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You seem to have a very casual approach there. Life would take the mother of all blows from a rapid melting. The continents' shores are polluted enough that it would wipe off most of the shallow water marine life. Species are NOT trained to such a rapid change.
A lot of species died in the climate change periods of the holocen, and they were not nearly as rapid as what is projected. But also, species had a much larger and undamaged habitat then. And the shores were clean. Finally, there was no dominant species to kill all animals bigger than a grasshoper because it was starving from the huge reduction of its agricultural land.

It would be an unfathomable catastrophe.

Now, I don't expect +70m anytime soon, and by that I mean within the next million years. It would be too catastrophic not to take the most drastic of actions.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi

by Cyrille (cyrillev domain yahoo.fr) on Fri Nov 21st, 2008 at 05:19:54 AM EST
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In this scenario, clouds of lotuses would likely become food for the, (noticeably less numerous,) masses.  Just because it sounds like doom porn and would make great backgrounds for post-apocalyptic barbarian epic movies doesn't mean it is, (or is not,) not a serious possibility.

Mig provided a link that showed the global effects of sea level increases up to 7 meters.  I believe that such a link that showed the effects of a 70 meter rise might be useful to show people what their great, great grandchildren, if any, could be inheriting.  Just because we will all be dead does not mean that we can abandon concern for posterity.  Perhaps one of the benefits of increased life span could be a heightened concern for future generations, more of whom some of us might see.


As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri Nov 21st, 2008 at 10:48:34 AM EST
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