Both are solved by one thing!
If we find a way to create cities on the ocean - it does not matter if floating or on a platform - we solve both issues - we have the space for population growth and we have the space for when the sea levels rise.
Two thirds of the space we have is ocean!
Why the hell do we even bother with trying to reverse climate change at all - yes, we may well be responsible for climate change, but we are "a drop in the ocean" compared to what nature can and will do in the next 100 years. So forget fixing this cause of problems and start on handling the result of the problem instead - two birds with one stone.
Simples.
P.S. Please do take this as just a wild rant to start a bit of debate - such issues need a lot more serious discussion. P.P.S. I was drunk when I posted it :-)
The oceans make the Sahara look like a perfectly pleasant, even sensible place for everybody to live. The picture you've attached is a fantasy, the product of people who've maybe been on a Mediterranean "cruise" and mistook summertime in coastal waters for the actual ocean, which is like confusing an afternoon stroll on a local hillside for the ascent of Everest.
ReplyDeleteAs to "trying to reverse climate change" have you looked at the numbers? Imagine if in 2008 the UK government had announced that, in partnership with the Americans and Europe, they had figured out how to release an addition 400 000 IPv4 addresses by 2012. Hooray, IPv4 address exhaustion is being "reversed" right?
Well no, you know 400 000 addresses is barely a sneeze, an empty gesture. You'd have told anyone who asked that this made next to no difference to the actual outcome, exhaustion was still inevitable. And most of them would shut their eyes and said "The government says it's fine, I don't want to listen to some expert tell me otherwise".
We aren't trying to "reverse" climate change, even the ambitious _target_ that there's no actual plan to meet is only to limit change to 2°C, which is likely to result in mass migration, conflict, starvation and so on. Right now we're trying to change the rate of acceleration, of the rate of change of the climate. The metaphorical car is headed off a cliff, and we are currently arguing about whether it's OK to wait until after we're off the cliff to take our foot off the accelerator, or if it might better to do it before. Nobody is discussing the brake pedal at all, it's not even on the agenda, and yet you think they're already putting the car in reverse gear!
You are right that Nature can do worse in absolute terms, but not on anything like this timescale that we've managed. Last time Nature took the form of the Cyanobacteria, a novel species which produced Oxygen, an incredibly toxic gas, and just released it all over the surface of the planet, driving most things that were alive at the time extinct. But keep in mind it took them 200 million years to do that. We've managed climate change in about a century or so. So no, we're not a "drop in the ocean" in that sense.
Well, I thought my post would create some interesting comments, and it has. Thank you
Deletebtw, it took a lot more than 200 million years. It took about a billion years just to get the dissolved iron out of the oceans so oxygen could accumulate in the atmosphere (we're talking multiple *kilometre* thicknesses of rusted sediment), plus another billion before it approached modern levels, in the very late Precambrian. (And then trees evolved a while later, but it was fifty million years before anything evolved that could eat the lignin they were made of, so levels shot up way past modern levels, to 35% or more...)
DeleteThe time required to fix global warming is a flicker in comparison, even if long on a human scale. Heck, even BT could manage to get a phone line installed in that timespan. :P
Well, on this logic, we're all f**ked anyway, as even the unachievable 2 degrees is too much, so we may as well just enjoy life while we can, not bother about it, and just let it happen. Humans are pretty resilient, I'm sure some of us will survive.
ReplyDeleteWhat you say here is an argument for apathy not for fighting climate change.
Sorry, this was supposed to be a reply to Tialaramex above :)
DeleteI don't want to be seasick, but apart from that and tsunamis, I love the plan.
ReplyDeleteTsunamis aren't dangerous on the ocean. On the ocean the tsunami energy (from an earthquake) is trying to move, say, a kilometre of water. Water is heavy. So it rises maybe a metre or so. No big deal, there are bigger waves almost all the time in the ocean and it's not even a visible wave, it's so long the water just gently rises and falls, you won't notice. However at the beach almost all the earthquake energy is still there, but now there isn't a kilometre of water to move. So the waves become ten metres, fifty metres, maybe even more, and they're much longer than normal waves, they don't break into spray harmlessly but instead pour inland. That kills people.
DeleteIf you make the platform big enough, then it'll even out out absorb most waves or turbulent seas.
DeleteIn fact there are several potential cities on the ocean near me. Eileanan nam Manach off the coast of North Uist would be one nice candidate. Eday would be another.
ReplyDeleteAndrews & Atlantis? :)
ReplyDelete