2012/1-1981climatec.jpg
Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Rein Haarsma of KNMI summarize their findings: [INDENT]To conclude, a projection from 1981 for rising temperatures in a major science journal, at a time that the temperature rise was not yet obvious in the observations, has been found to agree well with the observations since then, underestimating the observed trend by about 30%, and easily beating naive predictions of no-change or a linear continuation of trends. It is also a nice example of a statement based on theory that could be falsified and up to now has withstood the test. The “global warming hypothesis” has been developed according to the principles of sound science.
You don’t have to break up the iceberg or drag it onto land or do anything to melt it.
Just tow it to the mouth of a freeflowing river (one without dams or waterfalls) and arrive when the tide is coming in, so that it gets pushed upstream. By holding still (with anchors) when the tide is going out and moving (upstream) when the tide is coming in, plus using whatever little bit of towing power you used on the open ocean, make it to a freshwater lake or a section of river that is freshwater. Then, just let the iceberg melt into the existing body of freshwater and pump freshwater out of that body at the same rate.
This will reduce the temperature of the existing body of freshwater, and that has environmental consequences to consider.
This would not work with the Charles River in Boston, because there is a dam in the way.
But the Hudson River has no dams south of Albany and is over a mile wide at its mouth. However, it’s not very deep, so you might need to dredge it before icebergs could clear the bottom. And I’m not sure that you could dredge it that deep along Manhattan, because of the Lincoln, Holland, PATH, and Northeast Corridor tunnels. You could avoid problem that by taking the iceberg through the Long Island Sound and the Harlem River, reaching the Hudson farther north, but the junction of the Harlem River and the Long Island Sound is called “Hell’s Gate” for a reason, and I don’t think you could navigate it with an iceberg. And don’t try to get to the Hudson from the other end, by going up the Saint Lawrence Seaway and down a canal. The canals in NYS aren’t big enough.
California is even worse, because many of the rivers are dry, or at least don’t have enough water to float an iceberg.
How about Panama? Their canal is wider and deeper than the ones in NYS.
In their 1981 book “Oath of Fealty”, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle postulate a future where icebergs are towed to the L.A. bay, and surrounded by a “membrane” around and below. This “pond” is then flushed of brine and the iceberg is allowed to melt naturally providing fresh water and skiing opportunities to the Los Angelinos. It seemed a viable idea to me in 1981. It seems an even more viable idea now, considering current California’s water shortage.
should be feasible, at some price point of water. Might have to use an aircraft carrier or a supertanker to have the needed horsepower, or more than one, even.
Why do they use tugboats to nudge icebergs away from tankers? Can’t they just steer the tanker clear of the iceberg? Do floating icebergs move faster than tankers?
However, the Hudson is still one of the deepest rivers in North America. Just not so deep that one could tow an iceberg through it. That might not even be possible with the Amazon.
The fact is, California is out of easy solutions. They could have built water retention systems as Arizona did. They could build desalination plants as in Israel and other Middle Eastern countries. They could stop dumping half their fresh water into San Francisco Bay to help a non-endangered bait fish. But all these are too costly to the environment for Californians’ taste, so instead they come up with proposals like diverting the Columbia River (as if that would have no environmental impact).
Really, they need to get over their baby tantrums and take care of the problem with the solutions at hand.
Rivers are only tidal at their ends, near to the ocean. There’s no way you could get to a freshwater lake that way, since all freshwater lakes are going to be above the tidal zone.
Icebergs are large. Really large. That makes them heavy. Really heavy. Even floating in water, they have a shitton of mass. That takes a lot of energy to move, and creates a lot of momentum. Water is thick (viscous). It creates a lot of drag. (I bet you thought I was going to say really. Nope. A lot more than air, but not like mud or tar.)
That creates a lot of drag, which in turn adds up to a really large amount of stress in your teflon bag.
Plus, yiu kinda probably want the floating part at the top rigid.
You’d be better off stacking the ice in an empty supertanker.
Nopity nope nope nope. First you have the tide/freshwater problem outlined by Chronos.
Then you have the draft problem. Do you have any idea of the draft of a berg weighing 1-10M tonnes as Cecil contemplates? We are talking at least a hundred and probably more feet of draft for even a relatively small berg. There is no river that is going to fit the bill.
And dredging that depth, and width, all the way to the freshwater part of river?
Probably cheaper to fly the berg in one cube at time.
Tugs are used to move icebergs out of shipping lanes, and away from fixed installations like oil rigs. They are not used to move bergs away from tankers “on the fly”. Moving bergs using tugs is a very, very slow process.
Tankers may be heavy and hard to turn, but they are as nimble as basketballers compared to icebergs.
