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Five Solomon Islands Disappear Into The Pacific Ocean As A Result Of Climate Change (go.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Climate change strikes again. A paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters says five of the Solomon Islands have completely submerged underwater due to man-made climate change, and six more have experienced a dramatic reduction in shoreline. The Solomon Islands has a population of a little more than 500,000 people, many of whom have been adversely affected by rising sea levels in recent years. NASA scientist James Hansen estimated that seas could rise by seven meters within the next century. In 2014, Losing Ground issued a report that shows how large areas of the Louisiana coastline are being lost to rising sea levels. A 2011 study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey determined that the state's wetlands were being lost at a rate of "a football field per hour." Michael Edison Hayden writes from ABC News, "The Solomon Islands provides a preview of how sea-level rise could affect other coastal communities in the coming years, according to the study, largely because the speed which erosion is taking place has been accelerated by a "synergistic interaction" with the waves that surround it.

14 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. Re:SAVE THE BAGS by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How about just pricing fossil fuels to take into account extant and future climate change, and then let the market find the solution? Is the market capable of finding solutions to finite and/or expensive resources or not?

    --
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  2. Re:Except it's not actual sea level rise... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Get your big-oil "facts" out of our two minutes of hate orgy that passes for "modern science"!!

  3. did sea level rise only on that part of ocean? by sittingnut · · Score: 2, Insightful

    and how much did the sea level rise?
    to say whole islands and coastlines that were permanently above(not land that go below due to tides and seasonal weather for instance) are now below sea through rise of sea level(instead of soil erosion, effect of currents, artificial land/jetty creation, volcanic activity, etc ) means sea level must have risen considerable number of centimeters.

    if sea level rose uniformly (and it must), coastline should be lost on all parts of the world to similar significant extent, and this needs be observed more broadly.

    -
    i live on the sea shore in tropics, for very long time, i for one don't see any change whatever . but it is not scientific to generalize from my experience, nor should we generalize from isolated observations, about a phenomenon, which if true, should be observed more generally.

  4. Re:Lies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...five of the Solomon Islands have completely submerged underwater due to man-made climate change...

    That's a bold-faced lie. The total global sea level rise since 1880 is less than 25 cm (10 inches), according to the EPA. The natural tidal range of the oceans is of the order of one metre (several feet). Any island that has "submerged" during that time period did so primarily because of other factors, such as the ground subsiding, or erosion driven by the wind and the waves.

    This is especially obvious when you consider that anthropogenic global warming is not believed to have reached significant levels until around 1950 (if then).

    As for houses washing away and such - any land that can be "submerged" solely by a sea level change of 25 cm was already getting scoured regularly by waves, storm surges, etc.

    Read the paper. It is short, linked, and not technical.

    They aren't claiming that the island got submerged due to sea level changes. They are claiming that it got eroded.

    As sea levels go up, erosion (in the form of waves) gets worse. They claim that the increased erosion has completed wiped out the islands. This is a separate effect from your silly claim of a lie. You can read the paper for how they try and separate the erosion from other effects like El Nino and tides.

  5. Global warming hysteria by p51d007 · · Score: 0, Insightful

    How many hundreds or thousands of islands appeared and disappeared on this planet, LONG BEFORE man even set foot on it? The islands in the ring of fire have been coming and going for centuries, but with the DOPES in the world who actually believe this "man made" global warming crap, they are easier to control thinking their even breathing is causing ice to melt, polar bears to drown (because of the ice melting)...they can be told how to act/live, which is the entire desire of this garbage.

  6. Re:Lies by legRoom · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They are claiming that it got eroded, and that it wouldn't have if the sea level were a tiny bit lower. There is no way they can know that, especially since the actual sea level rise-to-date which is possibly attributable to AGW is more like 2 cm, not 25 cm.

    This is a separate effect from your silly claim of a lie.

    The statement in the summary, at least, is a lie because they are asserting a definitive cause-and-effect relationship where there is - at best - an unprovable possibility of one, rather than actual solid evidence for one. The claim is being sensationalized.

  7. You are free to disbelieve. by EzInKy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Still, the evidence was presented. The cost of denial is upon you, you pick wrong you pay. My money is going to investment into Appalachian Ocean Front properties.

