Is a Floating "Wetropolis" the Answer for Rising Sea Levels?

You know things have gotten dead serious with respect to climate change when major world leaders are no longer talking about cutting emissions and instead talking about "geoengineering" or even simply throwing in the towel and evacuating their nations en-masse from rising sea levels.

Let's start with the first of our doomsday scenarios. Geoengineering is an emerging scientific field that aims to use frighteningly large-scale engineering projects to counter the effects of climate change. Part of the concession the field of geoengineering is making by default is that limiting our carbon emissions - or even eliminating them altogether and becoming carbon-neutral - is not enough to stop the most devastating impacts of climate such as:

• Global average temperature increase of between 1.8 and 4 degrees C (4-9 degrees F)
• Sea level rise of up to 1.5 feet by 2100
• More frequent severe storms (cough:Katrina:cough)
• Longer and more intense heat waves and droughts (Texas, are you listening?)
• More sporadic rainfall overall

All of these effects are now generally accepted among the scientific community as likely to occur if they are not already occurring. The very fact that we are talking about a "tropical Germany", submerged skyscrapers in New York City, and hundreds of summer heat-related deaths in Seattle by 2050 is evidence that climate change is spinning out of control faster than our ability to respond.

At least for now, the field of geoengineering is has little funding and is not understood to be a viable solution to the climate change mess. Proposals such as ocean iron fertilization to boost phytoplankton growth and soak up ocean carbon sound effective, but there is no way of knowing currently whether it is cost-effective. How much carbon would you have to displace to be able to justify the expense? Other ideas, such as space mirrors or cloud reflectivity enhancement are no more effective and could produce nasty unintended side effects. 

Ocean iron fertilization off the coast of Argentina

So clearly how we build our cities' infrastructure must drastically change even as we cut emissions well into the future. Here are some of the more outlandish ideas on the table for retrofitting our coastal cities to deal with rising sea levels and climate change: 

In San Francisco, Iwamoto Scott Architecture imagines so-called "fog flowers" that would be installed on Twin Peaks and other major hilltops to collect the condensation from incoming fog belts. This method of water collection would be very important, as water resources are expected to be very strained in the coming years.

Farther downhill, high-rise residential towers double as algae farms for biodiesel production.

"Fog Flowers" covering Ocean Beach in the Outer Sunset

Images courtesy of Inhabitat

Another alternative comes from the increasingly water-logged city of Bangkok. Already home to 12 million people in a marshy river delta that will face more flooding with rising sea levels, a plan from the designers S+PBA aims to embrace flooding as a constant resource in a more resilient "wetropolis".

The vegetation basis for the Wetropolis is a forest of indigenous mangroves, which the government is already trying to implement in Bangkok. The mangroves naturally filter water, and they also supply fresh oxygen and natural cooling. As the water is filtered, shrimp farming can flourish in a sustainable manner. The community will live above the water fields in a network of interconnected homes, walkways, and roads, with curvaceous lines that emulate the rippling water below.

Dubbed "A Post Diluvian Future", the "wetropolis" suspended above mangroves would allow Bangkok to live sustainably with natural flooding as a constant, rather than something to resist. The plan would also help detoxify the city's polluted water supply, a major protection against the more frequent droughts tropical climates are likely to face.

Now let's say you are a tiny, impoverished South Pacific island nation without the money for geo-engineering or fancy design remodels like these. What do you do then?

According to a recent story in The Guardian, the president 100,000 person nation of Kiribati, Anote Tong, recently announced that he had been looking at plans to evacuate the island chain onto structures resembling gigantic floating lilypads:

"The last time I saw the models, I was like 'wow it's like science fiction, almost like something in space. So modern, I don't know if our people could live on it. But what would you do for your grandchildren? If you're faced with the option of being submerged, with your family, would you jump on an oil rig like that? And [I] think the answer is 'yes'. We are running out of options, so we are considering all of them."

Whoa...can you imagine President Obama getting up on his podium and telling the citizens of New York or San Francisco, "you know, we really tried to do something about this global warming business, but you wouldn't listen, so we have no choice. All aboard the floating lilypad, everybody" ? Insanity would quickly ensue. The fact that the Kiribati president has made such statements and is still alive and still president is testament to how imperiled these and other island nations like the Maldives, Seychelles, and Tuvalu really are.

