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Responsive Super Sculpture: An Macro-engineering Antidote for Unwanted Earth-biosphere Alterations

Gibraltar Strait Super Dam, robotized Mediterranean Sea layer

Richard Brook Cathcart GEOGRAPHOS 1608 East Broadway #107 Glendale, California 91205-1524 USA (818) 246-8422 E-mail: rbcathcart@msn.com

Abstract

A gigantic hydroelectric waste-processing facility and storehouse put at an important ocean gateway has been proposed as a means to fully counteract an existing or impending threat to Homo sapiens. The "Atlantropa Project" ought to be fostered soon by UNO-concerted Europe-North Africa geopolicy. Furthermore, by coating a reduced Mediterranean Sea with mindless, plate-like floating black and white colored robots our species can controllably change that water surface's albedo. This climate engineering macroproject is the antidote speculated to be a responsive sculpture. 

Introduction

Based on extrapolative geodynamics, Space Age electronic models clue interested persons to a final far-future Earth-biosphere fate(1). Such calculation, however, may be of little practical value to living planners; any geodynamical forecast can be invalidated if a geographically large-scale anthropogenic alteration of the ocean's albedo and mechanical weakening of the weathering process of a larger-than-today continental area ever occurs. The profession most likely to be called upon to effect a mitigation of this kind in order to change a prospective future geophysical reality for mind-endowed organisms is Macro-engineering(2).

Conservationists have identified the Mediterranean Sea Basin as a "hot-spot", an Earth-biosphere region wherein exceptional concentrations of endemic plant and animal species are presently experiencing remarkable loss of habitat(3). Beyond the non-human losses and exceptional environmental stress, any Earth-biosphere problem mitigation effort&emdash;Mediterranean Sea Basin macroprojects&emdash;must certainly be approved by the UNO as well as the most directly affected region's ecosystem-nations. The only proper geopolitical partnership, an organization for a cooperative international Macro-engineering effort directing anthropic global change, is for those persons and places that "win" to fairly and fully compensate those peoples and locales that "lose" economically(4).

Oneiric Macro-engineering

In 1998 the definitive history of a 1929-48 European plan&emdash;ultimately titled the "Atlantropa Project"(5) proposal&emdash;to induce a lowering of the Mediterranean Sea's surface level and to reclaim the Sahara for agriculture and industry was published in the FRG. That history's author, Wolfgang Voigt, since 1997 a curator and Deputy Director of the Deutsches Architekture-Museum at Frankfurt am Main, revealed therein the intellectual roots of this plan, a macroproject which could, if implemented and materialized, be the largest "ecological architecture"(6) scheme ever, except for that aimed to bring about Mars' transformation by Terraforming's techniques to make the planet inhabitable.

Dreamed (as an emanation of extra-ordinary desire) by Herman Sorgel (1885-1952) and by his professional associates at the very time Le Corbusier (1887-1965) unveiled his 1932 "Obus Plan for Algiers", the "Atlantropa Project" was devised to, in part, develop hydropower with the powerhouse's head-pond being an inexhaustible source at elevation zero (Earth's ocean) and the tail-water (the Mediterranean Sea) being a liquid body at a negative level maintained by seawater's natural evaporation whilst under the pervasive influence of a dry climate regime. In 1998, I advocated adaptation of the required Strait of Gibraltar Super Dam (GSSD) to two additional purposes not envisioned by Sorgel: (1) its hydro-electrical output ought to be used to solidify greenhouse gases (CO2 and CFCs) which cause global climate change and (2) the GSSD ought to be utilized as a long-term storage locker for <128 km3 of anthropogenic carbonate rock and other manufactured solids(7). The idea is to use a renewable energy source (Earth's hydrologic cycle) to restore Earth's ambient atmosphere, both compositionally and dynamically, to a pre-Industrial Revolution state! After all necessary atmosphere waste-gas extraction and mineralization operations cease, a rededicated hydropower production can then be distributed to the European Union and North Africa via a Mediterranean Power Pool Interconnection. (The Union for the Coordination of Transmission of Electricity was founded in Frankfurt, FRG, on 1 July 1999.) Meantime, hydropower will be producible at sites where rivers fall into the Mediterranean Sea and, possibly, at the Dardanelles or Bosphorus straits using impermanent, bladder or tension-loaded dams(8).

Creating an artificial compartment in Spaceship Earth's ocean, the GSSD induces the Mediterranean Sea's level to become lower than its present-day elevation and to resemble in appearance what it must have been shortly after the last glacial maximum, when humanity's pre-historic ancestors trod successively different shorelines of a smaller, but gradually enlarging Mediterranean Sea!(9) As the Gibraltar Strait is a major route for shipping, the GSSD must be furnished with ship-locks. The same kind of installation must be emplaced at the Suez Canal. GSSD turbines alone will produce ~12,500 Mwe (or, ~28% of the European Union's 1998 electricity consumption).

Only the uppermost part of the Earth within, at most, a few tens of kilometers of the solid crust's interface with the planet's atmosphere, is capable of supporting long-term stresses over Geological Time(10). However, considering the likely seismic consequences of a regionalized crust unloading&emdash;hazards such as explosive volcanism(11) and the rapid release of methane hydrates from sliding ocean floor sediments(12) caused by a destabilized outer continental shelf (upper slope sediments, tectonic over-steepening of the margin, relatively high rates of sedimentation, and seismic activity), I recommend an induced lowering of the isolated Mediterranean Sea of ~50 m only. This task will minimally require a 50-year period of total Macro-engineering&emdash;that is, wide-spread mechanical unloading combined with a concentrated point loading of the crust at the GSSD&emdash;in this Basin that will, obviously, impact all previous geologic hazard assessments(13).

Were this modernized Sorgelian plan implemented it might be worthwhile to zone certain segments of the emergent continental shelf as "forever non-developable"; thus, humans would create a new margin of safety for endangered ecosystem-nation infrastructures and populations&emdash;the equivalent of exclusionary economic development zoning on floodable river plains! Since only ~3% of the Nile River's flow still reaches the Mediterranean Sea, virtually all of the non-GSSD hydropower will originate on Europe's strand-sited facilities(14). New beaches can be technically stabilized(15) and the impact of seawater drainage from coastal confined alluvial aquifers controlled with freshwater injection well systems(16). A Mediterranean Sea reduction makes it easier to tap and distribute freshwater originating in submarine springs such as Lebanon's! (17) The desirable induced shrinkage of the Mediterranean Sea's volume will spatially enlarge the land area of Libya, Tunisia and Algeria by an area equivalent to the area added to Italy and Albania combined; other UNO-recognized territories will benefit similarly, but remarkable less so. However, there is the unique international problem related to the legal redrawing of the new continental shelf boundaries; squabbling can be prevented if these borders were pre-arranged, literally demarcated on the real sea-bed before an early-21st Century "Atlantropa Project" were ever commenced(18).

