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Miami's Submarine Future

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  I am forwarding an article that appeared in The Economist in 2022, followed by my comments and a little humor. Love the cartoon.   American government is no match for global warming Jun 9th 2022 Even before it started raining, there were puddles by the roadside in the Little River area of Miami. Then the heavens opened and on June 3rd, the puddles became pools. It was a timely display of the process his guide was in the middle of explaining. “Sea-level rise, as I was saying, is not our only source of inundation,” Katherine Hagemann, head of climate adaptation for Miami-Dade County, noted drily. The threat Miami faces from rising sea-level is well-known. The seas off South Florida have risen by almost a foot (30cm) in a century, more than the global average. Parts of Miami are close to sea-level, so prone to flooding at high tide. As the ice sheets melt, another couple of feet of sea-level rise is expected by 2060; perhaps six by 2100. Yet this calamity is only h...
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Birth Rates and Population Projection Issues

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    Demographic Issues   This is a summary of the essays in this blog on demographic projections.    It is not only the arc of population increases and then decreases that is important. It is what happens under the arc. Birth rates fall below replacement, the number of births go down, the size of the labor force decreases while the number of retired people go up. Eventually, the number of older citizens start to go down and the total population decreases faster and in larger numbers. This scenario happens in an increasing number of countries and then for the global population.   The demographic projections and discussion in this blog are based on the Lancet projections of birth rates and population using 2017-2020 data. Forecasts for global trends and for some countries have changed since the Lancet projections. The key projection is birth rates for each country, for geographical regions, and for the entire world.   But how good are estimates of future...
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India and the Future Global Balance of Power

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    INTRODUCTION     Geopolitics looks at geography and history as inputs into the relations among nations. A corollary is that countries have “natural” opponents and allies. But how this works out depends on the domestic and foreign policies of the leaders and governments of the countries.   The theme of this essay is the current and possible future the role of India in the evolving global balance of power. One topic is India’s strategic objectives in the Indian Ocean and stronger ties with other Asian countries. Another is the points of rivalry between India and China. They intersect.   INDIA AND THE INDIAN OCEAN: FUTURE STRATEGIC RIVALRY WITH CHINA?    India might become a major regional and possibly global power. India’s strategic interests center on the Indian Ocean. India is developing a “blue-water” navy for the vast Indian Ocean, which stretches 6.000 miles from East Africa to Indonesia. It competes with China’s strategy to have a naval pr...
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