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Disputed Island Disappears Into Sea
RawJoe writes "India and Bangladesh have argued for almost 30 years over control of a tiny island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have ended the argument for them: the island's gone. From the article: 'New Moore Island, in the Sunderbans, has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said. "What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Hazra.'"
It's not Global Warming it's Global Climate change. That way, when it comes resurfaces, we can blame it again!
~Mekkah
"Hurry! Buy into my company's carbon credits scheme so you can keep polluting!" -Al Gore
I thought global warming was a myth? Darth Cheney said so.
That was when it was cold outside. Now it's warm outside, so global warming must be real. It will go back to being a myth in a few months.
First, 20,000 years ago the climate changed for other reasons. No one has ever said that the only way the climate can warm is due to humans burning fossil fuels. Deniers like to act as if AGW proponents have said that, however. 'Tis just a strawman.
Second, 20,000 years ago we didn't have over 100 million people living in cities near the ocean. Over the next century, these millions of people will be displaced, or the land they're on will be protected, at a cost of trillions of dollars. If we can avoid it by spending much less money, say, only one trillion dollars, it makes economic sense to do so.
Spending a trillion dollars sounds almost scary, except when you put in into context of saving several trillion dollars.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
This is clearly *not* global warming or "rising seas" but old boring "erosion" (I know, not fun).
Consider this - less than 30 years ago India could sent paratroopers to this island's "rocky shores" (sic).
Seas were rising 2mm per year until 2000 and 5mm per year thereafter, so we are talking about a rise of 2*20 + 5 * 10 = 90 mm , less than 10cm, or for those US-residents - about 3.5 inches.
I am sorry, but something smells fishy here - a place can't be 3.5 inches above water surface and have "rocky shores" which paratroopers can walk on. Consider that a tidal range in those parts is at least a few feet, so those 3.5 inches would have to completely disappear under water once or twice a day. That would make this land a "shoal" by any maritime definition.
If this island no longer exists it is because it has been washed away, as these things often occur, especially in river deltas - perhaps after a cyclone or hurricane. Nothing to see here, move along.
Local weather != global climate.
Remember, while you were shovelling 9 feet of snow, Vancouver had to truck it in for the Olympics and south Alaska was having record highs. (The usual Arctic wind that keeps those places cool got pushed south a lot.)
Admittedly, trying to justify it with everything that happens is moronic. Weather patterns are massively complex. In the end, what you have to look at is the year to year trend, and by that measure, 200X was the hottest decade on record.
Spoken like somebody who has no idea the power that moving water has.
Water takes material from some places and piles it up in others, and it's incredibly hard to dispute with it. You might look at a sandbar that has been stable for decades, and think maybe I could shift it a bit to suit myself, or make it a little higher and have an island. Forget it. That sandbar is the result of self-organized criticality. It *looks* stable, but the individual sand grains in that sandbar are constantly changing.
My wife grew up near the ocean, and there was this semi circular reef extending from two points on the shore that comes out of the water on spring tides, when you can walk the whole thing. Many times I've surfed my kayak over that reef into the deep water inside. The reef consists of cobbles ranging from the size of a grapefruit to the size of a soccer ball. One day one of the neighborhood kids had an idea: if we breech the reef at one point, we'll be able to anchor our boats inside the reef and not have to pay for a slip or launch fees. Next low tide he had the entire neighborhood carrying rocks away from the selected point, until they'd converted the reef into a pair of breakwaters creating an artificial harbor. It was an impressive feat, but the first storm -- not even a *big* storm mind you, and you couldn't tell the spot they excavated from any other spot. There literally was no trace left of their labors.
What you'd have to do with this sunken island is create a new, artificial island using huge granite boulders like they use in breakwaters; or maybe you could set up coffer dams and build a reinforced concrete sea wall. But you have to admit that you're creating an artificial island.
The reason that India and Bangladesh are fighting over this is to establish Law of the Sea rights to the surrounding water. They are trying to evade negotiations over resource disputes by appealing to a "natural" right in artificial law. Using an uninhabited island to establish territorial sovereignty is dicey enough. Using an *artificial* island is clearly absurd.
They should just resolve the underlying dispute, instead of using legal flim-flammery.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There's no "both sides" of the debate. There's the science, which universally points towards global warming (hell, we've even noticed that over the last forty years, migratory birds in the United States have been getting smaller, which is indicative of generally rising temperatures due to Bergmann's rule), and then there's the people with a PR department, who are busy making it look like there's a debate. Even calling it a "global warming debate" is a victory for them, because the evidence for global warming shows up everywhere.