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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.'"
Correct me if I am wrong here, but isn't most of that "unoccupied territory," "unoccupied" because it's a very harsh environment, basically desert, that isn't really suitable for settling?
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)
As tourism takes a hit from the economic crisis, this is a great piece of advertising. "Visit the beautiful Maldives while you still can!"
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.
"Australia is worth looking at because of the immense amount of unoccupied land in that country. "
There are very good reasons why we have an immense amount of unoccupied land in Australia...
Picture Fallout 3, minus the radiation and ruins. And water. And trees. And people. Feel free to leave in the giant bugs and mutants though...
Contrary to popular oppinion, London is not burning. It is, in fact, quite nippy.
only 150 centimeters
Obviously the islamists are helping their librul friends with their global warming scam by scraping the top off the island so that they can claim it is disappearing!
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
Is 7 meters(ca. 21 feet) below sealevel and we are not leaving. Running is a bad solution. Fight the water because it will fight you. Feet getting wet? Build dams and dykes and stay safe. That idea is probably 10 times cheaper and more efficient than the whole "move everyboy out and buy a new homeland plan".
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Just for the convenience of keeping borders "manageable", I doubt any place they occupy can be elsewhere but on a seashore. Who'd want to lock themselves in a country, only to have them embargo you over a trade dispute? I mean, being land-locked is bad enough, but being bad locked inside a country that's bigger than you, whose standing army outnumbers you and who doesn't like you anymore?
On the other hand, maybe New Zealand will offer a better deal.
Not only will he lower sea levels in the long run, ;)
but in the short term, he can teach them to walk on water.
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.
My blog
Don't they know that the Democrats now have total control of the US government and will sign the Kyoto Protocol, thus lowering sea levels?
The USA has already signed the protocol. It has to be ratified, though.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
Your question is simple, but the answer is not. Sea levels have risen 120 meters during this interglacial warming period. Should the Greenland ice cap melt again, then they may rise up to another 7 meters. That is the maximum. The fact that these islands exist above current sea levels is proof that the sea levels have been higher than they are now. These islands are basically relic coral reefs and hence formed under water.
Cheers
JE
Muslims and Jews take matters into their own hands and fix their own problems.
Which explains why Israel has been at peace with her neighbors since her inception and the Middle East is one of the nicest places on Earth to call home......
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
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?
A true environmentalist SHOULD be skeptical about a body of law explicitly allowing developing nations to pollute. This is an incredibly stupid thing to do, because there is not in fact any real benefit to it. The simple truth is that it is more cost-effective to be "green" over any kind of reasonable time scale.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I really don't get why people are so reluctant to consider that burning 80 million barrels of oil each day does not affect the climate. I keep hearing those "Oh, I don't believe it" voices on /., but really, is it anything else than an excuse for not changing a wasteful lifestyle? A bit like an addict would deny having a problem?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
A true environmentalist SHOULD be skeptical about a body of law explicitly allowing developing nations to pollute. This is an incredibly stupid thing to do, because there is not in fact any real benefit to it. The simple truth is that it is more cost-effective to be "green" over any kind of reasonable time scale.
It also seems counterproductive from an economic standpoint. If we make carbon emissions expensive in the United States and Europe what's to stop companies from moving carbon-intensive parts of their operations to China and India? Then we lose twice -- we haven't brought emissions down any (in fact we probably brought them up due to the logistics of moving goods greater distances) and we've wiped out jobs and a tax base here at home.
I think we need a big investment into green technology but agreeing to mandated cuts in emissions while simultaneously agreeing to allow developing countries to increase emissions seems like an incredibly dumb idea to me. We are screwing ourselves environmentally and economically.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Apparently residents from Manhattan will be watching closely and anxiously taking notes on how this gets resolved.
agreeing to allow developing countries to increase emissions seems like an incredibly dumb idea to me
Are you kidding me?! Take a look at any 'developing nation' in Africa. Many people can't even get clean water, much less food, and you expect them not to increase emissions/go green?! These countries are printing million dollar notes because of absurd inflation and you are not allowing them to increase emssions?! Developing countries have no other choice than to use the cheapest energy source, period. As a country progresses, economically and technologically, they can begin to invest into cleaner technologies and eventually start to go 'green'. Even here in American it is still more expensive to consumer green energy than it is to consume oil and coal. With your complete and utter ignorance of economic conditions of developing countries and, it seems, the basics of economics, you should be more circumspect in questioning other people's intelligence.
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
We shouldn't be wasteful, and I agree that we may be effecting the climate, but stories like this just smack of "the sky is falling" all over again. Why can't we have environmentalism without the alarm? Thats the kind of environmentalist I am, I just want to attempt to stop being wasteful and live more frugally and more in-line with nature (now I know its impossible to be completly CO2 free, but we can do better then we are now.)
There are better ways to combat environmental problems then alarmism.
You might want to read up on Maldives. Your assumptions about the level of technology and their needs seems to be very out of step with the reality. Canals "wide enough to pass two canoes next to each other"? This is the capital of Maldives, which shows a level of tech far in excess of "floating oil barral" ships. Also, the entire population of Maldives is less than 400,000 so relocating "150 million people" is meaningless.
Virg
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.
No it's real (probably), but it's not man-made.
You mean it's real, and it's probably man-made. There is still some discussion about that last part because climate and sea levels fluctuate naturally, but theory has predicted that rising CO2 levels will cause oceans to rise, and now that it's actually happening, that same theory is still the best explanation. There's also sun spots and stuff like that, but those explanations leave a gap. A gap that's nicely filled by the theory that rising CO2 levels cause global warming.
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?
China wants our standard of living. The world simply cannot cope with 1.2 billion Chinese living at the current American/European standard of living. But if we clean up our act, then China may simply follow suit.
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 agree Kyoto is a terrible (and quite possibly harmful) compromise. We do need some sort of international agreement, though. Hopefully Kyoto is a step towards something better.
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.
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.
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
Number's don't seem to add up...
3.1mm/yr, and the entire country is only 115 sq. miles, with a third of the population in the capital city, which sits on less than 1 square mile. Additionally, from a brief glance at the most populous towns/villages, it looks like another third of the population is residing on no more than 10 sq. miles.
Would it really be more cost effective to move the entire population to a new "homeland", instead of investing in efficiently condensing the population, and building a levee system around the current well-developed, and incredibly expensive-to-replace infrastructure?!!?
This smells like a "Poor us!" bid for attention and money, playing off of the "green guilt" of the rest of the developed world.
In other words...I'm calling shenanigans.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
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.
I've met Phil - he's the sort of guy to go out to his back and throw an extra gallon of engine oil on his tire fire just to spite the Maldivians.
"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!!
That's actually not true.
Compare this with this, and you'll find that your Random Regurgitated Factoid is, in fact, bollocks.
Thanks for playing PAFOOYA (Pull A Fact Out Of Your Arse).
I hate printers.
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. :)
A plague on both your houses - and on the people who modded up this partisan bullshit. 1. There has been plenty of Hindu on Muslim violence since independence, and 2. not all Muslims are terrorist, for fuck's sake.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
and then used the tried and true "print money day and night till inflation is under control".
Isn't that as likely to be successful as a heroin addict who keeps shooting up until his addiction is under control?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.