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Grow shell fish within the shell of a boat
Wired News reports on an Abalone farming project in Australia. The idea being that it is easier to keep the required stable enclosed ocean environment for the Abalone when you are on the ocean in a boat, than what is traditionally done, moving the seawater inland.
posted by bjelkeman at 15:50

Using cold seawater to grow vegetables and produce fresh water
New Scientist January 2002 issue has a very good article on The Seawater Greenhouse, developed by Charlie Paton. In short it can be described as a greenhouse, cooled with cold sea water. The cold sea water cools the greenhouse, which allows for subtantially less water usage for growing the crops as well as condensing fresh water out of the air for irrigation (90% humidity required). At the pilot project on Tenerife off North Africa, they used an 1/8th of the water normally used for growing crops. New Scientist article [subscription required]

This is a very interesting way to produce agricultural products using sustainable technology. The Seawater Greenhouse seems to be the a perfect complement to an OTEC powerplant. With an OTEC the cold sea water is available in abundance as well as the required further fresh water and power to operate it. Please contact editor@OTECnews.org if you would like to help us write a summary/amalgamation of the New Scientist article and the Seawater Greenhouse web site.
posted by bjelkeman at 14:08

Is New York in line for a wakeup call for the US?
Vivien Gornitz of the Columbia University warns in Global Planetary Change that New York may experience severe flooding of rail, subway and road tunnels in the coming decades. Many of the Big Apple's tunnel entrances are only 3 meters above sea level, which leaves them vulnurable to flooding during a "hundred-year" storm. But due to raising sea levels you may not have to wait for a hundred years for the dissaster to strike. Vivien says "Projections of sea level rise based on a suite of climate change scenarios suggest that sea levels will rise by 18-60 cm by the 2050s, and 24-108 cm by the 2080s over late 20th century levels. The return period of the 100-yr storm flood could be reduced to 19-68 years, on average, by the 2050s, and 4-60 years by the 2080s."

Perhaps flooding of the of the New York City subway is required to wake the people of the US up to the folly of the SUV and polluting more than any other nation in the world, and start looking for alternative energy sources. It is clear that warnings in science journals is not going to change anything though.
posted by bjelkeman at 14:25