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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.'"
Yes, but Australia, the country, is entirely contiguous with the continent. I can't imagine us (now or in the future) being very receptive to the idea of another country buying their way onto the continent and having to set up borders etc.
Besides, who'd want to move from a tropical archipelago to - let's face it - a desert? Sri Lanka is a much more likely candidate.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Nasheed's quote at the end of the summary really made me recall Bangladesh, where my parents are from. It's another country that is under major threat from climate change. I've often wondered what Bangladeshi people would do when the flood waters finally get bad enough to make the country uninhabitable, through no fault of their own (most of the people there are remarkably poor). I once read a touching BBC article where a village farmer complained that he was losing his country so Westerners could drive in their cars.
I always thought most Bangladeshis not killed by cataclysmic flooding would escape into neighboring countries, especially West Bengal in India, but the Maldives seems to have a "good" (at least practical) idea. Sadly the Bangladeshi government is too inefficient, corrupt, and schizophrenic to manage something as well thought out, costly, and long term as that.
I fully expect to have to explain to my kids that Bangladesh was where their grandparents were from but that it no long exists (above the ocean, anyway).
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
I just emailed my senator yesterday because I was concerned about the mention that environmental refugees (which there have already been several groups) are not recognized by the international community, and was hoping to at least get the idea mentioned before the senate.
I hope he reads it, or a staffer does - seeing as he just got a promotion and might be a little busy.
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meh
I'd try to post some offbeat humorous comment, but I don't see a damn thing funny about this.
I helped a photographer assemble footage for a piece he's doing about this. He's gone there and stayed with Mohamed Nasheed for a few years running. The place is small enough that everyone more or less knows everyone. From what I saw they are incredibly pragmatic and dignified about this. They don't want a handout but would like to bring the world's attention to it. There are dozens of similar smaller nations that will not have the luxury of money to perchance buy their way out of this. I suspect, when this reaches critical mass, money won't be much of factor anyway. I hope the entire world will be able to be as calm and dignified and take a cue from the way they're currently dealing with it.
I know a guy who visits maldives often (mainly to go scuba diving). Their language is very similar to singalese (lang spoken in srilanka) and their food is a combination of Srilankan and Kerala (a state in India) food. I would tend to think they would look at buying land at these places rather than Australia
Old chart of the Netherlands(not the same as Denmark, go read a map):
http://ivan.ahk.nl/kaarten/lagelandenromeins.jpg
Modern chart of the Netherlands:
http://ivan.ahk.nl/kaarten/netherlands.jpg
Massive areas were flooded in the Middle Ages in the Netherlands. Instead of hiding on high ground we beat the water and founded a nation that is mostly below sea level. It takes a certain state of mind to do this. Once you start surrendering to the water, you lose. And you will keep on running from any danger that comes in your path.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
The USA has already signed [wikipedia.org] the protocol. It has to be ratified, though.
I'm a Democrat and think of myself as an environmentalist and even I'm skeptical about the value of the Kyoto Protocol. What's the point in the Western countries tanking our economies to bring down emissions if China is bringing dozens of new coal power plants online and adding millions of new vehicles to the road?
I would like to see progress made on green technology (which will translate into more jobs and economic recovery) so that we can bring emissions down and sell that technology to the rest of the World -- but why all of this focus on Kyoto when the protocol itself is inherently unfair to developed countries?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Actually you're wrong. Yes the very center of Australia is harsh unpopulated desert. However there are also large stretches of the north coast of Australia which remain uninhabited. These areas are tropical, have large monsoons and could sustain a fairly large population. In fact it's been proposed for a while now that in North Western Australia there be more settlement of people/industry. (I'm an Aussie by the way.) I don't know how receptive the general population will be to a new settement in the north. Especially with heavily islamic Indonesia next door which does house terrorism. I'm sure the Maldivean people are friendly and all but I don't know what the general Australian population will think of it all. On the other hand it does look like the Maldives are pretty relaxed about morality considering it is a massive tourism destination, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
There was a group of dreamers a while back with an idea they called the Millennium Project. One of their ideas for solving the population crunch was creating artificial islands to populate the empty reaches of the equatorial waters. I don't remember all of the details of their plan, it's been years, but the islands themselves would be created by pulling calcium out of sea water, I think using some form of electrolysis. You lay metal grids in the water, run a current, and the calcium grows on the grid like sugar on a string with rock candy.
