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Turning the tide is a hot issue

Simon Firth
20 Mar 2009


Back in 2005, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger formed a Climate Action Team to help California plan for global warming. They commissioned some 40 reports from state experts, the first of which are rolling in. So far the news isn't good, especially for Silicon Valley.

A study published by the non-profit Pacific Institute, for example, warns climate change will affect the San Francisco Bay Area more than anywhere else in the state. It says we should expect the San Francisco Bay to rise between 3ft and 4½ft in the next 100 years.

That would flood San Francisco and Oakland airports, half of the Nasa Ames research facility, 22 of the area's sewage plants, a good chunk of Silicon Valley's highway and rail links and large swathes of its housing stock.

The headquarters of Google, Sun, Intel and other major companies would all be vulnerable to storm surges.

So what should we do? The Pacific Institute estimates that constructing seawalls and levees could cost the state $14 billion. No one here has started building, or even planning, dykes yet, though.

When it comes to the challenge of climate change, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have decided that investing in green energy offers them the best opportunities for growth on a global scale.

It's typical of how the most innovative thinkers in the Valley rarely focus their attention on the health, education or infrastructure of their own backyard.

That's one reason why air quality, schools and traffic here are pretty awful. It may take the flooding of a bunch of our homes and offices to get our attention focused locally for a change.

• Web-enabled phones threaten the United States justice system, it seems. Last week a huge Federal drug case in Florida ended in a mistrial after eight jurors admitted to researching the case online, violating the principle that juries decide solely on evidence presented to them in court. Elsewhere, jurors have been caught Twittering live from the jury box.

• US celebrities are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, but not always successfully. Barbara Walters failed to explain Twitter to Whoopi Goldberg on The View, and crashed the service in the process as people tweeted about it.

Ellen DeGeneres got called "iltwitterate" after trying to get people to follow her without tweeting much herself. Others get it, though. nineties rap star MC Hammer has a whole new following thanks to his tweets.

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