Seasteading for Climate Change

[hayenmill]

SEASTEADING FOR CLIMATE CHANGE

http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1702/mf_seasteading_illustration_630.jpg

The idea of floating cities that could one day house climate change refugees is not new. There have been some older news regarding that solution in case rising sea levels force people out of their homes. It is with great hope that a new idea will be shared.

further on,

It was with this scenario in mind, that an interest idea has sprung. The Seasteading Institute has as a mission “to further the establishment and growth of permanent autonomous communities, enabling innovation with new political and social systems”.

One of the main engineering problems faced by the Seasteading Institute was precisely how to reduce the cost of floating platforms in order to make the prospec of living in the sea more attractive. These and other concerns are mostly addressed in the Seasteading Institute’s Frequently Asked Questions.

Such advances in floating platforms will reduce the cost of building those platforms and will allow for more of them to be built and to house more climate change refugees. Let us hope the cost will be even more reduced by further developments on this field.

Personally i think this is a great way of helping out climate refugees, provided we cannot stop climate change and the cost of building these floating shelters is reduced.

Maybe if many people actually go into this seasteading institute, and there is many demand for such floating platforms, we might see prices drop even more.

Please do not Hotlink to copywritten material.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Locknar

 

[Dancing David]

Maybe that would cost more than FEMA trailers did?

 

[KingMerv00]

It was with this scenario in mind, that an interest idea has sprung. The Seasteading Institute has as a mission “to further the establishment and growth of permanent autonomous communities, enabling innovation with new political and social systems”.

Bioshock 3?

 

[realpaladin]

The aircraft carrier in Snow Crash by Stephenson!

 

[hayenmill]

Bioshock 3?

they actually adressed that point in their FAQ:

BioShock

As Quiet Desperation wrote on the Reason blog: "Look, Bioshock was an awesome game, but, sorry, plasmids are eternally science fiction. An experimental Libertarian nation will not fall due to people being able to shoot lightning, or bees, or bees that crap lightning, or lightning made out of bees from their hand." If you insist on a more detailed rebuttal (of a video game ?!?!), see this blog post. And if you are going to model us with a video game, we prefer Civilization.

blog post is this one: http://seasteading.org/stay-in-touch/blog/3/2008/05/21/nothing-against-bioshock

We can do the same sort of analysis for BioShock. There, the city's owner/ruler demanded that the city maintain a closed economy; when supply and demand inevitably produced smuggling, he restricted trade, closed the transport links that allowed exit from the city, and nationalized his enemies' property. This, combined with a healthy dose of class resentment, pretty much doomed the whole endeavor in exactly the obvious way.

This is close to the opposite of our philosophy. We want a maximally open economy, and we think that free exit is so important that we've called it the only Universal Human Right. We certainly appreciate the comparison with a fictional universe that has such a powerful place in people's hearts, and it's fun to joke about - there will definitely be some homages to BioShock on our prototype platform. But we'd also appreciate it if, when it comes to evaluating our idea, people dug into the details rather than using superficial similarities. Also, it's good to keep in mind that fiction is often a poor mirror for the real world. After all, plenty of things like this have been tried , and many of them ended badly, but never as badly as everybody died.

 

[hayenmill]

for those interested, here's their review of all the other similar attempts tried:

http://seasteading.org/seastead.org/commented/paper/review.html

 

[casebro]

Expensive way to make living space. It would be cheaper to build on hot land and air condition than to make the same square footage float, and STILL need a/c.

So far as climate change goes, the flooded coast will be much offset by more verdant deserts elsewhere.

I guess you could point to um Singapore? Hing Kong? whichever, with all the people living on boats in the bay. And how much is an acre of land worth in those cities?

I think seasteading is an answer to a question that need not be asked.