Transmat World: CO2

Showing posts with label CO2. Show all posts

Monday, December 6, 2021

What Do We Do Now That We Know Climate Change is Inevitable?

Climate change experts say global emissions of CO2 must be reduced to 45% from 2010 levels by 2030. It must reach a “net” zero” level by 2050 in order to limit warming to 2.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees centigrade). The goal was originally set at 2 degrees centigrade (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), but the Paris negotiations changed it to 1.5 degrees C. to appeal to a broader base of nations. This half degree means 10 million fewer people are displaced by the ocean’s rising, a 50% reduction of people experiencing water shortages around the globe, 50% reduction in species losing half their habitat, and a 80–90% destruction of coral reefs instead of 100%. The level of atmospheric CO2, however, has risen from 387 ppm in 2010 to 413 ppm in 2019, a 6.7% increase.

For the first time, Saudi Aramco revealed its finances publicly. Although it was April 1, this was no April Fool’s prank. The company made $111 billion last year, twice as much as Apple, the most profitable public company in the world. ExxonMobil made $20.8 billion. Royal Dutch Shell made $23.4 billion. The financial inertia of the fossil fuel industry is making a mockery of world climate goals. It is not just the fossil fuel industry but the industries it fuels as well. Trucking, shipping, airlines, auto, steel and concrete industries must all switch to electric or hydrogen by 2050 for “net zero” to happen. That’s 31 years away. Can you see all of these industries making the staggering commitments necessary to switch over without laws in place to make them? Can you see all 195 countries on Earth passing laws to force them to do this? It is not going to happen.

If CO2 levels rose 6.7% from 2010 to early 2019, it’s safe to say that by sometime in 2020 it will be an even 7% for the decade and the CO2 level in Jan. 2020 will be 420 ppm, 449.4 ppm in 2030, 480.9 in 2040 and 514.6 ppm by 2050. This does not take into consideration the positive feedback loops evaporating mass quantities of natural gas (methane) into the atmosphere from melting permafrost. Methane is 21 times better at warming the atmosphere than CO2. The hotter it gets, the more methane injected into the atmosphere and so on.

So what would more than 2 degrees centigrade do in terms of damage to the world? It could kill 50–80% of the fish in the oceans. Ice melting could raise sea levels by more than three feet by the end of the century. If Greenland and Antarctic ice eventually melts, it could raise oceans 230 feet. While it is doubtful this could happen on Earth, positive feedback loops and runaway greenhouse gasses created the hellish conditions seen on Venus.

That is not going to happen on Earth. As soon as the general population realizes fossil fuel companies have been gas lighting (no pun intended) them for decades, it will become possible to overcome their propaganda efforts and the legalized bribery our congressmen and senators disingenuously call lobbying. By 2050, strict environmental laws will force the fossil fuel industry to change or die. Don’t feel sorry for them. They will build a lot of renewable energy plants and CO2 sequestration plants and still be making money. Taxes will have to go up to pay for research on how to do this. The U.S. saw marginal rates of around 70% to 92% from 1950 to 1981. When you hear rich people complaining nowadays about taxes, take it with a grain of salt. They will be bitching until it’s zero.

The political process will be too slow to mediate the effects of climate change. We must develop a slew of technologies and social standards to counter this lack of social progress.

1. Carbon dioxide sequestration and other technologies actively removing CO2 must be developed and implemented. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies are already being developed, but more work must be done to make it economically viable.

2. Reforestation must take place on a grand scale. This will assist in carbon capture and restore habitats to insects and animals.

3. Cheap water technology will need to be implemented to offset the increasing scarcity of potable water.

4. We must find a way to capture energy from low temperature heat from industrial processes and server farms. This is a huge inefficiency in our global society.

5. Grants and prizes must be increased for the development of new technologies to mediate and reverse greenhouse gas levels.

6. Products will have to be designed to be recycled with the least amount of energy possible.

Our social evolution must strive to keep up with technology. Stringent laws concerning carbon output must be enacted on industry and society. One half of the population acting as if nothing is wrong and living a huge carbon footprint is not going to work.

