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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.'"
Why can't they just build levies around the island an canals.
Because they are a tiny little nation, and they cannot muster the resources. The smaller the nation, the larger the ratio of coastline to area...
Other countries build entire islands so it shouldn't be impossible.
Very large countries build very small islands. Their whole nation is a very small island. Actually, it's way worse than that; their nation is a collection of small islands. They would have to build a whole lot of walls, and they don't have a whole lot of mass to build them with.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level: Christmas Island I
Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level: Christmas Island II
Spot the clear blub blub trend, Try hard. ~1mm rise per year. Maybe.
Meanwhile a typhoon could arrive next year with a 8 foot storm surge that swamps the atolls completely.
DISCLAIMER: Grew up in the Caribbean, nailed doors shut from the inside and held on tight for Hugo and Marilyn. People died. '~1mm/yr climate refugees' on a coral atoll really sound like whiny scammers to me. In terms of threat level it's like that movie, Frogs.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
I guess Caligula had it right, he was just 2000 years ahead of his time.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I believe we should be acting on the best scientific information we have.
I couldn't agree more. We should act on scientific information, not the politics of wealth and not the politics of guilt. And the science should itself remain independent and untainted by politics (otherwise it isn't really science).
I am willing to accept whatever unbiased science tells me. If I don't like that answer, too bad for me. It is what it is.
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.
Not only that. The Dutch system of coastal protection got built over centuries, and much of it in the 20th century, when the country, i.e. the state, finally came into some money. Even then, to build the system out to its current, world-class level, the state had to borrow enormous amounts of money, the last of which was only recently paid back. And this was a prosperous, fully industrialized country. Until the dawn of the 20th century BTW, and even during it, there were regular and major floods, with sometimes 1000s of casulties, in spite of the coastal protection already in place. The last of these floods took place after World War II. Disclaimer: I am Dutch.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Why not just be honest and say "Why does the Kiribati's problem take precedence over the American who wants a bigger SUV to tow his boat down his vacation home on the man-made lake so he can fish for trophies?"
You are welcome on my lawn.
There's a vacant house across the street form me in Wisconsin.
Sneaky, very very sneaky. US are tending (wonderful wishy washy word that) down from a peak well and truly above what other countries are barely starting to catch up to and not to forget the US outsources a lot of it's pollution to other countries, the US gets the products and they get shit wages, very bad working conditions and uncontrolled pollution but of course that is their governments fault. This ignoring the US standard invade and conquer if you refuse to sell your resources for funny money and provide working in poverty labour.
So semi floating cities in tsunami and tropical cyclone zone, well, I suppose that will work for as long as it works right up until the first major tsunami or tropical cyclone and the millions or mourners point it out as a really bad idea.
The only sound thing they can do is establish a treaty with another country to accept those people as citizens and establish a trust for them, based around trading off access to the fishing and mining resources, via that country to commercial players.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Can someone please translate this sentence into English for me? What is the "reverse" of "no effect whatsoever"?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Trends don't tell the complete story. I'm guessing you know that.
Imagine I weighed 700 pounds and last year I consumed an average of 5,000 calories a day. This year I cut that back to 4,800. The trend is down. My neighbor weighs 180 pounds and last year he consumed 2,700 calories a day. This year he consumed 2,800.
Yes, I'm heading in the right direction while my neighbor is not, but it's easy to see that I've got a much more serious problem than he does. The trend matters but what also matters is whether change is happening quick enough.
To answer your question, I think the US has made some strides but has a long way to go. In 40 or 50 years we are likely to still be be producing dangerous amounts of CO2. So, yes we will still be to blame, as will China and any number of other countries. Perhaps that won't be true.
I agree that taking responsibility is more effective than blame. As far as productive things to do go, a number of years ago I left my job and started working for an organization that does energy efficiency research.
What have you done?