A regulated Mediterranean Sea must be compared to an oceanarium (an English language word first used circa AD 1944) or aquarium (19) wherein nutrient enrichment/depletion and commercial/sport fishing influence marine ecosystems; as yet, Marine Ecology lacks any management guidelines for really large and completely unnatural oceanographic units(20). High-seas fish farming experiments may yet prove the commercial viability of that blooming industry. Artificial fertilization of the appropriate oceanic regions&emdash;iron pellets have been experimentally dumped into the topmost 200 m of the ocean penetrated by sunlight in certain "barren" regions&emdash;seems to be a cost-effective quick partial technological fix for the Earth-atmosphere's enhanced CO2 gas build-up. Both of these macroprojects require the perfection of comparable industrial-scale seeding techniques to economically alter the chemistry of large volumes of seawater and may also have to be UNO-approved before ever being commercialized.

Gibraltar Strait Super Dam emplacement and operation, ultimately causing a 50 m drop in level, will "suddenly" bring about a situation for the virtually tide-less Mediterranean Sea of a Basin-wide seawater still-stand and new erosion base-level for the encircling strand. Seawater will naturally evaporate to form clouds that will migrate according to season and daily wind direction. Two connected bodies of seawater, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, together equal ~0.0001789% of the Earth-ocean's tonnage; intentional redistribution of a tiny fraction of that mass is permissible simply because it will have inconsequential geophysical import for the Chandler wobble(21).

A fateful change in the angle of Earth's orbital axis may have instigated a geophysical event-process resulting in the Sahara's rapid desertification by an intensified regime of drying circa 5000-2000 BC(22), which peaked in intensity at ~3500 BC. Unnoted by Martin Claussen and his colleagues, circa 3000-2500 BC "…the Taurid Complex was producing phenomenal meteor storms…[in Earth's sky]"(23). Are these two events, together, responsible for the Sahara's indisputable Holocene desiccation? Extremely hot, even semi-molten, meteorites may have set alit major vegetation conflagrations, which subsequently would have altered the Sahara's albedo owing to brush-fire residues (ash) and smoke-induced haze of long-duration, warming that region faster than otherwise.

A small Mediterranean Sea's usefulness

Sunlight reflectors floating on the world's ocean can also be imagined as an additional antidote for unwanted global climate change caused by humanity's industrialization 200+ years ago. Long ago self-reproducing, motile solar-powered robots were proposed which would collect and mass-process particulates suspended in seawater to construct offspring, and which would themselves be harvested for the various materials from which they were auto-created(24). Might not such near-term future robots also change usefully the lowered Mediterranean Sea's albedo? If monolayer-induced albedo organizations are feasible, then Homo sapiens could tailor the Mediterranean Sea's color or color pattern to suit whatever modified Mediterranean Climate Type the region's UNO-advised managers judge desirable insofar as incident sunshine was a major contributing factor; in other words, a grand-scale active and reactive form of Georges Seurat's "Pointillism" commanded by a critical mass of macro-engineers, who will at that time be veritable dreaming and action Amphions! Such less-than-simple-minded embodiments of a responsive sculpture, if properly distributed, would not have the effect of layer-darkening the Mediterranean Sea's uppermost water volume. This mindless robotic carpet will only shade the shallow zone sea-bottom close to the shoreline, and only dim the natural light normally penetrating the seawater's upper 100 m. The carpet's components will be capable of being pushed by transiting oceanic shipping of all types&emdash;that is, able to survive collisions with floating machines proceeding at <30 knots&emdash;then swiftly recover positions to reform the carpet in the diminishing wake of ships and boats(25). (Elementary auto-repairs probably could be programmed and done by slightly damaged robots, or some cannibalization might take place also.) Aside from a stirring effect, traveling hovercraft&emdash;invented and tested first in 1959 by Christopher Cockerell (1911-99)&emdash;wont muss the "carpet" hardly at all whatever their passage speed!

A "checker-boarded" Mediterranean Sea would tend to promote convection because if the albedo of that compartmentalized fluid's surface is reduced in some regions (so that less solar energy is reflected back to the local sky), then the conversion of the energy at the surface would raise the temperature at its surface (thus increasing the radiation and evaporation) from the darkened superficial regions of the Mediterranean Sea, as well as heating the adjacent air by conduction and convection. By changing the thermal conductivity or heat capacity of the Mediterranean Sea's topmost salt-water layer, or both, or its sea-water content available for evaporation, the surface layer would be affected, and thus, the outgoing radiation(26).

A self-replicating mindless robot(27) monolayered Mediterranean Sea-Black Sea -approximately 0.8% of Earth's oceanic area- could be harnessed to roughly "fine-tune" that closed-off segment's sea-level and its internal [underwater] hydro-climates while functioning as a blanket-like barrier beneath a modified Mediterranean Climate Type! To off-set global warming stimulated by a doubling of the atmosphere's content of carbon dioxide gas, ~10% of the Earth-ocean would have to be colored white by a contiguous patch of bobbing dumb robots having an anti-beaching capability; each plate-like operational pollution-free machine must be painted with Teflon, a coating available only since 1960, to prevent the growth of reflectivity-degrading organisms on the outside of a seawater-immersed water-tight hull [biological fouling]. The coefficient of heat transmission of hollow glass tile filled with air&emdash;the nearest I can come at this time to accurately estimating an important physical property of these postulated future robots&emdash;ranges from 0.48 to 0.60. J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964), in Daedalus, or Science and the Future (1923), foresaw Earth's ocean turned the color purple after a cultivated alga fertilized by artificial substances was introduced to increase Homo sapiens-harvested fish stocks! Floating artificial living plants, as proposed by Edward Forrest Moore (born 1925) in 1956, could detoxify polluted seawater; only ~3% of the sunlight impinging a natural green plant is actually stored as chemical fuel within the organism; by contrast, some miniscule non-living devices that convert solar energy into usable energy have theoretical maximum efficiencies of >30%. Maintenance-worker housing for humans can be safely floated on the Mediterranean Sea(28) and/or securely affixed to the new beaches(29).

Jean Meeus(30) calculated the time that must elapse for every place in the Earth-biosphere to experience a total eclipse of the Sun; for sure, a total eclipse would occur at least once every 375 years at the Gibraltar Strait. Such shadowing has measurably decreased the air's temperature for the few seconds that darkness prevails during recent eclipses. But, when the Mediterranean Sea's water surface is blackened or whitened by robots the effect will differ markedly as sunlight will still impinge the surface! The Dead Sea is ordinarily transparent to sunshine. However, on many recorded occasions, its uppermost water layer has become milk-white owing to the presence in great quantity of fine aragonite (CaCO3) crystals(31). Unfortunately, I know of no data recording the reflectivity of this geographically large and whitened body of brine and, more importantly, what the effect on local air temperatures was.

