[TheClimate.Vote] June 8, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/June 8, 2019/

[DNC blunder keeps building]
*The Democratic Party Is Trying to Downplay Climate Change. Don't Let It.*
Surely the party can devote one-twelfth of its debate time to the issue 
that imperils civilization.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/opinion/democrats-climate-change.html
- - -
[OilChange United States]
*60 Questions We Could Ask at a #ClimateDebate*
http://oilchangeusa.org/60-questions-climate-debate/
- - -
*A #ClimateDebate would matter (Lessons from Texas)*
http://getenergysmartnow.com/2019/06/06/a-climatedebate-would-matter-lessons-from-texas/
   - -
https://twitter.com/PramilaJayapal/status/1136753245097906176
https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/1137110616445841408



[NPR report]
*1 Billion Acres At Risk For Catastrophic Wildfires, U.S. Forest Service 
Warns*
Written by Kirk Siegler Jun. 05, 2019
The chief of the U.S. Forest Service is warning that a billion acres of 
land across America are at risk of catastrophic wildfires like last 
fall's deadly Camp Fire that destroyed most of Paradise, Calif.

As we head into summer, with smoke already drifting into the Northwest 
from wildfires in Alberta, Canada, Vicki Christiansen said wildfires are 
now a year-round phenomenon. She pointed to the hazardous conditions in 
forests that result from a history of suppression of wildfires, rampant 
home development in high-risk places and the changing climate.

"When you look nationwide there's not any place that we're really at a 
fire season. Fire season is not an appropriate term anymore," 
Christiansen said in an interview with NPR at the agency's headquarters 
in Washington.

Christiansen's agency is the nation's lead firefighting apparatus. It's 
trying to prioritize treatments such as thinning, brush clearing and 
prescribed burning on 80 million acres of its own land, mostly in the 
West. (Her billion acre estimate includes land across multiple federal, 
state and local jurisdictions as well as private land.)

"Our national priority is to improve the condition of our nation's 
forests and grasslands," Christiansen said.

In line with a controversial Trump administration executive order 
pushing for "active forest management," the agency was directed to treat 
3.5 million acres this year alone, though it's behind target because of 
weather and administrative holdups. Part of the administration policy 
has also included an attempt to ramp up commercial logging on federal 
lands, an objective that conservation groups say will not reduce fire 
risk, unlike clearing of the smaller diameter wood that the timber 
industry has so far found little market for.

Christiansen defends what she calls an all-of-the-above approach.

"We are certainly focused on the timber outputs, but that is only one of 
the critical measures," she says. "We are tracking with laser focus our 
hazardous fuels reduction and our watershed health and restoration as well."

Christiansen's comments follow one of the worst wildfire seasons in U.S. 
history last year. Wildfires in Northern California destroyed parts of 
whole cities and killed nearly 100 people.

Even with the push for more mitigation under Christiansen, the Forest 
Service is predicting it could spend upward of $2.5 billion just 
fighting fires this year alone. The agency was budgeted $1.7 billion and 
will likely again have to transfer money from existing forest management 
and fire mitigation programs to cover the difference, a paradoxical 
problem that won't end until reforms kick in next year.
https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/npr/npr-story/729720938



[National Geographic]
*See the drastic toll climate change is taking on our oceans*
For World Oceans Day, we look at the impact our carbon emissions are 
having, from the shore to the deep sea...
- - -
Along with the warm air itself, the heat absorbed by the oceans melts 
ice in the polar regions, releasing fresh water that accounts for more 
than half of all sea level rise; the rest is attributed to the expansion 
of seawater as it warms. "This has obvious effects on coastal area 
flooding and real estate," says NOAA oceanographer Andrew Allegra, as 
well as implications for marine life.

The oceans don't just soak up excess heat from the atmosphere; they also 
absorb excess carbon dioxide, which is changing the chemistry of 
seawater, making it more acidic. "Ocean acidification is one simple and 
inescapable consequence of rising atmospheric CO2 that is both 
predictable and impossible to attribute to any other cause," says 
oceanographer John Dore of Montana State University.