It is a sad commentary on humanity that the captains of the industries that have taken us so far so fast would play chicken with a world threatening event. It is our responsibility as citizens of this world to reign them in and redirect their efforts to the common good. The only way to do this is to change our leadership by any means, preferably democratic, to people that are clear-headed, logical, moral, and responsible enough to lead us successfully through this age of salvation and into a brave new society of technological marvels in balance with the natural world.

For more articles by Glen Hendrix, browse them on Medium.

Sunday, December 5, 2021

Quit Obsessing About Climate Change. What You Do or Don’t Do No Longer Matters.

by Glen Hendrix

Photo by Matt Palmer on Unsplash

Quit worrying about going vegan, or recycling, or riding a bicycle to work, or buying a Tesla instead of that Ford F-650 pickup you’ve always wanted in order to save the planet. You’re off the hook. It’s out of your hands. You can do these things if it makes you feel better, but they are not going to change the big picture. Whatever you do does not matter. Unless you are a head of state, king, president, prime minister, or other grand poobah, it is above your pay grade. If you are able to vote for people of power, that is what is left for you to do. Other than that …. nothing.

According to scientists, the only way to keep the planet’s temperature from increasing 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit is to immediately phase out all fossil fuel infrastructure and devices. As soon as existing coal, oil, or gas plants reach their engineered lifespans, instead of refurbishing we must shut them down. If we don’t, the estimates for increasing temperatures start going up. At 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, positive feedback loops of evaporating Arctic methane could kick in. Methane is 21 times better at warming the atmosphere than CO2. The warmer temps evaporate the methane. The methane makes the atmosphere warmer. It evaporates more methane …. you get the picture.

I don’t want to be a Donny Downer or a Cassandra but how likely do you think shutting down the fossil fuel industry is? The industry has just invested billions upon billions on natural gas liquefaction plants to easily transport this fuel around the world. They are not giving that up without a tooth and nail, knock down drag out; and they have the money to do it. There are 25 countries whose oil percentage of exports range from Malaysia’s 22.3% to Iraq’s 99.8%. The trucking, railways, shipping, and airline industries would have to be completely transformed to electric or hydrogen propulsion. They will be as reluctant as oil and gas to give it up. All 195 countries would require state-ordained laws banning the use of fossil fuels entirely. There are still vast numbers of people in Africa that gather around campfires and stoves burning wood or coal just like they did thousands of years ago. What are they going to use?

This is the most pivotal point in the history of man. We only get one shot at this. If we blow it, we won’t get a comparable situation for millions of years, if ever. If mankind does have a world-wide civilization by then, we will have forgotten all of this — this choice we had. Save the planet or just get along and ignore it until it is too late. Scientists are saying our planet is doomed and all I hear on the news is everything but that. We are a society in denial, trying to collectively whistle past the graveyard. Our weather men won’t even talk about it on the local news. It might be construed as political. It might upset people. We are so polite and civilized in our denouement.

Since it is off our individual shoulders now, maybe we should give more thought about how we tell our children what’s happening and what to expect in the future. Hopefully, they won’t kick you in the shins when they finally understand what you are talking about. How do we look someone like Greta Thunberg in the face and tell her we screwed up in the worst possible way. This Swedish teen will probably spit in your eye and tell you to fuck off and keep riding that bike to work. She is up for a Nobel Prize for her admonitions to do something about climate change. In reality, she should be voted Queen of the World, because that is exactly what is needed right now; some central, charismatic figure with smarts and determination to do what is right, what is required.

It is not really our fault. Besides being stupid and greedy, we are genetically handicapped to deal with this situation. We simply don’t live long enough to plan ahead. By “planning ahead” I don’t mean decades. I mean centuries. The reason is that people with money and power, the people with the means to do something, just don’t care. They would have to give up some of that money and power to change things. They figure they won’t be around to suffer the consequences of climate change anyway, so they just don’t give a damn. It would require Biblically long lifetimes to plan ahead for the human race. For now and the near future we can, at most, hope to live to a hundred, not the 969 years of Methuselah. If you were going to be around for the consequence of your actions or inaction for as long as he was, you would care.

Our one ray of hope is artificial intelligence. Pundits say a generalized AI, the singularity, will be here within 20 years. It will have the lifetime and the smarts to rationally plan ahead for a viable future for the Earth. Maybe, by the grace of God, it will take over and guide the human race rationally into the future instead of selling us as cheap, world-wrecking slaves to the first aliens that drop by.

