According to  a recent article in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, the citizens of the world want a climate treaty, which is very interesting since the citizens have actually participated in this consultation.

Back in september, 4000 people from 38 different countries participated in a citizen consultation connected to the climate meeting in Copenhagen. The citizens were chosen with particular interest in order to reflect different geopolitical areas as well as sociocultural backgrounds. Economic factors were also considered in the consultation.

The Swedish citizen consultation took place in a town called Borlänge and the consultation was conducted at the same time throughout all the 38 different countries. The results from the consultations were then published in real time and lead to the report ”World Wide Views on Global Warming” which you can find at World Wide Views on Global Warming.

The consultation was concluded with a sort of excerise where the participants formulated recommendations to the negotiators in Copenhagen. Some of the comments read: “Be brave!”, “Take far reaching and binding actions now” and “Release resources for development of climate smart technology”.

One positive thing with this consultation is that it touches upon the posibility of a future vox populi, i.e. that the citizens of the world – to some extent – will be able to discuss big matters that have more far reaching consequences for the world than the local and national surroundings. The internet will be one possible way to connect people with each other in order to discuss alternatives and different environmental outlooks.

If you are into the sea or vast oceans and its biosphere, then this is an instruction for you on how to hack nature. I will try and describe what an artificial reef is and then I am going to try and make a design pattern that you can use if you want to build your own local reef. You can copy the instructions and re-post them or improve them. If you were to improve this design pattern then let me know and I can post the better version. Kopimi!

Artificial Reefs

“For a structure to be given the true title “Artificial Reef” it must conform to the four following requirements:
1. Stability
2. Durability
3. Compatibility
4. Function”

Natural reefs evolve over long periods of time and are very fragile and sensitive when it comes to toxic waste, biosphere ruptures as well as other threats towards the seaside related ecology. Artificial reefs are normally constructed by man and are usually different big or small structures of good sturdy materials. Even shipwrecks can be used in order to promote marine wildlife, however, if you don’t have access to a big ship, there are other ways to promote marine wildlife in your local lake, sea or ocean.

Artificial reefs should be constructed at depths and areas where there is little or none reef presence. Even though you could expand an already existing natural reef, this would be a bit counter productive since the natural reefs can be hurt when introducing the artificial assemblages. So it’s good to scout a given space that you want to hack.

There are a lot of different methods on how to build a reef depending on budget, gear, people who are helping you as well as location. You can sink already existing objects etc. e.g. ships (already mentioned above) and oil rigs but also concrete blocks and other smaller objects suitable for building structures and assemblages.

Worth noting here is that the marine wildlife, microorganisms, predators and biomass are also a part of the assemblage constructed, so in order to build a successful reef, you need to be able to spawn an environment acceptable for a diverse population of different species. Object, populations and single individuals uphold the local reef assemblage and is measure on how prosperous and healthy the reef is.

A thing to remember is that if you want to build a reef, you will have to sink objects that have flat surfaces, that stay in place and that aren’t hazardous for the natural environment. Algae, barnacles, corals and oysters really like the hard surfaces and if these attach they contribute to a larger assemblage of nearby fish and marine wildlife. Depending on what you want to do (build a reef for animals or for fish), then you can use other objects such as tires or shapes that create a suitable environment for a smaller marine animals. Some structures, pipes, subway cars etc make really good hideouts for cute fish, thus helping to preserve an already fragile population of smaller individuals in a biosphere.

A historical note to consider here is that reefs have also been used in warfare and biopolitics, in order to hold back enemy vessels as well as setting up advanced traps. But artificial reefs have also been used to grow kelp in Japan, and there are recorded reef building projects from early as the 1830s in the US.

It’s very important to note that you must think about how you are going to setup your reef and which materials you want to use. An artificial reef project that failed miserably was the “Osborne reef” off the coast of Fort Lauderdale in the United States, that since its deployment has been doing more harm than good. You must learn more about the materials you want to use when constructing your reef.

If you want to build advanced and complex reefs for different purposes then you need to find yourself a good design plan. There are examples of reef projects that have spawned reefs that not only make a good environment for fish and algae, but also enhance the waves for surfers. Different environmental hacks are possible if you think about the design and its possible assemblage potentials.

