Arctic cowboys: Meet the people wrangling icebergs for drinking water – Canada Boosts

Arctic cowboys: Meet the people wrangling icebergs for drinking water
Iceberg showing submerged section when viewed from above, Greenland's National Park, Northeast Greenland. August 2015.

EACH June, vacationers flock to Newfoundland to catch a glimpse of icebergs. Glowing as they twist within the frigid waves of the Labrador Sea, icebergs have change into one of many Canadian island’s most essential industries, attracting greater than 100,000 guests a 12 months. However not everyone seems to be happy merely watching the behemoth blocks of frozen freshwater – Ed Kean tries to catch them.

He makes use of his giant fishing boat to reap icebergs, then melts them and sells the water. Many native individuals swear to its purity and scrumptious style. Kean’s mom gained’t drink anything.

However Kean gained’t have the iceberg enterprise to himself for for much longer. For many years, there was speak of towing icebergs from the poles to hotter climes to slake the thirst of more and more parched communities around the world. Now, there are at the very least three outfits with plans to make it occur. Iceberg harvesting is an idea that has at all times intrigued me, so I got down to uncover whether or not it’s actually possible on a big scale, and whether or not it may be carried out safely, with out damaging our planet.

Iceberg wrangling isn’t as fanciful as it would sound. The UN predicts that, by 2030, half of the world’s population will face severe water shortages. But, there isn’t a absolute scarcity of contemporary water. It’s simply that round two-thirds of it’s locked away in ice caps and glaciers, which produce tens of 1000’s of miraculous parcels of frozen contemporary water yearly and ship them into the salty oceans.

First determine your iceberg

I started my investigations by discovering out how Kean works. He…

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