So tell your children you are sorry for what is going on with the climate, but it’s not their fault or yours. Tell them some bad people made it too hard to do anything until it was too late. Tell them you will vote for people that might help with the problem. Maybe if we elect the right leaders, and they do the right things there is still time. Tell them to study science and engineering so that someday they might help with a solution or figure out adaptations to deal with it. Or you can put that whole talk off for later. I won’t blame you. You are only human.

Read more great articles on this blog and on Medium.

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

America’s Choices on Climate Change

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

On the one hand you have the climate deniers, mainly in the United States, and mostly fossil fuel adherents saying it’s hard to determine the extent of humanity’s involvement, and that to combat climate change will simply cost too much money. It won’t be that bad. It’s God’s will. Basically, they will say anything to protect the interests of fossil fuel. And they have spent a lot of money convincing other people to buy into climate change being fake news. This article does not address those duped into a false assurance by propaganda.

On the other hand you have 97% of the world’s climate scientists in agreement that climate change is real and it is caused by mankind. The rest of the world, every other country, is in agreement with the climate scientists and have shown that agreement by supporting the Paris Agreement. With the current administration vocally opposed to the agreement and swearing to withdraw at first opportunity, the U.S. is now the only holdout.

The last time CO2 was this high, nearly 416 ppm, was 10-15 million years ago during the Miocene. Seas were a hundred feet higher and average surface temps were 11 degrees F. hotter. If climate is so CO2 dependent, why don’t we see that now? Because normally the Earth sees a change from 280 ppm to 413 ppm CO2 over the course of millions of years, not two centuries. There is going to be some lag time. Right now, however, glaciers and polar ice are melting. The sea is rising. Extreme weather events are common. An extinction event is happening before our eyes, and there is a cult of American deniers hindering the ability of the world to do anything about it.

There are many directions it can go, but boiled down to a binary format of the extremes the government’s choices are these:

1. Pay lip service to the climate change believers, fund a few programs, make it look like something is being done while energy companies go about their business as usual.

2. Go to war against climate change. Go solar, wind, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, afforestation and reforestation, soil carbon sequestration. Put major restrictions on carbon and institute a carbon tax.

Here is the best and worst of what would happen.

Pick #1 and the best scenario is that it turns out not to be as bad as they say: only centuries of hardship, famine, pestilence, and floods compared to near extinction as some scientists have predicted.

Pick #1 and the worst scenario happens: The world becomes a hothouse only survivable at the poles, the oceans become acidic vats of dead and dying fish and mammals. Billion of people die from drought, starvation, hyperthermia, and disease. The remnants of the human race are facing hundreds of thousands of years before the climate begins to cool down. Oops.

Pick #2 and the best scenario happens: After a century or two the climate stabilizes, CO2 starts to drop, and the Earth starts to cool again. Some companies’ bottom lines suffered, some treasure was spent, but other companies come into being and all is well.

Pick #2 and the worst scenario happens: Despite best efforts global warming has begun a runaway thawing of all the methane trapped as methane hydrate in the tundra and oceans and releases it to the atmosphere. Civilization is doomed. At least we tried.

From the options above, the obvious choice is to tackle climate change as though we were going to war and hope it is enough to facilitate the best scenario outcome. What the U.S. government has done under Trump is worse than option one. It is completely denying or ignoring human causes of climate change and actively aiding and abetting the fossil fuel industries.

Climate change is like the mafia. It is making us an offer we can’t refuse. It is unconscionable that we ignore it. They won’t admit it, but many of those people waging misinformation campaigns about climate scientists and climate change have this one evil thought at the center of their brains that they won’t even admit to themselves, “I don’t care because I won’t be here.” At best, these people are like children on a raft of chocolate on the ocean, willing to eat the very thing that keeps them alive--little psychopaths taking what they want. At worst, these are traitors to humanity. They have sold out every man, woman, and child of future generations. May there be a special place…. There should be a plaque with their names and what they have done, a permanent record of their treasonous deeds for all of history to look at and revile. If there are any historians left to keep track of it.