"Almost every aspect of marine biology--from bacteria to blue whales--is 
in some way influenced by the acid-base balance of seawater itself," he 
says. "The effects on other marine life are harder to predict, but it 
could take thousands of years or more to undo what we are presently 
doing to ocean pH."
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/see-the-drastic-toll-climate-change-is-taking-on-our-oceans/



[videos from Paul Beckwith]
*Existential Abrupt Climate Change Risks to Humanity: (video 3 Parts)*
Paul Beckwith - Published on Jun 7, 2019
Humanity is stressing vital life-support systems on Earth to the 
breaking point. It is incomprehensible to a thinking person like myself 
how the vast majority of the public continues to be blissfully unaware 
of the clear and present dangers that we face. For many years I have 
been dutifully trying to take the latest cutting edge science on global 
Earth system changes, and translate it into easily understandable 
layperson language, so more and more of the general public can 
understand the reality and truth about the extent of devastation to our 
life-support ecosystems on Earth.
Part 1 of 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuI0ZCrtdqA (about 12 mins in)
Part 2 of 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c14gOWMuC9c
Part 3 of 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KSLyQXPeTI




[Hank Green videos]
*Feeling Guilty About Climate Change feat. Hank Green*
Hot Mess - Published on Jun 6, 2019
Do you have complicated feelings about fossil fuels?
Special thanks to Hank Green for sharing his story!
Climate guilt is a common feeling. We've all benefited from fossil 
fuels, and most of the stuff we do in life depends on them. But we also 
know that we can't continue down this path if we want to live in a 
stable world. So how do we overcome this challenge? How do we make a 
change? We talked to Hank Green to get his thoughts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsQp2PnhPak




[deception called out]
*Exclusive: Enbridge Is Behind This Front Group Pushing the Company's 
Line 3 Oil Pipeline Project*
By Itai Vardi - Thursday, June 6, 2019
Enbridge building
Minnesotans for Line 3, a group established last year to advocate for an 
Enbridge oil pipeline project, presents itself as a grassroots 
organization consisting of "thousands of members."

But a DeSmog investigation has found that behind the scenes, the 
Calgary-based energy giant is pulling the strings. Enbridge has provided 
the group with funding, public relations, and a variety of advocacy tactics.

The investigation has also found that a public relations firm behind the 
operation recently tried to erase its ties to Enbridge.
Facebook Splurge and Secret Tactics

Minnesotans for Line 3 first appeared in the battle over Enbridge's Line 
3 Replacement Project early last year.

Opponents, who this week employed direct action tactics to block initial 
work on the project and delivered a petition to Minnesota Governor Tim 
Walz, include several Native communities -- among them the White Earth 
and Mille Lacs Bands of Ojibwe and the Red Lake Band of Chippewa. Of 
their main concerns, these groups cite violation of Indigenous rights, 
risks associated with oil spills, and climate change impacts.

Through a series of TV ads and op-eds, along with a social media 
campaign and a petition delivered to state authorities, Minnesotans for 
Line 3 called for approving Enbridge's multi-billion dollar plan to 
replace and reroute its aging pipeline that transports Canadian tar 
sands oil through North Dakota and Minnesota to Superior, Wisconsin.
-- -
But Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filings reviewed by DeSmog 
reveal that Enbridge is behind the TV ads for the group. The filings, 
which require parties placing political issue ads to list their officers 
or directors, name, along with Schoneberger, three Enbridge executives, 
including its president and CEO Al Monaco.

Another FCC filing shows that Velocity Public Affairs, a Saint 
Paul-based public relations firm, placed one of the ads.
- - -
Yet Velocity recently tried to obscure the work it does for Enbridge.

In a now deleted page from its website, which DeSmog discovered as a 
cached webpage (and archived here), the firm details its "invaluable" 
grassroots work it provided Enbridge on the Line 3 project through a 
service it calls "Advocacy Elevator."