Is Visionary Macro-engineering necessary?

An idea from Biology, called the "Law of Constant Extinction", conceived by Leigh Van Valen (born 1935), alleges the evolutionary advance of one species represents a deterioration of the Earth-biosphere for all other species, imposing selective stresses on those species to advance just to keep up with the leading species(32). Macro-engineering&emdash;underpinned by accepted geoscience data and theory&emdash;espouses the idea that Homo sapiens is the only species that is equipped with spatially (geographically and oceanographically) large-scale Earth feature(33) changing technologies, which is certainly pressuring other living biosphere-confined organisms, especially plants(34). (In Macro-engineering's parlance, humanity's infrastructure is the equivalent of the black and white flowers in J.E. Lovelock's famous "Daisyworld" computer simulation.) I hope that Pliny (23-79 AD), writing in his Historia Naturalis (at II.8) is correct: "There is always something new out of Africa"! (35)

1 S. Franck et al., "Reduction of biosphere life span as a consequence of geodynamics", Tellus 52B: 94-107 (February 2000).

2 Howard Herzog et al., "Capturing Greenhouse Gases", Scientific American 282: 72-79 (February 2000). [A thorough review of climate engineering proposals, compiled by Ben Matthews and current to November 1996, can be located at >> http://www.chooseclimate.org/cleng/ <<.]

3 N. Meyers et al., "Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities", Nature 403: 853-858 (24 February 2000).

4 M.L. Weitzman, "Why the Far-Distant Future Should Be Discounted at Its Lowest Possible Rate", Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 36: 201-208 (1998).

5 H. Petroski, "Engineers' Dreams", American Scientist 85: 310-313 (July-August 1997).

6 Mark A. Davis, "'Restoration'&emdash;A Misnomer?", Science 287: 1203 (18 February 2000). [For a resume of recent small-scale ideas concerning the geographical relationship between environment and sculpture, see: Sculpture 19 (#2), March 2000.]

7 R.B. Cathcart, "Land Art as global warming or cooling antidote", Speculations in Science and Technology 21: 65-72 (June 1998).

8 M. Astradi et al., "The role of straits and channels in understanding the characteristics of Mediterranean circulation", Progress in Oceanography 44: 65-108 (1999).

9 K. Lambeck and E. Bard, "Sea-level change along the French Mediterranean coast for the past 30,000 years", Earth and Planetary Science Letters 175: 203-222 (15 February 2000).

10 David B. Prior and James R. Hooper, "Sea floor engineering geomorphology: recent achievements and future directions", Geomorphology 31: 411-439 (15 December 1999).

11 W.J. McGuire, "Correlation between rate of sea-level change and frequency of explosive volcanism in the Mediterranean Sea", Nature 389: 473-476 (2 October 1997).

12 R.G. Rothwell, "Low-sea-level emplacement of a very large Late Pleistocene 'megaturbidite' in the western Mediterranean Sea", Nature 392: 377-380 (26 March 1998).

13 A. Palumbo, "The activity of Vesuvius in the next millennium", Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 88: 125-129 (January 1999).

14 M. Sultan et al., "Monitoring the Urbanization of the Nile Delta, Egypt", Ambio: Journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 28: 628-631 (November 1999).

15 J.M. Parks, "Beachface dewatering: A new approach to beach stabilization", The Compass of Sigma Gamma Epsilon 66: 65-72 (Winter 1989).

16 A. Mahesha, "Control of seawater intrusions through injection-extraction well system", ASCE Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering 122: 314-317 (September/October 1998).

17 J. Ghannam et al., "A Profile of the Submarine Springs in Lebanon as Potential Water Resource", IWRA Water International 23: 278-286 (December 1998).

18 See: August 1995 "Cites marines" issue of La Houille Blanche: Revue International de l'Eau ( pages 37-68).

19 L. Bruce Jones, "The Emerging Undersea Leisure Industry", Sea Technology 34: 37-42 (February 1993).

20 F. Micheli, "Eutrophication, Fisheries, and Consumer-Resource Dynamics in Marine Pelagic Ecosystems", Science 285: 1396-1398 (27 August 1999).

21 S.L. Marcus, "Detection and Modeling of Non-tidal Oceanic Effects on Earth's Rotation Time", Science 281: 1656-1659 (1998).

22 M. Claussen et al., "Simulation of an abrupt change in Saharan vegetation in the mid-Holocene', Geophysical Research Letters 26: 2037-2040 (15 July 1999).

23 D. Steel, Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets: The Search for the Million Megaton Menace That Threatens Life on Earth (1995, John Wiley & Sons, NY) page 149.

24 E.F. Moore, "Artificial Living Plants", Scientific American 195: 118-125 (1956).

25 By the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, the 1.3 km-long by 240 m-wide "city at sea" named "Freedom" may be plying a route which includes the Mediterranean Sea: >> http://freedomship.com <<.

26 F.J. Millero, "The Thermodynamics of Seawater at One Atmosphere", American Journal of Science 276: 1035-1077 (1976).

27 M. Sipper, "Fifty Years of Research on Self-Replication", Artificial Life 4: 237-257 (1998).

28 B.P. Kunz, "Open-ocean, Air-supported, Stable Platforms", Sea Technology 36: 47-50 (1995).

29 H.H. Stevens, "A Housing System Proposal", Speculations in Science and Technology 6: 241-250 (1983).

30 J. Meeus, "Shadow Painting the Globe", Sky &b Telescope (August 1999), pages 69-71.

31 M.R. Block, "Dead Sea Whiteness and Its Origin", The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Proceedings Section of Sciences No. 19 (1980) 7 pages.

32 L.V. Valen, "A New Evolutionary Law", Evolutionary Theory 1: 1-30 (1974).

33 See: Johann H. Jungclaus and George L. Mellor, "A three-dimensional model study of the Mediterranean outflow", Journal of Marine Systems 24: 41-66 (February 2000).

34 Alexandre Meinesz, Killer Algae: The True Tale of a Biological Invsion (1999, University of Chicago Press, Chicago) 360 pages.

35 At the moment [29 May 2000], Dr. Viorel Badescu of the Candida Oancea Institue of Solar Energy (founded 1997) situated in the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Romania and I are devising a macroproject plan to enshroud 50% of North Africa's Sahara with an inflated structure. Computer modeling has been done already and desert reclamation seems doable. Readers may wish to go to >> http://www.birdair.com << for up-to-date data on tensioned membrane and inflated buildings.

