Don’t worry, just a little bump - $70 is just around the corner. Short traders just keep making those margin calls, mortgage the house if you have to. Fortunes await you! PO is for pansies and doomers. At $70 short some more ..... it is going back to $22 .... the world is awash with oil ........ reality has nothing to do with it, its all in those charts!!!!!!!!!!
Posted: Sat May 31, 2008 11:06 pm Post subject: Polar cities for future survivors of peak oil, migration up
Has anyone ever heard of my quiet, mostly unseen and invisible planning project focused on "polar cities" in northern regions, -- not at the poles per se, but in far north areas of the Arctic, Russia, Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Norway, etc -- ?
Would these so called polar cities, if planned and designed and sited now, be useful for future generations of humans who might need them to survive peak oil, northward migrations and global warming events in say, year, 2500?
Or is 500 way too far ahead to even consider?
Lots of info online about polar cities. I have been working on the project for 18 months, from my base here in Taiwan, am from Boston originally, and just this week the first print article in a print newspaper appeared in print......because for 18 months, most mainstream media refused to consider this story as news. But online there are lots of blogs and website talking about, including New York Times Dot Earth blog and IPS story by Stephen Leahy and gizmodo etc.
What do YOU think of this quixotic idea? Worth investigating? Does it have anything to do with peak oil?
Posted: Sat May 31, 2008 11:09 pm Post subject: Polar cities for survivors in future times?
Has anyone ever heard of my quiet, mostly unseen and invisible planning project focused on "polar cities" in northern regions, -- not at the poles per se, but in far north areas of the Arctic, Russia, Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Norway, etc -- ?
Would these so called polar cities, if planned and designed and sited now, be useful for future generations of humans who might need them to survive peak oil, northward migrations and global warming events in say, year, 2500?
Or is 500 way too far ahead to even consider?
Lots of info online about polar cities. I have been working on the project for 18 months, from my base here in Taiwan, am from Boston originally, and just this week the first print article in a print newspaper appeared in print......because for 18 months, most mainstream media refused to consider this story as news. But online there are lots of blogs and website talking about, including New York Times Dot Earth blog and IPS story by Stephen Leahy and gizmodo etc.
What do YOU think of this quixotic idea? Worth investigating? Does it have anything to do with peak oil?
Posted: Sat May 31, 2008 11:23 pm Post subject: Re: Polar cities for survivors in future times?
An integral part for cities like those, is to have future generations of humans able to breath methane. Because in the context you propose (year 2500), that will be Earth's atmosphere, after the changes in climate that are unraveling now. _________________ Stocking up on popcorn
Posted: Sat May 31, 2008 11:28 pm Post subject: Re: Polar cities for survivors in future times?
eXpat wrote:
An integral part for cities like those, is to have future generations of humans able to breath methane. Because in the context you propose (year 2500), that will be Earth's atmosphere, after the changes in climate that are unraveling now.
Explain more. Yes, I have heard about that but don't know the details. If the tundra melts up there and releases methane, global warming will get worse, tropics and central regions will not be livable, only places in extreme north will be able to grow food, so -- polar cities might be needed. MIGHT. However, as you say, the very might be unbreathable, so all humans will die, most animals too, maybe fish will survive under water, and evolution will start all over again, and diverge, maybe won't go down human monkey path next time.....SMILE.
but do tell me more about this M thing. When will this likely happen, i mean, the atmoshere unbreathable...? of course, before 2500.....i am just being generous...
Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 12:43 am Post subject: Re: Polar cities for survivors in future times?
Humans have been migrating north for around 50 years now, due to housing inflation. It'll work itself out naturally. _________________ People first, then things, then dollars.
There will be enslavement & cannibalism.
Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 4:07 am Post subject: Re: Polar cities for future survivors of peak oil, migration
If you cannot survive there using things you can create yourself and local stuff , then it's an utopia. Or do you plan to depend on trade and capitalism to get some of what you need ? _________________ "Hitting bottom isn't a weekend retreat. It's not a goddamn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and just let go! LET GO!"
Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 4:46 am Post subject: Re: Polar cities for future survivors of peak oil, migration
paimei01 wrote:
If you cannot survive there using things you can create yourself and local stuff , then it's an utopia. Or do you plan to depend on trade and capitalism to get some of what you need ?
it's a good question, don't have answer. i am still asking questions, like you. But what I propose is that we, as a humanity, start discusing, planning, designing, siting and maybe even pre-building some preliminary northern retreats, run by UN or separate national govts on whose land they are on, NOW, so that they will be ready, for when the shite hites the fane, so to speak.
So no, this is not utopia, far from it. these are safety refuges for survivors, so that it does not turn into Mad Max Versus The Road. Which is likely will. Any suggestions? Don't quit my day job?
Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 4:49 am Post subject: Re: Polar cities for future survivors of peak oil, migration
danbloom wrote:
Or is 500 way too far ahead to even consider?
Hmmmm ......... the possibility of mankind still being around in 500 years. What a nice fantasy! If we make it another 50 years, I'll be surprised as hell.
Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 4:56 am Post subject: Re: Polar cities for survivors in future times?
heroineworshipper wrote:
Humans have been migrating north for around 50 years now, due to housing inflation. It'll work itself out naturally.
Yes, HW, you are prob right. People will move north slowly, in increments, week by week, year by year, slowly, there prob won't a mass migration in one day kind of thing, but rather a long slow but steady migration north to Canada and Alaska and north Russia and Scandanavia, so slowly that the media might not even notice it until small new towns start popping up in those places. I agree with you. It has already started. My polar cities, just mere speculation as an alarm bell for those people still asleep, are prob not going to be what humans will be living in in 2500. But maybe something like this. This is just a beginning vision, but more and more designs and ideas are out there now too. Have else have you heard of?
Of course, it could just end up being like MAD MAX meets THE ROAD, and all things in between by 2500, or even earlier, and it won't be a pretty picture, like these pretty polar city images now. Of course. These are just visuals to get other designs and planner thinking. Nobody knows the future. But surely it won't be a pretty picture.
30 generations more to go, I say. Not yet. But it is beginning now, yes yes yes.
Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 5:53 am Post subject: Re: Polar cities for future survivors of peak oil, migration
I already live in the Polar Region, specifically in Alaska north of Anchorage.
As a spot to migrate to right now, you gotta like the cold weather. It regularly hits 30 below in the winter. Up in Fairbanks, all businesses with parking lots where customers are there for more than 2 hours have to have plug ins for your car block heater. Not to say this will be the case in a few years, the winters here do seem to be getting somewhat milder as time passes.
So, clearly we need a lot of fuel for heating up here right now, but locally we do have quite a bit in the form of untapped Natural Gas, and the North Slope is still producing pretty well, though if we sell it on the international market to the Chinese it won't last too long.
In the event global climate change really warms things up, chances are the Polar Ice Cap melts and from what I am told by geologist frineds working the slope, there is at least as much oil under the ice cap as there ever was in Saudi Arabia, probably more. However, these reserves will be fair game for Russia as well, all of Siberia borders the same section of earth.
In terms of food, for the population we have now in the state, between the salmon and the moose, there is decent amount of subsistence hunting and fishing to be done. However, with mass migration up to the state, that resource would dwindle quickly. Farming is tough up here, even if the climate warms substantially. In all your polar regions topsoil is VERY thin, because the growing season has been so short for so long. Lotta gravel basically left over from the receding glaciers with little organic matter as of yet. In a few hundred years if the climate warms, it will be better, but right now its nasty for doing good farming on a mass scale. If you could just ship up topsoil from say Iowa and drop it down on Alaska, you could do some great farming, but the energy cost of shipping that much dirt that far would be horrendous.
I have little doubt that if things get real bad in the lower 48 that more people will be trying to get to Alaska. Of course generally speaking the only way to get here is by plane or boat, so you would have to have the money for expensive tickets to get here if you wait too long. Making the trip on the Al-Can is about a no-winner if there is a real fuel problem, right now even in the summer if you drive the Al-Can you only have fuel stops every 200 miles or so, and many of them close in the winter. Delveries to those fuel stops will be DONE quite early on in a Peak Oil scenario.
Alaska is truly the Last Great Frontier. Its the most remote region on earth and for very good reasons. The terrain in the Yukon is close to impassable, heck the Al-Can itself was only paved out on 2 lanes in 1996. Its darn hard to cut roads around here, its very mountainous. You cannot for instance drive from Anchorage to Juneau, there aren't roads to do that. Only access is by seaplane and boat.
Right now, there are less than 1 million people living up here, because it is so remote and overall not a real hospitable climate for the typical human being. As time goes on, I would expect more people will want to come here though. However, unless you work the slope (and to do that you gotta know somebody these days), there isn't much in the way of economic opportunity up here. If you are a hunter though, at least for the next 5-10 years, the game up here should stand up to the hunting, because I doubt that many people will move here that fast. Long term, its hard to assess the overall viability of the northern cities, the topsoil problem is a serious one, as is the terrain and the difficulty of building roads.
Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 270 Location: Second Vermont Republic
Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 7:53 am Post subject: Re: Polar cities for survivors in future times?
The earth has been much warmer in the past than it is now and as you can see by looking at any globe, there is as much or more land near the poles as in the whole rest of the world put together. Greenland alone is bigger than France, Germany, Spain, and England put together. I'm not worried about running out of land for human habitation.
But don't get carried away. No amount of global warming, however, will make Antarctica a pleasant place to live.
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