"To garner favorable decisions by government agencies that would decide 
the fate of the project, Enbridge needed an exceptional and sustained 
show of statewide public support," the now-deleted page says. "Enbridge 
tapped the Advocacy Elevator's power to develop uniquely comprehensive 
sets of data that were the foundation to better define and understand a 
universe of people more likely to support the project and to take action."

Afterwards, the description continues, Velocity used a variety of 
tactics, including a phone program, direct-mail, digital and content 
engagement, and canvassing to create grassroots support. "All of this 
was focused on the objective of further identifying the strongest group 
of likely supporters and then getting them to 'walk the walk' by taking 
actions that would create an impact with specific audiences that would, 
in turn, support approval of the line."

The firm's current "Advocacy Elevator" webpage makes no mention of 
Enbridge, and instead presents a generic description of the services it 
provides clients through that particular product.

Mike Zipko did not respond to a request for comment. Similarly, Enbridge 
did not respond to a series of questions about its role with Minnesotans 
for Line 3.
- - -
Frank Bibeau, an attorney with Honor the Earth, a Native-led group 
opposing the pipeline and one of the appellants against the PUC, thinks 
that such front groups are deceptive. "It's big oil and it's what they 
do," he said. "They've been engaged in subtle misinformation -- for 
example recently claiming in an op-ed that the project will bring oil to 
the Twin Cities. The problem is: it won't do that; it goes to Lake 
Superior. But people often don't know the details and just think 'this 
will benefit Minnesota.' So it's deceptive, a kind of propaganda that 
makes it look like ordinary citizens are backing this. It's sad, really."
Not the First Front Group

Minnesotans For Line 3 is not the first front group involved in the 
battle over the pipeline replacement project, which was first proposed 
in 2014.

In 2017, the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), an Enbridge-funded arm of 
the lobbying firm HBW Resources, created a campaign titled "Modernizing 
America."

CEA ran two TV ads in Minnesota in support of the pipeline.

Modernizing America's webpage then cited a University of Minnesota 
Duluth (UMD) study that concluded the project will create 8,600 jobs. 
But as the watchdog group Public Accountability Initiative revealed, 
Enbridge provided the data inputs for the study and funded the entity 
that commissioned it from UMD.
https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/06/06/enbridge-minnesotans-line-3-front-group-oil-pipeline



[clean ice water - 10,000 years old]
*Towing an Iceberg: One Captain's Plan to Bring Drinking Water to 4 
Million People*
Nicholas Sloane has a fix for a country struggling with its supply.
By Caroline Winter
June 5, 2019
Nicholas Sloane doesn't mind discomfort. The 56-year-old South African 
marine-salvage master has survived two helicopter crashes and spent 
thousands of hours aboard ships that are burning, sinking, breaking 
apart, or leaking oil, chemicals, or cargo into the ocean. Often, he 
gets calls in the middle of the night asking him to pack his bags and 
fly immediately to a disaster zone across the world, anywhere from Yemen 
to Papua New Guinea. Twice, he's fought off armed pirates using water 
cannons, sound cannons, and strobe lights.
relates to Towing an Iceberg: One Captain's Plan to Bring Drinking Water 
to 4 Million People

Usually, Sloane rooms on location, bunking in makeshift beds aboard 
singed or waterlogged ships he's working to rescue. He once lived for 
three months with a family on Tristan da Cunha, the world's most remote 
inhabited archipelago, orchestrating the logistics of catching and 
washing thousands of rockhopper penguins drenched in bunker fuel from a 
shipwreck. More recently, he spent 2½ years overseeing the almost $1 
billion refloating of the Costa Concordia, the infamous Italian cruise 
ship that capsized inside a marine sanctuary off the coast of Tuscany, 
killing 32 passengers.