The structures are the brainchild of Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut. This "ecopolis" would not only be able to produce its own energy through solar, wind, tidal and biomass but would also process CO2 in the atmosphere and absorb it into its titanium dioxide skin.

The nation of Kiribati, just south of Hawaii, faces a bill of $900 million to shore up its infrastructure in the face of rising sea level projections for 2050. With most of the islands less than two meters above sea level and only a population of 100,000 how exactly are they supposed to pay for that?

Solutions like Callebaut's lilypad may look ridiculous and farfetched, but they are grounded in a tradition of artificial islands. For centuries, people have lived on floating islands of reedgrass in Lake Titicaca, Peru.

Floating villages of Lake Titicaca...yes, that really is the name of the lake :)

The sad truth is that unless we really start getting our act together on climate change, we too may have to look at these pretty fucking outlandish floating scenarios with a more serious eye.

The Soccer Stadium to End All Soccer Stadiums

The recent announcement that the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar will host the 2022 World Cup has caused this tiny Arab country to become an architect's wet dream, as dozens of fantastical designs for the World Cup stadium seem to push the limits of the imagination.

One of the main concerns surrounding the logistics of the World Cup was how this country of 115-degree temperatures would accommodate hundreds of thousands of soccer fans.

According to GOOD, "all of the stadiums will utilize the region's solar energy through solar panels which will help keep temperatures cool. Energy will also be collected from the 12 stadiums when they're not in use, and will be stored for later use." The ultimate goal is to make the 2022 World Cup completely carbon-neutral, piggybacking on efforts to make the 2012 London Olympics the "greenest games ever". This is no easy feat given the lack of water, transportation, and energy infrastructure in Qatar in place to handle crowds large enough to fill multiple stadiums.

Here's a look at each of the designs and some of their unique features:

Qatar plans to host the opening and closing matches for the 2022 World Cup in the Lusail Iconic Stadium (in the city of Lusail), which boasts a seating capacity of 86, 250.

Doha Port Stadium will be on an artificial peninsula in the Gulf and will have water running over its outer surface, aiding in the cooling process. 

Al-Gharafa Stadium is one of three stadiums set for remodeling in Qatar. Colorful ribbons will decorate the outer walls, symbolizing the various nations to qualify for the 2022 World Cup Games.

With its flexible roof and seashell shape, Al-Khor Stadium will offer spectators a wonderful view of the Gulf—right from their seats.

Umm Slal Stadium's design is a modern interpretation of traditional Arab forts.

Located in one of Qatar's oldest cities, Al-Wakrah Stadium takes inspiration from the city's local heritage in fishing and pearl diving.

The Al-Shamal Stadium is modeled after a "dhow" fishing boat commonly used in the Gulf.

 Al-Rayyan Stadium is one of Qatar's current stadiums and features a "media membrane" on the outside walls where updates and news on current matches are projected.

Inspired from traditional Arab tents, Sports City Stadium has plenty of retractable seating, making it ideal for future sporting events and concerts.

The Qatar University Stadium will feature a facade with traditional Arabic geometric patterns. After the World Cup games, the stadium's seating capacity will be downsized for use by university student athletes.

Via: GOOD

My Senior Thesis - The Real Deal!

Green My Fleet - An Analysis of Puget Sound Clean Air's

View more documents from dperl88.

EU Mayors Pledge to Cut CO2 20% by 2020 - A Step Towards Carbon Neutrality?

While European countries have typically been perceived as more environmentally progressive and more in favor of climate change legislation, the recent breakdown of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen left much to be desired in political commitments to emissions reduction.

In a move that mirrors the earlier pledges of Seattle, Vancouver, Sweden and Denmark to become carbon neutral, the Covenant of Mayors (Europe's corollary to the American Mayors Climate Protection Center) has pledged to reduce overall carbon emissions 20% by 2020. Such a reduction in ten years is substantial, not least because the Covenant of Mayors represents over 500 European cities and over 120 million people in 36 countries, according to the Edie Legal Resource Center. One disticntion of the Covenant of Mayors is that rather than acting against official policy of the federal government, as the Mayors CPC was forced to do during the Bush Administration, the Covenenta of Mayors its itself an initiative of the European Commission and as such has the full range of EU expertise and funding at its disposal.

