Dubai firm dreams of harvesting icebergs for water
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A Dubai firm’s dream of towing icebergs from the Antarctic to the Arabian Peninsula could face some titanic obstacles.
Where many see the crumbling polar ice caps as a distressing sign of global warming, the National Advisor Bureau Limited sees it as a source of profit, and a way of offsetting the effects of climate change in the increasingly sweltering Gulf.
The firm has drawn up plans to harvest icebergs in the southern Indian Ocean and tow them 9,200 kilometres (5,700 miles) away to the Gulf, where they could be melted down for freshwater and marketed as a tourist attraction.
“The icebergs are just floating in the Indian Ocean. They are up for grabs to whoever can take them,” managing director Abdullah al-Shehi told The Associated Press in his Dubai office. He hopes to begin harvesting them by 2019.