America was the savior of the world during WWII, fighting the Nazis to end Hitler’s despicable regime and the slaughter of millions of Jews. How times have changed. As a nation, the U.S. has contributed more to the climate problem than most. Now we are the only nation in the world whose government is saying “no” to the future. These few climate denying Americans will not be responsible for just a few million lives. They may very well be responsible for the deaths of billions of people of every nationality, race, and creed. They should think about that, and it should keep them up at night. I doubt that it does. Very sad.

Other articles you may enjoy:

The Environmental Advantage of a Space Elevator

The U.S. Must Recycle Recycling

Climate Change Will Herald the Age of Island Cities

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS): The Existential Technology We Are Ignoring

Nations at Risk of Becoming Psychological Echo Chambers: China Sets Worrisome Precedent

Climate Change Will Alter The Way We Think About Energy

What Do We Do Now That We Know Climate Change is Inevitable?

Are You Susceptible to Digitally Induced Cognitive Karma

Why the Oceans Will Be Humanity’s Life Raft

There May Be a Quadrillion Dollars Lying About on the Moon

Mining That First Asteroid - Manned Mission or AI?

A Convergence of Technologies Will Create a New Age of Space Exploration

Steampunk Meets Star Wars: A Harrowing Micro-Tale of Future Spacefarers

The Space Habitat Revisited and Revised

Are Seeds of Conflict Brewing Over the Moon?

Just What Are NASA’s Plans Under Trump

Thruster On a Chip: An Alternative Rocket Science That Could Revolutionize Space Travel

Oumuamua: Alien Probe or Asteroid? It Could Be Both

Cryptocurrency Is Going Into Space

Going Back To the Moon Is Not Just for Governments Anymore

Why It Is a Certainty We Will Become a Space-Based Civilization

Asteroid Mining - How to Pick the Right Asteroid

Recycling Asteroids For Fun and Profit

Taking the 06-03-25 Asteroid Shuttle to Mars - An Alternative to Planned Mars Missions

A Heavy Metal, Cannibalistic Asteroid Propulsion System

Sticking the Landing On Your Billion Dollar Asteroid

Artificial Intelligence and Asteroid Mining Will Be a (Necessary) Match Made In the Heavens

The Weapon of Mass Destruction Nobody Is Talking About

How We Can Diminish the Possibility of Water Wars

There's An Asteroid Out There With All of Our Names On It

What Will Be the Most Common Currency In a Future Space-Based Society?

Workers In Space Will Live In Igloos

How We Will Get Asteroid Material Back To Earth

The Military Values High Ground - Space Is the Highest

Very Large Scale 3D Printing In Space

Energy and Space; Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

China’s Strategy for the Future Is Scary Smart

Sunday, May 12, 2019

The Environmental Advantage of a Space Elevator

image courtesy Obayashi Corporation

Climate change is big. It’s bad. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It’s going to be a rough few hundred, maybe few thousand, years for humanity. The short term view is not encouraging. The fossil fuel energy companies are going to fight tooth and claw to keep selling combustibles. The long term view is more optimistic. As the adverse affects of climate change begin to multiply and intensify, naysayers will be silenced, and social pressure will mandate change. Will it be enough soon enough? Hard to say. If mankind ever gets this CO2 problem under control, we will be looking at different ways to do business that protects the Earth in a more proactive manner, keeping the environment as ideal for life, all life, as possible.

A space elevator may be the key technology for mankind to have it’s cake and eat it, too while the Earth’s climate rebalances. With a space elevator, all the nasty industrial processes that require a lot of energy and cause a lot of pollution could take place in orbit around the Earth. The end products of those orbital industries could then be more easily and cheaply transported to Earth via the space elevator.

A space elevator could also preserve planetary resources. The materials needed for these myriad industrial processes may not even need to come from the surface of the planet. Most can be found in the asteroids or on the Moon. Need fuel? Load up an orbital tanker from a methane lake on Titan, one of the moons of Jupiter. Need water. Find an asteroid made of water and mine it. It is estimated half the water in the oceans came from a bombardment of water-bearing asteroids. Need metal? Nickel-iron asteroids are plentiful. Need energy? Build focusing mirrors for heat and solar panels for electricity.