Experience

Founded GEOGRAPHOS in 1969. Participated in Howard Jarvis' Proposition 13 tax revolt in 1978 and from 1978 to present a real estate advisor to Kaplanis & Grimm (Los Angeles, CA). Born 23 November 1943.

Publications

Viorel Badescu and Richard B. Cathcart : Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 53: 297-306 (September-October 2000). "Stellar Engines for Kardashev's Type II Civilization", Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (2000). [with Viorel Badescu]

"Tibetan power: A unique hydro-electric macroproject servicing India and China", Current Science 77: 854-855 (10 October 1999). [India]

"Land Art as global warming or cooling antidote", Speculations in Science and Technology: An International Journal for Innovation and Creativity 21: 65-72 (1998).

"Taming Mars with a Tent and a Tunnel: Creation of a Biosphere-City", SST 21: 117-131 (1998).

"Greenhouse atmospherics: Mega-deaths or Macro-engineering?" SST 20: 17-20 (1997).

"Seeing is Believing: Planetographic Data Display on a Spherical TV", JBIS 50: 103-104 (1997).

"Gauthier's 'Linear City'", Environmental Conservation: An International Journal of Environmental Science 23: 286 (1996).

"Mitigative Anthropogeomorphology: a revived 'plan' for the Mediterranean Sea Basin and the Sahara", Terra Nova: The European Journal of Geosciences 7: 636-640 (1995).

"Macro-engineering and terraforming: building modernized and additional functional regions", SST 14: 34-40 (1991).

"Is the Trans-Channel Icebridge a viable alternative to the Channel Tunnel?" SST 10: 63-65 (1987).

"Improving the status of Rodoman's electronic geography proposal", SST 9: 37-39 (1986).

"What if We Lowered the Mediterranean Sea?" SST 8: 7-15 (1985).

"Macro-engineering Transformation of the Mediterranean Sea and Africa", World Futures 19: 111-121 (1983).

"Mediterranean Basin-Sahara Reclamation", SST 6: 150-152 (1983).

"A Megastructural End to Geologic Time", JBIS 36: 291-297 (1983).

"Radioactive Waste Element Liquefying Device for Geologic Fault Fusion", SST 4: 103-104 (1981).

"How a Global Warming Could Change the Geographical Future", The Futurist: a journal of forecasts, trends and ideas about the future 14: 28 (October 1980).

"Meteorite Mining", Future Life #27 (June 1981), page 13.

"On the road to Antarctica", Future Life #23 (December 1980), page 13 .

Essay-bibliographies

[The following fourteen titles are lengthy reports, all published by Vance Bibliographies, P.O. Box 229, Monticello, Illinois 61856. "P" refers to "Public Administration Series" and "A" refers to "Architecture Series".]

November 1980 : "A Futures Study of Latin America", P-603.

May 1980 : "Light from Tibet", P-482.

"Ground Effects Machines (GEMs) in Antarctica", P-481.

April 1980 : "Geo-duplication: Some Replacement Costs for Nature", P-461.

February 1980 : "Un-Earthly, Non-human Architecture", A-182.

"Herman Sorgel", A-181.

December 1979 : "Vehicular Cities", A-144.

"Any City, Earth: A Mass Savings Account", A-143.

November 1979 : "American Geography's Image of Human Life in Earth", A-119.

September 1979 : "Evaporative Sea Basin Power-drop Sites", P-328

"America, 1979 A.D.: Engeoneering Our Nation's Future", P-327.

"Engeoneering: Europe and the USSR", P-326.

"LDC's (The Less Developed Countries): A Possible Engeoneered Future", P-325.

April 1979 : "The Developing Artificial Geography of the Solar System", P-206.

Mentioned/quoted

Uwe Kitzinger & E.G. Frankel, Macro-engineering and the Earth: World Projects for the Year 2000 and Beyond (1998), pg. 81.

Wolfgang Voigt, Atlantropa: Weltbauen amn Mittelmeer. Ein Architecktentraum der Moderne (1998), pp. 121, 123 and 139.

Martyn John Fogg, Terraforming: Engineering Planetary Environments (1995), pg. 9.

Andrew Shaw Goudie, The Human Impact on the Natural Environment (1986), pg. 186.

James Edward Oberg, New Earths: Restructuring Earth and Other Planets (1981), pg. 94.

Education

Associate of Arts (1964, City College of San Francisco)

Bachelor of Arts (1966, San Francisco State College)

Master of Arts (1969, San Francisco State College)

[MA Thesis: "Regional Planning in the Strand Are of the Monterey Bay, California"]

California Community College Instructor Credential #23930, awarded 20 July 1972.

Membership : CLUB Energizer&emdash;yes, the intrepid, unstoppable Pink Bunny. Scoff, and I'll pound you with my unpadded drumsticks!

A new form of art, Ocean Art, is proposed which centers on terracing a part of the global ocean's surface. Controllably macro-engineering the Mediterranean Sea may be economically accomplished with the emplacement of a suspended-in-seawater vertical membrane screen at the Strait of Gibraltar. Because it is a physical separation, such a material screen can be utilized, in part, to (1) stop the high-salinity water bottom current leaving the Mediterranean Sea and (2) regulate the North Atlantic Ocean surface current of fresher water entering the Mediterranean Sea. When it is based on correct geophysical calculations and predictions, Ocean Art becomes another postulated means to mitigate unwanted regional coastal changes and to foster Basin-wide economic prosperity.

Key words

Ocean Art, Gibraltar Strait, Molecular Nanotechnology, Mediterranean Sea Basin, Oceanarium

INTRODUCTION

Sequencing the human genome has put our species on a course towards the control of the "environment" within our kind; it follows Homo sapiens' discovery of fire, a discovery that kindled all our efforts to macro-engineer the Earth-biosphere. It is on fiery plumes of rocket-engine exhaust that humanity's representatives temporarily visit Outer Space. From space, spationauts (and those watching televised images of our Earth from their exalted viewpoint) may be able to see as much as half of our Earth's Face, or at least its "skin" (air, land and ocean). On 25 March 2001 in Paris, France, at the Fifth Space Arts Workshop, "Outer Space-Cyber Space", conference participants examined the cultural impact of interplanetary space exploration. However, on 26 May 2001, the Train a Grande Vitesse-Mediterranee sped from the English Channel (passing through Paris) to the Marseille-St-Charles Station (situated close to the Mediterranean Sea's northern strand) in only 3.5 hours. Such a record-setting transportation-communication event presages a sweeping cultural impact on the peoples and landscapes of the Mediterranean Sea Basin.

