Slashdot Mirror
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.
A federal court has ruled that the Obama White House was stonewalling in its refusal to turn over global warming documents requested under the Freedom of Information law
The judge also ruled that they will now proceed with “discovery”, in which the courts will force the administration to release documents, under penalty of contempt.
The article also notes that this is the third time the courts have been forced to go this route with the Obama administration.
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?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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?
I mean, you wouldn't just be making this up because you have an infantile attitude towards life and are too much of a coward to ponder that maybe ,just maybe, the universe doesn't care about your tender little feelings.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
...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.
Not climate change.
"Ten houses from one island were washed away at sea between 2011 and 2014"
Oddly enough, the Solomon Islands were struck by Tropical Cyclone Freda in 2012. What a coincidence. And they've lost five low-lying reef islands in the last 70 or so years. Out of ten THOUSAND islands in the Solomons.
Here's part of the paper's abstract:555
"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. Shoreline recession at two sites has
destroyed villages that have existed since at least 1935, leading to community relocations. Rates of
shoreline recession are substantially higher in areas exposed to high wave energy, indicating a
synergistic interaction between sea-level rise and waves. Understanding these local factors that
increase the susceptibility of islands to coastal erosion is critical to guide adaptation responses for these
remote Pacific communities."
Actual story: "People built houses near the beach on islands that were being washed away in the first place, and we're going to blame it on the SIX INCHES of global sea level rise since the mid-1930s."
They also casually toss in the fact that the Solomons are very geologically active, and a lot of the sea level rise they refer to is RELATIVE sea level rise - in other words, the water didn't rise, the land sank - often by as much as three times the amount of actual sea level rise over time.
I think the idea is that it's a tax, which goes into a fund to ameliorate climate change effects. Doesn't help the oil companies (unless you count preventing them from being sued for climate change because it's now out of their hands). Sucks for energy availability to the poor though. I wonder what fifty years of suffering through that would do to our infrastructure though. Mass deaths? Cheap and ubiquitous mass transit and subsidized heat efficiency improvements to housing?
You freakin' conservative wack job. Obama has nothing to hide when he refuses to release public funded studies. And Hillary had nothing to hide when she deleted all of those emails from the server that she wasn't allowed to use. And Obama was just showing his love for this country when he released all of those dangerous terrorists back to the mid-east, and when he releases all of those felons, including murders, from federal prisons, and didn't even deport the illegals.
Put back on your tinfoil hat. Clearly there is nothing to see here.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
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.
did he say that ALL the profit should go to the oil companies?
of course, they own the congress and no one says anything bad about our FRIENDS, the texans (even if not from texas).
but I could imagine pricing fuel so that it motivates everyone to find better choices; and the excess should go into REBUILDING our infrastructure.
how's that for a plan?
nah, would never work. sounds too much like that word that the R's hate that starts with an S.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The erosion in coastal Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi River *is* man-made, but not attributable to climate change.
As the Mississippi river was "controlled" for flood prevention and shipping, less and less sediment from upstream flooding and erosion has been available to replenish the delta at the river outflow. That is why the coast is eroding
It appears from the PDF that most of the island area that disappeared did so between 1947-1962. If it is accelerating, the data presented seem inadequate to show it.
Based upon a $3.00 gallon of gasoline, the average break-down is as follows.
Gasoline Retailer $.01 cents per gallon
Oil Company $.08 cents per gallon
Refining $.29 cents per gallon
Marketing/Distribution $.32 cents per gallon
Cost of crude $1.71 per gallon (delivered)
Taxes $.59 cents per gallon - no one in the gubmint got their hands dirty supplying oil but they take the lion's share.
Who is gouging who?
The idea is that if you increase the taxes on something that's destroying our planet, the green alternatives will become cheaper than oil by default and people will be forced to make the right choice.
I wonder this every day. I believe we are warming up the earth sure, but it also naturally goes through changes. It seems to me like climate change people are more concerned with keeping it exactly as it is right this moment (i guess more like 100 years ago) instead of actual climate change. I find it insane to think that the earths climate needs to stay exactly as it is now to suit our needs, when it hasnt even been stable in human history.
