Polar Cities in the Year 2121 A.D.
Global Warming and "Sustainable Polar Retreats" (SPRs) also called polar cities
SEE WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE HERE:
http://pcillu101.blogspot.com/
HOW ON EARTH, new global warming protest song:
http://www.dailymotion.com/songsterhiragana/video/x398cu_global-warming-song-how-on-earth
http://audio.isg.si/audiox/?q=node/13377
HOW ON EARTH: Global Warming Spoken Word Song
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Polar cities are proposed sustainable polar retreats designed to house human beings in the future, in the event that global warming causesthe central and middle regions of the Earth to become uninhabitablefor a long period of time. Although they have not been built yet, some futurists have been giving considerable thought to the concepts involved.High-population-density cities, to be built near the Arctic Rim with sustainable energy and transportation infrastructure, will requiresubstantial nearby agriculture. Boreal soils are largely poor in key nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, but nitrogen-fixing plants(such as the various alders) with the proper symbiotic microbes andmycorrhizal fungi can likely remedy such poverty without the need forpetroleum-derived fertilizers. Regional probiotic soil improvementshould perhaps rank high on any polar cities priority list. JamesLovelock's notion of a widely distributed almanac of science knowledge and post-industrial survival skills also appears to have value.
Webposted Worldwide: June 26, 3007 (email the author at danbloom AT gmail DOT com)
The author is an American who resides in Taiwan.
POLAR CITIES WILL NOT LOOK LIKE THIS. BUT TAKE A PEEK:
An old photo and newspaper story from 1959 about Sustainable Polar Retreats :
http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2007/06/closer-than-we-think-polar-city-1959.html
ENLARGED PHOTO:
[Polar cities should be in active construction within 50 years. These SPR's, sustainable polar retreats, in other words, will function primarily to house potential survivors of catastrophic global warming events in the far distant future, perhaps by the year 2121 or so. ]
You know the story. Climate change is for real. In the future, maybe in 50 years, maybe in 100 years, maybe in 300 years, maybe even not until 1000 more years, but someday, I believe, humankind will need to have sustainable polar retreats --POLAR CITIES -- to house remnants of humankind who might be able to survive the coming big global warming event. Here's a date to think about: 2121 A.D.
I got the idea, of course, from James Lovelock, who has said in several interviews that he believes only a few breeding pairs (of humans) might be able to survive in polar regions. He said that in the Guardian recently. After I read that, I had a eureka moment, as they say, and I envisioned the need to start thinking about, designing, planning and maybe even building, NOW, when we still have time and resources and transportation and fuel, NOW, polar cities and towns in both polar regions.
I realize this is a radical idea. I realize most people won't accept what I am blogging about. That's okay. This is just something to make you think HARD about what we are getting into, with global warming for real and all that. Maybe the radicalness of my idea will be perceived as so far out as to be rejected by most people. However, even if this blog makes people THINK more about what they can do in the global warming fight, then good! For example, we need to get the world population way down, soon, to about one billion people, by 2500. How? We need to stop using cars, ships, coal-burning power plants and airplanes NOW. Well, soon. Who is ready?
So this POLAR CITIES -- Sustainable Polar Retreats -- blog is online for two reasons: one is to actually contribute the idea of real sustainable polar retreats for the future, to house those who might remain, so that someday they can go back to the middle regions and repopulate the Earth. The other reason for this blog is to get people to take global warming seriously and start doing something concrete in their lives about it. Because if a human being in 2007 can even "think" about or ponder the very idea of polar cities to house remnants of humankind, then we are really in deep trouble.
Here are some questions that must be asked: And answered:
1. Who will go to live in these northern and southern Sustainable Polar Retreats?
2. Who will decide who gets to live in them? The UN? Who?
3. Who will design and build these Polar Cities -- Sustainable Polar Retreats -- and where? Sites? Murmansk? Wrangel Island? Resolute? Longyearbyen? Fairbanks? Anchorage? Baffin Island? Greenland?
