Monday, August 23, 2004

Glaciers pose potential harm to Internet
According to Yahoo! News, Glaciers are melting faster than before in some regions from the Arctic to the Alps but others are getting bigger, scientists said on Friday. They are unable to crack the conundrum of why certain glaciers may be more resilient to global warming, though one reason could be that melting sea ice falls back to earth as snow and so causes some of the ice mountains to grow.

U.N. studies indicate that sea levels could rise by about 30-50 cms (~11 to 19 inches) by 2100, threatening many coastal regions and low-lying islands like Tuvalu in the Pacific.

You may wonder why Tuvalu, at best 17 feet above sea level, is important considering it's just a group of 9 atolls situated between Hawaii and Australia with about 18 square miles of land mass, no arable land, no streams, rivers, or potable water, no permanent crops, with fish as its only resource and an estimated population of 11,468. The thing is, Tuvalu negotiated a contract leasing its Internet domain name ".tv" for $50 million in royalties over the next dozen years. Wouldn't want anything to happen there, huh?

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