Via Chris Hayes, it's LILYPAD A Floating Ecopolis for Ecological Refugees. Neat if it works, I suppose, though these days anyone can make a cool-looking computer-generated image and assert that it's self-sufficient, energy-positive, etc.
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Waterworld
18 Jun 2008 12:12 pm
Comments (12)
Or "ecological refugees" could move up hill.
The fundamental ridiculousness of all this is that climate change kills poor people because they don't have the means to make the necessary adjustments. And incredibly expensive projects like this would only further limit the resources available for subsidizing the necessary adjustments by poor people.
The world bank estimates that a 1 meter rise would displace 60 million people. These supposedly house 50,000. So we'd only need 1,200 of these. Given that they're to be covered in solar panels, I'll go ahead and say it's safe to bet that they'll not be cheaper than a billion dollars a piece. So that puts us somewhere upwards of ten trillion dollars, which will be payed for by whom?
This doesn't deal with the social/cultural/economic problems of taking the 60 million people who's homes are now underwater, many of whom likely have jobs and things, and putting them all in floating bubbles. It doesn't deal with the laughable unlikeliness of actually supporting sustainably diverse ecosystems in this situation. It doesn't deal with what happens when one of them sinks, or how spots are allocated, or whether they'd be privately or publicly owned, or any of the other 80 gazillion reasonable reasons not to do this.
It almost seems like... finding places for people to live right here on the land parts of earth might make more sense.
I can't make a cool-looking computer-generated image. So, I'm just going to assume this will work. Problem solved.
I can't make a cool-looking computer-generated image. So, I'm just going to assume this will work. Problem solved.
As a commenter on the linked site noted, this has already been proposed by the Bjarke Ingels Group .
It looks like an upscale version of "the Raft" in Snowcrash.
Blah blah blah problems with this blah blah blah.
Who cares? I hope the future is cool and we all live in earthships or floating cities and have vertical farms and whatnot.
Screw flying cars, where's my self sustaining man made island city?
For an ecological solution, that sure requires a lot of polyesther (petrochemicals required) and titanium dioxide, both of which are increasing in price dramatically right now and have substantial environmental impact resulting from the extraction of raw materials. Move uphill.
Cool. Global climate change will not be a problem once we:
(1) bury all the trees
(2) build skyscraper farms
and
(3) create lillypad cities.
Damn it. I can't do math. The cost I said (already relying on a totally made up price tag) was off by a factor of ten.
So much eye-candy, So little sense (like most "visionary" solutions to real problems).
It reminds me of those who proposed floating houses for New Orleans anticipating the next time the city gets devetated by broken levees.
Ignore the real problem (broken levees) and propose cool new solutions, also ignoring that New Orleans would never recover from ANOTHER catastrophic levee breec.
Comments closed July 02, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Isn't this kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy? People are displaced by rising seas so they move to hundreds of giant, floating cities, which in turn cause greater displacement of ocean water which causes the sea level to rise even more. Makes perfect sense.
Posted by jamois | June 18, 2008 12:36 PM