4. Should they be built now, when we have time and resources and air transport and fuel available, and get them ready for the future when the world MIGHT need them, or should we wait until later, when it might be too late to build things or transport materials?
5. How many people can these polar cities and towns support? 100,000? One million? More?
6. Who will govern and rule these polar cities?
7. Will the rich and powerful people from developed nations be invited in first?
8.Who will plan for food resources, enterainment, TV, radio, newpapers, Internet, money there?
9. How long will the Global Warming Era last? 100 years, 10,000 years, 100,000 years? More?
10. Are we in big trouble, caused mostly by our own hands on the CO2 spigot all these years? What can we do to solve the problem?
11. How to repopulate the temperate and tropical regions of the Earth once an hospitable climate comes BACK to to those areas after the long global warming era, the day after tomorrow, so to speak?
COMMENTS WELCOME. Pro and con!
FIELD NOTES: a researcher tells me: "I have no blog yet, and my own developing opinions on the best response to the climate change crisis are not yet ready for publication. I do think that the crisis will get very serious quicker than many people expect. On much of my home continent of North America, a Dust Bowl period of drought, wildfire, thirst and famine looks probable. Like you, I've read James Lovelock and other sources on the topic. I observe that "polar cities" = which I take to mean high-population-density cities to be built near the Arctic Rim with sustainable (or nuclear) energy and transportation infrastructure = will require substantial nearby agriculture. Boreal soils are largely poor in key nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, but nitrogen-fixing plants (like thevarious alders) with the proper symbiotic microbes and mycorrhizal fungi can likely remedy such poverty without the need for petroleum-derived fertilizers. So I suggest that regional probiotic soil improvement should perhaps rank high on the "polar cities"priority list. Lovelock's notion of a widely distributed almanac of science knowledge and post-industrial survival skills also appears to have value."}THE FIRST BLOG TO MENTION POLAR CITIES EVER:
Thinking About Polar Cities -- Or Trying To
By Kit Stolz
An interesting journalist named Dan Bloom, now based in Taiwan, hasbeen agitating for consideration of one of James Lovelock's morealarming ideas -- polar cities. (Here's his site on the subject.) Idon't have answers for Mr. ...<http://achangeinthewind.typepad.com/achangeinthewind/2007/06/thinking-about-.html>A Change in the Wind<http://achangeinthewind.typepad.com/achangeinthewind/>
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A FUTURE PRESS RELEASE:
Year 2121 A.D. -- Media Alert:
The world's media to Svalbard !!!
30 journalists from all over the world will on Wednesday visit the World's First Model Polar City which is under construction on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. 22.08. .... 2121A.D. Construction work on the Svalbard Model Polar City (SMPC) started in April 3007 and the first blastings were performed in May. The facility will be opened on 15 February 2121. The visit to the facility will be lead by Project Manager Magnus Bredeli Tveiten from the Norwegian construction body Statsbygg. Part of the tour will include press briefings by Environment Minister Helen Bjoernoey, the head of the UN's Climate Secretariat Yvo de Boer, Development Minister Erik Solheim, the head of the Polar City Research Institute and the governor of Svalbard. The SMPC is being constructed as a cave excavated into the permafrost just outside Longyearbyen. The SMPC is intended to ensure survival for some 200,000 survivors of global warming in the year 2121, and will have storage capacity for food and supplies.
(Press release) 2208 A.D.
=========PREDICTION:
Polar cities should be in active construction within 50 years. These SPR's, sustainable polar retreats, in other words, will functionprimarily to house potential survivors of catastrophic global warmingevents in the far distant future, perhaps by the year 2121 or so. It'sgood to be prepared, according to the U.N. Homelands Security Officein Oslo, and these polar cities, situated in both polar regions of theplanet, will be capable of handling up to 2 million people -- humanbreeding pairs and their families -- to ensure the continuation of ourspecies. After the Earth's temperatures cool enough to permitresettlement of the planet's temperate and tropiocal regions again,the polar cities will become historical oddities and turned intomusuems, according to the UN office. Learn more online, just google"polar cities" or check the Wikipedia entry for them.
posted by dan at 9:56 PM
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