"How about just pricing fossil fuels to take into account extant and future climate change"
One approach could be to tariff imported oil to keep the gasoline price in the US at, say, $3.50/gal. If a Republican is elected this year, we can include Canadian production in the 'domestic' side of the tariff area. This will cause several good things to happen at once, videlicet:
1. The Ay-rab world is screwed and will go bankrupt. Good riddance as funding for international terrorism disappears.
2. Domestic oil production is encouraged, and employment in the oil patch maintained.
3. A somewhat higher but stable gas price encourages electric vehicle proliferation.
4. The revenue can be earmarked for carbon-free energy independence infrastructure. Our Navajo would no longer have to sell most of their uranium to France.
5. If we can replace enough domestic oil usage with carbon-free energy, we might even export domestic oil. Everybody wins except for OPEC.
Not even that fortunately.
Read the article, the summary is a bald faced lie.
In fact, the total land area of the Solomons is growing relatively quickly, there are a few exceptions, which are
basically old unstable low lying reefs that were washed away in a couple of major tropical cyclones, which is
very normal. They are selectively reporting a very few examples where it is not..
Add to that a couple of islands where, due to human pollution the coral has experience die back (remember, many
of these islands are natural growing coral, when it dies, they erode away..)
Its actually quite impressive that the total land area is growing..
Of course that doesn't suit certain political agendas, and doesn't generate free money (aid..), so....
Tariffs.
You, a sovereign state, can't force the oil companies to charge more, but you can raise the tariffs on them. Then the oil companies don't get more money per barrel, but you do.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I had a feeling the ACs weren't going to like this story one bit. No sirree. You can't pull any of that climate change nonsense over their eyes. They're too smart for that.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Apart from the cost of buying the car itself, the green alternatives are usually barely more expensive than fossil fuels. And for electric cars, they're cheaper in the long run.
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.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
No worries then B-)
What a relief!!
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
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.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Australia briefly introduced a carbon tax, some of which went to the poor and elderly whose portion of daily living costs towards energy was so significant that their quality of live would be significantly effected. Carbon emissions went down and the economy was stimulated by R&D in high-tech renewable energy - solar, wind, nuclear, etc.
The situation, of course, did not last long. Rupert Murdoch and his friends went hard against it in the media. When laws forced them to provide balanced points of view, social engineering was used - flooding the comments section with "anonymous" contrarian opinions and "misinformed" data. They got their preferred oil-interest backed party back into power, who, it seems, successfully argued that wind-mills are utterly offensive while coal is as good for humanity today, as it was at the start of the industrial revolution.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
This is going to be hard for you to accept, but you got modded down because you said something stupid, and may, in fact, be an idiot.
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.
Everybody jumps on the global warming bandwagon yet ignores the fact that the earth's crust isn't solid.. its in motion (though very very slowly)
You can't just inject sea-level global warming without acknowledging that the sea-bed is moving. Even the most junior geologist knows how the Hawaiian islands are built and fade over time....
Peace out.
https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/HCV/haw_formation.html
I don't know where you got those figures, but the retailer makes more than $.01 per gallon. In 1972 the gas station I worked at made about $.05 per gallon on regular and that was when prices at ~$.38 ish cents per gallon (~ $1.40 now). I doubt they make less than that now.
Based upon a $3.00 gallon of gasoline, the average break-down is as follows.
Gasoline Retailer $.01 cents per gallon Oil Company $.08 cents per gallon Refining $.29 cents per gallon Marketing/Distribution $.32 cents per gallon Cost of crude $1.71 per gallon (delivered)
Taxes $.59 cents per gallon - no one in the gubmint got their hands dirty supplying oil but they take the lion's share.
Who is gouging who?
I work in the oil industry providing logistics software as a service. Let me reformat your list, again based on $3.00 per gallon of gasoline (your numbers are off but they're mostly besides the point):
$0.01 per gallon Gasoline retailer
$0.08 per gallon Oil company
$0.29 per gallon Oil company (refining)
$0.32 per gallon Oil company (marketing and distribution)
$1.71 per gallon Oil company (crude extraction and delivery)
$0.59 per gallon taxes
Totals:
$2.40 per gallon Oil company
$0.59 per gallon Taxes (seems like a good price for the roads and infrastructure and environmental cleanups involved, no?)
