h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"The brain is the attic of my mouth." [Baron Grim]

So is mine. And like the attic in my house it's cluttered up with old furniture, books, clothes and drawers filled with Bob knows what

If we follow paulh's theory the backbone of Denmark must be chalk. Wherever you dig down through what's been left through the ice ages you will find chalk. Which is very apt since "buying on chalk" is our national sport - and our way of saying "buying on credit"

Only exception to this is Bornholm which is pure granite. Even they buy on chalk, though

I would never take Bomholm for granite.

Excuse both the pun and the previous analogy.

From the sea Denmark rose, and into the sea it will sink once more at some point. On average, the country is 101 feet above sea level. The highest point is 560 feet. I don't expect the ocean to rise to the highest point, but I'd be concerned if I were only 30 feet above sea level., especially if my house had a cellar.

The seas only have to rise 9 feet before my house is flooded. And yes, I have a cellar. Not that it will matter much. I can only store so much of the flood down there.

Actually my estate is only 2.13 meters (7 feet) above sea level. I guess my cellar floor is 1 meter (3.3 feet) lower than that ...

Surely your home is a pirate ship, and you can sail in it!

Or maybe I'm taking your name too literally...

Easter Island is "the Navel of the world" (3rd chakra, the navel and adrenals, the seat of ego).

The central USA and Canada, lame longitude as Easter Island, is "the Heartland" (4th chakra, the heart).

Mt. Everest is that small place in the middle of your back its hard to reach.

That explains its white top.

The day may come when floating homes start to look pretty good.

re post 66:

I have been warned that if the groundwater rises, my cellar floor may burst open. But I'm counting on my house floating away on top of the waves if I seal the cellar properly and disconnect all pipes and cables. Who needs those anyway if you have enough candles and sufficient wifi and stuff?

Maybe then I can exchange my sloth for a different spirit animal. Like the sea otter or a

Could Denmark hire the Dutch to build massive sea walls to keep the ocean out?

My area here on Galveston Bay, Texas is seriously considering just that. (We're calling it alternatively, the "Coastal Spine" or "Ike Dike".)

I hear the US Navy's largest naval base, Norfolk, Virginia, is already doing something like that.

In theory we might be able to build an 18 foot dike around Denmark - but what about the Faroe Islands? And Greenland? Let alone the rest of the disc?

There's only one possible way: Reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.

Pierce, I have *many* ideas for doing just that. Deeprooted perennial grains would store many tons of carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere. Some scientists think that early human agriculture with annual cereal grains put so much carbon into the atmosphere that the Earth grew warm enough to end the last ice age. Replace those annuals with perennials and see if it helps.

In my area, Northern Sea Oats is an almost-native perennial cereal grain. Among perennial legumes, there are scarlet runner beans and everlasting peas. These are real plants! No one has tweaked their genes at all, as far as I know.

A major tree-planting program could help, too.

Those are the less controversial of my ideas.

The more controversial ones include flying plants that can float in the atmosphere, going wherever carbon dioxide concentrations are the highest. Cyanobacteria are capable of floating, too, as they are single-celled. As much as half of the oxygen released into the atmosphere comes from them.

They sound like good ideas to me. Planting lots of trees in particular.

Others have talked about storing CO2 in old mines.

But using the free energy from the sun instead of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas is probably the best solution. There is plenty of space in the deserts to harvest sun energy with solar panels and distribute it via cables

There's an agreeably low-tech method of harnessing the Sun's energy: arrange a lot of mirrors in a circle, focussing sunlight toward a central water tank. The water comes to a boil and turns a wheel that produces electricity.

or maybe you just want to boil water for your tea or coffee. It would work for that as well.

Another idea (I *told* you I have a snowstorm of ideas) would be to plant an acre's worth of a fast-growing woody plant that's in the grass family. Chop the stalks down every Fall and put them through a wood chipper. Use the chips during the winter as fuel for your furnace. A acre's worth of this stuff will see you through the Winter, if your house is small enough. I told my aunt about this and she was against the idea because, longterm, the carbon will come and go and not decline. However, it at least doesn't elevate atmospheric carbon the way fossil fuels do. Plus, the action of chopping and chipping gives you some much-needed exercise. And, your fuel isn't coming from 6,000 miles away, but form the spare lot next door to you.

Hemp would be good for that. It has a lot of uses.

Willows are also fine and fast growing. Plus their roots can filter your waste water.

Silly me, talking about plants in a thread about animals.

Interesting. Have you ever heard of spirit plants?