Space Art proponents opt to construct various symbolic artifacts in Outer Space visible to Earth's people. With plastic envelopes, Air Art's proponents exploit the possibilities of compressed air, or the atmosphere's winds. Land Art results from different human interpretations of the significance of sub-aerial Earth-crust segments. The most Romantic work of Land Art is "Spiral Jetty", a 1,460 m-long, 4.5 m-wide rubble-mound causeway at Rozell Point (now submerged by an enlarged Great Salt Lake); built 1969-70 by Robert Smithson (1938-73) of dumped basalt and limestone rock pieces mined in Utah, it is considered a contemporary artwork. And it is owned by the Dia Center for the Arts in New York who have the option of raising "Spiral Jetty" above the Great Salt Lake's surface. Whilst the artist Christo Jarachev (b. 1935) built eleven island-surrounding pink mats covering 600,000 m2 of briny lagoon water in Miami's Biscayne Bay during 1983 as his "Surrounded Islands Project", until now no one has formally proposed Ocean Art, a deliberate civil engineering meant to cause a sea change in the elevation and composition of any subdivision of our world's ocean by any peacetime sea terracing macroproject; as proposed herein, Ocean Art may become a fast-track technological fix for unwanted Earth-biosphere changes as well as an extension of Art's geophysical domain.

During 1969, Peter Hutchinson (b. 1930) and Dennis Oppenheim (b. 1938) installed artworks in the coastal waters of Tobago in the West Indies. Subsequently, these installations were labeled "Oceanographic Art". However, the originator of Ocean Art is architect-engineer Frei Otto (b. 1925) who first began to contemplate the concept circa 1953. "Oceanographic Art" is a form of decoration whereas "Ocean Art" is a form of sculpting. Without freshwater reservoirs, which were mainly constructed during the 20th Century, our world's ocean would be approximately 3 cm higher; radical Green-activists don't seem to have been bothered by that fact, if it's even known to them, particularly with regard to their social movement's persistent insistence for widespread 21st Century dam de-commissioning. That's an indirect form of "Ocean Art"! Macroengineers ponder the creation of an Ijsselmeer-like freshwater-flooded polder-reservoir supplying northern Europe by isolating the Baltic Sea with a physical barrier to stop all influx from the North Atlantic Ocean as well as an isolation of Long Island Sound to form a freshwater reservoir for the USA's Northeast. Evidently and prospectively, it is Homo sapiens' intention to occupy the land and the ocean; per contra, humans can still only use the air. Thus, Frei Otto's "Ocean Art" utility.

"Technological fix", a solution to a macro-problem based on technology, is often offered in a pejorative sense as an apparent, or simplistic technological resolution to a complex human problem whose benefit may be only cosmetic. Technological fixes often have deleterious and unforeseen consequences, but so do "Social Fixes" devised by Social Engineering's advocates! After 1960, some media-savvy Social Engineers promoted the world-public's mindless acceptance of various versions of their Doomsday Equation that predicts Earth's human populace will reach an "infinite number" before AD 2026! After 1972, many of these same hysterical persons touted&emdash;both in print media and cyberspace&emdash;our Earth-biosphere's irrevocable demise at the brutal "hands" of mankind's extensive (constructive and destructive) technology! Alvin Martin Weinberg (b. 1915) claims to be the neologizer of "Technological Fix": the phrase was coined during 1966-68 to "…connote technical inventions that could help resolve predominantly social problems".

What's the global social problem that Ocean Art can address after AD 2001? Stakeholder and ideological conflicts resulting from two predicted hyperstatic disaster scenarios ("global warming" or "global cooling"-caused sea-level fluctuations) may be ideal targets for overall Ocean Art cures. Macro-engineering's concern with both a cooling as well as a warming of our common atmosphere&emdash;climatic instability resulting from an anthropogenic and/or natural "Greenhouse Effect" change&emdash;are not antithetical interpretations of measured climatic alterations; each predicted atmospheric state represents a different time period and both are considered reasonable interpretations. Ecosystem-nations vulnerable to quirky climatic change event-processes that may obliterate extant spatial and temporal boundaries of vitality (through induced unnatural worldwide chaos) can oscillate between society-wide hope and near-universal human despair! Gloom and doom atmospherics, along with the unproved Gaia Hypothesis, cannot be permitted to drive humanity into making unwise and risky macroproject plans for our Earth-biosphere.

What's the worst that can happen to Earth's land with respect to an anthropogenic increase in the ocean's volume? If all the world's ice were to melt, at first the ocean would inundate ~22.5 x 106 km2 of land, then it would stabilize at ~75 m higher than today's ocean level in its areally enlarged basin. Subsequently, if the entire ocean, from its murky watery surface to its mucky sea-bottom, simultaneously warmed from 150 C to 200 C then the ocean's level would rise ~3.5-4 m more. These are the maximum oceanic rise effects possible&emdash;that is, ~79 m&emdash;if the most extreme "Global Warming" scenario becomes geophysical reality. The Mediterranean Sea-Black Sea Basins have undergone great changes in their shape and contents during Geological Time and some of these changes are documented at Mediterranean Prehistory Online.

"Coastal nations of the world should now be planning for one-half to a meter rise in sea level during the next century [AD 2001-2101]". Contemporary informed opinions generally support this more-than-a-decade-old public assertion by two hydraulic specialists. They proposed, and others since have concurred, that there's going to be an "abrupt" anthropogenic change in the Earth-ocean's elevation. But, "abruptness", in a global geoscientific context, "…depends very much on what Man can discern." Highly tweaked and overly-publicized crude computerized simulations of the future Earth-biosphere are a very popular means to broadcast a particular model&emdash;a geopolitical viewpoint, in fact&emdash;of our world's anticipated inhabitability. On the other hand, in a sociological context, the future ultimate perfection of Molecular Nanotechnology will demarcate an abrupt historical change for Homo sapiens (from an ancient Non-technological Era to the Nanotechnological Era). Nowadays, macroengineers must assess the cost-effectiveness of gigantic macroprojects designed to avert a rise of the ocean. In essence, today's Macro-engineering adds "Proactive Action" to our standard curative options list (Do Nothing, Planned Retreat, Reactive Accommodation and Protect in Place). Political and geopolitical decision-makers, as Peter Szanton thoroughly pointed out in Not Well Advised (1981), have vastly different perspectives about Earthly geologic change than macroengineers!

WHO'S "Frei Otto"?