$0.01 per gallon Gasoline retailer
And at every step of the way, the oil companies push off every last inch of risk and liability they can, but hook and by crook, on whomever they can force it.
You, sir, are ignorant and a fool. And spewing your ignorance and foolishness all over the 'net is a detriment to us all.
British Columbia has one now that's been quite successful: "We've grown our economy at the same time we've had what the World Bank calls the most successful carbon taxes in the world." - http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Until recently, I was your typical far-right climate change skeptic. After seeing for myself the changes in places I once lived, speaking with people from around the world who have seen the changes first hand, evaluating the data for myself (I'm a healthy skeptic).
What's not being discussed is Africa. The water shortage in Africa is becoming a real problem. Wars are on the verge of happening because of water shortages. I lived on a certain island for years, and as a child, it never got above 80 in the summer or below 40 in the winter. Now? Routinely over 90 in the summer, with the warmer months three months longer. The people there are losing flora, the animals are having issues dealing with the newer temperatures since the mid-late 80s. It's real. Things like this are happening all over the world. The Pacific Ocean is losing it's oxygen levels because of the rise in sea temperatures. This is starting to happen in the southern Atlantic, which in turn affects the Gulf Stream, which affects fishing, currents, people's lives.
Nah, just back to $100 a barrel is fine. That way the places that are warm year around (which coincidentally happen to be oil producing regions) don't have any short falls.
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.
How stupid. That HURT the supply of oil. Obviously. If Dubya had put his arm around Saddam after 9/11, we'd have been awash in oil without spending a dime, and we'd have had an enormously more effective ally against Al Qaeda.
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.
To my knowledge no AC has ever denied the existence of "climate change".
The climate has never not been changing.
Try using a term that actually describes what you're talking about,
Hog Island, New York - I'll be amazed if any of the Man Made climate change folks knew about it before frantically googling it.
The climate is changing. Eventually we'll lose Lake Michigan because the topology of the area will continue to revert to pre ice age conditions. I won't be alive when Illinois is tropical again. Growing up in Lockport , Illinois and seeing the shale with fossils embedded sorta made me look farther than less than 50 years of data.
But I'm silly that way :)
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Number 1 is already happening:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/1...
Saudi Arabia just made major replacements in it's government to deal with the collapsing income crisis.
Most oil countries based their economy on $100 or higher oil prices and their citizens do not want to give up the perks now that it is in the $40s.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Bullshit
I don't think anyone has seen the final sticker price for that.
So you have some actual evidence that these islands sinking is due to subduction, right?
I don't think he needs it. According to the most alarming numbers, sea levels have risen some 10 cm in the past century. If we have already lost three islands to increased sea level, those islands would have to be on average 10 cm tall or so. Even assuming that the rise in sea level has strong local variations, we're talking about some really flat islands here.
In most places I've been to around the Pacific, the tide variation is more than 10 cm. So, how do we know that these islands are primarily sinking due to subduction? Easy. Here's how we know that they are gone because of rising sea levels. if the islands, 100 years ago, were under water every time the tide was high, and now are under water permanently, it is possible (but not demonstrated) that the islands are gone due to rising sea levels. If the islands were permanently dry, and they were significantly taller than 10 cm 100 years ago, then we know that their "disappearance" is due to subduction since it couldn't be cause by rising sea levels.
The goal of war is not to improve the supply of oil, it's to profit. Halliburton and many others made their money from contracts they'd never have gotten without the war.
This space intentionally left blank
Does the retailer or the oil company set the price? Where I am, all gas stations go up and down in price in lock step and talking to the cashiers, they get a phone call that sets the price.
It would be nice to have some actual competition instead of the most expensive gas in N. America, but at least locally, the independent gas station is dead and the 5 or 6 oil companies don't seem to have any interest in competing, at least in gasoline sales. Diesel does vary and all gas stations sell junk food which is where they make their money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
That, by definition, is in no way related to the Market.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
As much as it pains me to do this, your assertions are so one sided that I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask you to provide as least a suggestion of where you got these numbers.
Because as we all know, ACs can make up whatever shit they want.
