The IPCC has released its Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. This report investigates ice sheet, glacier and sea ice melting in the oceans and cryosphere as well as sea level rise and other changes occurring in the ocean. It also summarizes the effects on residents from coastal megacities to high mountains. In looking to the future, the report stresses the urgent need to prioritize timely, ambitious, and coordinated measures to address these problems, raising the question of what is possible. Here, I examine the message of the report in detail.

Recently arrived residents in Kainan City, Wakayama Prefecture have sought to revitalize the depopulated Shiotsu fishing port by starting a company for a new specialty product. After three years of cultivation operations, they have succeeded in producing raw oysters for market, a first for Wakayama Prefecture. They have opened a raw oyster hut on the beach, a draw for visiting tourists, and are also shipping to markets in Tokyo and Osaka.

While the Vikings are usually thought of as plundering pirates, their voyages abroad were also for the sake of trade. While their first advances out of Scandinavia into the wider world were in search of Islamic silver, the dirham, they soon expanded trading routes not only into the European continent, but from the North Atlantic all the way to areas around the Caspian Sea. As trade flourished, the Viking world was built on these networks, and their homelands became distribution hubs and then commercial zones.