As a consequence of the discovery of electricity and fossil fuels architect-engineers became managers responsible for directing major private-sector companies as well as public-sector organizations in the construction planning industry. During 1952, Frei Otto founded the Institut fur leichte Flachentragwerke in Germany. Like Christo, Otto's a Romantic designer who utilizes the most modern materials (plastics and metals) to realize his innovative Institute for Lightweight Structure conceptions. "In the years after 1970 he concentrated his attention on the analysis of biological phenomena, developing his exploration and analysis of lightweight structures in nature. Because…[Frei Otto] combined research into the optimum shapes for pre-stressed surface structures with the development of a new technological means for their realization, his innovations have proved of outstanding importance; indeed, it is in large part due to his efforts that the successful revival of the tent has come about…". Well-mastered tensile-fabric structures are his forte professionally. Such structures consist entirely of form-active elements (cables and membranes); they are flexible and, thus, are incapable of taking up other than the form-active shape because they automatically assume that shape when loaded. To perform satisfactorily, Otto's tensile-fabric structures must be capable of achieving a stable state of static equilibrium in response to all gravitational, wind and inertial loads. For the very first time in humanity's history, really large-scale buildings visibly and instantly interacted with their the environments&emdash;they respond to precipitation, wind and the warm bodies of living persons. Previously, buildings were chiefly notable for their hardness, opaqueness, immobility, permanence and inertness; Frei Otto's inflatable and tensile-fabric inventions offered different&emdash;basically quite oppositional&emdash;building characteristics (softness, transparency, portability, temporaries and reactivity).

It is to be hoped the forecasts of Molecular Nanotechnology's elite, which allege that profession's perfection by mid-century, are materialized since such perfection will surely enhance the already vigorous advance into geophysical reality of Otto's ideas! For example, metallurgical engineer David Richard Forrest (b. 1956), a project leader at Baverstam Associates of Newton, Massachusetts, says: "Raw materials such as nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen will be put into a desk-size unit which will rearrange the elements and control the trajectories of all the molecules", resulting in "smart" fabrics that are, at least, 100 times stronger than today's materials. Being "smart", such post-Kevlar fabrics will detect rips or tears and send out robotic "repair crews" to mend the damaged site. And, Kevlar&emdash;invented during 1964 by Stephanie Kwolek (b. 1923)&emdash;can suffice for this macroproject, being a more-than-adequate fabric (with zero porosity, it would behave as a film with no open space) for the purposes outlined below.

Cables, the other main ingredient of Frei Otto's structures, may also become significantly stronger than today's steel ropes. Unusual new molecules&emdash;long, hollow fibers with unique mechanical properties&emdash;have been discovered and fabricated in the chemical laboratories. These "Fullerene Nanotubes", industrially produced in quantity, may offer Macro-engineering super-ropes with real-life strength of 130000 MN/m2, almost 43 times stronger than steel piano wire (3000 MN/m2). The NASA prognosticates super-rope use eventually in an Earthly Space Elevator macroproject! The NASA hosted a 8-10 June 1999 Advanced Space Infrastructure Workshop on Geostationary Orbiting Tether "Space Elevator" Concepts which by August 2000 resulted in a summary booklet, compiled by David V. Smitherman, "Space Elevators: An Advanced Earth-Space Infrastructure for the New Millennium" (NASA/CP-2000-210429). However, Fullerene Nanotubes merely insure a large practical margin of safety for Frei Otto's already planned tensile-fabric structures! They are, in fact, a bonus technology applicable in the future.

Application of a bonus technology at Gibraltar Strait could result in a pontoon bridge spanning that stretch of ocean&emdash;something less obstructive than Xerxes needed to transport his army across the Hellespont in 480 BC! Use of at least two super-ropes make it possible to stabilize a pontoon bridge in a fixed geographical position for a long period, especially if any surface water current is present. Even so, such a bridge will require constant maintenance and be liable to damage from floating debris or severe oceanic storms.

"Non-rigid dams which are shaped like segments of open [that is, topless] circular containers and are provided with membrane partitions, membrane ribs anchored by means of intercepting cables, or anchorage cables attached to individual points…, can be joined together to produce structures of any desired length. With such systems it would even be possible to form large terrace-like enclosed areas of water…for irrigation purposes, hydroelectric or tidal power generation, climate control, etc." Frei Otto has calculated a 20 m-high water-retaining tensioned-fabric dam (to be fitted into a v-shaped valley) that has a built-in conventional civil engineering safety margin. (Super-ropes, of course, could markedly and safely heighten such retention works many fold.) A super-rope barrier ought to be better than a deep-foundation concrete dam at a place where Africa and Europe are slowly closing tectonically (owing to "continental drift").

STRUCTURAL FUNCTION AND DUTY

When defining any structure, Macro-engineering ordinarily examines the "function" (what is it meant to accomplish?) and "duty" (what does the object built have to endure to do its job?). For the entirety of its design life the object is expected to be quasi-static, safely responding to every imposed load. "Duty" demands it successfully respond to dead and live loadings, corrosion, wind forces, fast water currents, tidal rises and falls, thermal expansions and contractions (seasonal and daily) and unexpected loads caused by ship collisions and major earthquakes.

Using a suspended, pre-tensioned uniform network of cables and woven Kevlar fabric, I propose a macroproject to physically separate the Mediterranean Sea from the North Atlantic Ocean. (This exciting proposition of using "Futuristic" technology such as Molecular Nanotechnology won't be examined in this report.) A suspended membrane, laced, braced and anchored by strong steel cables, will more than cope with its self-weight (sag factor) and with its static load uniformly distributed over its vertical plan area: it will terrace the North Atlantic Ocean in the Strait of Gibraltar's vicinity! Securely taut (though usefully flexible) cables affixed to land anchorages and deeply embedded seafloor roots can be used to lock the facility in place because a deep-hole micro-drilling technology developed by the Geoengineering Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory makes it feasible. Kevlar fabric has been manufacturable and marketed since 1971; hung vertically, Kevlar thread has a self-supporting length of ~200 km, almost four times that of drawn steel wire! Seafloor Macro-engineering in the Strait of Gibraltar requires intense site-specific study with the objective of defining all the possible effects of seafloor conditions and processes on the proposed sea-change screen during its anticipated, but as-yet-undetermined, lifetime. There is a chance the Mediterranean Sea can be transformed from an "Oceanarium" into a true "Aquarium". Military engineering offers the truism that "nothing lasts forever": anti-material technology (super-caustic and liquid metal embrittlement chemical agents) , high-explosive charges or a nuclear explosive device and focused laser beams can damage or destroy any sea change screen no matter what it's ever constructed of.

WHY BLOCK AN OCEAN GATEWAY?

