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As Seas Rise, Maldives Seek To Buy a New Homeland
Peace Corps Online writes "The Maldives will begin to divert a portion of the country's billion-dollar annual tourist revenue to buy a new homeland as insurance against climate change. Rising sea levels threaten to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees as the chain of 1,200 island and coral atolls dotted 500 miles from the tip of India is likely to disappear under the waves if the current pace of climate change continues to raise sea levels. The UN forecasts that the seas are likely to rise by up to 59 cm by the year 2100. Most parts of the Maldives are just 150 cm above water so even a 'small rise' in sea levels would inundate large parts of the archipelago. 'We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own and so we have to buy land elsewhere. It's an insurance policy for the worst possible outcome,' says the Muslim country's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, adding that he has already broached the subject with a number of countries and found them to be 'receptive.' India and Sri Lanka are targets because they have similar cultures and climates; Australia is worth looking at because of the immense amount of unoccupied land in that country. 'We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades.'"
The article specifically says that building seawalls around the many islands is prohibitively expensive.
There is a war going on for your mind.
A simple answer: between 1993 and 2000, the mean rate was 3.1mm/year, and it is increasing. These islands are like, 150 centimeters above sea level. Not much margin there.
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Build dams and dykes and stay safe.
Ever tried building dams and dykes around 1190 small coral islands? Look at this picture of Malé, the capital: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Male-total.jpg Is it still worth living there with a 10 meeter dam around your city?
It takes more than a state of mind, and you're dismissing their problems too easily.
1. The Netherlands took 1000 years or more to get where we are now. For the last 100 years, we've been continuously building major infrastructure to keep dry feet.
2. The Netherlands has money to burn (and has been in that fortunate situation for hundreds of years now). We spend on the order of the Maledives' entire GDP ($ 1.5 B) every year.
3. For a long time, land reclamation projects were extremely unambitious, no more than what a farmer and his personnel could achieve in the off-season. Each year the farmer would add another few hundred m of dikes and reclaim a patch of land. After 100 years of that, you've got quite a bit of land, but this only works if the area you're working is shallow marshes. The Maledives don't have that easy option. They would need to go for the expensive option (working directly against the ocean) immediately.
4. All of our (.nl) efforts were directed at shortening the coastline, which is easy enough if most of the area is land with low marshes in between. The Maledives would need to fortify 650 km of coastline in short order.
As a religious mindset wasn't really the root cause here, I'm not sure the conflict relates to GP's comment.
Eh, my only intent was to show the stupidity of the GP's comment that "only Christians are that dumb". I think you'll find your fair share of stupidity among all religions -- indeed, among all peoples.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1991). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 27 billion tonnes per year (30 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 2006) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2, through 2003.]. Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of more than 8,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 3.3 million tonnes/year)! (Gerlach et. al., 2002)"
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/index.php
How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
Am a Maldivian and am surprised by the amount of coverage this is getting. The comment (by our president) was in the context of, IMO, "we need to save money - have a fund, for the worst case scenario". Sooooo not what is being made out of it. :)