But at some point early last year, Sloane really wanted to take a bath 
and couldn't. He was home with his family in Cape Town, which had 
recently declared an emergency: After three years of severe drought, the 
city of 4 million was at risk of becoming one of the first in the world 
to run out of municipal water. To forestall a shutoff, each household 
was permitted only 50 liters--about 13 gallons--per day per person to 
cover drinking, cooking, washing, and showers. "That's enough to fill 
less than half a tub," says Sloane, a soft-spoken man with graying hair, 
ruddy skin, and a deep crease between his green eyes. "My wife used to 
take a bath every night and a shower every morning. She told me, 'You'd 
better do something.' "

More than a year later, disaster has been averted, thanks to badly 
needed rainfall and drastic reduction in water use. But conditions in 
Cape Town remain far from normal. The daily-use limit has been raised, 
but only to 70 liters, and people still take speed showers, collecting 
the runoff to use for toilet flushing. Some hotels have removed stoppers 
from bathtubs to keep profligate tourists in line. And farmers 
throughout the country are reeling. More than 30,000 seasonal jobs have 
been lost in the Western Cape, and crop production has declined by about 
20%. During the height of the drought, hundreds of farmers in the 
Northern Cape killed off most of their livestock rather than truck in 
costly feed. "Everyone has cut back their flocks of sheep to the bare 
minimum needed to start again when it rains," one farmer told Bloomberg 
News in 2017.
Sloane still hasn't taken that bath at home, and he isn't optimistic 
about Cape Town's future. "We'll never get back to the days where water 
is flowing all over the Cape," he says, pointing out that the city's 
population has grown almost 40% in the last 20 years. "If the taps run 
dry, the first day people will be standing in lines at watering points 
throughout the city. The second day, if you don't get your water, well, 
people are killed for that."

That's why Sloane is working on a solution that might sound absurd. 
Making use of his unusual skill set, he plans to harness and tow an 
enormous Antarctic iceberg to South Africa and convert it into municipal 
water. "To make it economically feasible, the iceberg will have to be 
big," Sloane says. Ideally, it would measure about 1,000 meters (3,281 
feet) long, 500 meters wide, and 250 meters deep, and weigh 125 million 
tons. "That would supply about 20% of Cape Town's water needs for a year."

Sloane has already assembled a team of glaciologists, oceanographers, 
and engineers. He's also secured a group of financiers to fund the 
pioneer tow, which he calls the Southern Ice Project. The expected cost 
is more than $200 million, much of it to be put up by two South African 
banks and Water Vision AG, a Swiss water technology and infrastructure 
company.

Now Sloane's team needs an agreement with South Africa to buy the 
Antarctic water, if the plan succeeds. His team could charter the 
necessary ships and prepare all required materials within six months, 
though the mission will need to take place in November or December, when 
the Antarctic climate is somewhat less ferocious. "We're taking on all 
the risk," he says. "We're ready to go."

Harvesting icebergs isn't a new idea. In the mid-1800s, breweries in 
Chile towed small ones, sometimes outfitted with sails, from Laguna San 
Rafael to Valparaiso, where they were used for refrigeration. In the 
late 1940s, John Isaacs of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography began 
exploring more fantastical plans, such as transporting an 8 billion-ton 
iceberg to San Diego to mitigate California droughts. (Icebergs of the 
size Isaacs had in mind--20 miles long, 3,000 feet wide, and 1,000 feet 
deep--are extremely rare.) In the '60s oil companies began using thick 
ropes to wrangle and redirect much smaller Arctic icebergs before they 
collided with rigs, a practice that's now common. If conditions are too 
rough, or a berg too big, the rigs sometimes need to be moved instead.
In the '70s, the U.S. Army and the Rand Corp. both looked into using 
Antarctic ice as a source of fresh water. At about the same time, Prince 
Mohammed al-Faisal began pouring funds into polar research, in hopes 
that his assembled team of international glaciologists and engineers 
would find a way to alter the drift of icebergs, potentially bringing 
them as far as Western Australia....