More and more, Geoscience is producing evidence that rapid regional climate change over as little as a decade's period of Historical Time during the 21st Century is remarkably possible; speculations as to dates of onset in particular Earth-biosphere regions is still very much in the purview of the applied Astrologist. Nevertheless, reputable macroengineers have examined numerous ways to cost-effectively mitigate or totally prevent some unfavorable changes by counter-balancing the post-Industrial Revolution enhanced Greenhouse Effect with careful manipulations of our Earth-biosphere's exchanges of heat, liquids and gases. One pertinent long-term anti-Global Warming/Cooling mitigation technique is a massive dike-weir blocking the Strait of Gibraltar to reduce the average salinity of the North Atlantic Ocean's water. All the scientific reasons adduced in 1997 by its author are equally relevant and useful on which to found this new plan. My only difference with its devisor is that we wish to avoid the sky-high costs, both economic and environmental, which would follow the emplacement there of a huge pile of broken rock to form his dike-weir. Briefly, his dike-weir is a ~300 m-high rubble mound structure design with a low 70 m-wide crest; some sections of it behave like statically stable submerged low-crested breakwaters with their crests above sea-level while other sections act like statically stable submerged breakwaters. All the rocky material rests at a 300 angle of repose. (As the structural behavior of the Pyramid of Chephren in Egypt clearly demonstrates, even snuggly-fitted stacked cubic rocks can slip as a result of strong local seismic activity.) Cables and fabric membranes seem a lot more doable and certainly less intrusive on either the seascape of the immediate sea-bottom or the adjacent landscapes of Europe and North Africa! The sea-bottom footprint of the dike-weir is very, very big; the roadway alone is 70 m wide and the imposed dike-weir base is enormous (~416.4 m wide); if an imaginary 70 m-wide "monolith" of piled rock&emdash;an utterly useless and structurally impossible 273 x 106 m3 vertical-sided slab&emdash;were installed at a cost of ~15 USA2001$/m3 it would result in a macroproject cost of USA2001$4,095,000,000. Guesstimating, that might be the post-2001 AD amortized cost of a trans-Gibraltar Strait Tensioned-Fabric Sea Change Screen that is significantly less ecologically degrading of the local seabed. The absence of extra-ordinary local crustal loading means too that life won't be made more difficult for tunnel diggers or bridge builders and major earth tremors won't be induced that might adversely affect real estate prices and pose life-threatening disasters for vulnerable local populations.

In addition, it's important to note some changes within the Mediterranean Sea that are likely to follow whether a suspended membrane screen or his dike-weir is put into Gibraltar Strait. The Mediterranean Sea-Black Sea is ~0.8225% of the Earth-ocean's area and contains 0.3094% of its volume; the Mediterranean Sea-Black Sea is one of the two most land-dominated of all Earth-ocean subdivisions with a land:ocean area ratio of 4.4. [The other is the Arctic Ocean.] Despite being the first world-ocean region to be studied scientifically, there's still much to be learned about it! Whether blocked or not, most of the freshwater vapor exiting the Mediterranean Sea eventually goes into the North Atlantic Ocean as direct precipitation and continental river runoff&emdash;annually, ~1 m is removed by evaporation; such unbalancing reduction in the Mediterranean Sea's volume causes two currents, one super-positioned above the other, to pass through the Gibraltar Strait to restore a hydraulic balance. The North Atlantic Ocean inflow, the eastward flowing superior (surface) current, moves with a speed of ~1 m s-1 while the inferior westward flowing Mediterranean Sea outflow moves at ~5 cm s-1 at depth.

Stopping the inflow and the outflow currents with an Ocean Art screen means that (1) the Azores Current in the North Atlantic Ocean will radically change its measurable physical features ; (2) absence of the incoming tidal wave from the North Atlantic Ocean will detune all Mediterranean Sea tides, doubling the small amplitudes of the semidiurnal tides in the North Aegean Sea ; (3) absence of a metal-enriched plume of seawater&emdash;caused by local mining wastes&emdash;entering the western Mediterranean Sea from the North Atlantic Ocean will be mostly halted and therefore contamination will be curtailed greatly ; (4) the Mediterranean Sea's marine bio-diversity will inevitably adjust to novel conditions over time ; (5) the Mediterranean Sea will warm and become more saline&emdash;warming can result in a rise of sea-level while a salinity increase may lower sea-level&emdash;both can cause a purge of alien and native marine flora and fauna. Properly managed, this purging event-process could prove invaluable because it would dissuade extra-Mediterranean Sea-Black Sea creatures from surviving (and causing trouble) in that region of the world-ocean. (If the salinity ever rose to >6%, all the life in the enclosed body of water would die&emdash;except, perhaps, for some of the archaebacteria. A report in the 27 July 2001 issue of SCIENCE consisting of an analysis of the effect of anthropogenic extinction of oceanic species of rely on the intricate food web of coasts in the New World and the Old World demonstrated that humanity has "damaged" the Earth-ocean for at least 10,000 years.)

An approximately ~13 km-long impermeable pelagic drape, hung across the underwater part of the Strait of Gibraltar by "tracing" a direct point-to-point navigational line extending from Morocco's Point Ceres (36004.3' latitude North by 05025.7' longitude West) to Spain's Tarifa (36000.2' latitude North by 05036.4' longitude West)&emdash;but, actually, bulging or deflecting eastwards in a graceful arc&emdash;ought to epitomize form-active behavior. Its vertical surface area ought to be ~25 times the area of the floating Flamingo Pink-colored fabric Christo installed in his famous Florida, USA artwork. Buoys floating attached to the screen's non-gaudy shore-visible rim will take up the slack membrane thereby keeping the North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea at equal levels. However, there are a few more aspects of this all-important membrane we wish to discuss. For instance, when it is deemed appropriate the cables can be tightened, a shortening will subsequently cause this gigantic enabler of Ocean Art to elevate above the Mediterranean Sea's ambient water level. It is possible to convert this piece of infrastructure from a mere barrier to a true dam: such effort results in the colossal "terracing" of the North Atlantic Ocean, making an enormous West-East elongate "architectural" subdivision of the world-ocean! In effect, it redefines the Earth's "main watershed of the world"&emdash;the principle drainage basins of the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean first emphatically noted in 1887 by Aleksei Andreevich von Tillo (1839-99).