Look up the terminal gate price. You'll be amazed at just how many companies take a loss in retail and move those accounting figures around. Now this may not be the case ink the USA but certainly in all the parts of the world I've lived in the margains were indeed razor thin and boosted by ludicrously overpriced "additional services and products" such as a service garage or my favourite the stat that BP is the largest coffee provider in New Zealand and that coffee is by an order of magnitude the largest margain item at a service station.
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?
With a sea rise of (best case) 2.5mm/year, I really have to ask - how short do you think these islands were?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
It may well be treated as a loss-leader, cheap gasoline, expensive everything else.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Tells you all to shut up about "climate change" or he'll hit you in the head with a snowball. The Bible says that mankind has been given domain over the planet, it's ours to do what we want to with and nothing we can possibly do can possibly mess it up. Even if it does, Jesus will fly in and save us all anyway. /sarcasm
Already done by most first-world countries.
It's GBP 1.20 per litre, here in the UK. Do the conversion and exchange - that's about $6.5 per gallon.
"no one in the gubmint got their hands dirty supplying oil but they take the lion's share"
How much does it cost to subsidize the entire road infrastructure of the country?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Say what?
Bob Hawke and Jay Weatherill want to build a nuclear waste dump but there's no suggestion in the report released on Friday that there's any urgency to embrace nuclear power. The NIMBYs have killed that idea stone cold except for a few maverick Liberals.
Dr James Jansson of the Science Party is the only one seriously floating nuclear technology as a climate change busting option in this forthcoming election. I'm hardly pro-nuke but I welcome his pragmatic boldness on the matter - having Nick X and the black wiggle holding the balance of power isn't necessarily optimal; the more diversity of opinion in the senate the merrier.
I use a whike, you insensitive clod!
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
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:
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):
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
My aunt went on a diet but, like so many, she didn't lose much weight and regained what little she did - based on your logic, I can therefore conclude that losing weight was never the intention of going on a diet.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Generally speaking the green alternatives are actually cheaper in many cases.
In fact - you don't know how much cheaper.
My father is an electrical engineer - he is actually encouraging people now to BORROW money to go full solar - because the gains are so big that even while paying interest on the capital outlay you are still making a profit compared to remaining on the coal grid. It's a fairly complicated set of equations -starting with a highly conservative estimate of a mere 10% per annum increase in the coal electricity price (it's been consistently higher than that for years). A consideration of likely interest rates on a 20-year loan for the typical cost of a full solar+battery setup on a home and the monthly repayments. By year 5 the solar savings exceed the repayments. By year 7 (again conservative as they are actually rated for 10 years) you need to replace the batteries but you've already saved more than they cost (assuming less than half the annual decreases in costs that have been the trend so far). Etc. etc. etc.
Oh and the calculation assumes no solar subsidies at all (they don't exist here, they used to exist for solar water heaters but those ended last year)
NOTE: These calculations were done in South Africa - they may not be true in your specific country, the cost of local grid power varies widely and will influence the math and timelines - they are merely given to illustrate how competitive green tech can actually be.
For large scale central grid generation green energy can also be more economic. Again - in South Africa the government is currently trying to negotiate a deal (with the builders of Chernobyl of all companies) to build 5 new nuclear generators. The 5 nukes are estimated to reach completion in 20 years and cost 15 billion dollars - each. That's 20 years before the first one comes online and due to the high cost we can only afford it if we build them in series (i.e. we'll be busy building nukes for the next 100 years)
No nuke in history has ever been finished on time or on budget and there are strong economic arguments that it's actually impossible to do so - but let's be generous and assume that they can manage it. How would it compare if we were to build equivalent large solar installations (maybe using molten salt towers as those are better for grid power since they operate at night as well) ? Building a decent sized molten salt tower takes about 2 years, costing maybe 1 billion. You can build multiple in parallel. To get the same output as all 5 nukes would give us in a century would cost maybe 12-billion (less than one nuke) and we can have them all by 2018...
And that's nuclear, probably the most cost effective and least harmful fossil fuel there is (to the extent that uranium can be called a fossil fuel).
The reality is that fossil fuels have been outdone in both economic and technological terms for a long while now - it's political corruption and nothing else that keeps it entrenched.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Hog Island, New York - I'll be amazed if any of the Man Made climate change folks knew about it before frantically googling it.
