World’s biggest iceberg moving beyond Antarctic waters | Hacker News Reader

World’s biggest iceberg moving beyond Antarctic waters

theguardian.com

33 pointssambeau42 comments

Kind of crazy, but I wonder if it could some how be towed back and tied to the main shelf to avoid it melting quickly once it reaches warm water.

How would you approach towing a 1500 square mile chunk of ice?

That's a perfectly reasonable SWE interview question.

"I would definitely use a linked list, or maybe a hash map"

It looks like you’ve got a lot of experience but we’re a crushed ice shop and you’re mostly familiar with cubed ice - so I’m sorry it won’t be a good fit.

No, it's more along the lines of the "Why are manhole covers round?" and "How many barbers are there in Portland?" questions that Microsoft used to love a long time ago.

> How would you approach towing a 1500 square mile chunk of ice?

Very slowly, and by nudging it into prevailing winds and currents [1]. Definitely within our capability to move it. Not sure if it is worth it to keep it there.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/mar/31/thisweekssci...

Wondering how much fossil fuel we want to burn to do that

Use nukkular subs, carriers & icebreakers.

We’re gonna need a bigger boat.

Even if that could be done, how would it be anchored in place? If anchoring is possible it might be sensible to anchor it where it is now and forget the towing.

Shame it isn't as simple as hoisting a huge sail on it.

if the wind was predictable enough...maybe fashion a sail by melting the tops of the structure in a cold (pun intended), calculated shape that would push it back from whence it came?

Wind turbines running in reverse.

"The miles aren't coming off in reverse."

Stratospheric kites.

Why? It's already floating and displacing its own weight in water.

Not an expert, but I can come up with some plausible sounding reasons.

Ice melting decreases albedo causing increased warming. Keeping it at the pole keeps it from melting.

Melting at the pole will result in ice that is current sitting on land moving to water, significantly increasing ocean level. Replacing a trillion tonnes of ice with a trillion tonnes of water at the pole, even assuming both are at exactly 0C, introduces a lot of energy to the system (333 quintillion joules, aka 333 exajoules. Wolfram alpha helpfully tells me this is about the total amount of solar energy that hits the earth in ~30 minutes, or 0.93x the total human energy consumption in 2010). It stands to reason that introducing that much additional energy to the antarctic system will increase ice melt and the chance/amount of ice sliding off of land into water.

The fine article includes some comments about how this big chunk of ice could get in the way of ecosystems.

Ultimately I doubt we can stop a trillion ton glacier from doing what it wants without expending absurd amounts of energy (to our detriment). But if we could snap our fingers and keep it where it is, I'm pretty sure we should.

> It's already floating and displacing its own weight in water

That doesn’t make it lighter, i.e less subject to inertia. It just means you don’t have to contend with surface friction forces in a non-drag way.

I mean, what's the purpose of "avoid[ing] it melting quickly once it reaches warm water"—it's a no-op.

Guess we'll have to throw it back on the ice sheet.

But ya the fact that it already broke off means we have bigger things to worry about than one specific iceberg

ice caps refelect sunlight, melting icecaps reduce reflected light.

Also as already observed, melting of icecaps over the landmasses does not displace water as its over landmass.

Also ice regulates ocean drifts.

All of it is a cause for concers

> weighing nearly a trillion metric tonnes

I'm not sure what would be capable of moving that :) https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2021/01/In_perspec...

Supposedly the energy stored in the fuel of a SpaceX super heavy booster is equal to 13.3 kilotons of TNT[1]. The kinetic energy of a trillion metric tons moving at 1 meter per second is is 1/2 * 1 trillion metric tons * (1 meter per second)^2, which is 9x the energy in a Super Heavy. Assuming perfect conversion of energy (not valid, but I was having trouble doing the math) then you could get it moving with a few Super Heavies.

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/11lyo2i/superheavyst...

We’ve still got like 12,000 nukes left worldwide - this would be the perfect time to test Project Orion in atmo!

With all that water vapor that would enter the atmosphere and increase the albedo, we’d probably solve climate change for a few generations too.

> With all that water vapor that would enter the atmosphere and increase the albedo, we’d probably solve climate change for a few generations

You realize excess water vapor = rain right? I have heard people say stuff like that before but I never understood the disconnect where they think throwing water into the air will somehow not result in it coming down within days or weeks.

Water vapor = clouds.

We can just use a chain of nukes to make sure it makes it even higher beyond the troposphere.

Water vapor is an invisible gas, clouds are dust + water droplets and or ice.

Pushing water higher isn’t going to change anything here. Updrafts from major storms can dump a lot of water in the stratosphere, but it doesn’t stay there for long.

Water vapor becomes ice when you nuke it high enough into the atmosphere.

Some will but not all, more importantly sending water high up and it doesn’t stay there. The stratosphere is dry because it doesn’t retain water not because nothing is introducing water into it.

Heavier the molecule and the lower it stays. You only see oxygen and a little carbon dioxide at the base of the exosphere, it’s mostly hydrogen and helium.

Just detonate the nukes high enough to cause an atmospheric EMP that reverses the stratosphere’s polarity and attracts the ions in the water vapor. That should slow down the exowater cycle enough to cool us down a bit.

(I’ve been reading r/VXJunkies)

It won't melt quickly once reaching warm water. There's a huge amount of volume contained by a fairly small surface area - this iceberg would last for years in the Caribbean.

A better idea, if you can tow it, is to tow it to one of the gulf states or somewhere else with a severe potable water shortage.

The force required to move it is probably beyond the capability of mankind.

And the rope required to secure it is for SURE beyond mankind's capability.

This thing is larger than some of the worlds largest cities! Even a nuclear bomb would not destroy it.

We're going to need to send the world's best offshore drilling team.

Hopefully no one gets space dementia.

Huh, this was a classic question asked at my University to final-year Engineering students on the "welcome back/fun day" (also build a bridge out of straws).

The guesstimated answers needed to consider how many ships and how much fuel would be required to tow it, losses due to melting, and storage/use once it arrives at it's "destination".

Tempting to go plant a flag on it and claim it.

What would happen if a storm flipped it over? Would it be virgin territory again?

I think we'd have bigger problems if a 1 trillion ton icerberg flipped. Well, not me in particular, but whoever is on that side of the Antarctic might be in trouble.

This was my first thought as well. I wonder how long it will last floating in the ocean and what a storm would potentially do to it (and anyone attempting to reside on it).

I feel like this would be exceptionally dangerous, like the plan would be something along the lines of

1) navigate a vessel to the site with a helipad and helicopter, while avoiding accidentally making that classic Titanic move of running aground on hidden ice or something

2) fly a helicopter to the center of the iceberg, hope the weather’s nice, as the terrain of this is likely to be “extremely dangerous and tall cliff faces on all sides”

3) plant a flag in the center of the iceberg, hoping you didn’t land your helicopter in a hidden crevasse or something equally gnarly in the process?

is it fresh water I wonder?

I think this is a definitional thing. If it’s made of salt water, that’s called sea ice which is formed when water just freezes on the surface of the ocean.

An iceberg on the other hand is a broken off piece of glacier, which is ultimately made of snowfall, and therefore should always be freshwater (at least on earth!)

Basically all ice is fresh water.

Ice that forms from sea water (sea ice) will be composed of fresh water ice and pockets of salt water (brine) which generally drain themselves out reasonably quickly.

Ice that comes from glaciation which I believe this iceberg is would just be fresh water from the start.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com