Hi! Prepare yourself for the business proposition of the day! I propose we construct sea-faring vessels to capture fresh water from Greenland's melting glaciers, which was going to be wasted in the sea, and possibly destroy your fancy coastal house (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0408_040408_greenlandicemelt.html) and drag it across the atlantic to sell for MAD PROFIT$$ to countries in the middle east and africa. Since we're just dragging about large volumes of water, we needn't have elaborate steel vessels as we do for oil. Instead they could be giant plastic barrels which will only be filled halfway or so to achieve buoyancy. Solar cells would top the vessel and power it's electric motors to slowly but surely get that water where it's most needed. I'm sure the UN or some hippies somewhere will give us all kinds of sponsorships. Let's get a cost analysis. Ya know these hardly need to be plastic barrels, let's think plastic bags! Who cares if we pop a few! Water balloons riding the trade winds like a message in a bottle, only the message is love! life! and a bill!! More Dough Means: More Croissants!
-- mintygreencow, Jun 15 2004

Cheap water tankers in the real world http://www.planetar...sid/13449/story.htm
[DrCurry, Oct 04 2004]

An older idea www.farmhand.org.au...%20water_Part_8.pdf
Search for glacier [kbecker, Oct 04 2004]

a) There's a way to embed that link in a poper link, which will make the page lay out properly.
b) I think we've done this half a dozen times so far.
-- DrCurry, Jun 15 2004


Why would Middle-Eastern countries buy water when they can build desalination plants with their cheap labour and power them with their own oil? Sorry, it's a [-] from me.
-- Apache, Jun 16 2004


Currently not profitable, but the only folks doing it are probably don't have the cheapest water supply, and they are using tugs to move the bags around. Tugs use a ton of diesel! Solar and wind power would be better (but expensive to build). Also eliminating the crew by controlling the bags remotely/automatically would be ideal. Even then you would probably have to overcharge the crap out of the customers to make much of a profit.
-- bmadigan, Jun 16 2004


Huge plastic bags and towing icebergs, etc.... it's all very very baked.

The icebergs are located too far up north or down south to tow them at a reasonable cost to the countries who need them.

It would be more interesting to catch the huge mass of rain which falls near the equator in the Intertropical Convergence Zone. It's all fresh rainwater, and located at 1/3th the distance to the Middle East or other countries with water shortages.

Towing Icebergs is way too expensive. You need nuclear powered towboats.
-- django, Jun 16 2004


Oooh! I want a nuclear powered towboat!
-- krelnik, Jun 16 2004



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