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So its a dam!, i didn't understand how the gibraltar strait managed to close and open in only 11000 years. It's too wide yet. On the other hand, I don't think i

by omegant 13y ago

So its a dam!, i didn't understand how the gibraltar strait managed to close and open in only 11000 years. It's too wide yet. On the other hand, I don't think it makes sense to close the strait, there is too much commerce flowing through there, also all the mediterranean economy would colapse, and the weather change quite a bit.

jerf 13y ago
11,000 years is a long time, especially when we're hypothesizing a future in which apparently once the fossil fuels disappeared, nothing else was a viable energy source. (It's possible. They aren't the only energy source, nor even the only dense energy source, but it's possible that long-term, the other ones can not be economically maintained. Fission reactors aren't trivial, and we still don't know how to build fusion reactors.) One could imagine a long-term, slow-burn conflict between a culture located in what is now Spain and one in what is now Turkey, and Spain deciding that building the dam would be worth it to cut them off at a point in which they are on the ascendent and Turkey is on the decline, so as to make the decline permanent, or who knows what crazy thing like that. 11,000 years is a long time for human history.
- GoLongOrShort 13y ago
  Quick question - should I go long or short AAPL, considering I'm going to hold it for the next 11,000 years?
  - GoLongOrShort 13y ago
    lawl
raldi 13y ago
What if, 350 years from now, rising seas levels threaten to destroy most of the Mediterranean coast, so they build a structure to return the level to present height, and it can even allow for the passage of ships... but then, one day, perhaps centuries later... something goes wrong
fhars 13y ago
Some people have been thinking about that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa
- omegant 13y ago
  There even was an institute! Amazing thank you, I had heard the idea of a dam but didn't know it was so serious.
BrandonMarc 13y ago
Not a dam. Or, it's a natural dam. I suspect a big piece of the phenomena is sea levels massively shrinking, and then expanding ... massively, but slowly. 11000 years is plenty of time for, say, an ice age cycle (even a minor one). After all, if a large % of the water on earth suddenly collected at the poles, it's not as though every water body's shoreline would contract at the same width, like a photoshop "contract selection" command. Undersea geography, depth, etc would play a factor.
protomyth 13y ago
The novelization for the first Star Trek movie talks about such a dam.

by omegant 13y ago

jerf 13y ago

11,000 years is a long time, especially when we're hypothesizing a future in which apparently once the fossil fuels disappeared, nothing else was a viable energy source. (It's possible. They aren't the only energy source, nor even the only dense energy source, but it's possible that long-term, the other ones can not be economically maintained. Fission reactors aren't trivial, and we still don't know how to build fusion reactors.) One could imagine a long-term, slow-burn conflict between a culture located in what is now Spain and one in what is now Turkey, and Spain deciding that building the dam would be worth it to cut them off at a point in which they are on the ascendent and Turkey is on the decline, so as to make the decline permanent, or who knows what crazy thing like that. 11,000 years is a long time for human history.

GoLongOrShort 13y ago
Quick question - should I go long or short AAPL, considering I'm going to hold it for the next 11,000 years?
- GoLongOrShort 13y ago
  lawl

raldi 13y ago

What if, 350 years from now, rising seas levels threaten to destroy most of the Mediterranean coast, so they build a structure to return the level to present height, and it can even allow for the passage of ships... but then, one day, perhaps centuries later... something goes wrong

fhars 13y ago

Some people have been thinking about that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa

omegant 13y ago
There even was an institute! Amazing thank you, I had heard the idea of a dam but didn't know it was so serious.

BrandonMarc 13y ago

Not a dam. Or, it's a natural dam. I suspect a big piece of the phenomena is sea levels massively shrinking, and then expanding ... massively, but slowly. 11000 years is plenty of time for, say, an ice age cycle (even a minor one). After all, if a large % of the water on earth suddenly collected at the poles, it's not as though every water body's shoreline would contract at the same width, like a photoshop "contract selection" command. Undersea geography, depth, etc would play a factor.

protomyth 13y ago

The novelization for the first Star Trek movie talks about such a dam.