- - -
More urgently, interest is being fueled by the world's increasingly dire 
shortages of fresh water. Today, as many as 2.1 billion people worldwide 
lack access to safe drinking water, according to the World Health 
Organization, and the United Nations says global water demand will 
outstrip supply by 40% as soon as 2030. The problem is the result of 
poor government oversight, fracking, pollution, and failing 
infrastructure. Even in the U.S., leaks and theft account for an 
estimated loss of 16% of fresh water, writes David Wallace-Wells in The 
Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. In Brazil and other places, the 
loss is as high as 40%.. .
- - -
Meanwhile, more than 100,000 Antarctic icebergs melt into the ocean each 
year. They range from merely large to country-size (the biggest seen 
recently was the size of Jamaica), and by some calculations they contain 
more than the annual global consumption of fresh water. Rather than let 
that water slip away, several groups are vying for berg-towing funds and 
know-how. The European Union in 2010 received a proposal to pull 
icebergs from Newfoundland to the Canary Islands, which have long been 
short on fresh water; and the United Arab Emirates plans to test its 
prospects of importing icebergs by bringing one from the Antarctic to 
Australia or Cape Town by late 2020. In Germany, a company called 
Polewater Gmbh says it's spent $2.8 million over the past six years 
hiring experts to complete a strategy for getting Antarctic iceberg 
water to drought-stricken areas, with an emphasis on minimizing 
environmental impact. Having won the blessing of some Greenpeace 
officials, Polewater says it needs $67 million to build the company over 
the next three years.
But when it comes to towing a 100 million-ton iceberg through the 
notoriously rough Antarctic Ocean, where swells regularly reach 15 
meters, investors are betting on Sloane. "I was the greatest skeptic 
around," says Bert Mulder, chief operating officer of Water Vision, 
Sloane's Swiss backer. "Then I started to listen to Nick Sloane. If 
anybody can do it, it's him. I truly believe that."

Sloane was born in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, and grew up exploring 
rivers and lakes. "There was no TV, only basic radio, so the outdoors 
was your life," he says. At about 10 he moved with his family to a town 
outside Durban, South Africa, where he began sailing and found he loved 
ocean racing in stormy weather, particularly because daring counted for 
more than tactics alone. After high school, he completed his national 
service with the merchant marine, then spent 10 years becoming a master 
mariner, running tankers and cargo ships and towing oil rigs. From 
there, he stumbled into the high-intensity work of marine salvage, where 
successful teams are rewarded with payouts of 7.5% to 10% of the 
distressed ship's assessed value, a fee that often reaches millions of 
dollars...
- - -

The iceberg is Sloane's side project, and he's enlisted perhaps the 
biggest names in the game. The first is Georges Mougin, the French 
engineer whom Prince Mohammed tapped as CEO of his company, Iceberg 
Towing International. Now 91 years old with bushy eyebrows--but still 
sharp and a dapper dresser--Mougin has spent much of the past four 
decades exploring the technologies and materials to be used for iceberg 
transport. The second is Olav Orheim, trim and energetic at 77, who 
served as director of the Norwegian Polar Institute from 1993 to 2005. 
Orheim has probably landed atop more icebergs than anyone in the world 
and once was stranded overnight on one with David Attenborough, the 
English broadcaster and voice of the nature series Planet Earth.

Together with oceanographers and engineers from Norwegian and South 
African universities and from government-affiliated institutes such as 
the Pretoria-based Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, 
Sloane's team began forging a plan and soon attracted press coverage. 
"Unfortunately, the first article came out on April 1," Sloane says. 
"People still think it's an April Fools' joke."

The team is focused only on Antarctic icebergs, which break off from the 
giant sea shelf that extends from the southern continent's landmass. 
These are often hundreds of times bigger than Arctic icebergs, and the 
biggest are almost always tabular and therefore more stable. By 
contrast, Arctic icebergs, most of which descend from Greenland's steep 
glaciers, are typically irregular and contain weak spots that make them 
liable to split or flip.

