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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.'"
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.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
I live not far from the Sydney Opera House, and though I haven't been measuring things there, I haven't seen any sign of it getting closer to the water. Certainly not a whole island worth of closer. Likewise I would expect somewhere like Venice to be in the news if its gradual descent into the ocean were suddenly to accelerate, threatening all that tourism. Ditto the pacific islands; or anywhere people have jetties or wharves that would need rebuilding.
Is it possible that sea levels could change in the Indian ocean while remaining constant in other parts of the globe? That's what seems odd here. Or is this likely to be local, run-of-the-mill geology at work, and people seeing what they (justifiably, IMHO) expect to see?
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At Thermopylae the 300 held off an army of 100,000 to 1,000,000 (depending on who you believe) men for two days in hand to hand combat. That was after a larger army had held them off for a week before withdrawing from the field.
At the time Thermopylae was a pass bordered by cliffs on one side and the sea on the other so narrow that one man with a spear could hold it.
Now it is wide enough that a tank battalion could traverse it side by side.
Things are not always as simple as they might appear and the world is not, nor has it ever been a static place. Islands have both dissapeared and appeared throughout mankind's term on this earth.
Works of man may certainly nudge things here and there in particular directions, but the idea that the world as it is is "normal" and must, nevermind can, be held in its current form is arrogance born of ignorance.
The only thing constant is change.
KFG
Also, this probably isn't unprecedented in human history. For example, the ocean levels rose substantially after the end of the last ice age. It's quite likely that human inhabited islands became submerged during that time. We also have land that is in the process of sinking, eg, along the southern part of the north sea or southern Louisianna to name a couple of locations that experience substantial sinking of land and have been populated for a fair bit of time.
George Bush didn't cause the submerging of this island. His policies may cause other islands to be submerged in 30 to 50 years, but this island sank due to carryover from the Industrial Revolution and the massive industrialization of the developed world in the last half century.
Blaming GWB in this conversation is petty. You can oppose his policies without blaming him for events that he didn't cause. But blaming him for everything you see is just intellectual bankruptcy.
There sure as hell isn't any reason to panic over this piece of drek reporting.
You get a clue at the intent of the piece when, in the first paragraph, you find out that the islands are part of a river delta. Well, you kind of find out. But nowhere does the piece just come out and say that river deltas are always changing shape, i.e. some parts wash away and other parts build up. Nope, right away there's a diatribelet about global warning right where there ought to be an explanation about how river delta islands come and go.
I've got an apocalyptic prediction to make:
If the story about these islands doesn't kick off a global panic there'll be another gas-inflated story, probably out of the Guardian, before January is done. Oh the humanity!
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Telegraph India has a map of the island and some islands nearby in 1969 and in 2001, and Google Maps has a Satellite photo.
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:
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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-ma
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
If this island has "been covered" (as opposed to having "sank") where are the rest of the islands that should also be completely covered by the sea?
Could it just possibly be an issue of that island sinking?
If not, then I think you've gone past blind faith.
The other day there was an article about the dolphins in China disappearing. Sure we clamour, "OMG, it's terrible. If we don't stop soon, we might be screwed. Aw, but what can we do, it's so hard. So uncertain, so...hey, can I have one of those bagels? Oh, yum." The other day I was talking with a group of 10 people about glacial melting and the rising sea level. They all nodded seriously and said, "Sure, but that is a theory and even then it would only happen in 50 years." I assure you, if I bring up this article, people will look just as serious, and then hop in their Hummer and drive to the gas station so they can go hiking on what used to be ski slopes.
Until about a million people are absolutely, beyond any doubt--beyond even the ability of the most resolutely blind dumbass moron I know's ability to doubt--are going to relocate or drown in their home because of rising sea level...and it has to be a first world country because otherwise, reminder: Nobody Really Gives a Fuck...until that point, I do not really want to hear about it.
