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Floating Island Cities & Farms.

By Carlisle Ross posted 10-16-2009 11:45 AM

  

Over the last century the world's population has more-or-less quadrupled.  If the trend continues then by the year 2109 the world's population will be about 28 billion!  Moreover, due to "global meltdown", the latest forecasts by glaciologists say, that "by the turn of the present century, sea levels are likely to rise by about 7 m (23 ft)".  Thus, we have two concomitant problems over the next 50 years or so, namely, a growing world population and shrinking dry land.  Now some 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by water; only about 29% is covered by dry land.  Therefore to increase our area of "dry land" on Planet Earth, I suggest that we build floating island cities & floating island farms.  In the case of the latter, I suggest that we use the hydroponic method of agriculture, where to grow our crops, we require sunlight, water , air & nutrients; we do not require soil.  For both types of floating island, I suggest that we use 'green energy', namely wave energy, tidal energy, wind energy, solar energy and bio-mass energy, where in the case of the last, we use human waste as a fuel for power stations.

For a BBC radio broadcast on this topic, Click:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xats5q_radiosolentbroadcast15102009

For a newspaper article on this topic, Click:

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/newshome/Portsmouth-professor-shortlisted-for-award.5735259.jp

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01-24-2010 07:15 PM

Hello Mr. Ross:
This might be a historic moment for SNAME Voyager. I just checked what was on the Voyager blogs and came across your entry, which showed that there is a value in exchanging ideas between SNAME members.
Your thoughts about water based self sustained living were experimented with in the port of New York in the summer of 2009.
Check out http://www.thewaterpod.org/. My company provided pro bono engineering assistance on the project
It was an interesting project and showed what can be done and what is very difficult to do.
Most of all it was fun to hang out in the harbor to watch the chickens lay eggs and to watch the plants grow.
Regards,
Rik van Hemmen