The islands themselves would be like giant dinner plates floating on the water, but I assume with enclosed flotation chambers so a good sloshing wouldn't sink them as it does with the dinner plate. The goal here would be extremely green and low-impact living so the islands would generate their own power via green and renewable methods, crops would be grown on the upper surface, and waste would be recycled. The experience here would be less like a cruise ship and more like low-impact commune living.
The habitat itself would have a submerged lip around the edge that would be perfect for the formation of corals and home for shallow water fish. Even if the island were moored in deep water, it would be a a fine habitat, much like a volcanic island can rise from the abyssal plane and suddenly there's a nice shallow water habitat for fish.
The really cool part is that these islands could theoretically be free-floating, drifting with the currents and floating around the world, using powered propulsion only when pushed too close to obstructions.
These islands represent a fairly interesting idea in population management. Right now, we have too damn many people on the planet. Now I know we're not going to get people to reduce population the way we're living now, there'd be blood in the streets if anyone forced them to. And not doing anything will just lead to ecological collapse, mass starvation, wars, and the population will be whittled down through attrition. But if we could get people a safe, clean, sustainable standard of living away from the cycle of poverty, the west has already shown that birthrates will naturally stabilize and begin to decline. The problem manages itself without coercion.
I don't know how likely it would be but I think it would be extremely cool if the islanders could just build their own replacements and say "fuck global warming, we're ready for it." Maybe the Dutch can join them, not sure how much longer their dikes can hold out.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I love how that Wikipedia entry states, with absolutely certainty that the rising sea level is mainly a result of man-made global warming.
What I find interesting is that there is strong archeological evidence of populations thrived when the climate was warmer and the seas higher. One example being prehistoric Japan, 4000 BC to 2000 BC, when the seas were believed 5 to 6 meters higher. The indigenous population declined significantly when temperatures dropped.
These people on the Maldives would be screwed whether or not anyone wants to blame global warming. I suppose I'm being insensitive, but maybe they should have thought twice when they decided to settle land that's pretty much at sea level sitting out in the middle of the Indian ocean.
Frankly, I'm tired of this alarmist crap. I completely believe that the climate is changing, but when hasn't it been changing? This notion that humans are responsible for screwing everything about is about as arrogant, in my mind, as the belief people once had that humanity was at the center of the universe.
Because if we didn't have the alarm, then people in Maldives would drown instead of buying new land.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
GCMs have energy conservation added to them by hand.
At least all the ones I've looked at do.
To a computational physicist that means they are non-physical. They don't and can't make any serious claim to modelling climate.
Attempts to compare the results of GCMs to actual temperature readings have shown more anti-correlations than correlations, and that's without even correcting for the heat island effect, which makes the comparison worse.
The use of "average global temperature" is unphysical. Temperature is an intensive thermodynamic quantity. It cannot be averaged in an inhomogeneous substance like the atmosphere. Atmospheric heat content should be used, but isn't.
So, anyone who takes GCMs seriously needs to answer these questions:
1) Why do you believe unphysical models are a sound basis for strong public policy measures?
2) Why do you believe disconfirmed models are a sound basis for strong public policy measures?
3) Why do you believe that an unphysical global average temperature is even worth talking about (that is, why aren't you talking about global atmospheric heat content?)
I believe dumping gigatonnes of garbage into the atmosphere is a bad idea, and that our policies should be drifting in the direction of reducing that. But I also believe that people who are making strong claims about the future of global climate based on GCM results are badly mistaken about the strength of their conclusions, and as a scientist I care far more about what is TRUE than what will motivate people to change.
It is wrong to mislead people in order to get them to change.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.