Transmat World: oceans

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.

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

Friday, March 22, 2019

Why the Oceans Will Be Humanity’s Life Raft

Photo by Giga Khurtsilava on Unsplash

It’s the year 2100. Nobody lives near the coast. Too dangerous. Hurricane Xena took out Miami in 2085. Most coastal cities have been ravaged. Besides, the land has been soaked with seawater so many times, it won’t grow but the hardiest saline-loving plants. Ports are the only inhabited portions of coastline. Ports are specially designed to shelter people and vessels. Ports are very expensive nowadays. The water is always rising, claiming more land. People build sturdy houses on high ground away from the coast. Many build in the ground on high ground, living in basement caves. The good thing about the coast is it doesn’t stink as much now as when the great aquatic die-offs were taking place.

The political will wasn’t there to fight climate change until the middle of the century, when truly scary things begin to happen. People started living in their vehicles to escape locally violent winds, floods, heat, and snowstorms. Insects and wild animals became rare. Dead things mummified instead of rotting to a skeleton. People don’t even wonder about that now. Hurricane names went through the alphabet every year with half being Cat 4 or better. The weather alternated between violent storms and extended drought. The Southwestern United States went five years without a drop of rain. Annual rainfall in the northeast increased to over 100 inches per year. Crops failed. Many died of starvation. A chunk of methane hydrate the size of Manhattan surfaced off the coast of San Francisco. Lightning set it ablaze, and it burned for six years. Scientists say this is fortunate. The evaporating methane would have been worse for the atmosphere than its products of combustion.

The nations of Earth finally came together in 2050 to pass laws. Fossil fuel usage is now rare. Wind, hydro, biomass, wave, solar, nuclear fission and fusion are what power everything. All vehicles, including planes, run on hydrogen made by hydrolysis of water. Population growth is under control. Weather related deaths have leveled off to two billion since 2050. In 2100, the world’s population is only eight billion, not the eleven billion projected in the early part of the 21st century.

The average global temperature has started to stabilize as huge CO2 sequestration plants suck it from the air and turn it into plastic and lubricating oils. The seas are still warm and acidic with few creatures sturdy enough to survive the low oxygen levels. Yet, this is where the majority of humans now live - on the vast oceans. You see, it is only the top 200 meter layer of the oceans that is warm. The next layer is the 1000 meter thermocline which separates the surface ocean from the deep ocean. The deep ocean represents 80-90 percent of the oceans’ volume and is frigidly cold. While the surface layer takes about 100 years to mix temperatures, the deep ocean works on a longer timeline - 1,000 to 100,000 years. The cold melt from those disappearing glaciers and arctic ice over the past 150 years seeped to the bottom of the ocean becoming part of this vast reservoir of coolness not thought about until it was absolutely necessary.

Mankind retreated to the sea. With a pipe stuck 1200 meters into the ocean, one can draw out 32-45 degree Fahrenheit water. Run it through a heat exchanger along with ambient air and cold, pure condensate comes pouring out, dripping off the coils. It is used for drinking, bathing, growing crops, and trade with the people who still live on land. The cold, dry air gushing out of that same heat exchanger is used for refrigeration and air conditioning. The best thing, though, is the still cool, oxygenated, nutrient dense sea water that floods the insulated fish tanks where the precious sea creatures saved from the dying oceans thrive. Some are grown for food, but many simply find sanctuary from the warm death on the other side of their tank wall. As cool ocean water warms, it is released into the ocean. Still cooler than the ambient water, it helps to bring down the temperature of the world's oceans.

Moveable, manmade islands proliferated and became nations. They number in the thousands now from the tiny Gilligan's with a population of seven to the huge New Miami with a population of 150,000. Some islands are engineered for safety, efficiency, and longevity. Some are cobbled together from sea barges and yachts. Ocean liners and merchant vessels sometimes form the nucleus. Even aircraft carriers and other military ships form parts of the hundreds of island nations that dot the seas. Large vessels make good bases for the big wind turbines that stretch into the sky above the islands. It is hard to pick out individual vessels as most everything is covered in dense vegetation. Flashes of light reflected from windows dispersed through the greenery are the only indication of dwellings underneath the plant growth.

Floating solar farms surround the islands with channels through them, accessing the ports near the center of the islands. From these same ports, deep sea drones launch to the bottom of the ocean, looking for wrecks and mineral treasures and to monitor the temperature and condition of the most precious commodity left to humanity - the ocean deep’s cold-water refuge from the heat. We can only hope that it lasts until the Earth is healed.