Why should we all have to suffer with our feelings of the awful terrible things that will likely happen (but hopefully just after we die happily in our old age so our children can deal with it instead), when elected or otherwise empowered people will never act fast enough to ever avert any true crisis. I say, bring on the disasters. One after another. Because getting some practice at actually dealing with problems just might start building a habit of acting and instill some fear in a real problem, rather than the lurking possibility of a boogeyman or an Osama or little microbes that people will only act on enough to deprive others of their liberties, but never act on enough to actually address the issue since the issue isn't there yet. Isn't it ironic how proactive we are at doing terrible things when faced with a real problem, and how inactive we are at doing the good things? Well, it's not ironic at all. Good things are invariably more work and most people are inherently lazy, which is why 5% of the world has 90% of the wealth, and they wealthy are too busy driving around in hummers.
Wake me up when we're all drowning.
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
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
this island sank due to carryover from the Industrial Revolution and the massive industrialization of the developed world in the last half century.
Either that, or the same ordinary process of erosion that sunk the former islands (now seamounts) of the northern part of the Hawaiian chain.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
your point about "no normaility" is good, but I hope you aren't trying to push a "both sides of the argument" point of view. just because there are always two sides doesn't mean they are equal.
What I am doing is pointing out that the idea that there are "two sides of the argument" is an idiocy. There is no "argument" in the first place.
the fact is people have historically settled very near water and if that water moves real people get screwed.
I currently live on a flood plain. Before moving here I lived on an estuarial flood plain. I'm now simply a bit further inland on a tributary to that estuary. I have twice this year watched the waters rise toward my house. They never reached my house, but my small collection of crops was untterly destroyed. I have had to help neighbors leave their homes by boat.
I am not ignorant of the devestation that flooding can cause. The farm my mother grew up on was ultimately permantly destroyed by the one-two punch of the Great Hurricane of '38 (her entire town went eight feet underwater. My great-grandmother lost her store) and the hurricane of '44.
If you could excavate the bottom of Long Island sound you might very well find evidence of human habitation. 12,000 years ago it was a fertile valley; now it is a branch of the Atlantic Ocean. Nothing people did either caused nor could have prevented this.
What "other side of the argument" is there in this? Shit happened. Shit always happens. Get used to it. It doesn't stop the shit from happening, but hysteria is not a very effective coping mechanism.
KFG
I'm Dutch and us Dutch have something with water. Did you know that one of our small islands (located north north/east of our country) has also been swallowed by the sea at the end of the last century? No? Guess thats because they didn't invent global warming at that time. At least not in the extends they have now. For us it was a very simple process, one which has been part of our 'folklore' for millenia now: "The sea gives and the sea takes.". Every year we have parts of the country which flood over ("uiterwaarden"). When the sea finally retreats it sometimes leaves enough soil to build on so such a terrain is then "added" to the main land (easily put ofcourse). However that doesn't mean that this is the end of it. On the contrary; mostly these new terrains were used for agraculture. And why? Simple; because it has also happened numerous of times that the sea rose again and took away the newly given land. No global warming, no environmental problems, just the work of Mother Nature.
And on that subject. I could be mistaken here but I always learned at school that ice, in contrary to other materials, expanded when it was frozen. Thats why you get your broken waterpipes if they freeze up. When it melts then the water shrinks again. So how does the melting of the polar caps make the sea rise when the whole mass is actually shrinking?
Almost. But I wasn't getting that message from Bush.
The line he's been pushing is, to my knowledge:
In short, Bush is playing a very political game with the entire issue. He's not being scientific, he's being political. And the wonderful thing about politics is you don't have to actually do anything until there is overwhelming and indisputable proof to that effect or you can convince everyone that there is.
America didn't change course in policy on WWII until we were personally bombed. Overwhelming proof that Japan was bad. Invasion of Iraq is a testament to the amazing ability of the propaganda to do it's work and the even more impressive apathy we now take on the whole issue. Goebels would be proud of how well this has been run from the Whitehouse.
This global warming crap is being treated in about the same manner. Scientists are banned from public communications without proper screening by the Whitehouse staff. Proposals of any changes are mired in layers of something that makes it impossible to succeed.
Nothing will get done until people individually start making an issue of it in their lives. Buy diesel engines and then buy only bio-diesel. It's not cost effective to do so but you have to make that choice of what's important. Same thing with electric cars. And so on for electrical appliances, computers, energy efficiency.
