Every couple of years, some enterprising engineer resuscitates the idea of towing an iceberg to the Arabian Peninsula to slake the thirst of the water-poor, energy-rich countries of the Persian Gulf. A Saudi princeling first floated the notion in 1977 at a conference in Ames, Iowa, on iceberg utilization. He arranged the delivery, via truck and helicopter, of an Alaskan mini-berg to the gathering, where it was hacked into chunks to cool attendees' drinks.
That may have been the closest Gulf Arabs have come to sipping from a glacier, but it was hardly the last outlandish scheme to green the desert....