I can see where something like this might work as a resort. But 250 million “climate refugees”? Really? From job-maldives.com where they are “celebrating three years of service”:
LILYPAD, A FLOATING ECOPOLIS FOR CLIMATICAL REFUGEES 2100, a large crowd of ecological refugees
Further to the anthropogenic activity, the climate warms up and the ocean level increases. According to the principle of Archimedes and contrary to preconceived notions, the melting of the arctic ice-floe will not change the rising of the water exactly as an ice cube melting in a glass of water does not make its level rise. However, there are two huge ice reservoirs that are not on the water and whose melting will transfer their volume towards the oceans, leading to their rising. It deals with the ice caps of Antarctic and Greenland on the one hand, and the continental glaciers on the other hand. Another reason of the ocean rising, that does not have anything to do with the ice melting is the water dilatation under the effect of the temperature.
According to the less alarming forecasts of the GIEC (Intergovernmental group on the evolution of the climate), the ocean level should rise from 20 to 90 cm during the 21st Century with a status quo by 50 cm (versus 10 cm in the 20th Century). The international scientific scene assets that a temperature elevation of 1°C will lead to a water rising of 1 meter. This increase of 1 m would bring ground losses emerged of approximately 0.05% in Uruguay, 1% in Egypt, 6% in the Netherlands, 17.5% in Bangladesh and up to 80% approximately in the atoll Majuro in Oceania (Marshall and Kiribati islands and step by step the Maldives islands).
If the first meter is not very funny with more than 50 million of people affected in the developing countries, the situation is worse with the second one. Countries like Vietnam, Egypt, Bangladesh, Guyana or Bahamas will see their most inhabited places swamped at each flood and their most fertile fields devastated by the invasion of salt water damaging the local ecosystems. New York, Bombay, Calcutta, Hô Chi Minh City, Shanghai, Miami, Lagos, Abidjan, Djakarta, Alexandria… not les that 250 million of climatic refugees and 9% of the GDP threatened if we not build protections related to such a threat. It is the demonstration inflicted to reluctant spirits by a climatological study of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and that challenges our imagination of eco-conception!
Yeah, OK, thanks for sharing. Here’s the rest
H/t to Paul Ostergaard.
Does this come with a free Kevin Costner action figure?
Based on doomsday predictions over the past half century, shouldn’t we be seeing a measurable quantity of doom and gloom coming to pass rather than being delayed?
Seems to originate from here:
http://vincent.callebaut.org/page1-img-lilypad.html
Similar “projects” here:
http://vincent.callebaut.org/projets-groupe-tout.html
“If the first meter is not very funny with more than 50 million of people affected”
40 million people a year move in the United States. 50 million people Globally needing to move to in the next 100 years doesn’t appear to be a problem to me. I’m sure the worlds moving companies will be able to cope.
Something that large will have a big displacement and raise the sea level.
Rule #1: You can’t do just one thing.
I read it and thought, this sounds typically french. And indeed:
Vincent Callebaut Architectures
119, rue Manin (bâtiment D)
75019 Paris
France
“The international scientific scene assets that a temperature elevation of 1°C will lead to a water rising of 1 meter.”
Go scene. My mononational unscientific scene calls BS on that absolute correlation. Go me.
Don’t these people see that Antartic ice is actually growing?
No need to build that thing, just sent them to Antarctica.
A floating city is not a bad idea, but notice how it can’t be expanded? Dumb design.
And a few more questions:
What about bad weather? How robust is this thing?
How do you build and launch it?
Is it self-sufficient?
What is the power source?
Where would fresh water come from?
How about food?
How many people can this thing support?
How do you keep it from washing up on the rocks somewhere?
Ideas that might make sense in a small application don’t necessarily scale up very well. I hope they build it. It would be very interesting to see how things works out.
Wonder what a typhoon/hurricane would do to this boat?
Wind/wave propulsion system? or diesel?
Surely the key point is that the change (if it occurs at all) will be gradual and predictable and will take place over four or five generations.
