Rising sea levels are going to mess with the internet

Thu Jul 26 19:29:01 UTC 2018

On July 26, 2018 at 16:56 SNaslund at medline.com (Naslund, Steve) wrote:
 > 
 > Since we have been able to cope with train derailments, backhoes, forest fires, traffic accidents, etc, I am pretty confident that the networks will keep up with the lightning fast 1/8" per year rise in sea level.  

Anthropologists say (there was a pretty good article on this in The
Atlantic a year or two ago) that's what we (humanity) have done
historically, adapted, eventually learned to eat acorns or rats or
whatever*.

And very little if anything to combat the basic problem even if we
understood it well enough.

We'll adapt and adapt because the problems tend to evolve slowly.

Unfortunately I tend to think that's the likely outcome here simply
because whatever we (more developed countries) do several billion
people out there will undo faster because let's face it they want to
eat regularly, have reliable electricity, etc. etc. etc.

And a lot of what could be done works against their getting all that,
at least if it's limited to their means.

Perhaps not in theory.

But call me when the G8 or G20 proposes to plunk down the many
trillions it would likely cost to provide the rest of them with
fertilizer and farming techniques and energy generation plants and so
on which aren't contributing to the problem.

Didn't India recently state that they won't even talk about slowing
down the rate of increase (2nd derivative) of coal usage for at least
ten years?

Not picking on India, they have their reasons, but just trying to be
realistic and move past these late-night dorm room bull sessions about
how the world ought to work.

* One significant exception was crop and field rotation which worked
very well where it was possible.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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