You might want to move to Finland. It is currently +1 C here in southern Finland (minus degrees in northern and eastern parts of Finland; at nights it apparently can already go down to -15 C degrees in eastern parts), so we will obviously survive the climate change.

Which reminds me, I may have to change the winter tires quite soon. I was hoping to wait until November.

Thanks for the reactions. It's true climate change is something I can do little (not nothing) about. I can look after my own behaviour, trying to lessen my own 'CO2-footprint'. I don't drive a car (don't even have a license) and have never flown to travel. But it's only 1/7th billion part of all human behaviour. I would want to be the hero who saves all people on earth, as I worry about all people on earth. It's very hard not to think about what happens to other people. I worry about desertification, even though it won't hit Holland and worry about sea levels rising, even though I live in rare hilly terrain far in the east of Holland. So moving won't be necessary. But all those other people on earth suffering, oh my God.

And we might even be better off from climate change, at least on regional terms. The geopolitical consequences are harder to estimate.

You're kidding, right? Antarctica and Greenland have a lot of land ice, as in gigantic ice shelves sitting on the land. Those ice shelves are melting. A side effect of that is during winter the amount of sea ice (ice on the sea) around Antarctica and Greenland is growing, but during summer that all melts. Ever seen those pictures where people calculate exactly how much land will be underwater if we added a few metres to sea level? They're not kidding.

We're going to lose a hell of a lot of land mass on a planet that is mostly surface water anyway. We lose land mass, we lose food production. We lose food production and this gets dicey.
Vote left wing politics. If we want to fix the environment, we need to fix the economy. If we had a society focused on intellectual, scientific, and technological progress then we'd have solved climate change decades ago. Any equality/environment party is where your vote should be going, hell with the parties who think that pretty feudalism is the only way to go. In the Netherlands the main one would be... Groenlinks? Think they're the main party.

Vote for them. If you're in a country where you don't have to vote, do so. Learn about the issues and convince your friends to vote and vote left wing. If enough people did that then we either change, or we get to see the end of the illusion. Both of those would be pretty damn awesome.

It has been quite awhile since someone warned about the "Waterworld (1995)" effect. I thought that idea died already. I thought were were all going to freeze to death instead, as in "The Day After Tomorrow (2004)". The ideas of what exactly we will be facing due to the "climate change" seem to change with each generation of movies. In the 80s I was scared to death that we will all die of skin cancer, as the ozone layer is evaporating. Even saw some TV movie about that.

One could approach your proposed dilemma in many ways:

- At least up here the land mass has actually raised over (thousands of) years, and seems to keep raising. It has been proposed that sometime in the future e.g. the Baltic Sea will become a lake, as it loses the connection to Atlantic Ocean. So i don't know, maybe it would just be good if the sea level raised a bit for change, it might be good for the condition of Baltic Sea too.

- Netherlanders might give some tips on how to amass land from the sea.

- If all else fails, look at the bright side: since humans are not amphibians but must live on dry land, less land means there is less room for humans to destroy the planet. Isn't that what the green nutties want anyway, humans ("humen"?) should leave the planet alone?

Oh, and to hell with the green party alarmist nutcases. Scaring little children so that they can't sleep at nights, and for nothing.

Ps. I fight CO2 emissions by promoting nuclear energy. The actions of environmentalist nutcases has caused e.g. Germany to run down its nuclear power plants, replacing them with more and more coal-fired power plants producing massive amounts of CO2 and tiny particles causing lung cancer. It appears those silly wind turbines or solar cells were not producing enough energy after all.

So true... +1 The longer our society is all about money, the more our world will be fucked. And if humanity doesn't get their heads out of their asses soon then our planet will turn into a polluted savage primitive water world with petty pirate warlords battling each other for food. And they will curse their ancestors for letting things get so bad.

I did a search on one of the issues you brought up, ozone depletion. Ended up here:
National Geographic: Ozone Depletion

In short, it seems like this:

In the eighties, chlorofluorocarbon from spray aerosols reached the ozone layer where they broke down into chlorine, of which one single atom can destroy over 100.000 ozone molecyles.
"The ozone hole" is not a hole as such, but a area over Antarctic where up to 65 percent of the ozone are being destroyed.

For this reason, the industrialized countries banned Chlorofluorocarbon 1996, causing the amount of chlorine in the atmosphere to be falling. It is estimated that it will take about 50 years for the ozone layer to reach its original state.

Since we're on the subject, I've heard two predictions for the coming winter here in the upper Midwest:

- cold, possibly even more so than last year.
- warmer than normal.

We're told that the global temperature has increased 0.02 degrees a year (my made-up number) for the last however long, but have no idea - not even a rough guess - on what this winter will be like. Doesn't instill confidence.

Haha - whatever. I'm approaching the whole thing from a different angle, the one that DubConqueror mentioned: there may not be much I can do in the great scheme of things, but I'm going try something anyway. No idea what, if anything, can be done about GW, what the positives and negatives will be, and how big of a change will result.

But I do know that this planet comes with only a certain amount of fundamental resources, and if we can reduce the strain on them by taking other approaches then lets have a good, long, thoughtful look at those alternatives. If super-insulating our house and installing solar collection just so happens to lessen any GW impacts as we also reduce our drain on those finite resources, then that's just a side benefit that comes from something we really should be pursuing anyway.

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Stupid bitch: for some reason the wife and I yesterday were discussing my laptop and she asked if it was getting to be time to replace it. And I said "no". She was essentially giving me the go ahead and I turned it down. <forehead slap!>

I was talking about Finland only. Our food production capacity would increase due to longer and warmer summers, and the rising ground level (due to a slow geological rebound effect from the previous ice age) mitigates the effects of rising sea levels.

I just realized I lost my debit card.

I just spent the entire day at my grandmother's bedside. She is probably not going to be here much longer. I am emotionally exhausted.

[hug]

thanks

I always wanted to join a pirate ship and crew! But i can't! 300-400 years too late!!!

had to RMA psu :'(