How does a space elevator work? Take a piece of string with a weight on one end. Pick the string up by the weightless end and spin around until the weight is straight out from your body. A ladybug makes an amazing landing on the string and starts walking out the string to the counterweight. You are the Earth, the string is the elevator cable or tether, the weight is the counterweight, and the ladybug is the car that goes up and down the cable. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it gives a good idea of what and where the major parts are. The counterweight would be about 60,000 to 90,000 miles up from the Earth’s surface. The center of mass of the whole thing should be at geosynchronous orbit, about 22,000 miles up. Now quit spinning and sit down because you’re gonna be dizzy.

Currently, carbon nanotubes are in the running to be the material that can withstand the tremendous stresses of this application. Someone just has to figure out how to make a 60,000 mile long ribbon of the stuff with no imperfections. Meteoroids and space debris are a major problem. Protective measures must be implemented. A major clean-up of our space debris may be in order before we invest in such a mega-project as the space elevator.

With the polluting industries moved to orbit, imagine the Earth as a giant natural park. Yes, we’ll live here, but not as obtrusively as before. One counterintuitive idea would be a further consolidation of humanity into supercities. Megalithic structures would house humanity. Supercities could eliminate untold millions of miles of transportation because everything and everyone is so close. Walking would be the preferred mode of transportation along with personal electric scooters and elevators.

It would free up a lot of land for planting trees and other plants to sequester CO2. Meat would be grown or fabricated in a lab. Multistory greenhouses would grow our vegetables and grains. Supercities would be connected by high speed underground subways like Hyperloop. Other means of transportation will be electric drones and hybrid airships that can flip between heavier and lighter-than-air modes of flight.

I know what you’re thinking. This is all such pie-in-the-sky fantasy stuff with no connection to reality. Fifty years ago, so was AI, GPS, autonomous vehicles, internet, and personal computers. The future looks bright. If we can just get there. Let us hope our immediate future holds in store political allies to humanity and the planet instead of what we have now.

Other articles you may enjoy:

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS): The Existential Technology We Are Ignoring

Nations at Risk of Becoming Psychological Echo Chambers: China Sets Worrisome Precedent

Climate Change Will Alter The Way We Think About Energy

What Do We Do Now That We Know Climate Change is Inevitable?

Are You Susceptible to Digitally Induced Cognitive Karma

Why the Oceans Will Be Humanity’s Life Raft

There May Be a Quadrillion Dollars Lying About on the Moon

Mining That First Asteroid - Manned Mission or AI?

A Convergence of Technologies Will Create a New Age of Space Exploration

Steampunk Meets Star Wars: A Harrowing Micro-Tale of Future Spacefarers

The Space Habitat Revisited and Revised

Are Seeds of Conflict Brewing Over the Moon?

Just What Are NASA’s Plans Under Trump

Thruster On a Chip: An Alternative Rocket Science That Could Revolutionize Space Travel

Oumuamua: Alien Probe or Asteroid? It Could Be Both

Cryptocurrency Is Going Into Space

Going Back To the Moon Is Not Just for Governments Anymore

Why It Is a Certainty We Will Become a Space-Based Civilization

Asteroid Mining - How to Pick the Right Asteroid

Recycling Asteroids For Fun and Profit

Taking the 06-03-25 Asteroid Shuttle to Mars - An Alternative to Planned Mars Missions

A Heavy Metal, Cannibalistic Asteroid Propulsion System

Sticking the Landing On Your Billion Dollar Asteroid

Artificial Intelligence and Asteroid Mining Will Be a (Necessary) Match Made In the Heavens

The Weapon of Mass Destruction Nobody Is Talking About

How We Can Diminish the Possibility of Water Wars

There's An Asteroid Out There With All of Our Names On It

What Will Be the Most Common Currency In a Future Space-Based Society?

Workers In Space Will Live In Igloos

How We Will Get Asteroid Material Back To Earth

The Military Values High Ground - Space Is the Highest

Very Large Scale 3D Printing In Space

Energy and Space; Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

China’s Strategy for the Future Is Scary Smart

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Climate Change Will Herald the Age of Island Cities

Courtesy The Seasteading Institute and Gabriel Scheare, Luke & Lourdes Crowley, and Patrick White (Roark 3D)

Maybe you haven't heard of the Seasteading Institute. Their idea is to create ocean-going island cities with separate laws and governance from the rest of the world; more for sociopolitical reasons than practical. Little do they know they are ahead of the curve on what will be a major trend in the future.