Using satellite data, the team will identify an iceberg that's the right 
size and shape and on a course for Gough Island, a tiny landmass halfway 
between Antarctica and Cape Town--about 1,600 miles from Sloane's final 
destination. (There are typically three or four desirable bergs 
available on any given day.) Next, they'll inspect the iceberg on 
location, using sonar and radar scans to determine its precise 
dimensions and check for structural flaws. If everything looks good, the 
team will employ two tugboats to encircle the berg in a gigantic net of 
5-inch-diameter ropes fashioned from Dyneema, a supermaterial that, 
unlike metal cables, is neutrally buoyant and also stronger and better 
suited for low temperatures, friction, and tension. Costing about $25 
million, the net will extend about 2 miles across and 60 feet high. It 
will act as a kind of belt around the belly of the iceberg, which could 
reach more than 70 stories below the surface of the ocean.

All this will be done amid high waves and winds reaching 80 mph. "It's 
the worst part of the ocean worldwide," Sloane says. "People don't go 
there unless they have to." With the net in place, the iceberg will be 
attached to two supertankers at a distance of about a mile. The tankers, 
which will remain about 1,000 feet from one another, will move at about 
1 mph. Because they'll have little ability to steer at such low speeds, 
each tanker will be led by tugboat. The operation will need to be 
insured by Lloyd's of London in case the iceberg breaks apart en route, 
leaving dangerous debris in the path of other ships.

The goal will be to follow the Antarctic Circumpolar Current eastward 
and then, at the right moment near Gough Island, deploy full force to 
switch over to the Benguela Current, which will bring the iceberg upward 
toward South Africa's western coast. "If we hit the wrong current, 
that's it," Sloane says. "Then we'll have to call up the Aussies and 
say, 'Do you want to buy an iceberg?' "

Traveling "slower than the slowest thing on Earth," as Sloane puts it, 
the journey will take an estimated 80 to 90 days. The anticipated melt 
rate is about 0.05 meters to 0.1 meters per day from each side and the 
base, which would result in a reduction in size of about 8% by 
arrival--but certain factors, most notably storms, could increase 
erosion at the water line. The final destination will be northwest of 
Cape Town, where the iceberg will run aground and sit amid the fairly 
cold, slow-moving Benguela Current, about 25 miles from land. There, 
Sloane's team will hold the berg in place with a 1,000-ton mooring 
system, and, like the French artist Christo, wrap the entire underwater 
portion in a giant, 800-ton geotextile skirt designed to reduce wave 
impact and inhibit further melting. The skirt, expected to cost roughly 
$22 million, will let fresh water pass through, creating a buffer of 
cold water, while keeping salt water out. As the iceberg gets smaller, 
it will be moved closer to shore.

To harvest the water, the team will ship earthmoving equipment, 
including grading and milling machines, to the iceberg via barge. The 
machines will be used to excavate a shallow saucer, which will help 
speed melt to anywhere from 60 million to 150 million liters a day of an 
icy slurry. The slush will be pumped into a rotating fleet of 
grocery-grade container ships.

Back on land, the slurry will be fed into a temporary pipe system and 
mixed with water from municipal reservoirs. Sloane believes the iceberg 
could supply Cape Town for a year before it becomes unstable and breaks 
apart. This, he says, will likely happen once the berg is reduced to 
about 30% of its original size--though it's impossible to know for sure. 
"Nobody's tried this, so there are going to be unexpected discoveries," 
he says.

