I am sick of living in the cold region. As people are getting more and more demanding and particular of their natural environment, massive engineering of the earth will become acceptable.
Continental Shift or rather Creation is an idea to create a ring of land mass, hundreds of miles wide along
the equator. It is justifiable because land value of beach front with warm tropical weather has increased beyond belief. Where else can the old people go when Florida is full, one wonders.
The Continental Shift project will take centuries, trillions and trillions of dollars (what’s after trillion anyway) and the cooperation of the nations of the earth to complete. But once this final act of “gardening” the earth ended, the benefits will last for a very long time.
The first phase of the project is like cracking the egg a little. Existing oil platforms in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans will be retrofit to drill ultra deep holes into the crust of the earth. Holes will be drilled every couple hundreds of miles along the equator.
While all this is going on, “astro-prospectors” will be wandering the debris field near planet Mars, looking for mind you, debris of sizeable chunk. Hundreds of these asteroids will be hauled to the earth orbit.
Back on earth, when all the ultra deep holes are ready, each hole will house couple hydrogen bombs. Now imagine when all these bombs are detonated in sync, the earth will crack. For a analogy, it is like perforated line (those “holely” thing on the edge of a stamp) along the equator. And when the earth do crack, magma (I like how Dr. Evil says that word) will flow and solidified into a ridge, for analogy, think a scar tissue for earth. This act will level the uneven ocean floor and create some new mass.
Now what to do with the asteroids orbiting the earth. There are two options, one is a little crazier. I will give both scenarios.
Option Alpha : DUMPING
This method involves dumping these relatively small size asteroids into the equator. Of course the rock will have to be hard enough and big enough so it won’t just vaporize into nothing during reentry. Some of it will vaporize and create a lot of dust, but like every other renovation project, dust is inevitable.
Option BETA : SQUIRT
This method is more expensive and energy intensive. An orbital space station is built to process the asteroids. They are melted down into magma, and then “squirt” towards the earth equator. So you have these giant blobs of magma raining down, upon hitting the ocean they will solidify into islands.
When all is completed, we will have ourselves a ring of man-made islands along the equator. They are the foundation of what will be built upon later.
It is probably a hundred years has passed, but more work still need to be done. Fleets of tankers, bulldozers and workers will move earth from say Canada to fill the in the gaps between the ring of islands. Another hundred years has passed and we have exhausted Canada, and move on to Greenland and Siberia for more earth.
But when the Continental Shift is completed, we will have ourselves acres and acres of prime real estate with miles and miles of beaches stretched indefinitely. The inland area will be utilized as farm land, orchard and garden because of the warm weather and ample sun-light there.