If you have a house built, push the developer into a higher efficiency than anything he's seen before or find someone who can. It's going to cost more, but it's also going to drive the money into a new area of the industry. By moving where the money goes, you will move the attentions of the american industry and american politics.
First off, sea level increases, assuming the sea level IS rising, is happening in mm per year, not meters. Unless these inhabitants are extremely small, a few extra mm of water is not covering a whole island.
Secondly, it's not unprecedented. In fact, as other posters have pointed out, islands have come and gone for all of recorded history.
Thirdly, the island appears to actually have dissapeared 22 years ago. It's part of a freaking river delta, guys.
I'm not smart enough to make a call on Global Warming. Maybe you guys are. But I do know enough to see that for all of recorded history, there have been large sections of the population that believe the world is ending. In EVERY instance, this is due to some sins of mankind. Repent! Say the believers. Repent now and perhaps we will all be spared! If this same slant was in a technology article, most of you would be calling FUD. Well I call it on this. This article is total crap.
That's not saying GW is false, that's saying that when trying to extrapolate long-term trends from short term inputs in a chaotic system a little humility is in order. Articles like this one make the whole GW movement look like a bunch of knee-jerk idiots. The science deserves better treatment than this. The public deserves a higher level of discussion than stories that can be tossed out after five minutes of inspection. FUD is no way to make a technology buy, or have a serious discussion about science.
GWB is part of the problem -- and the US, to the extent that he is the President and you follow him as sheep, allowing the government to even censor the truth coming from scientists.
And you are, too, every time you come up with such retarded excuses like that ("he' not guilty of what happens now, just of what will happen later"). How dumb do you think you can be? How dumb do you think we are to believe such idiotic argument?
He could have done lots to improve Earth's situtation, if nothing more by setting an example for China to follow. Now China will pollute even more than the US, and you are gonna resort to double standards again. The usual phrase which always comes up is: "they can't do it because they will pollute _our_ air, but if someone can do it, better be the US, huh?".
It's not just a lame President. It's an entire nation of lame people. Congrats. We humans are so dumb we are 90% identical and cannot even agree to clean our rooms in our common building.
I am shocked, shocked to discover that islands on an unstable delta in India can sink under their own weight into the ocean. This has clearly never happened before and George W Bush is clearly to blame.
Clearly if Bush had signed the Kyoto death pact, and if the Senate which had voted 95-0 in 1998 had let him, then these islands would still be here and, for good measure, the earth will have been cooled by an astonishing and completely unmeasureable 0.07C by 2050.
We will now see the Slashdot approach to group censorship take effect. Your rights online?
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
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.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
You want to watch out; hysteria is the rule of the day when it comes to global warming.
The facts don't support that global warming causes "sinking of islands." If islands sink, they do so for (relatively) local geological causes. The amount that the seas have risen in response to the (highly doubtful) global warming trend people so badly want to imagine is a matter of centimeters (currently running about 10 per century), and I submit to you all that if an island was mere centimeters from being overcome by the sea, then calling it "inhabitable" was stretching it a bit in any case. Yes, yes, the sea can rise a centimeter and a wave can get over something it previously could not, but really, storms produces wave action you can hardly imagine if you've not been out in the ocean on an isolated island.
The bottom line? Even if global warming is absolutely on target, it had nothing whatsoever with this island succumbing to the sea.
Before you have a cow about current sea level rise and what effects that might have, perhaps you should peruse this. Pay particular attention to the graph; note how unusual our current relative stability is over time, but look at the bottom line; sea level rise simply isn't enough to demonize for eating islands. Some land features will succumb to the sea in the normal course of events, and that is all we have here.
It never ceases to amaze me how readily people will accept a pointed finger if "global warming" is inserted anywhere in the accusation.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Why do I say gradual? Because much of the resistance to this idea currently is from people who just bought a suburban house and an SUV based on an assumption about the price of gasoline over the next 10 years. The general public will be much more likely to vote for a "5 cents per year" gasoline tax increase than a "50 cent" increase.