The climate is changing. Eventually we'll lose Lake Michigan because the topology of the area will continue to revert to pre ice age conditions. I won't be alive when Illinois is tropical again. Growing up in Lockport , Illinois and seeing the shale with fossils embedded sorta made me look farther than less than 50 years of data.
But I'm silly that way :)
You should share this groundbreaking insight with the worlds scientists, they have overlooked this completely, good thing you didn't.
The goal of war is not to improve the supply of oil, it's to profit. Halliburton and many others made their money from contracts they'd never have gotten without the war.
Ah yes, because the Cabal doesn't mind killing off thousands of young soldiers, and injuring thousands more. We hear this rhetoric frequently, but nobody seems to be able to point a finger at who these mysterious bastards are. Can you?
Disclaimer: Certainly there are plenty of companies that profit off of war. I've worked in/around them (including being heavily involved in bidding on contracts), for nearly 40 yrs., and never come across anyone pushing for a conflict in order to make more profits, nor doing anything that would intentionally cause a soldier (on our side) harm.
Just another day in Paradise
Just because your country decided to tax fuel more than ours does doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to complain about our own.
As for your suggestion that we walk more, there are no homes within walking distance of my office (and fwiw, I walked an hours just for the exercise yesterday). The U.S. is vastly more spread out than the U.K., so please stop trying to make a comparison...it's apples vs. oranges. We're not going to rebuild our entire infrastructure, and in many places you can't find affordable housing near work. In the DC area, many people commute for more than an hour because ... traffic sucks here, and the cost of housing is much cheaper 20+ miles out, so sure tax the people who can't afford to live closer more.
Just another day in Paradise
Ok, so here is what to expect from the right wing. Those five islands have not submerged. You just can't see them because Satan is blocking your vision. Besides, you are not a scientist so who are you to tell me those islands submerged? It's just a scheme to cover up Obama's real place of birth!
As long as the latitude of Lake Michigan does not change magically, it never will be tropical.
Regardless of global warming you will have occasionally a harsh winter.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It is. Most retail stations make more on pop, coffee, and hot dogs than they do on gas.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Lets see them deny the impact of climate change as their standing knee deep on what was once an island.
Life is good by the Beach... (my house is presently 16ft above sea level)
Bullshit
Mic drop. Case closed. I just don't see how you can possibly argue with such science based discourse.
Also, the article says that it was due to erosion. Has there been increased wave and current action due to the mythical AGW?
When the lead-in inflammatory comment is the sarcasm flag...
but nobody seems to be able to point a finger at who these mysterious bastards are.
But since they most definitely have (hell, these guys tend to brazenly out themselves), I have to call bullshit on your blatant attempt to frame the debate.
Really, should you be so quick to out yourself as a shill like that?)
Forests burned before man existed. Therefore arsonists don't exist.
Sea level rise has been about 8 inches in the last 100 years.
It sounds like these islands would be barely above water on a calm day, and any day with any wave-action would submerge them every few seconds anyway.
But it sounds better than "5 reefs, usually only 10 inches below the surface of the ocean 100 years ago, are now under almost 20 inches of water!", which I'm sure a generally true condition somewhere in the Solomons, too.
To my knowledge no AC has ever denied the existence of "climate change".
That's an impressively large body of "knowledge" you've got there..
The final drainage of Lake Agassiz contributed an estimated 1 to 3 meters to total post-glacial global sea level rise. Much of the final drainage may have occurred in a very short time, in two or one events, perhaps taking as short as a year.
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.
That fluctuation in price may very well have to do with the cost of the location. If you're across the street from a very busy mall then your real estate prices will be higher. The margin is so razor thin that many mom and pop gas stations in California offer a cash discount because the 1-2% credit card fees really eat into their margins.
What was the maximum altitude of the 5 lost islands prior to them submerging? What effects did wave erosion have on the islands? How deeply submerged are the islands?
linquendum tondere
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.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
These are nations whose warmaking power, conventional or terroristic, is purely dependent on their oil revenues. Take away most of that revenue, and they have to spend what they have left on scrambling for basic supplies, rather than anything resembling WW III.
