Fragile Earth

The Guardian carries a set of photographs from a new book, "Fragile Earth". All about the impact we're having on the planet (code for, you might think, "we're all gonna die!").

Certainly great satellite pictures. But, umm, of what? In order they are:

A river creates a delta from the sediment it carries. A river floods. Umm, a river floods and creates a delta. People cut down a forest and create farms. A desert becomes polluted (seriously, who cares?). A dam allows people to create fertile farmland. Umm, people create farmland. Drought makes a lake shrink.

They're all excellent photos, but I'm not sure that any of these deserve the title "Fragile Earth". I seem to recall all of these except number five from O level Geography.

The final picture is rather more scary.

Some climate change models predict that a two-degree rise in global temperatures would cause the Greenland icesheet to melt. This in turn would cause sea levels to rise by and estimated 7m and could change the shape of Florida, as shown by the second picture. The Everglades would disappear, the coastline would change dramatically, and major cities would be completely flooded.

That is, the only one really showing any fragility is the one that's completely made up. And strangely they manage to forget to mention that even if the predictions do come true, they're expected to come true somewhere between 2,500 and 2,700 AD.

Still plenty of time for that trip to DisneyWorld. Even, in fact, for your tenth generation descendants to get there.

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