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How To Lead a Nation That's About To Be Swallowed By the Sea
merbs writes: Anote Tong, the president of low-lying Kiribati, has spent nearly a decade trying to save his people from rising sea levels. There's a good chance he will not succeed. This is how he leads a nation that will likely not exist in 100 years. Motherboard reports: "Kiribati’s fate provides a rare glimpse of the future world under climate change. The tiny island nation is the canary in our global coal mine, and it will bear the brunt of climate change more intensely and much sooner than nearly anywhere else. 'We cannot keep doing what we are doing,' Tong said. 'Because we may be on the front line today, but other countries, other societies, other communities will be next.'"
It is not the first time a population has to move because of adverse climate effects. It happened all the time through the history of humanity. The only thing different here, is someone believes we can avoid this by some actions because this is caused by our own actions. As far as I know, no one has proven yet this is actually possible. Our climatic models are overfitting the data and are then poor at predicting the future.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Throughout the history of the Earth, its crust has constantly been recycled. Areas once above the ground and above the sea have descended downward and have been replaced with new land. This will continue to occur. Just as Kiribati and the Maldives are descending into the sea, other islands are being born by volcanoes. The Himalayas were once under water, including the peaks of mountains like Everest, at the bottom of the Tethys Ocean. Sea levels have risen and dropped by over 100 meters in the past. There's evidence that sea level was about 120 meters lower in the last ice age. All of these things have occurred many times in the Earth's past, sometimes rapidly like at the end of the last ice age. I fail to see why things that have occurred naturally throughout the entirety of the Earth's history are a problem. Who cares if Kiribati goes under water? There's plenty of land being created elsewhere on Earth.
I've been to the Netherlands, and I've cycled along the dykes and levies. And they could be built because the coast of the Netherlands is a large intertidal zone which falls dry and gets flooded again during the tide. Even some miles away from the coastal line, the sea is no deeper than ten feet during the flood, and the islands at the dutch coast can be reached by car during the low tide. And it's not a single dyke, it's a whole system of levies and water locks and pumps, reaching several miles into the land.
Kiribati has barely any intertidal zone, and only one larger island (Kirimati). Every other island has less than 10 square miles. There is simply no space at the coast to even built something similar to the dutch coastal protection. With the exception of the vulcan island of Banaba, all other islands have less than five feed elevation above the sea level. There not even enough building material on the islands to construct any levies.
Sure, when you live on an island barely six feet above sea level, passing hurricanes have threatened (and have succeeded in the past) to wipe these islands clean. But the threat of sea level changes, which have been slowly rising since the last Ice Age, is moot because, in recent times, most of these Pacific atolls have grown in size, due to increasing biomass of growing coral.
http://news.nationalgeographic...
Cutting emissions, IMHO, will have no observable effect on these islands. But I can't blame the natives, though, for trying to get the rich nations of the world to give them free transport to higher and safer havens.
The Island are Atolls, they are made of coral sand, so the harsh reality is the coral reef is the levies. When the coral reefs are healthy, the Parrotfish grind up the coral into coral sand which is then washed up on the atoll. This with wind and wave erosion results in an auto-regulation, the atoll stays a few meters above sea level as the sea level raises and lowers. When the Atolls population increases pollution and over fishing pushes the reefs into an unhealthy state and the replenishment of eroded sand decreases and the atoll shrinks. Humans as dig water wells and as fresh water is used the ground subsides.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Another one of you. You think Kiribati residents will just stand there as the water rises over the years and in 50 or 100 years it will be over their heads and they will drown. Is it just Kiribati residents you think are that stupid? Or do you also look down on other people based on their race or nationality?
It's worse than that. Actual measurements show the islands are growing not shrinking.
It's all just an attempt to extort money based on lies.
However the bleeding hearts just never bother to do any actual research.. They just want to feel self important by 'supporting the cause'.