Inhabited Island Vanishes Forever Underwater

PhreakOfTime writes "For the first time the rising ocean levels have washed away an inhabited island. Lohachara island was at one point home to some 10,000 people. It, along with several other spits of land near the Indian mainland, is now permanently underwater. From the article: ' As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities. Eight years ago ... the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.'"

Comments

Now... or... 22 years ago?

[Behrooz]

Short-term changes in sea level like waves, tides, and storm surge mask the effects of rising sea levels. When the signal-to-noise ratio is that low, you end up with news articles stating that the island in question became uninhabitable 22 years ago.
 
Not to rain on anyone's parade, but compared to serious examination of long-term sea level trends, one island isn't a very useful measuring stick.
 

It has happened in Europe, too

[dybdahl]

The small island of "Jordsand" was inhabited in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, rising water has since then made the island vanish entirely. I visited the island in the 1980s before it vanished entirely. More info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordsand

Plate tectonics means that some part of continents are rising, and some are falling. In Denmark, the northern part is rising, and the southern part is going down. Jordsand was located in the area that is going down. This means, that measured relatively to the ground, the water is "rising" in south Denmark and "falling" in north Denmark.

Here is a picture of the remains of the "Ferry farm" in Ræhr, Denmark:

http://www.saarup.dk/saarup2/johannespedersen.htm

From this place, there was once a ferry going to "Boat farm" in Hanstholm. Today, you drive this distance by car instead. Both farms are located in the middle of this map:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hanstholmen-map .png

What has once been a collection of islands, is today countryside with a few lakes. More information about the former island of Hanstholm is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanstholm

Ahem ... not global warming

[vtcodger]

Not to minimize the potential problems of global warming, but sea level rises associated with global warming so far are measured in inches, and not very many of them. So few inches in fact that it isn't even 100% certain that sea levels have changed at all. It's difficult to measure sea level changes of a few inches because the sea moves up and down all the time on its own due to tides and storms. It doesn't help that many places are locally rising or sinking on their own for a variety of reasons.

It's a bit of a stretch to believe that a phenomenon that is (so far) too small to even measure with confidence could erase an island big enough to have a substantial population. It's a bit hard to tell because of the "noise", but it looks like the total sea level rise in the 20th Century was maybe 4-6 inches ... at most.

So what really happened to this island? Who knows -- either erosion or local sinking one suspects.

Wikipedia has a long article on global warming href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise" >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise.

And here's an article that says that the Sundabaran Islands of which Lohachara is (was?) a member are sinking at 3.4cm (about 1.4 inches) a year which is maybe 20 times the estimated rate of sea level rise from global warming. href="http://membrane.com/global_warming/notes/tig er.html">http://membrane.com/global_warming/notes/ tiger.html

We haven't reached Kyoto levels...

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

We haven't reached Kyoto levels of pollution in Europe, so we really can't beat our chest loudly. Further more the levels of pollution are that of 1990, which still means quite heavy pollution: remember the biggest industrial base in the world is in Europe and although European factories and plants do clean emissions, they aren't 100% clean. Actually what is happening in Europe largely is that by trying to achieve Kyoto levels we only have been able to decrease the increase of pollution.

Just to make my point more clear, here are some excerpts from Wikipedia article about Kyoto Protocol.

On June 28, 2006, the German government announced it would exempt its coal industry from requirements under the Kyoto agreement. Claudia Kemfert, an energy professor at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin said, "For all its support for a clean environment and the Kyoto Protocol, the cabinet decision is very disappointing. The energy lobbies have played a big role in this decision."

To date (October 2006), there is no legislative framework in place within the UK to guarantee year-on-year reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases.

The position of the EU is not without controversy in Protocol negotiations, however. One criticism is that, rather than reducing 8%, all the EU member countries should cut 15% as the EU insisted a uniform target of 15% for other developed countries during the negotiation while allowing itself to share a big reduction in the former East Germany to meet the 15% goal for the entire EU. Also, emission levels of former Warsaw Pact countries who now are members of the EU have already been reduced as a result of their economic restructuring. This may mean that the region's 1990 baseline level is inflated compared to that of other developed countries, thus giving European economies a potential competitive advantage over the U.S.

The good thing is that we are really doing something to make a difference, but we aren't making real progress in the issue. Further more many countries in the European Union have really unrealistic energy politics going i.e. Germany and Sweden who both made political decision to stop using nuclear power and who now buy more and more gas from Russia and electricity from other member countries. Today only Finland is building more nuclear power and France is the next country to do the same. If not all member countries don't educate their citizens and start to have rational energy policy which includes nuclear power, we as Europeans don't really have a position to shout to the US or rest of the world "Fuck you, you irresponsible pollution loving lunatics" when we are just as bad.