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    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
  8. Mitigation by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You're either underestimating the future change or overestimating the past change. Generally there isn't a goal temperature/CO2 level, just a pre-industrial baseline. We've already done enough to change the planet drastically. At this point we're just hoping that we don't continue to make things worse. At this point, we're still emitting ever-greater amounts of carbon year after year. At what point do you imagine that we should maybe dial back the things that we know raise the equilibrium temperature of the Earth? How quickly do you think plants and animals can adapt to 3-5 degrees of global temperature change? Because it looks like people would rather find out the answer to these things by massive uncontrolled experiment rather than simulation at this point. Buckle up.

    --
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  9. Re:SAVE THE BAGS by dcooper_db9 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    no one in the gubmint got their hands dirty supplying oil

    Are you joking? Did you not see the price tag on the second gulf war?

    --
    I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
  10. Re:SAVE THE BAGS by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Gasoline Retailer $.01 cents per gallon

    Within 5 miles of my house, gas prices vary by 40 cents per gallon (Chevron is the highest, Rotten Robbie is the lowest). So there is no way that the retail margin is only 1 cent.

  11. Re:subduction, try it, its free! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So you have some actual evidence that these islands sinking is due to subduction, right? As well as evidence that there is no sea level rise, right?

    There is plenty of evidence that sea levels are rising ... by about 2.5mm per year, or about an inch per decade. There is no way that is enough to "sink an island". This article is the kind of stupid over-the-top alarmism that drives more people into the denialist camp.

    Climate change is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, but it is not an imminent crisis. We don't need lies and hyperbolic exaggerations to scare people into taking action. That is counter-productive, and just leads to crisis-fatigue and loss of credibility. Nothing did more damage to the credibility of climate scientists than the wild exaggerations in the 2007 IPCC report, and this is just more of the same garbage.

  12. Re:Lies by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Notice the operative words there: "can", "may be", and "further work is required". They don't actually have anything to say on the subject - that is, on the causal connection between sea level rise and increased wave erosion - other than "maybe you should read these other guys' papers" and "give us money and we'll write something too". But, they decided to name their paper after it anyway, and the media ran with it.

    This is how science works. You don't start from scratch every time, proving basic physics and maths until you build up to your main point. You base your work on the work of others, building on it to advance the field. You avoid making definite statements when you can't be entirely sure, but suggest promising areas of further work.

    I agree that the media has puffed this up into more than the paper warrants, but the paper itself is perfectly fine. You use a lot of weasel words and make baseless accusations, like saying they chose to focus on the islands that shrank as if it's part of some sinister plot to prove AGW is bad, when actually it was just the focus of the study. Not every study has to be a holistic review of all possible related issues, you know.

    --
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  13. Re:subduction, try it, its free! by rworne · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's another, easier answer:

    Erosion due to weather, wave, and tidal activity. This can be quite fast compared to the glacial rise of the sea level or tectonic plate movement.

    From the paper in question:

    Using time series aerial and satellite imagery from 1947 to 2014 of 33 islands, along with historical insight from local knowledge, we have identified five vegetated reef islands that have vanished over this time period and a further six islands experiencing severe shoreline recession

    Reef islands? These are formed by coral that do not grow above the surface of the water. It's the sand and other junk that pile up on these reef islands that has washed/eroded away.

    From Wikipedia (Solomon Islands):

    while many of the smaller islands are simply tiny atolls covered in sand and palm trees.

    I suppose mentioning that would be counterproductive to the scare-mongering.

    --
    I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
  14. Efficient markets are not idiotic by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm not sure why you accuse this of being thoughtless.
    This is the classical "efficient market" approach to a problem of consequences: the people who cause the consequences should pay the cost of those consequences. Classical economics argues that markets are inefficient when a person (or corporation) can gain benefits from an action, but somebody else pays the cost.
    So, if carbon dioxide emission has a cost, in terms of effects of global warming, the efficient market solution would be that the people emitting carbon dioxide should pay that cost, and hence allowing them to adjust their usage in such a way as to incorporate the consequences.

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    http://www.geoffreylandis.com