global warming will soon destroy the internet

I've posted about sea levels many times.  The increasing sea levels is the first noticeable consequence of global warming.  But coastal real estate, cities like Miami and New Orleans, aren't the only things we'll notice.  We will also notice internet coverage. 

The findings estimate that within 15 years, thousands of miles of what should be land-bound cables in the United States will be submerged underwater.

These cables bring us the internet, streaming movies, streaming television, streaming music.  It all could be gone with a few years.

The immediacy of the threat stems from an unfortunate coinciding of location — much of the infrastructure that supports the internet just so happens to be situated in places most prone to rising waters. Internet traffic from our devices pings through fiber optic cables bound up in tubes that lie in shallow trenches underground. Although these cables are designed to be weather-resistant, they were never meant to be waterproof, Barford says. He predicts over 4000 miles of these cables running along the coast will flood within 15 years.

What’s more, the parts of the system that are designed to be waterproof are also vulnerable. While pipes carrying streams of information along the ocean floor can withstand the stresses of the sea, these are very different than the cables buried on land. Ocean-faring tubing is endowed with “armor,” metal cabling and protective coating to keep water from its fiber-optic contents. “Of course the irony there,” Barford says, “is that those transoceanic cables have to come up above water at some point.” These landing points don’t have the same protections, and they happen to be right next to the ocean. Barford’s research shows that more than one thousand locations where cables meet — like the spots where the submarine tubes hit land — will be surrounded by water in less than two decades.

The extent of our communication system at risk, and the sheer amount of physical stuff supporting the internet, is difficult to fathom. “It is the largest and most complex infrastructure that humans have ever built,” says Barford.

It will soon be destroyed by rising salt water.