Design Pattern

1 Technical Brief
2 Construction
2.1 Variety
2.2 Clusters
2.3 Crevices
2.4 Height
2.5 Placement
2.6 Site selection
3 Further information

Technical breif

Natural reefs are disappearing, what can we do about it?
How can we mimic nature and its functions when constructing artificial reefs?
How can we protect the marine wildlife from destructive fishing practices?
How can NGO’s work in order to protect the environment and its wildlife?
How can we enhance breeding?
How can we construct hiding places for the fish?
How can we build good modules for algae?
How can we know where to put the artificial reef?
Who can help us with information on how to build a reed?
Can all materials be used?

Problems:

• –How to mimicing nature
• –How to mimicing nature’s functions
• –Using ecological materials
• –Ecological materials = higher cost although higher gain for nature
  

Solutions:

• –Ask you transnational or local NGO’s for more information and help
• –Support your nearest NGO that works with the issues
• –Gather a community around a cluster project
• –Build an artificial reef
• –Prevent illegal and destructive fishing practices
• –Spawn marine wildlife

Building blocks and assemblage materials:

• –Ferro-cement and coir
• –Open pipes
• –Mixing boulders and rings
• –Concrete blocks
• –Shipwrecks
• –Train carriages
• –Oil rigs
• –Reef balls
• –Reef buoys
• –Reef anchor

Ideas on ecological and nature mimicing materials:

• –Coral mimicry
• –Eco-Coral
• Artificialcoral

Low budget instructions:

• –Start a cluster project and create project event in order to spawn interest
• –Gather a community
• –Find a suitable lake or sea
• –Contact an NGO for tips and support
• –Discuss project funding or 0:- budget solutions
• –Conduct dives and locate a suitable area in a lake or sea. If no one has got scuba gear than hire some local diver from a diving school or a group of people who dive in the area
• –Cluster on what the reef should look like and what materials and structures that are going to be used
• –Ask for a grant or permission to create a reef
• –If you do not get permission to do a reef, revise the entire reef project and ask an NGO for more help
• –If the project is considered fruitful by the NGO, then go ahead and carry out the project anyway.
• –If you are given permission, continue to plan the project carefully and hire boats and transport for the materials that are going to be needed

Let us say that you are going to do something with big cement blocks in a lake with a more muddy seabed:

• –Create a structure that will not sink too much into the seabed
• –Create higher structures with a solid base
• –Try using less heavy materials or other types of formations
• –Consider having a clustered formation of objects rather than dispersed if the waters are turbulent

If you are going to construct a reef on a more solid seabed:

• –More concrete!
• –Have a mixture of clustered formations in order to create a more dynamic environment
• –Do not forget about the small nooks, crevices and spaces for the smaller fish, these are vital in order to have artificial protection from the bigger fish in the environment

Big budget instructions:

• –Try and get an NGO involved
• –Plan your budget
• –Hire bigger ships and consider using larger objects that are used to structure the assemblage
• –Hire people as well as creating a cluster project
• –Think long term when doing a project and do follow up projects and excursions to the sites and document how the artificial reefs are doing
• –Expand the reef projects into projects that concerns the lakes’ entire environment and overall health
• –Construct reefs that prevent fishing boats from fishing in restricted areas
• –Conduct research about artificial reefs and inform the public
• –Spawn cluster projects that want to help their local lakes and sites
• –Introduce new fish into the sea or lake that will adapt to the environment and not threaten the fish or eco system that already dwells at the site

Construction and variety

• –Let the fishing industry know about your plans if you build in non-restricted areas
• –If you utterly dislike the fishing industry then do it anyway, but consider the consequences of such actions
• –If you build a reef in a restricted area where fisheries carry out fishing, then go ahead anyway if governmental actions are not planned
• –The reefs has to be sturdy and the management and monitoring of the reefs should be documented
• –Diversity is vital when building reefs, dense structures are better
• –Dispersed formations will not be fruitful and should be avoided
• –Consider solutions that increase the overall biodiversity
• –Use locally available objects that are non-hazardous for the environment and use your imagination and a variety of different combinations and orientations

Clustering

• –When constructing a reef, build dense structures
• –Orientation is important; consider the torrents and how the water flows in different areas
• –Build lines and shapes that run across the current
• –This creates shelter for fish and is good for how the food flow near the artificial reef
• –Try placing buoys when constructing the line in order to enhance the orientation of the project

