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.
I thought we’d got these things already. Aren’t they called Cruise Liners? Only they are pointy and the front and round at the back and can go places.
“”””” so supposably we have warmed 0.6 deg C in considerably less than the last 100 years; so the sea level must already have gone up 60 cm or two feet; totally wonderful, that that happened and I didn’t even notice. Or are they saying it goes up logarithmically with temperature or maybe it is exponential; well take your pick.
Just put it in the Pacific Vortex, it won’t go anywhere. There could be a lot of “green” jobs making crafts out of the good supply of plastic there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
Common Sense says:
November 15, 2010 at 2:17 pm
“40 million people a year move in the United States.”
40 million people who already live in the United States move every year.
I.E. People retire and move into a retirement community, people grow up and move away from Mom and Dad etc etc etc. People get a job and a house, lose their job and lose their house. In 2008 2.8 million households got foreclosure notices, that like what 10 million people who had to move for ‘financial reasons’.
Point being, why are we worried about a few million people that may have to move in 100 years because of ‘high water’ when we have millions that have to move today due to ‘lack of economic opportunity’.
Science fiction author Damon Knight’s CV:
Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Tor Books (March 1986)
“CV is the story of one cruise on a very large ship, the Sea Venture (usually called CV, hence the title). This is a structure designed as a self-sustaining city, basically, but to make ends meet in this prototype stage it is also a cruise ship. This novel concerns a particularly dramatic cruise. The story…”
Climate catastrophe or not wouldn’t you love to see that extrordinary thing floating around the oceans. I’m prepared to go alarmist if it’ll get one or two built.
Anyone remember that fraud in the desert in Arizona a few years ago! Called Earth 1 or Eco 1 or something. Supposed to be a self-contained sealed habitat but it failed and they had to draw air and save the project but had to keep it hidden. They got caught.
Anyone who believes the investment these things would take would be worth it either do not understand money (and there’s too many people like that), or they are the rich who also would pay $5000.00 a plate to sit at Al Gore’s table after his presentations.
I think these pictures will help some people who believe in “manmade global warming” to come to their senses.
When one considers the cost and difficulty of building and maintaining a floating city, the cost of building in near coastal desert and providing desalinization for a water supply pales by comparison.
The floating cities are of a “Popular Science” article, a high school term paper (like the one I wrote about Gerald O’Neil space colonization and SPSS ideas — http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/the-lost-space/ ), or a Discovery Channel “Cities of the Future” special, but that about the extent of it.
Civilization survives only aboard floating cities after a worldwide cataclysm… how novel. Oh wait, um 2012 or Roddenberry could use it as setting for Genesis II, erm, Planet Earth, erm, Strange New World, erm, Andromeda.
Nothing to see here folk move along…
Looks like Vincent (from the batiment D) takes too much spliff…
[Think of your sentence and then spell check 8<) Robt]
…reminds me of the B-sci-fi by the social engineer from Zeitgeist Addendum movie.
OECD: Obsessive Excessively Compulsive Disorder.
Kinda fits …
I wouldn’t ride though a storm in that thing,I nearly got swamped crewing a 72 foot sloop rig on the Columbia River bar-once, and never again. Do not volunteer to crew unless you check out the Captain’s/owner’s/crew’s credentials….
Been out to sea after that, but knew who I was with and their ability…
Sometimes you are safer in a small commercial troller/crabber in rough seas
than is something that is big, hard to maneuver and incompetently run.
This Lily Pad does not inspire confidence….
Yeah, we’re going to be so short of land, that we’ll all have to live on big boat cities. Because, all those vast areas of the US, for instance, that have hardly anyone living in them… those will presumably all be under water will they?
Utterly moronic.
In the 1960-ties there was a somewhat off-balance high ranking civil servant in Holland who wrote a book detailing his encounters with the beings from outerspace (Wht him was never explained) during his sailing trips in the estuaries in the South of the country. According to his detailed reporting on what he claimed was their way of life on a home planet ravaged by devastating earthquakes was their solution: floating cities of a hundred thousand inhabitants each.
He didn’t comment on how they solved the sewege problem.
It seems to me that this idea is in the same category.
Eric Dailey said on November 15, 2010 at 6:12 pm:
Biosphere 2, with Earth being “Biosphere 1.” It wasn’t exactly as you said. According to a PBS show I saw about it quite a few years ago (Nova?), during the first mission the oxygen levels had dropped precipitously low, leading to the necessity of an air exchange using a structure/device referred to as the “lungs” of Biosphere 2 (bellows-like operation).
