Towing the Line

Even as rains release floodwaters all across the United States, the longer-term prognosis for water availability, as average temperatures rise and as underground aquifers relinquish their last drops of liquid gold, is less than positive. California is particularly vulnerable, and the May 23^rd Newsweek notes that for southern Europe alone, with rising temperatures and “reducing rainfall another 30% - things will only get worse.”

For those living in coastal regions, aside from the possibility of desalinization of ocean water, there may actually be another, more dramatic, solution. Towing fresh-water-abundant icebergs from the polar ice flows, as global warming increasing breaks off these massive water storage units in record numbers (an estimated 15,000 measurable icebergs released off Greenland this year), may become a pragmatic necessity. While we haven’t done it yet, computer simulations tell us that towing icebergs to places where water is desperately going to be required is more than possible; it is actually commercially feasible.

The visionary behind the underlying theories revolving around using tugs and currents to move giant ice flows where they can be “mined” for water is 86-year-old French eco-engineer, Georges Mougin. He’s been working on this concept for four decades, but until recent computer simulations proved how feasible the process can be, it was just a high-risk theory in search of substantiating proof. As an additional benefit, water trapped in icebergs happens to be some of the purest rainwater, frozen thousands and thousands of years ago.

With the help of some of the most sophisticated 3D computer simulations from Dassault Systèmes, Mougin has worked how a tugboat, working with the ocean’s actual currents, could deliver a viable iceberg with about 38% shrinkage (from melting) along the way. The larger the iceberg, the less the percentage of shrinkage. The scientists aggregated massive amounts of oceanographic and meteorological data to substantiate viability.

Able to withstand fierce storms, the tug system starts by enclosing the half of the iceberg by encircling it with an insulating geo-textile material (a belt first surrounds the berg, and then the curtain is dropped to provide the insulation). While the tug snails at a speed of one knot per hour, making the journey consumes a very long five to six months, and generating the greatest assist from ocean currents really depends heavily on picking the right departure date.

An actual test with a smaller iceberg will cost between $3 and $5 million, but it does appear that this “theory” will be a reality in a year or two. Human ingenuity is going to be tested to the max in the near term – as the earth’s resources are increasingly reaching their limits.

I’m Peter Dekom, and a cool glass of iceberg water sounds pretty good right now