Since we will not get instant gratification from our selfless sacrifice to clean up our CO2 emissions, it isn't worth doing.
That is the most dangerous "stinkin' thinkin'" going on in the US today. Great Gramma and Great Grandpa are to blame for the CO2 problem we have today, so technically it is not my problem. If I'm to blame for the CO2 problem that my great grandkids have to live with, then at least I'll be dead and won't have to listen to them complain.
At the very least humans have muddied the environmental waters to the point that we cannot pinpoint exactly what we have caused and what is natural cyclic environmental behaviour. And because of this we have no way of knowing how much we are accelerating any natural cyclical events beyond what is natural. And yet, any mention of sacrifice or change on our part is still dealt with viciously and remorselessly.
Unfortunately, those who believe that change and sacrifice are for those other countries will never realize that they are giving up a perfect opportunity to create multiple industries that can make the oil and coal industries look like child's play. Their panicky death grip on the status quo will never allow them to see the opportunities that the US has missed already, or what we will soon be completely missing out on. Those who have been fighting change the most viciously are the same ones who, in ten years, will be shrieking "Why are we licensing wind and solar technology from Europe? Why can't our auto manufacturers sell to Asia or Europe? Why is our economy slowly weakening while Asia and Europe are getting stronger?"
It's a matter of economics. A majority of the rest of the world gets it, but so far we have not and that does not bode well for America's future.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
I agree, "global warming" has become no more than a public relations buz word.. For use when you want to garner public attention for any natural or unnatural change in an ecosystem. I'm sure nobody will make the argument that the blackened air created by cars, factories and other industrial complexes is helpful to the environment around us. On the other hand, I find it hard to believe that global warming is responsible for everything negative that happens. It seems from this discussion, I am not the only one who feels this way. From what I learned in Geology, the river delta explanation seems plausible.
What everybody needs to understand is that Earth - as an environmental system - is always in a state of change. People don't like to hear that because people like to believe that they are in control of their surroundings. In reality, the environment and the ecosystems around us will move to adapt to any new stimuli introduced. This is what we (the public) lack an understanding of. If we continue to abuse the Earth by polluting the air as we are now, the ice caps might melt quite a bit. Okay, fine... but that is a short term, direct reaction. How will the world look in 100 years? 500 years?
No computer model is going to accurately predict that. Too many unknown variables in the equation. It might not be as bad as we are led to believe. Just something to keep in mind.... I personally support environmental reform, but not because of global warming threats.
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
I wouldn't say that calling global warming 'highly doubtful' is inflammatory. While I have no doubt that continued destruction and pollution of our environment will have profound if not irreversable negative impact on our planet, attributing the sinking of an island to global warming is irresponsible journalism at best.
While ocean levels are rising around the world, Arctic levels are falling http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5076322. stm and the model predicting the globabl warming trend cannot explain why.
Another unexplained action is while consensus is that the planet is getting warmer and glaciers are melting, the Antarctic ice sheet - by far the biggest in the word is actually growing larger: http://www.iceagenow.com/Growing_Antarctic_Ice_She et.htm. Glaciers in California are also growing: http://dwb.sacbee.com/content/news/story/14317368p -15234887c.html
Given that the Northern Hemisphere at least is getting warmer, this is not entirely a bad thing as the food growing season is longer, and the increased productivity is an economic boon. From this government report on climate change: http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/nationalasses sment/overviewmidwest.htm "With an increase in the length of the growing season, double cropping, the practice of planting a second crop after the first is harvested, is likely to become more prevalent. The CO2 fertilization effect is likely to enhance plant growth and contribute to generally higher yields. The largest increases are projected to occur in the northern areas of the region, where crop yields are currently temperature limited."
But with the increase in global temperature, the worlds deserts would increase in size causing more environmental destruction you say? Not so - the Sahara desert, the largest desert in the world, is actually shrinking, again contrary to the global warming model. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17523610.300 -africans-go-back-to-the-land-as-plants-reclaim-th e-desert.html
So given all of these environmental observations (not minor discrepancies but huge anomalies) that are contrary to the global warming prediction, I think its perfectly acceptableto have doubts as to the actual cause of sinking islands.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.