It will drive more people towards more efficient means of commuting. Whether it be more fuel efficient cars, electric cars, public transit, or decreasing the length of the commute by moving closer to work or finding a job closer to them, or may be even further encouragement for remote working.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
I have now read the entire paper. It is true that it does not ever directly attribute the sea level rise in the Solomon Islands to AGW. (The linked ABC news article does though - surely the scientists will be publicly denouncing the media's gross distortion of their claims any minute now... ?)
On the other hand, the premise of the paper is that sea level rise is responsible for significant loss of land area in the Solomon Islands (and the authors worked very hard to connect sea level rise to AGW at every opportunity, even though they didn't quite come out and say that AGW has actually caused any sea level rise yet).
That's a problem, because nowhere in their paper (that I could find, anyway) do they actually offer any evidence that the local sea level rise experienced by the Solomon Islands contributed meaningfully to the loss. They point out several other factors that likely dominated, one of which was erosion by wave action. They then attempt to connect this back to AGW with the following statement:
Wave energy can interact synergistically with localised sea-level rise (through changing wave refraction dynamics and more wave energy propagating across reef crest onto the coast) to exacerbate coastal erosion (Storlazzi et al 2015) and thus may be a key driver of the rapid coastal recession in the Solomon Islands. Further work is required to determine the relative importance of extreme wave events or incremental changes in incident wave energy and their interactions with sea-level on shoreline dynamics of islands.
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.
The main actual content of the study - once all of the background material and discussion is filtered out - is basically just:
1) Some statistics about the rates of erosion and accretion on various islands in the Central Pacific, including the Solomon Islands.
2) More statistics about the atmospheric and oceanic conditions over time around those islands - much of which was extrapolated, not measured.
3) A few anecdotes about communities that need to relocate - all of whom, from the sound of it, were in poor locations to begin with.
As someone else pointed out, the last graph clearly shows (if you know how to read the axes, anyway), that there was a net increase in land area for the islands chains studied; the authors simply chose to focus upon a specific few tiny islands that shrank.
That's how grant applications work these days. Mentioning a connection to AGW means more publicity and more potential grants and other research funds. Academia has been biased for a long time towards whatever topics will garner research grant dollars. That's not saying academics are selling out and falsifying their research, but that they have been pushed towards selecting paper topics that will get grant money which often does mean stretching to connect research with popular topics like AGW.
That sounds like a plan ... but the market value for 1-5ha reef islands washing away is pretty close to zero.
Ugh, another goon who gets all of their news from the internet. Gasoline is a futures market; by the time it hits the retailers storage tank what they paid for it is so far removed from the current market price that is almost no correlation with crude oil. Yet if you looked at the prices side by side historically they appear to be tied together even though it takes a refinery two to three weeks to break a barrel of crude into useful products. That is because you are not being charged based on what it cost the gas station to get what they have. You are being charged based on what it would cost the station to replace that amount if they had to purchase it again that same day. Think about it, how often do you see the price of gasoline change at a station? Like eight to ten times a week? How often do you think that delivery truck stops by to fill the tanks, maybe once a week give or take based on location? Don't get me wrong, gas isn't some power house profit center. I am all too aware that it cannot compete with the kind of markup you get with coffee, energy drinks or junk food. But the crap about them only making one cent on each gallon was basically propaganda so that red necks would stop torching gas stations.
Why are we talking about gasoline and oil company profits anyway? Although the demand will always be there, gas is not, was not and has never been the most profitable part of a barrel of oil in terms of profit per unit of input. It's almost regarded as a waste product, and you see this periodically when refineries need to make room for other products and so they flood the market; name one other commodity that behaves like that. Oil companies will make literally any other product they can rather than waste it on producing gas.
Ok, they know, the islands slowly went under — that is quite observable.
How do they know, it happened "due to man-made climate change"? Tasmania, for example, became an island about 10 years ago — was that due to humanity's activities too? Some shamans of the times, probably, said so... Kodiak islands used to be connected to Alaska (either by land or by ice-fields) recently enough for Kodiak bears to be genetically close to other grizzlies, but long enough ago for them to qualify for being subspecies today. Do we blame humanity inventing fire for that?
There are vast ancient cities underwater. Some of them submerged rapidly due to earthquakes, for others the explanation is not so obvious — but tectonic changes (slow or rapid) are most likely to blame.