Before even attempting the tow, the team will need a few months to 
perform a reduced environmental assessment for the government--reduced 
because Cape Town is still in crisis. One problem may be the effect of 
parking a giant ice cube off Africa's coast. "We have no idea what such 
a thing would do to all the atmospheric, oceanic ecosystem dynamics in 
the area," says Marcello Vichi, a professor of oceanography at the 
University of Cape Town who's collaborating with Sloane's team but has 
some reservations. "We'd need to do a lot more research, but that's 
where money comes in, and time." Alan Condron, who works at the 
Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and joined the 
project in May, will begin modeling impacts within the next months. He 
also plans to model melt rates and various towing routes, as well as the 
carbon footprint of hauling icebergs vs. desalination. But there's a 
limit to what these projections can achieve, he says. "At some point, 
you can throw all the modeling you have at it, but you just need someone 
to go out and do it."
The price of delivering Antarctic water will be perhaps the biggest 
obstacle--Sloane says it would cost Cape Town about three times what it 
now pays for delivery of surface water. Critics within the Cape Town 
government say it would cost substantially more. "This proposal was not 
considered suitable for Cape Town," says Xanthea Limberg, a member of 
the mayoral committee for water and waste services. "Such a project is 
both complex and risky with an anticipated very high water cost. The 
greatest challenges pertained to containment and transportation of the 
melt water as well as its injection into the water supply system."

Other officials say the world's worsening water crisis, along with South 
Africa's booming population and the local impact of climate change, 
require looking beyond traditional water sources. "We do not have the 
luxury to discard options," says Dhesigen Naidoo, CEO of South Africa's 
Water Research Commission, a nonprofit funded by the country's water 
tax. "An iceberg is 99% pure water, and you have the prospect of that 
sitting on your doorstep in a giant chunk that you can tap into. It's a 
terrific idea."

Time is running out for South Africa to order an iceberg for delivery 
this year. Instead, politicians will likely pray for rain, which is 
frustrating for Sloane's backers. "We silently sometimes think, A little 
more drought could bring the project closer," says Mulder of Water 
Vision. "But at the same time, you wish the best for the people in Cape 
Town and that abundant rainfall comes."...
- -
Sloane has put more than $100,000 of his own money into the Southern Ice 
Project. "If you'd asked me 10 years ago, I probably would have said 
this was crazy, but now the time is right," he says, sitting in the 
lounge at the InterContinental Paris Le Grand Hotel, where he's staying. 
Cape Town, he points out, is by far the most conveniently located city 
for a pioneer tow, given its relative proximity to Antarctica and the 
path of the Benguela Current, but he believes icebergs may eventually be 
pulled to Perth, Australia, and Santiago, Chile. "And if you can get it 
to Cape Town, you can get it to Namibia and maybe as far as Angola."

For now, Sloane is focused entirely on his continent, where cities and 
towns across several nations are running dry. "I promise you, the water 
situation in some parts of Africa is getting worse all the time. It's 
certainly not getting better," he says. "Twenty or 30 years from now, I 
think towing icebergs will be a regular thing."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-06-06/towing-an-iceberg-one-captain-s-plan-to-bring-drinking-water-to-4-million-people
audio https://megaphone.link/BLM2478928650


*This Day in Climate History - June 8, 2001 - from D.R. Tucker*
June 8, 2001: The New York Times reports:

    "With a new scientific report in hand that reaffirms the reality of
    global warming, the Bush White House readily acknowledged today that
    climate change was a problem but gave little clue as to what it
    intended to do about it.

    "Ari Fleischer, the president's spokesman, told reporters that when
    President Bush heads for Europe next week: 'He's going to tell the
    Europeans that he takes this issue very seriously, that global
    climate change is an issue that nations do need to deal with -- all
    nations, industrialized nations, the United States, developing
    nations, as well. And that through technologies and through growth
    and through other measures, that the world has a responsibility to
    face up to this.'

    "This is the strongest language the White House has used on the
    issue and a far cry from its earlier position that the science was
    too uncertain to proclaim global warming a problem.

    "But a report from the National Academy of Sciences, requested by
    the White House and released on Wednesday, reaffirmed the mainstream
    scientific view that the earth's temperature is rising, largely
    because of human activities, and that this could cause drastic
    climate changes throughout the century.

    "Even before the report, the president was meeting with cabinet
    officials to work out a position and figure out how to present it at
    home and abroad."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/08/politics/08WARM.html
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

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