Why carry out such an infrastructure-building Macro-engineering task? To "Save" the Mediterranean Sea Basin's beaches, ports and mega-cities from an unnatural 0.5-1 m global sea-level rise as postulated by hydraulic experts is an appealing reason to do so! It may turn out that Venice, Italy, can be "rescued" from its forecast "fate" without any expensive and ugly macroprojects being installed locally that would mar that city's tourism charm! The hydrodynamics of the sea-lockless Suez Canal needn't change much either. And, perhaps most importantly, there won't be any need for all Mediterranean Sea Basin-Black Sea Basin ecosystem-nations to convene a delicate and complex UNO conference detailing, discussing, debating and designing new international legal regimes to specifically cope with coastal baseline boundary adjustments caused by either a sea-level rise or a sea-level fall! This Tensioned-Fabric Sea Change Screen at Gibraltar Strait won't be as costly as trying to preserve all the major ports and tourist-magnet picturesque towns dotting the Mediterranean's fabled shoreline! [According to The World Tourism Organization, in its Tourism 2020 Vision: Africa issued June 2001, Morocco and Tunisia alone will double their current annual number of out-of-region visitors by AD 2020 (to ~17.7 million visitors yearly).] One might even "voice" the hope that, to chorus Patricia Goldstone (b. 1951), its future construction will be but another aspect of Making the World Safe for Tourism (2001).

MEDITERRANEAN SEA OCEANARIUM

More than 50,000 ocean-going vessels are estimated to transit the Strait of Gibraltar each year. The gateway is still viewed by naval planners as a "choke point" even though the advent of "Super-Panamax" vessels has profoundly influenced their deliberate military assessments because of the simultaneous advent of automated mega-ports. The 400-kV electrical cable interconnection between Spain and Morocco is the first fixed link of its type between Europe and North Africa. Undoubtedly, more submarine electrical cables will follow the shortest sub-sea route between oil and gas-rich North Africa and Europe. Frei Otto anticipated that surface shipping could safely pass over or through his tensile-fabric aquatic installations using a simple sea-lock set-up. Suddenly lowering the Sea Change Screen ~1 m across the 13,000 m breadth of Gibraltar Strait won't be a disaster for the Mediterranean Sea Basin-Black Sea Basin ecosystem-nations; more or less, it'll resemble a bad storm surge event (an unpredicted ~17,680 m3/s incoming oceanic "tide" rippling eastward across the Mediterranean Sea-Black Sea's weather-system agitated ~2.97 x 106 km2 surface) with no seawater recession following its one-time only influence! Put into proper oceanographic perspective, that's ~15 times the maximum rate of seawater flow that may have abruptly cascaded over the Bosphorus' sill to subsequently and permanently inundate land east of the Mediterranean Sea during the post-5150 BC Black Sea's legend-inspiring natural creation process. After the barrier is repaired or replaced, it will only require about a year's evaporation of the Mediterranean Sea to restore the former status quo. It's worthwhile to note that authorities in The Netherlands (specifically, its National Institute for Coastal and Marine Management in The Hague) claim to "…already have [USA2001$ 2.5 trillion worth of] existing infrastructure." Nothing like that amount of public monies expenditures ought to be needed in the Mediterranean Sea Basin&emdash;ever!

What Frei Otto did not foresee are some useful spin-offs from technology invented and tested during recent years. For example, is it possible to maintain today's Mediterranean Sea overall salinity by implanting (appropriately isolated) salt exclusion-filtering membranes within our sea-change screen, thereby admitting freshened water to the compartmentalized lowest "terrace" of the North Atlantic Ocean? Is there any likelihood that osmotic pumps will dot the superficial enclosed Mediterranean Sea? Ought Macro-engineering fund and administer chemical laboratory experiments aimed to market the perfect dialytic battery? (Where rivers flow into the Mediterranean Sea, salinity-gradient energy is renewable and its use at very low efficiencies is defensible&emdash;when ~1 m3/s of freshwater meets brine ~30 MW is releasable.)

Precipitation enhancement&emdash;that is, weather modification&emdash;over the littoral ecosystem-nations of the eastern Mediterranean Sea Basin can be promoted by vertical mixing of nearby seawater masses, according to Siegfried Fred Singer (b. 1924). Proved wave-driven machines can do the job. Since the water that normally flows into the Mediterranean Sea from the North Atlantic Ocean is nutrient poor, it seems worthwhile to fertilize segments of the screened Mediterranean Sea with iron pellets to boost phytoplankton ecology (and afterwards the phytoplankton-devouring commercial and sport fish). Capitalist entrepreneurs have undertaken to promote large-scale commercial fish farming on the high seas, while at the same time claiming to help solve&emdash;with a "technological fix"&emdash;the CO2 gas buildup macro-problem alleged to cause unhappy future global climate change!

Finally, there is one very speculative natural hazard mitigation function for which a super-rope screen might prove useful. On 21 July 365 AD a tsunami generated by an earthquake struck the entire Mediterranean Sea coastline. On 1 November 1755 Lisbon, Portugal endured a powerful earthquake during which a 5.5 m tsunami assaulted Cadiz, Spain as well as affecting the coasts of Spain and northern Africa with a small wave run-up on the land. Nowadays, we have become aware of the likelihood of tsunami produced by the impacts of asteroids&emdash;that is, a new kind of natural hazard. Hence, the Torino Impact Hazard Scale logically categorizes the risk assessments. Rene Magritte (1898-1967) painted disquieting visual paradoxes; one of his most Surreal is "La Fleche de Zenon" ["Zeno's Arrow"] which illustrates a huge gray boulder suspended over a frothy and aquamarine-colored ocean like some stop-motion photograph of an incoming asteroid! If an asteroid fell into the central North Atlantic Ocean it would generate a tsunami wave which would radiate outwards in all directions and, in part, move rapidly towards Gibraltar Strait: "The wave enters the Straits of Gibraltar as a hydraulic bore. The width of the bore after it passes through the straits is comparable to that of the straits. Later it disperses laterally to produce tsunami in southern France and northern Morocco." The question that surely needs supercomputer simulation is: What change in the behavior of such a computational model tsunami will occur when a well-secured sea-change screen exclusively constructed with super-ropes is installed? Guessing, there might merely be a slight slop-over of little consequence to the Mediterranean Sea-Black Sea perhaps accompanied by a somewhat focused reflection of the impacting tsunami&emdash;owing to the screen's parabolic plan shape&emdash;westwards into the North Atlantic Ocean; such a dissipative rebounding counter-wave is likely to diminish the lesser energy content eastbound following waves of the main tsunami wave!

Science Fiction generally portrays the Earth-ocean from the same vantage that it views Outer Space&emdash;as a volume of material and life in which the play of human Science and Technology create our species' future. Thus, for many sound non-fiction scientific reasons, it may be technically desirable for Macro-engineering to professionally utilize its geopolitical knowledge and its planetary-interplanetary work site experience towards the apparently impending task of converting the Mediterranean Sea into a "Mediterranean Sea Oceanarium". Many will agree that public utilities are the defining focus of civilization; it is conceivable that a cross-Gibraltar Strait tension-fabric dam will become a plastic utility operated in real-time, serving millions of customers, just like the World Wide Web!