If 250 million ‘climate refugees’ were suddenly to need housing and food and all the other amenities of life overnight tomorrow, then there would indeed be a catastrophe and the world’s support systems would find it difficult to cope. Real refugees often lose all their possessions and have to start completely anew.
But even the worst case scenario does not speak to this sort of problem. Maybe, year by year, some parts of the tidal littoral become that little bit less inhabitable than they were ten or twenty years before. And maybe the young folks decide that their long term future lies elsewhere and the village or town or even city migrates a few miles inland. Or slowly dies away completely. Which might be sad from a sociological viewpoint and for the few remaiing inhabitants, but would not lead to the global crisis of so many scare stories.
In the more developed world, its quite possibel to build sea walls a few feet bigger…the existing ones probably date back a hundred years or more and may already need a refit. In London, where I work. the recent trend of the City eastwards towards the sea might need to be reversed.
But cities ave grown and changed shape and centres of population have changed throughout history. Sealevel rise would be another influencing factor. But not an insurmountable one, nor one to get too concerned about. A hundred years is a long time.
I find it hard to believe there’s anyone dumb enough to spend time writing that garbage. Only insanity can explain it.
Now there was I, all this time, believing that the local sea-level at the Maldives is actually going down – or the Maldives are rising just as any islands built from coral erosion.
Silly Me
Andy
Interesting idea to relieve some wealthy people of their hard-earned money. I assume the domiciles would be extremely expensive, probably only the elite (those with money) need apply. Is this government subsidized? Sponsored? It looks like it has the potential to make some people quite a bit of money by capitalizing on their fantasies, just like any good amusement park.
Did anybody else think, at first blush, that the photo was of one of those plastic devices that hold the “sanitizer” block in a urinal?
Arcosanti meets Waterworld. After all, what could go wrong? I think they did this plot line in StarGate Atlantis.
Renew!
The Cancun shuffle.
Now appearing at http://ourmaninsichuan.wordpress.com/
There is the translation of the low carbon plot from China by Locusts.
There is also the Norfolk Island personal carbon credit card scheme story by Blackswan.
With more Cancun related fun added daily!
Will the Cancun climate conference just be a holiday in the sun?
Or is there a sinister reason for the shroud of silence?
NoIdea
I say this qualifies for climate craziness of the year! Lets see, 250 million refugees @ur momisugly 50,000 per pad = 5,000 lily pads “moving from the equator to the poles” with flora and fauna magically adapted to all regions. If we just consider surface area for solar based food production (not including their solar panels), and each inhabitant used a mere 20m x 20m (66ft) each pad would be 20 square kilometres. Drop my estimate by half and this thing still has a diameter of over 2 miles! Sounds great, send me a postcard from the NW passage.
I went to the beach last week. It was still there, where I recall it being for the past several decades.
also:
RayG says: November 15, 2010 at 11:27 am
Did anybody else think, at first blush, that the photo was of one of those plastic devices that hold the “sanitizer” block in a urinal?
—————————————————–
It looked to me like somebody stomped on a window fan.
I stop drinking …..
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/mccoy_carbontrade_its_dead_jim.jpg?w=448&h=400
http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-153023286-jornada-nas-estrelas-star-trek-nave-klingon-d7-_JM
Sorry,
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/3945/klingon.png
semelhante
http://vincent.callebaut.org/page1-img-lilypad.html
This article does bring up a good point. A lot of the ice in the world is displacing water (as we all know 90% of a glacier is unde
This article does bring up a good point. A lot of the world’s ice displaces water (as we all know 90% of a glacier is underwater, etc., etc.). Ice becomes denser as it melts, thus freeing up space and lowering sea levels. Even if ice that is above sea-level melts would cause the ice that it is sitting on to get lighter and to rise. This may or may not raise sea levels depending on how much denser the ice gets and how much the remaining ice rises. I don’t like to claim anything without empirical evidence, but this may sea levels rising a lot less than previously thought (assuming warming is real of coarse).
Is it that the re-educational facilities intended for us, skeptics?
I like it!.