The show said the problem was exposed concrete surfaces absorbing the oxygen. The Wikipedia article is interesting. It says the real issue was the concrete absorbing carbon dioxide and forming calcium carbonate. Does this mean mankind’s many concrete structures are actively sequestering carbon, and the Greens still don’t like them? The massive CO2 swings, from day to night and also seasonal, are intriguing. Levels of 4000 to 4500 ppm in winter?
For such a “self-sustaining” habitat, the generated energy requirements sound quite impressive. From the Biosphere 2 site, Fast Facts section:
I wonder how many solar panels and/or wind turbines it’ll take to replace those generators and any incoming off-site generated electricity. Sustainability in all things is the goal to pursue and achieve, right?
According to the Wikipedia write-up, there were numerous disputes, since its beginning the facility has changed owners and management a few times, currently ending at what I find to be quite fitting. Emphasis added:
Studying greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect inside a real greenhouse? Just the sort of high-grade “climate change science” we’ve come to expect.
Build the habitat on an iceberg.
I’ve seen that idea floated online. It requires lots of energy, for the cooling to keep the iceberg from melting. We currently lack fusion-based power, but fission-based will suffice, and we know there’s a virtually unlimited supply of dissolved uranium in the oceans, and other suitable radioactive elements as well as other usable substances. On top of the iceberg goes insulation, then the habitat structures, there can also be structures extending into the iceberg. Maintaining a good temperature in the structures won’t be a problem. You can grow crops on top of the insulating layer, just add dirt or go hydroponic, you could raise some livestock as well. Around the iceberg you can have aquatic farming (saltwater-tolerant crops grown in the ocean), farming on barges, fishing, etc.
For Greens whose heads are exploding because “It’s NUCLEAR!”, an iceberg is a good place for a nuclear plant. Placed deep within the ice, you have built-in automatic emergency cooling plus good radiation shielding to protect the residents. For something going really bad, move the residents and anything possible to another iceberg habitat, let the iceberg melt away, and the nuclear plant becomes very effectively “buried” at the bottom of the ocean, with the normal seabed silt and debris accumulation burying it ever deeper over time. Any “irradiated ice” becomes water and is dispersed into the “background noise” of the vast oceans, unnoticeable.
You could use an existing iceberg, or grow an artificial one around the cooling tubes. Another benefit, expansion is easy, increase the cooling and grow some more ice.
Heck, forget global warming, someone should do this “just because.” It’ll be cool.
They should have talked to the folks over at the Living Universe Foundation. Their proposed floating colony, Aquarius, is designed to scale up from a small near-shore settlement to a full-blown city. And, IMO, Aquarius is more fully conceptualized than Lilypad in all areas (energy, food, economy, etc.), plus it just looks cooler 🙂
RE: Joseph Day: (November 15, 2010 at 11:12 am)
“A floating city is not a bad idea, but notice how it can’t be expanded? Dumb design.”
I suspect that this is an ‘Artistic Expression’ rather than any serious design. I would expect that if ever anyone ever decided to build a marine city of ‘Pacifica’ that it would be constructed of a series of linked modules or large pontoon-barges and it would be sited at null current point equivalent to the Sargasso Sea.
It’s already been done — Stargate Atlantis!
All it needs are Naquada fueled generators for power and a hyperspace star-drive located on the underside.
“No serious SF writer would touch arcologies even with a remote controlled robot. They are a stupid idea that have almost no reasonable application.”
Colonies on almost habitable worlds? (E.g., the domed cities of Komarr.)
Granted, we need to learn a lot more about life-support. But these “lily-pad cities” won’t need atmospheric recycling. As long as some one wants to build one with their own money, I have no objection. I expect it will be a learning experience.
RE: LarryD : (November 16, 2010 at 10:05 am )
“As long as some one wants to build one with their own money, I have no objection. I expect it will be a learning experience.”
I expect that we all will be the poorer if a lot of money is spent on such a project and it never pays off. I do not think this would be a practical answer to rising sea levels.
I believe there would have to be the potential of some real paying advantage, such as superior access to a local resource, before we would go through all the trouble and expense of constructing and supporting a floating city on the sea.
Let’s see … a new bed wetter home world (S Pacific or Mars – don’t care) where they can stay out of our business. I hereby pledge a hefty percent of my tax payments so long as it is a one way trip.