Slashdot Mirror
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
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
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:
p .png
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
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
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.
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
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.