Accurate ice core readings now show the atmosphere has more CO2, way more, than at any time in the past 800,000 years. Less accurate but 95% reliable are studies showing the last time CO2 levels were this high was during the Miocene 15 million years ago.

As our world heats up due to the unrelenting rise in atmospheric CO2 levels, it will begin to resemble the Miocene era.

You will find arguments that since average temperatures were much higher (5-8 degrees Centigrade higher) along with sea levels (130 feet higher) during the Miocene, there is no correlation with our current situation since we are not seeing those conditions. Those CO2 changes in the Miocene took place over a period of thousands of years. Ours has taken place over just the last 250 years.

If climate change were a light bulb, we have flipped the switch and are living in that geological microsecond the bulb filament is glowing a faint red. We are wondering why the light does not come on, but it did. It will get brighter at it's geological pace. Humanity is handicapped by not being able to visualize clearly the scale of really big things, be it time or space or the thermal inertia of a planet. Plus, we want patience and we want it now.

What the hell does this have to do with island cities? As that light bulb gets brighter, the planet’s oceans will become the most pleasant, practical places to live over the next century or so. When they talk about the seas becoming warm and too acidic, they are talking about the uppermost layer of the ocean called the Epipelagic Zone, also known as the Sunlight zone. Towards the lower boundaries of this zone is a thermocline that is a demarcation of warm, mixed upper sea water and frigid, stratified deeper sea water. Ninety percent of the ocean is below the thermocline and is 32-37 degrees F. This means if you lived on the ocean in 2100 A.D. you could be as few as a hundred meters away from a precious commodity in a hot and getting hotter world—the coolest liquid on the planet.

What can you do with it? You can pump it through the water side of a water/air heat exchanger, blow hot moist ambient air (there will be plenty of that) through the air side of the exchanger and collect the condensate off the coil for one of the cheapest ways to produce large quantities of fresh water known to man; cheap enough to use for farming. Use the cool air produced as a byproduct of this process to air condition living quarters and refrigerate food. This would eliminate the hydrofluorocarbons typically used in air conditioning. They are some of the worst greenhouse gasses around as far as potency; 1,430 times worse than CO2 per unit mass.

But wait! There’s more! That cold seawater your pumping can go into a large fish tank as it leaves the heat exchanger. It is full of nutrients and, because of its temperature, can hold a lot of oxygen, unlike the warm acidic water surrounding the island city. Many species of fish and shellfish may be saved from extinction by being raised in such tanks. This will also serve as a major source of food for the island city. The still cool overflow from the fish tanks will be dumped into the warm surrounding water, forming oases for wild organisms following the island around. With enough island cities and given enough time, this cool water from the depths may begin to help cool off the planet, assuming CO2 emissions are under control. It puts a whole new spin on the idea of deep-sea fish farming.

These island cities may be built with modules—habitat, water, plant farming, fish farming, solar power, wind power, manufacturing, harbor, recreation, etc.—linked together to form a large floating mat of functional habitability. Or they could be like huge, sail-driven cruise ships specially built to be self-sustaining. I can also see where they would run the gamut from well-planned and custom engineered to an old freighter with attendant sea barges roped to it a la Waterworld.

The engineered island cities will make excellent platforms for exploring the depths of the oceans for minerals, metals, and scientific studies. They will trade with other cities and whatever ports are still functioning to form a network of civilization the likes of which the world has never seen.

There are other reasons living on a floating island city may become a much better option than living on land in the future. For many, living on land will be a scramble to stay ahead of rising seas and ever hotter middle latitudes. There is evidence that equatorial regions may have been uninhabitable by living creatures during the hottest parts of the Eocene, another time period when temperatures rose along with an increase in CO2 due to major volcanic eruptions. This may cause a migration of humanity and animals on a previously unimagined scale, causing strife and conflict between haves and have nots. Many people will look to the sea for a less stressful life.

One could get a taste of this lifestyle by simply going to work on a cruise ship or going for an extended cruise. It's only about $45,000 for a year’s cruise. That would certainly be cheaper than buying a cabin on The World cruise liner for 13.5 million dollars. Probably would not be the same. They won't put you to work wiping off solar panels, gutting fish, or harvesting crops on a cruise ship. I wouldn’t, however, count on living at sea becoming a necessity in the immediate future. That light bulb filament won’t be orange for a couple of decades yet.

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