8 minutes agoCrazy plan: Antarctica's billionaire brings ice to Emirate
Periskopi(7 years ago)
(7 years ago)The investor and entrepreneur from the United Arab Emirates, Abdulla Alshishi, plans to transfer ice to South Africa or Australia by the end of the year. All this will cost 80 million dollars, and the goal of this billionaire is to see if there is an opportunity to transfer a glacier [...]
All this will cost 80 million dollars and the goal of this billionaire is to see if there is an opportunity to transfer a glacier to the United Arab Emirates to provide people with fresh water.
“Copa” of ice from Antarctica will be transferred either to Cape Town or Perth this year, but the exact date is unknown.
This is actually just a test of much more ambitious plans and is hoped to succeed in transferring 8,800 miles of ice to the United Arab Emirates.
In addition, to bring fresh water, this will be a real tourist attraction for a country that is not much used to ice.
Alshishi told Euronews that it is cheaper to bring a piece of glacier than to use water from the sea.
He recalls similar plans existed earlier and the Saudi Arabia project failed in 1977 due to technical problems.
The iceberg for use will be resolved via satellite and may be about a mile [2.5 km] long. He is expected to lose up to 30 per cent of the measure during his ten-month trip. It will travel from the island of Herd to Antarctica, to Fujairah, one of the seven deservings within the United Arab Emirates.
The final project will cost between $100m and $150m, plus 60-70m to be spent on testing.
The United Arab Emirates is one of the deadliest countries. The climate is extremely dry and falls less than an inch [100 mm] of rain a year.
However, this Arab state consumes twice as much water as the global national average, which for the country creates a serious problem from drought in the next 25 years.