Crevices

• –Build holes and crevices which are used as shelter and refuge for organisms
• –Think big and use different variations and solutions; small fish use small crevices and big fish use big crevices
• –Use fabricated modules that has holes, or materials such as pipes and tubes
• –Bricks and flower pots can be used
• –Attach natural or synethetic fibre to the modules; these are used in different ways by fish and organisms
• –Synthetic meshs or fibre can be fruitful for the reproduction and breeding

Height

• –Reefs should be about one third of the water depth; however, this is hard to do when building reefs in lakes or in deeper waters. Ask your NGO for advice in your individual project
• –Think big and tall, but do not forget about the importance of a solid base, as you do not want the entire structure to fall over if placed in waters with strong currents
• –Height actually increases the chance for larger fish to find the reefs; thus increasing biodiversity
• –Build the reef so it is almost like a beacon working to enhance and strengthening the biodiversity
• –Height can be increased by using long objects such as telegraph posts or long pipes
• –Use air filled buoys if more height and to spawn biomass

Placement

• –Placement is the key when building a successful reef
• –Objects that seem to be heavy on land will be able to drift away when in water; try and consider this when constructing your reef
• –A concentrated module of objects and stuff will be very beneficial

Site selection

• –Ask local fishermen for information about reefs and site locations
• –If there is a conflict between activists and local fisherment then try and conducting investigations in other ways
• –Try and gather knowledge about thriving reefs, dead reefs and places that have no reef at all.
• –Either repair a reef or construct a new one

• –If you are working with a low budget, try and construct your own sink rig

Further reading

How to construct a reef anchor:

When anchoring over structure on an artificial reef the possibility of fouling and losing a valuable boat anchor always exists. To prevent this from happening, boaters can construct their own inexpensive but effective anchors for mooring over reef structures by following the instructions below.

1. Bend two 4-foot sections of 3/8″ concrete reinforcing rods double.

2. Slide a 12″ section of l 1/2″ pipe over the bent rods.

3. Complete the anchor by bending the ends of the rod to form a grapple.

Concrete may be packed into the pipe around the rods to add weight if desired. The resulting anchor will hold most boats in position once it snags on a solid structure. A strong pull on the anchor line will straighten the 3/8″ rod and allow the anchor to dislodge easily.
Never tie to artificial reef buoys.

Links

Design Pattern
How to build an artificial reef
An approach to design spatial configuration of artificial reef ecosystem
Feature – Artificial Reefs
Reef Ball Foundation
Marine Artificial Reefs
Eco-Coral
Artificialcoral

Read more here: Mesquite

What is biomimicry then? Well, according to Wikipedia biomimicry is:

“(from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is an ancient concept recently returning to scientific thought that examines nature, its models, systems, processes, and elements— and emulates or takes inspiration from them to solve human problems sustainably. Scientific and engineering literature often uses the term Biomimetics for the process of understanding and applying biological principles to human designs. This includes biomaterials, biomechanics, biological systems composed of individuals of one species (e.g., schools, herds and swarms), or multispecies ensembles.”

Be sure to check As Nature as well and learn more about biomimicry and learn more about this fascinating way of solving design problems.

Here is the TED:Talk introduction:

Janine Benyus has a message for inventors: When solving a design problem, look to nature first. There you’ll find inspired designs for making things waterproof, aerodynamic, solar-powered and more. Here she reveals dozens of new products that take their cue from nature with spectacular results.

Talks Janine Benyus: Biomimicry in action

In order to live at sea, we’re pioneering an entirely new form of marine architecture. Open_Sailing acts like a giant organism, a cluster of intelligent units that can react to their environment, change shape and reconfigure themselves. They talk to each other. They’re modular, re-pluggable, pre-broken, post-industrial and self-sufficient. Open_Sailing is a project that is well underway. We are a constantly growing, international team of around 15 people designing and engineering a prototype that is being built now in the UK, France and Morocco – under the mentoring of numerous experts. We will set sail in May from London to Rotterdam. You can see the results of the test journey in July at the Royal College of Art and track our progress online at www.opensailing.net.

We’re at a point in time when we have to re-think our strategies and global tactics not only to embrace technological breakthroughs, but also to enhance them in order for us to learn how to cultivate and harvest energy in new ways.

