Scores of icebergs have floated to within about 300km of New Zealand, with the largest measuring about 1.8km in length and standing some 120 metres above water: source smh

Should we standby, and let all this fresh water go to waste?

I want to float the idea that we tow these water-bergs into City harbours, carve them up and drop them in our nearly empty lakes. If it proves too difficult to airlift the chunks, perhaps it would be feasible to drill them and pipe the run off back into water systems. There is more than enough engineering and piping skill in the country to make this work. I am sure it would be a wonderful project for the nation, and one of great accomplishment.

The water saved from onshore, could be potentially sparing. Imagine too, a berg tied up in the city harbour. It might make a great tourist attraction, and generate a small income.

Governments should take the necassary steps now, while the chance is there.

What do others think?

Gadget,

Floating the idea is a lot easier than floating the berg in a harbour. One, and by no means the only, problem is the draught. A tabular iceberg (the typical Antarctic type) will have only one ninth of its volume above water. So if its upper surface was to be 30 metres above the sea, then it could well have a draught of around 240 metres. How close inshore could you get one to, say, the Eyre peninsula in South Australia, or to Albany in Western Australia? This, of course, is only the beginning of the problem (Wash your mouth out, Forrest! The word is challenge!) of getting the fresh meltwater ashore without contaminating it with salt water.

Running aground the beginning of the challenge? Rubbish! Before that come the twin challenges of the ablation rate (the underwater melting into the sea) and moving the berg into the latitude where it is wanted. Just how feasible it might be to sail a berg with the aid of the west wind drift and the roaring forties up into the latitude of Perth and Adelaide I know not. Could be big business for Dutch tugs! Ask Smit Tak. Maybe super-supertankers for fresh water is the way to go. Melt the ice in more southern latitudes, at sea, from the top down with the aid of steam from the nuclear fired boilers of the super-supertankers, and run it aboard under gravity.

And think of the money to be made! 70 percent of all that ice belongs to Australia! Most of it floats in our offshore economic zone. And as for what does not, who is to say that it did not originally come from Australian Antarctic Territory. We have a responsibilty, together with the Kingdom of Norway and the UK, to protect it all from irresponsible exploitation. Giant windjammers racing to market across the Southern Ocean! Winner takes all! Privateers of the first water. Who needs Malcolm Turnbull? "South Australia past Cape Horn, melt away, pump away! Bound for South Australia." Water merchants to the world.

Like many good ideas , it's been around for ever !

the main objection are transfer cost and transfer technique
dragging the poor berg is not an easy thing to do , however turkey
today is selling water to israel by using sea going " bladders "
towed by tuggs . as a mental exercice it might be possible to wrap a
bladder to a berg and using a wind powerred vessel drag them to
southern OZ , the wind power is not to sound green , god forbid ,
in this particular aplication and location it would be elegant .

There might even be a simpler solution.
Take a large tanker to the antartic and park it adjacent to where the
carving is taking place and divert melt water straight off the ice shelf into the tanker.
Might only take one or two days to fill it.
Like all these schemes there will be a catch 22.
It will proably be the cost of fuel for the tanker and the pumping costs
once it arrives. Don't forget that ships are at sea level and resevores
are considerably higher.

You know what is really bizarre?

That people can come up with the wildest ideas in order to continue providing essential resources (in this case water), while not even sparing a thought for reducing, or even stabilising the demand on such resources!

It’s completely whacko!

Surely if things are so grim that we even need to think about hair-brained things like towing icebergs up from Antarctica for more than a split second, then we need to very seriously think about pulling back on the demand that we are exerting on these resources.

Population stabilisation!! !! !!

Can anything be more obvious that this is the first imperative, with our current national water crisis? We MUST stop expanding the population and hence the demand on this most fundamental of resources…. and make the paradigm shift away from continuous growth and onto a sustainable foundation.

Oh my poor head! I’ve said this sort of thing so many times on this forum. The repetition is driving me up the wall!!

But there is a lot of support for this on OLO. So we just need to keep pluggin’ it until it penetrates the thick skulls of a few pollies.

Bob Carr could see it, sort of. Mike Wran can see, more or less. So there is hope that it will all become acceptable really soon…. and the likes of Costello and his growth-boosting philosophies will be relegated to the trash basket once and for all.

Yes Ludwig, we have heard what you have said.
Many years ago the CSIRO said that water would limit our population to
25 million. Looks like they were right.
We can always start culling here.
Back to my pet project. A desalination plant big enough to top up the
existing supply, whatever that is, and a windfarm big enough to drive
it.
That should make everyone happy, present company excepted.

“we can always start culling here”

What the ??!!

You entertain a fleeting thought about the demand side of the equation…. and then right back to thinking about how we can ever-increase the supply side!

This is exactly what I find so extraordinary Bazz! And so almightily unbalanced!

Isn’t the whole business about balancing supply and demand, instead of just blithely forever increasing supply in order to chase the tail of ever-increasing demand?

CSIRO’s words were very wise. But it appears that they overestimated. By all indications, with drought or irregular and reduced rainfall or climate change, or whatever it is factored in, it appears that water supply is going to limit our population to something well less than 25 million, which means that we may well need to adjust our population downwards, over time….and it means that we’d better damn well start addressing the continuously growing population issue with urgency!