Like the United States, the EU has reconized the disproportionate role of cities in contributing to climate change. As over 80% of all energy is consumed in cities, this is where any efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions much start. Hopefully, this renewed committment by the EU to reduce carbon emissions will help spur greater investment in the green fleet technologies to create a large number of green jobs.

Via: Worldchanging

City of Seattle Announces Plans to Become America's First "Carbon-Neutral" City

The Seattle City Council has released a proposal to make the City of Seattle "carbon neutral" by 2030, according to a recent story in The Stranger. This proposal, first suggested by Alex Steffen (the president of the local think tank WorldChanging) has generated a great deal of controversy over whether this significant of a carbon reduction scheme is even feasible, how carbon neutrality will be defined, and how the carbon neutrality scheme would be administered.

Council members Richard Conlin and Mike O'Brien were the main sponsors of this proposal, announced as one of the City's top legislative priorities of 2010. The proposal materialized in print form on a public forum called Ideas for Seattle, a blog started by the mayoral campaign of Mike McGinn.

Despite the McGinn campaign's initial receptivity to the idea (the forum's 4th most popular), now that Mayor McGinn has been sworn into office his response to carbon neutrality has been more lukewarm.

“Let’s be very clear,” he said in The Stranger. “I support carbon neutrality as a goal. But we’ve been down this path of politicians setting ambitious goals and not following through before”—a reference to his predecessor Greg Nickels’ vow to reduce emissions below 1990 levels, in line with the Kyoto Protocols, by 2012.

McGinn continues,

“We have a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but we’re building a bigger 520, we’re building an auto-only facility on our waterfront, we’re not funding the bike master plan. The question isn’t what the goals should be. The question should be, how do you get there? … If we want to spend a year or two setting up a new goal and creating a work plan to do it while we’re taking actions that accomplish the opposite, that’s not what I think we should be doing.”

Part of the problem in implementing any carbon neutrality scheme stems from criticism that the City will not be able to meet its goal of adhering to its Kyoto Protocol targets by 2012. The City, and former Mayor Greg Nickels in particular, has been the environmental vanguard of American cities in encouraging other municipalities to reduce their emissions through informal, voluntary agreements set through the US Mayors Conference on Climate Change. In this conference, over 1,000 US cities have agreed to cut their emissions to 7% below 1990 levels by 2012. Seattle successfully achieved this milestone in October 2007, although whether this emissions reduction can be maintained is being called into question.

According to a recent article in The Seattle Times, most gains from 1990 to 2005 came from cutting pollution associated with residential, commercial and industrial energy use, the study found. Seattle City Light is responsible for most of these emissions reductions (about 60%), through investments it made in carbon offsets for alternative energy projects and selling its stake in ownership of a coal-fired power plant in Centralia.

However, emission from the transportation sector increased 3% during this period, even as total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per capita decline 2%. Emissions from the transportation sector are expected to spike between 2007 and 2012, and this increase will put Seattle behind its (currently already achieved) Kyoto goal 700,000 tons of carbon annually, according to a City report. Clearly, achieving the City's Kyoto targets as well as carbon neutrality will take a large investment in alternative fuel vehicles, reduced VMTs by city drivers, and an expanded infrastructure car-pooling, car-sharing, walking, bicycling and public transit to make the latter a reality. Evergreen Fleets, whose certifications criteria Seattle could easily supersede within the next several years, was designed partly with carbon neutrality in mind through achieving the former.

There is also significant debate as to what a working definition of carbon neutrality would look like. Scientists have already established that in order to prevent the most catastrophic effects of global warming, we must avoid reaching an atmospheric concentration of CO2 of 350ppm. Some estimates show that we have already passed this threshold and are approaching 380ppm globally. This threshold is the scientific basis of the Kyoto Protocol's goal of reducing emissions 80% by 2050, informally called the "80 by 50 rule".

The Kyoto Protocol currently has been signed by mostly the world's most developed countries, of course with the notable exception of the United States. The dilemma is that even if the world's developed countries and the US meet the 80 by 50 goal, developing countries could still increase their emissions to levels more commensurate with their population sizes and put the world well over the important 350ppm threshold. If richer nations do not help rapidly growing poor nations reduce their emissions - and this is by no means a given - then the 80 by 50 goal will lose its effectiveness and make the entire Kyoto regime an international joke.

