Aw, don't stop there, Shocka.

Tell us more about the "tiny little island known as Antartica" - and all the things that humans will be able to do with it should it ever melt while we're plodding the earth?

I agree with Lyn Bender keeping coal in the ground is the way and the Chinese are cracking that problem. In the long run we do not need to burn coal to generate electricity to keep us warm active and passive solar solutions can crack can reduce demand. We need electricity to power road transport.

The big trends shaping transport in the next 50 years will be be electric powered and they will come from Asia. Electric bicycles, cars, buses, trams and and trucks which are essential for sustainable transport globally. China is now mass producing electric bicycles and scooters which has already changed the way Chinese people commute and are sell to over 100 countries. China and has initiated the process of mass producing, cars, buses, commercial vehicles to reduce the poisonous air pollution in their cities and to adjacent countries. Japan has been and still is this E-vehicle revolution . Perhaps Australia sleeps.

The experiment with electric bicycles has been so successful that the Chinese government hopes to do the same with e-motor cycles, e-cars, e-buses and e-trucks .The production of electric bicycles in China stood at 27 million units in 2010, is predicted to rise to 40 million by 2015 and could rise to 160 million in 2020. In China this explosive development has created new planning opportunities, both in terms of traffic regulation, pollution control, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the use of solar cell charging of all electric or hybrid vehicles vehicle. With the efficient production of electric 2, 3, 4 and 6 wheelers, that is linked with the more innovative use of sustainable solar and wind energy energy sources, this is already creating a fourth industrial revolution in China. , Taiwan and South Korea, and hopefully in time India.

Japan was the innovator that invented, in 1989, the first automatic electric bicycle (Pedelec) and exported the production knowhow into China. Japan has also pioneered the development of electric cars and hybrid cars and inseminated that technology into the rest of Asia

Now there is a great idea from PEST. You wouldn't be another humanities type would you PEST, with no math.

Here it is, we will cut down our electricity use by, wait for it, driving electric bikes cars busses & trucks.

It gets better, we'll charge them with solar cells, which produce much more pollution & CO2 in manufacture than they save in their useful life time.

You've got to give it to those fairies down the bottom of the garden, they sure know how to write fantasy.

Shockadelic,

Here's a pic of that tiny little island, Antarctica:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Antarctica_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg

Here's one of Greenland too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greenland_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg

Maybe we can melt them both!

If we try.......

I agree that we should be keeping coal from being burnt. We should also be sequestering CO2 in geological storage. We should be looking at establishing a nuclear industry to power the conversion of atmospheric carbon to liquid hydrocarbons. We should be building proper digesters for biological waste (including dead people) to generate methane which can be burnt. We should be looking at ways to capture NOx and store it.

In my view we need to do these things not because we are worried about the heat, but because we are worried about the cold. IF gtreenhouse is real and it seems to be well-founded, then we should be storing as much as we can get hold of for the coming very long, cold spell to be released as needed to maintain temperature in the sweet spot for as long as possible.

Any projected temperature rise would be uncomfortable, but an 8degree global drop would be catastrophic for more than half of humanity.

All of human expansion from the Neolithic on occurred during the current extended warm anomaly that has lasted for around 11000 years. In that time our population has expanded from around a few million globally to its present enormous number. Most of that number will not be ancestors of whatever remains of the human race in 10000 more years. The current population is a spike, not an approach to a new steady state. It will fall dramatically, either through natural causes or a global conflict and I suspect that will happen before an ice age proper, as climate becomes drier and water becomes scarce.

Imagine the 200 million people in Bangladesh if the Himalayas don't melt on time. Ditto for the Indians and Pakistanis. Imagine China with no flow down the Yangtze and the Gobi Desert advancing. Think of South America with no spring melt from the Andes. The US if the Great Lakes froze and stayed that way. Europe with the Alps and Pennines ice-locked. Britain with no rain, just snow and sleet.

Does anybody think the people in these regions would calmly accept their fate?

Poirot, I am well aware Antartica isn't "tiny". I was being sarcastic.
It is a continent almost twice the size of Australia.

What will we do with it?
What do we usually do with *land*, Poirot?

And yes, Greenland is another currently underpopulated landmass that would pose the same development possibilities.

Ditto Siberia, Alaska, northern Canada, northern Scandanavia.

These are lands already subjected to "extreme weather conditions", which is why virtually nobody lives there.

The idea that rising sea levels would make the *planet* uninhabitable is ridiculous. We would simply relocate.

It might be a "tragedy" for those human communities sunken (although that hasn't hurt Venice much), but not a tragedy for the "planet" or a threat to our species survival.