Long before I read about the ancient city of Seuthopolis I though about the possibility of creating new land on the top of a Seamount by building a large dike and then pumping out all the water.
There are (in my opinion) several advantages to this idea over any other possibility to create a LFC society on this planet.
1. There is no one who can be said to "own" the property in question. Yes, the United Nations Conventions on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) do have provisions dealing with construction in international waters, but these are with regard to being "hazards to navigation" and, well a shallow Seamount is already a hazard to navigation. The construction of a visible structure would actually be less of a hazard to navigation.
The UN extends its greasy fingers in further under misguided nonsense about protecting fragile habitats, but I would argue that one single solitary Seamount measuring a total of 160 square kilometers is no loss in an ocean comprising 361.132 million sq km.
2. The remoteness of some of these Seamounts would enable building to begin and possibly go on for quite some time before the settlement would be "discovered" by the outside world. Yes, I know there are satellites in space that can read the newspaper lying on your front porch but the only reason they are zooming in is because there is a front porch there in the first place. How much time and at what sort of resolution do you think satellites spend scanning that 361 million square kilometers of ocean?
This also reduces significantly the possibility of Greenpeace or the Sea Sheppard society from instantly being aware of the destruction of the aforementioned "delicate ecosystem"*1.
3. The logistical effort and the necessity of creating such a huge structure would create an instant economy. Where there is work there is commerce, people trading value for value, people filling all the niches of a full blown market from the guy making and handing out sandwiches at the job site to the guy running the company hauling material from the mainland to the site itself.
4. The fact that the builders and settlers would be completely removed from any outside influences would be invaluable to the creation of and development of a truly LFC society.
The undertaking would be immense, it would include the development of the first truly objective code of law in the history of man. The creation of an explicitly laissez faire constitution and the separation of economics and state.
In my opinion this would be much easier and more likely to succeed without any external international pressure. With the world moving closer and closer to collectivism the freedom to develop outside of all that influence and those who would wield their considerable power against that ideal is of immeasurable value.
I'm sure there are some reasons I haven't thought of, but in my mind these would be the most important, especially the time and space to make it happen. When the USA won the War of Independence the world was a different place, it took weeks to cross the Atlantic. This simple fact allowed the Fathers of the American republic to develop their county in practical isolation, to come as close to the LFC ideal as was possible in their day and age.
That is the kind of isolation I wish for, for New Atlantis. The time and space to make a new start.
*1 - I should mention that in the design of the structure it would be beneficial for it to be constructed in such a way that it would encourage more aquaculture to live there. This could be achieved by having a non-uniform exterior on the sea-wall. This would encorage the growth of corals and provide habitat for fish and marine plant life. An irregular shell on the sea-wall also helps dissipate wave forces in the same way that Tetrapods do.
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Nertz--it looks like the comment I wrote this morning went into the ozone.... (also it appears that older comments are still inaccessible even though the feature appears to be working now for new comments).
ReplyDeleteIf it is a basaltic seamount *and* we have LOTS of electrical power (a couple of those small nukes?), it looks like we can have a fair amount of aluminum and iron for the asking... and maybe glass--darkly colored glass can make a decent privacy wall. Certainly brick. I note that these are the same building materials proposed for the interior of O'Neill and Stanford Torus space habitats. I can picture terraced houses up the interior slope of the sea wall. What will have to be imported, for quite some time, is any sort of wood or plastic.
I've been thinking about the concept of a new nation built right on the ocean. There might not be such a problem getting hold of plastic, Steve. The US and Canada are going bonkers trying to eradicate plastic - imposing a 5 cent charge on plastic bags for instance. Soooo - all we'd have to do is say we're opening up a new garbage dump, and they'll give us the old plastic for free. All the garbage can be recycled into new stuff.
ReplyDeleteSo - a desalinator to make potable water out of ocean water, and a lot of composting of waste, and before you know it, there's land on that there seamount.
What I need to know is what kind of machine can turn old plastic into new.
What I am also wondering is if there is a small country out there - an island nation, that would join the new nation and serve as the land base onto which to build the seamount extensions.
A few scattershot thoughts first thing in the morning... yes I'm on holiday so that 11 am = first thing.