By Mark Brown, Wired UK

French engineer Georges Mougin has a big idea. He wants to go to Antarctica, tie a big rope around a six-million-tonne iceberg, drag it back to Africa and melt it into fresh, drinkable water.

Some might call him crazy, but Mougin reckons the plan could work. Using 3D computer simulations and declassified satellite data, his “IceDream” team believes that towing a drifting mountain of fresh water to Africa is absolutely possible.

He came up with the plan more than three decades ago, when he and polar explorer Paul-Emile Victor met with a Saudi prince...