On Sat, 17 Jan 2009, Arthur Figgis wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Sat, 17 Jan 2009, Roland Perry wrote:

Maybe we could do something similar - fill in the whole Thames Estuary?

I think i was pimping this idea a while ago. I'd been looking at the
various epic works the Dutch did, particularly the building of the
IJsselmeer, and it occurred to me that we could do something similar. Not
just to the Thames estuary - to the entire Channel, between East Anglia and
the Netherlands. As with the IJ, you'd not totally close up the space, but
leave large canals running along the line of the existing coast (some of
it, at least), so that there was still access to the ports (and to
hydraulically separate the polders from the existing land).

This would not only create land for housing in the overcrowded southeast,
as well as a huge amount of agricultural land, but enable direct rail links
to northern Europe (including a Felixstowe - Rotterdam freight line),
provide opportunities to create huge amounts of ecologically vital
wetlands, and effectively eliminate the flood and erosion risk to the
Thames estuary and East Anglia. We could even build a new home for the
Trident fleet at the same time, to shut the jocks up.

I shall write to the environment secretary immediately. Where can one buy a
pen with green ink these days?

It's been suggested before!

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/200...of-doggerland/

Curses! This is just like that time i invented savoury doughnuts only to
find out that the Chinese had been making them for hundreds of years!

I think my plan (the geographical one, not the doughnut one) is more
nuanced than theirs, though - i'm not suggesting landlocking much of the
present coast, nor building the whole thing as one big giant polder.

A link in the comments leads here, which is genius/bonkers and worth a
look:

http://www.worlddreambank.org/P/PLANETS.HTM

Also, i've read that Stephen Baxter, one of our best and most nerdy
science fiction writers, has written a book, to be published this year,
along the lines of 'what if in the Iron Age (or whenever) when the north
sea was land, the people who lived there built a giant dyke around it, and
it never flooded?' which also sounds quite genius/bonkers.

tom

--
It's just really ****ing good and that's all. -- Gabe, on the Macintosh