I crossed the Rubicon last week. Literally. I was visiting a friend archaeologist at Ravenna on the Adriatic coast of Italy - a few miles north of the Rubicon, which crosses without realizing it when you're on the highway. And what to do when visiting a friend, archaeologist, otherwise visit archaeological sites?
Archaeological sites, therefore, a good half-dozen Byzantine churches but also the installation port of Ravenna. Oh I know your little inquisitor air. I know you typed "Ravenna, Italy" in Google maps, and you rub his mustache while enjoying the satisfaction that I understood before Everyone I talk to the Marina di Ravenna because, hey, Ravenna, it's still ten kilometers from the coast, it's a little far when p'tits boats on the water will have no legs.
Mwouin. No. No, I'm not talking about the marina. I speak indeed of a city, a millennium ago and a half, was an important seaport, and is now a two-hour walk from the Adriatic.
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Michael Crighton died two weeks ago, and I'm sure you've cried a lot. Much, or not at all, if you're the type Ecologist informed. Because environmentalists informed they know that Michael Crighton Jurassic Park was a destroyer of global warming, and therefore a form of postmodern Antichrist.
Crighton criticized Al Gore of this world, and not necessarily on the most solid foundations. Since its public release on this, much of its conclusions (based on solid research in the scientific literature, but also on a flawed analysis of the data it is found) have proved inaccurate. Obviously, you say, because global warming is undeniable.
OK, OK, OK, but did not say that Crighton bullshit on the subject. In his speech Aliens Cause Global Warming (read, really, the title is a joke), he imagines that the people of New York in 1900 could imagine as the worst problem that would face New Yorkers hundred years later, in 2000, after the city's population has more than doubled. And it suggests that for much of this population horse-drawn, the worst problem in New York in 2000 would be the tremendous amount of horse manure produced by the transportation of eight million. How to solve the imminent problem of a tidal wave of horse shit?
Obviously, the question is not relevant today. Not because the population has not doubled, or because New Yorkers no longer move, or because the horse manure magically disappears. No, the question is no longer relevant because the methods of transportation have changed in a way that New Yorkers of 1900 would have predicted, because the answer requires consideration of factors not included in the question, in short, because the world is too complex for the simplicity of the question.
It's the same thing when we talk about rising sea level, which is expected because of global warming. Is a rise of one meter means that whatever is located at an altitude of less than one meter will be swallowed up? Absolutely not. Some coastal areas will be eaten away by erosion, although the sea remains the same. Other areas, like the ancient port of Ravenna (and many others besides) will gain ground and sandy sea
mechanics becomes more complicated when one tries to calculate the effects of natural phenomenon in a human population. How death can be an earthquake, say, 7.5 on the Richter scale? None of the tens of thousands, depending on factors as diverse as the density population and residential building standards in force.
In almost every conversation about global warming, in all evaluations of its effects, it implies an "all other things being equal" which is still rarely discussed. But all things are not equal. If climate was the only variable with an influence on agricultural production - one of the victims most often cited by climate change - this is not agriculture. That would be the collection of wild fruits.
And humans, well, humans adapt. Not always easy either, not that it is always fun, not that there ever who suffer or die. But they are building houses on stilts in flood-prone areas, not in the Alps. All other things being equal, the day when your computer will stop working, you stay sitting exactly where you are currently at a computer off. But all other things are not equal, and you find out a way to move the back when the need arises. It's called the world's complexity, and it does not receive the attention it should. * * *
The Rubicon today is more than a stream. Oh sure, you can always start a campaign to save the is left. But if you want to understand how he reached this point, begin immediately to study the geomorphology, the dynamics of urban sprawl and environmental history of the last two thousand years. And hurry up, the die is cast almost ...
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