Computer Models Show that Towing an Iceberg to a Drought Area Could Actually Work
Towing Icebergs to Fight Drought A 30-ton iceberg could provide water to half a million people for up to a year. Michael Haferkamp via Wikimedia You may have heard of this scheme before: during periods of serious drought, a huge tugboat or fleet of tugboats could be tethered to an iceberg and hauled to areas where water is scarce, providing drinking water and irrigation stores to stave off famine. The idea was originally floated by an engineer named Georges Mougin in the 1970s, and though it was laughed out of development back then, it's enjoying a kind of renaissance today. Dassault Systemes, the french software developer, has built a computer model of Mougin's idea. And after 15 engineers ran the problem through their models, they found that the idea is more or less perfectly feasible. Towing an iceberg from somewhere around Newfoundland to the northwest coast of Africa would only take around...