[Brian_Ewen]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2187598/Maldives-unveils-floating-future--complete-luxury-golf-courses-undersea-tunnels.html?ITO=1490

The floating future of the Maldives: Complete with £320m golf course and luxury 'workers island'
By MARK PRIGG
PUBLISHED: 10:25, 13 August 2012
For golfers who struggle to avoid the water hazards, it could be a challenging course.

The Maldives has revealed plans for a radical £320m floating course, which players access by an undersea tunnel.

The course is part of a massive plan to replace the sinking islands with a network of man made, floating islands.

With an average elevation of just five feet above sea level the Maldives, with its 1,192 islands in the Indian Ocean, is the lowest country in the world.


The floating golf course that could soon form the centerpiece of the Maldives, replacing its islands as they sink below the surface of the sea

Amid fears many of the islands will soon sink into the sea, the Maldivian government has started a joint venture with the architectural firm Dutch Docklands International to build the world’s largest series of artificial floating-islands.

The Dutch firm has already built floating islands for prisons and housing from slabs of concrete and polystyrene foam.

In the Maldives, the floating islands will be anchored to the seabed using cables or telescopic mooring piles, making landforms that are stable even in storms.

The architects chose this approach to minimise damage to the seabed, and also chose to build lots of small islands to reduce the shadow on the seabed, which could affect wildlife.

The islands will be constructed in India or the Middle east to reduce costs, then simply towed to their final destination in the Maldives.

The islands will also be designed for swimmers, divers and even private submarines to enter them from below, and the Dutch firm designing the scheme has said visitors will be able to rent private submarines that can surface right in the middle of their living rooms.


Watch out for the water hazards: The plans include an 18 hole golf course designed by Troon, complete with clubhouse

The idea is the brainchild of Dutch firm Waterstudio who designed the project.

It is being engineered by floating architecture specialists Dutch Docklands.

CEO Paul van de Camp said: 'We told the president of the Maldives we can transform you from climate refugees to climate innovators.

'And we have a way of building and sustaining this project that is environmentally friendly too.

'This is going to be an exclusively green development in a marine-protected area.'

The first part of the project to be built will be the golf course.

'This will be the first and only floating golf course in the world - and it comes complete with spectacular ocean views on every hole,' said van de Camp.

'And then there's the clubhouse.

'You get in an elevator and go underwater to get to it.

'It's like being Captain Nemo down there.'


Players will access the floating course via a series of underwater tunnels so wide they can even accommodate a golf buggy

Designer Koen Olthuis said: 'We'll be building the islands somewhere else, probably in the Middle East or in India - that way there's no environmental cost to the Maldives.

'When it comes to the golf course, the islands will be floated into position first and then the grass will be seeded and the trees planted afterwards.'

Development on the course is expected to begin later this year, and it should be ready for play by the end of 2013 ahead of the full launch in 2015.

The course will be split over different floating islands, while private cabins will also be located on some of the islands

The proposed site is just a five-minute speedboat ride from the capital of Male, giving golfers the chance to make quick journeys to the mainland.

Amazingly, the course will even be powered by solar energy which is a resource the Maldives has plenty of - as it's located just north of the equator. 

The designers claim the entire resort will be carbon neutral.

[Matthew Runde]

I'm glad it's not ugly.

[Ross Harmon]

Will surely make the World Top 100 list!

[Ronald Montesano]

More hash-enhanced ideas from Amsterdam.

[Tony Ristola]

How much have the islands sunk into the ocean in the last 50-years? I recall seeing a Swedish researcher on a program related to rising sea levels saying it was zero, and then found this:

But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

When running the International Commission on Sea Level Change, he launched a special project on the Maldives, whose leaders have for 20 years been calling for vast sums of international aid to stave off disaster. Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Before announcing his findings, he offered to show the inhabitants a film explaining why they had nothing to worry about. The government refused to let it be shown.

Similarly in Tuvalu, where local leaders have been calling for the inhabitants to be evacuated for 20 years, the sea has if anything dropped in recent decades. The only evidence the scaremongers can cite is based on the fact that extracting groundwater for pineapple growing has allowed seawater to seep in to replace it. Meanwhile, Venice has been sinking rather than the Adriatic rising, says Dr Mörner.

When I spoke to Dr Mörner last week, he expressed his continuing dismay at how the IPCC has fed the scare on this crucial issue. When asked to act as an "expert reviewer" on the IPCC's last two reports, he was "astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on sea levels was a sea level specialist: not one". Yet the results of all this "deliberate ignorance" and reliance on rigged computer models have become the most powerful single driver of the entire warmist hysteria.  
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html

One of his reference points was a skull embedded in coral that the locals had made a legend about for quite some time (I may have the facts wrong but the general point was memorable), and today that skull in coral is still visible after hundreds of years. He said if the oceans had risen the skull would be under water... It isn't.

[Brad Klein]

Ecological status of the Maldives aside, the plan is delusional and makes no business sense and will never "float."

Not long ago one genius tried to get me to write about a proposed all-artificial turf golf course that would be ecologically sound. When it was pointed out that covering a piece of ground with 150-acres of carpeting had a disastrous environmental impact on run-off, plant life and animal habitat, that idea died. Then there was a plan for a fully enclosed, domed golf course. Now this. More garbage designed to attract starry-eyed writers and fund-raisers.

[Tony Ristola]

Ecological status of the Maldives aside, the plan is delusional and makes no business sense and will never "float."

Not long ago one genius tried to get me to write about a proposed all-artificial turf golf course that would be ecologically sound. When it was pointed out that covering a piece of ground with 150-acres of carpeting had a disastrous environmental impact on run-off, plant life and animal habitat, that idea died. Then there was a plan for a fully enclosed, domed golf course. Now this. More garbage designed to attract starry-eyed writers and fund-raisers.

It is delusional, but it keeps making news.

A lot of things make no business sense, but somehow become law or get funded.

When there is an international honey pot for the taking... big schemes and apocalyptic scenarios are needed to milk the guilt and money. This probably qualifies as "international aid".

[Doug Siebert]

Not sure I really see any golf course on that starfish shaped thing.  I'd hate to think those narrow terraces are the fairways...hit a hook or slice and you could end up on any one of three or four levels below you!  If I was an insurance agent or lawyer I'd be looking to open up an office at the entrance to that underwater tunnel

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