Not only do we have to learn how to deal with e-waste and garbage, we also have to try and figure out how to use our resources better and how to globally avoid disasters and to diminish wars over water, oil and natural resources.

Logistics per se, and how we understand this concept, will change over time, and it is up to governments and citizens of the world to decide whether or not we want to limit our way of life or keep on going as before, and at the same time doing something about it.

Citizens can be encouraged to influence politics both locally and globally. They could empower themselves to hack their environments, through individual actions involve their peers as well as governmental structures in microtactical collective actions, in order to clean up their local environments, lakes, parks or even public gardens. I ask myself why there aren’t initiatives that strive to clean up in deserted and zero degree spaces. Why aren’t we all making these spaces more beautiful and inhabitable? I reallt want to dwell more in secret and unknown locations.

Governments and nations could in cooperation with citizens engage in macrotactical maneuvers in order to learn how to spawn new solutions, new ways of understanding energy, develop ways and tools in order to grow and cultivate energy as well as re-using our existent e-waste materials as well as excess materials.

The reason why I am moving my blog to Greenpress is that I want to learn more about technologies, development of democracy in relation to speed and politics, democracy and citizenship in relation to a more transparent state as well as studying the very constitution of governments, in accordance with forward thinking democratic tools and projects.

A very powerful way of becoming involved in politics and different environmental issues is to spawn net-political clusters. I will come back to this in a later post, however, clusters can come up with a lot of good ideas, solutions as well as informative actions just by teaming up and creating assemblages and ideas through communication and chaotic teamwork.

We Rebuild.EU has got a wiki for a variety of topics of concern and importance such as net censorship, openness, net neutrality, data retention etc. However, the wiki is also used as a “tink tank” (a sort of tool oriented and idea oriented think tank), and I hope that’ll be able to get someone to translate “Patent och klimatkampanjen” into English, since this kind of individual and collective cluster not only spawns new ideas and creates and interest for pressing issues, it also manifests a new idea and a new way of “tinking” and doing politics.

Citizenship is about enhancing transparency between government, institutions and citizens. It is also about acting and doing something in this day and age, and the surrounding political climate that we now face.

We are all quite naive in thinking that our protests against governments, and the complaints against the democratic reorganisation neither will spawn new solutions nor shrinking the gap between the national and the global, between the citizen and the politician and between the individual and the collective. It is time to write more about how citizens can spawn, create and to cultivate ideas and solutions in order for governments to try and implement these solutions into a global problem solving scheme.

If we look at the graphs we can clearly see that the technological development has gone through periods of recession in the past, and we ought to continue developing information technologies etc. in order to spread fortwardthinking ideas and progressive technologies to mankind.

In this TED talk, Kurzweil also unveils his new project, Singularity University, to study technology on the verge of breakthrough and find ways to share this technology in order to benefit humanity.

In the talk you will also be able to hear some remarks and thoughts about the environmental and global issues we all have to deal with in new updated ways.

We need to rebuild the ethical environment, perspectives on problem solving and political attitudes.

Ray Kurzweil is an engineer who has radically advanced the fields of speech, text, and audio technology.

I encourage you to see these talks because they are already classics as well as very inspiring. They will challenge your preconceptions and your way of thinking about globalization, markets, economy and data. The first talk was filmed Feb 2006 and the second talk was filmed Mar 2007.

Hans Rosling (b.1948 in Uppsala, Sweden) is Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet and Director of the Gapminder Foundation, which developed the Trendalyzer software system. From 1967 to 1974 he studied statistics and medicine at Uppsala University, and in 1972 he studied public health at St John’s Medical College, Bangalore. He became a licenced physician in 1976 and from 1979 to 1981 he served as District Medical Officer in Nacala in northern Mozambique.[]

“You’ve never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called “developing world.”"

“Researcher Hans Rosling uses his cool data tools to show how countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He demos Dollar Street, comparing households of varying income levels worldwide. Then he does something really amazing.”

Link:

Gapminder.org

The Skeptic’s Handbook

“Juan Enriquez challenges our definition of bioenergy. Oil, coal, gas and other hydrocarbons are not chemical but biological products, based on plant matter — and thus, growable. Our whole approach to fuel, he argues, needs to change.”

“Juan Enriquez thinks and writes about the profound changes that genomics and other life sciences will cause in business, technology, politics and society. Full bio and more links“

TED: Ideas worth spreading