>> Taking your argument in the opposite direction, is it reasonable to assume consumers will give up their gas guzzling cars? Or install power charging stations

>> Taking your argument in the opposite direction, is it reasonable to assume consumers will give up their gas guzzling cars? Or install power charging stations in their garage? Those two inconveniences pale in comparison to the devastation of losing all our coastal cities. I'm not sure what you're getting it. I don't think consumers will adopt those practices, which is why we're in trouble. >> Again, though... Cities would "submerge" as part of a gradual process, and not all simultaneously. It doesn't happen overnight. There are technological measures to delay it, and even to manage it. Levies, stilts, barges are all increasingly economical options. Humans have adjusted to major changes throughout millennia, and it seems naive to assume they would be incapable of applying breakthrough civil engineering technologies to the problem of mitigating global warming's effect on coastal cities. I made the wrong argument in my last post: I framed the debate over humanity's response to Global Warming in the language of the phenomenon's impact on humanity. On the damage and possible mitigation of that damage to human life and property. But far greater a threat is compromising entire biomes themselves (raising the acidity of the sea via carbon dioxide, for example, to the point where it becomes toxic to certain kinds of flora and fauna vital to the larger food chain and ecosystem) The reason I react so strongly to the argument you're putting forward as part of your discussion, as it's the one often used to justify current apathy towards the subject. It doesn't matter if the coastal cities are given a respite from rising seawater, or if the Artic straights are opened up for international trade, or if new land is made arable - if the underlying problem is left unsolved, it will eventually compromise the planet's ability to support human civilization as we have come to know it. Anything that doesn't address the root problem of our massive and continued dumping of greenhouse gases is just a temporary patch - and one that won't matter in the end.