Will they call it Atlantis?
By LibbyPutting aside the arguments over climate disruption and whether or not this will actually be needed, I think this floating city is really cool. I wouldn't mind living in it although I do have a couple of questions.
For instance, I don't see an anchor on the thing. I wonder what keeps it from just drifting around the world. If you start out in the tropics and find yourself a month later in the Anarctic sea, that could present a bit of a wardrobe problem. And I do wonder how hurricane proof they are. But in theory, I love the idea and the way it looks. Kind of like a space pod in the water.
Labels: Just for fun, science
posted by Libby Spencer at 10:10 AM
10 Comments:
Plants notwithstanding, you can't feed 50,000 people without, at the very least, exploiting the oceans that are already overstrained as a food supply.
Quite right, without engines it's going to come ashore or go aground and be destroyed. It would at least require tugs to move it and there goes your energy independence.
I'm not much impressed with ideas that seem to promise continued population growth and increased standards of living. And what is to become with the majority of Earth's population who can't afford anything remotely similar to this pie in the surf?
this is the coolest thing ever
http://sensicology.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/what-a-surprise-fisheries-are-to-blame-4-fish-decline/
Oh Fogg. You're so practical. Surely they have a few kinks to work out in this scheme but it is rather pretty I think. As for the peons who can't afford to climb aboard the floating oases, well, they get to inherit the scorched earth the rich folks left behind, I guess.
Senisico. Welcome to our humble blog and good luck on your new one.
I also don't see any way they'll be able to defend themselves from the Smokers.
From the article, it sounds as though they'll have engines so they're not at the mercy of currents and tides and can move around.
Admittedly, they look like a cool idea, but if sea levels were to rise enough to make such a plan necessary, there would be way too many people displaced for this to be a practical solution.
On the other hand, I can see this sort of thing taking off as a way for organizations and individuals to create their own little self-contained city-states in international waters beyond national laws to escape or conduct activities not allowed anywhere else.
Good point BJ. We could organize our own independent island nations.
Is it gated?
I expect they have torpedos or something built around the perimeter.
To defend against the Smokers. LOL BJ.
There are far more practical and less fanciful proposals out there. This design would have such a huge amount of aerodynamic drag that it would use huge amounts of energy to move it or control it.
It reminds me a bit of some of Bucky Fuller's dream projects, if not Jonathan Swift's floating cities, but even less practical. There are so many reasons that this won't work, I can't list them all, but it's attempting to solve the wrong problem in the first place. No matter what we do, the planet cannot sustain even a fraction of current growth unless the standard of living falls dramatically for all of us.
I'm afraid you're right about that Fogg. Fortunately for me, I'm used to being poor, so it won't be so much a shock.
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