What this means is that we may have to define carbon neutrality in a way that squares the 350ppm threshold with our own disproportionate responsibility for global greenhouse gas emissions, as the United States produces the largest share of emissions of any country on earth. Taking this element of social equity into account would mean that we would need to take responsibility for emissions reductions that amount to greater than our total emissions. We would, in this sense, become carbon negative and not just carbon neutral. One Swedish study suggests that we would need to become substantially carbon negative through a combination of two processes: reducing our own emissions to nearly zero, already an extremely expensive proposition; and funding green infrastructure in developing countries to simultaneously reduce their emissions even as their populations grow tremendously. This could be put into practice through a global cap-and-trade system, although it would have to have much stronger enforcement mechanisms than Kyoto, which currently has no means of getting any of its members near the 80 by 50 goal.

In addition, there is an emerging debate about how to calculate the City's total carbon emissions under such a policy. Would all emissions created by City residents be the measure, even if the emissions take place outside of the City, such as through travel? Would the measure be limited to just activities within the City limits? How would the life cycle costs of production and consumption of commercial products be calculated for the City's progress? What about the emissions of a port that ships goods all over the world? There are no easy answers to these questions because no other city has been forced to make these decisions.

Solar-Powered Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Taking Off

Electric vehicles have long been an environmentalist's holy grail - they are clean, produce no emissions, futuristic, and are generally silent. Numerous environmental activists, from Elizabeth Kolbert to Al Gore to Jeremy Rifkin, have advocated a total manufacturing shift to producing electric and fuel-cell vehicles as a means of cutting our total emissions and protecting against global warming.


However, the source of these vehicle's electricity is rarely considered, despite its enormous weight on the overall carbon footprint of implementing any viable electric vehicles charging grid. Conventional fossil fuel sources, logically, have a much greater carboon footprint than renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar, or geothermal. Unfortunately, more than 70% of the electricity generated in the United States comes from fossil fuel sources, including coal (48%), natural gas (21%), and petroleum (1%). Nuclear energy (19%) and hydropower (6%) are less harmful to the environment but still carry significant local impacts. Truly "renewable" sources of energy account for just 3% of our generated electricity, according to the US Department of Energy. 

Several startup firms have taken that message seriously and have made major steps to create networks of electric vehicle charging stations that are truly carbon-neutral.


The E-Move Charging Station prototype, designed in Bozen, Denmark, by Valentin Runggaldier, charges vehicles through solar energy absorbed by eight solar panels on its roof. According to Inhabitat, 

"no word on how long the filling stations require to charge different devices, but unless people have the capacity to wait all day while a plug-in car is charged, the stations might be best suited for smaller devices."

The City of Chicago's Fleet Department used the ChargePoint technology created by Coulomb Technologies and adapted it to use solar power. By independently creating its own power source, the solar powered charging station does not draw upon the rest of the city's electric grid and does not cost the Fleet Department's electric bill. The only obstacle for wider adaptation of this type of solar-power charging station is the cost, which must be below what it would cost to use conventional electric sources to be practical. 

New York City just opened its first ever solar-power charging station within the last six months, through a partnership with the sustainable energy company Beautiful Earth Group.

In order to promote more of this type of synergy between the solar energy and electric vehicle sectors, certification regimes like Evergreen Fleets play a crucial role in promoting renewable-based electric grids over conventional ones.

A Breakdown of Life Cycle Analysis

Here is a more detailed portrait from the EPA of life cycle analysis, a concept that analyzes energy or product investment based on its total cradle-to-grave costs of production (including production of sub-products or materials), refinement, distribution, and consumption.

What is very telling about these charts is the degree to which highly-touted alternative fuels - corn-based ethanol, for example, have been promoted without much regard to whether they are significantly "greener" than conventional petroleum gasoline. This is a great example of how production itself becomes politicized in our society, with various interest groups lobbying federal and state legislatures on behalf of energy sources for which there may be little, if any, environmental benefit. Others argue that any displacement of petroleum gasoline itself is an environmental benefit, regardless of whether using the alternative fuels truly reduces overall greenhouse gas emissions.