What makes us so sure about these 5 islands?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Australia briefly introduced a carbon tax, some of which went to the poor and elderly whose portion of daily living costs towards energy was so significant that their quality of live would be significantly effected. Carbon emissions went down and the economy was stimulated by R&D in high-tech renewable energy - solar, wind, nuclear, etc.
The situation, of course, did not last long. Rupert Murdoch and his friends went hard against it in the media. When laws forced them to provide balanced points of view, social engineering was used - flooding the comments section with "anonymous" contrarian opinions and "misinformed" data. They got their preferred oil-interest backed party back into power, who, it seems, successfully argued that wind-mills are utterly offensive while coal is as good for humanity today, as it was at the start of the industrial revolution.
Carbon taxes are similar to other 'sin' taxes on things like tobacco and alcohol. The major difference being that EVERYBODY gets hit by a carbon tax. Everything from the cost of shipping food to your grocery store, to the cost of getting yourself to the store and back again to the cost of keeping your lights on and house cool/warm.
Sure, increasing the cost on something will lower usage. Let's also be honest though, governments around the world have almost zero interest in the curbing of emissions. The carrot for them is another means of taxing their people which means another level of wealth redistribution that they control and it's that control which has everyone lining up to support this 'solution'.
The US EIA doesn't break down the costs to sufficient detail. The Association for Convenience and Fuel Retailing claims that the markup on a gallon of gas is approximately 2 to 3 cents per gallon averaged over a five year period across all retail outlets. Even so, that 2-3 percent markup is not profit. The retailer still has to cover utilities, staff, rent, etc.
It's unusual for gas prices to consistently vary by 40 cents between two stations in close proximity. Most stations will vary by less than 10 cents. The most significant cost variation is driven by variations in rent. Higher traffic=higher rent. The next most significant factor is the retailer's strategy. Some stations will accept a lower margin in the hope they will make money on other products and services. A station with a lower price can sell more lottery tickets, cigarettes, and beer. Those stations make less per gallon but more total sales may add up to the same return on gas.
http://www.eia.gov/energyexpla... http://www.nacsonline.com/your...
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
Do you know what markets are?
Another way to think of it would be if the oil companies raised their own prices, and used the additional income as a revenue stream to increase their own offerings of alternative energy sources. They would charge more for oil and put that investment into clean energy. They're not always going to be "oil companies", not when there isn't any more oil (obviously that's a really, really long way into the future, but even so). The smart move for any company making money on fossil fuels is to use part of that money to position themselves to be a provider of clean energy as well.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The point that AC was making wasn't with the actual numbers, it was the claim that the oil company is making a profit every step of the way. AC even said this:
your numbers are off but they're mostly besides the point
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Wave action is what erodes and ultimately destroys islands, and any increase in the water level is going to have an effect on wave action.
That being said, from looking at the pictures in the PDF report it kind of looks like this can be explained by extreme weather events, like a cyclone. One of the islands has completely moved since the 1940s. As in, its current boundaries and its boundaries in the 1940s do not overlap at all. That sounds like "regular" erosion of island land brought on by extreme weather events. Whether those events are related to global warming would be another issue.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
then we know that their "disappearance" is due to subduction since it couldn't be cause by rising sea levels.
Do "we" really know that or did you just pick something out of the "hat of earth's physical effects not including global warming"? Scientists know quite a bit about plate tectonics including where major faultlines are and how to measure drift and subduction. You want to find something other than rising sea levels to blame it on? Great! Go find it. Don't just pick it.
Government intrusion via a "market-like" mechanism is not the free market.
Absolutely. And a totally "free" market includes transactions of the following sort: "I point a gun at you and give you the choice, either I take your money, or I shoot you and then take your money." That's a free market transaction with no government interference. But this transaction is beneficial to the robber only because the consequences to you are not included in the robber's profit calculation.
The government's role is as a mechanism to say "if your actions create a consequence to other people (such as, say killing them), your actions need to be regulated."
We have already established that this is what the government does. We're just arguing in which circumstances government intervention is needed.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
And yet you've supplied zero evidence of your claim, or of the claim that I'm a shill. And as for the shill part, anyone can look up my history here, it's quite a bit longer than yours, so feel free to link some of my shill commentary.
My claim stands, that I believe the GP's point is nothing more than conspiracy theory, with virtually no evidence, and all you've done is substantiate it.
