[ExI] towing an iceberg

[spike at rainier66.com]

Cool!  A few days ago, this huge iceberg was formed when A-76 broke off the
Ronne Ice Shelf.

 



 

 

A-76 has been measured at about 4300 square km, and since about 10% of an
iceberg is above water, then the volume of ice is the product of square km
of visible ice times the average altitude above sea level of the surface of
the ice times ten.  

 

Sooo. by that reckoning, this is a bunch of cubic km of ice.

 

California (and the US in general) is going into another damn drought.  What
if. we could somehow haul A-76 up and park it about 50 km out at sea, then
build a pipeline out to it which would bring fresh water from the melting
ice over to the mainland.

 

OK so how the heck do we haul a chunk of ice that size?

 

Good chance we can't do it with the little bit of force we can exert with
ships, but if we had some kind of anchors which sit still on the sea floor
and exert steady force through cables, might that move the ice into the
current that flows north along the west coast of South America.

 

Once we hit central America, the current that once helped us is now going
hack the other way, so I can imagine two ways from there.  One is to break
off pieces of perhaps a cubic km and try to haul them against the current
or. park the ice off the west coast of Columbia and pipe the fresh water up
thru Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico to the USA.

 

Any chance either scheme could work?  If so, there is a buttload of money to
be made.

 

spike

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