Just another day in Paradise
The more I think about this thread the more it bugs me. Why did my post get five points? It's not because it's especially insightful. It's because I crafted the post to score points. I made it short. I phrased it so it was slightly confrontational. And, I left out the answer I would like to have given:
Whether the tax reflects the government's contribution to delivering fuel is irrelevant. In many parts of the country people have voted to impose taxes on themselves to cover the cost of building and maintaining infrastructure. That is not gouging. That's taxation WITH representation.
But the post that gave that answer was too long and too late. It's buried in this thread having garnered a single point.
We are living in an age where people are persuaded by tiny bits of information. We don't take the time to consider nuances. We don't think through complex problems. We just toss little arguments back and forth to score popularity points.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
Not true about reef islands being just atolls. Anguilla for example is a 'reef' island but those reefs are gigantic and ancient. The island has peaks that are quite high although overall the island is rather flat.
A Pigouvian solution has worked pretty well at reducing carbon emissions in British Columbia. I think you have to be careful about how you implement it, but it's probably the best way I've heard.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Ah yes, the "war for oil" claim again. Tell me, do you know how much of Iraq's oil actually went to the US? Because it's pretty much none of it. Most oil companies operating in Iraq aren't even American companies.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
This garbage got +4? Really? Most oil companies don't do all of the above steps - most refineries aren't the same company as the people who pump it out of the ground. And all of those steps cost quite a bit. Furthermore, it seems like with $0.59 per gallon, American roads and bridges should be in a much better state than they are.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
This is the truth about the whole matter:
http://www.examiner.com/article/sinking-solomon-islands-and-climate-link-exaggerated-admits-study-s-author
Good link.
http://www.examiner.com/articl...
However you should have explained that the study's co-author (Dr. Simon Albert) is saying that OTHER people are exaggerating the Solomon Islands - climate change connection.
From the Examiner article:
Dr. Simon Albert, the report's co-author told the Guardian today that numerous media outlets, like the Washington Post and NY Times and Think Progress, have misinterpreted their work by trying to link sea level rise with climate change. According to Albert, the researchers did not study climate change and how it influences shoreline erosion and submersion of certain low-lying islands.
He stands by the his paper and the conclusions they made.
You have a point. Science is about falsification. Science can not say much about what we know as such, it can only say things that we do not know. Now, at the moment, there are two known ways an island can disappear into the sea, subduction and rising sea levels. Since we have excluded rising sea levels, there is only one possible explanation at the moment. If someone can come up with other possibilities, then that would be another alternative to rising sea levels, which we still know it is not.
If you have alternatives to subduction and rising sea levels, I am all ears.
That may be true, but the ones talked about here are just the smaller ones that were created more recently, geologically speaking.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Or you'd see that their point was to study erosion of the islands in relation to past ocean rise OF WHATEVER CAUSE to be able to predict effects of ocean rise due to FUTURE climate change. oh slashdot, you make me cry..
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Wave action is what erodes and ultimately destroys islands, and any increase in the water level is going to have an effect on wave action.
That being said, from looking at the pictures in the PDF report it kind of looks like this can be explained by extreme weather events, like a cyclone. One of the islands has completely moved since the 1940s. As in, its current boundaries and its boundaries in the 1940s do not overlap at all. That sounds like "regular" erosion of island land brought on by extreme weather events. Whether those events are related to global warming would be another issue.
that was the point of the paper.
"Discussion
At least eleven islands across the northern Solomon Islands have either totally disappeared over recent decades or are currently experiencing severe erosion. However, islands in the more sheltered Roviana area of the southern Solomon Islands did not experience significant coastal recession." http://iopscience.iop.org/arti...
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Without trying to claim anti- or pro-climate change(or even human-caused) if 5 of the Soloman Islands are now flooded due to sea level rise, how much acreage has Hawaii lost? I mean Hawaii is an island chain AND one of the 50 states so it is "closer to home" than the Solomon Islands. Is there any documented evidence--that I am allowed to read for myself--showing Hawaii has lost ground to the sea?
http://www.npr.org/2016/05/10/...
Meanwhile Miami Beach is already underwater
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Inches not centimeters
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
No, centimeters. about 4 inches.