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'Sinking' Pacific Nation Tuvalu Is Actually Getting Bigger (phys.org)
mi shares a report from Phys.Org: The Pacific nation of Tuvalu -- long seen as a prime candidate to disappear as climate change forces up sea levels -- is actually growing in size, new research shows. A University of Auckland study examined changes in the geography of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, using aerial photographs and satellite imagery. It found eight of the atolls and almost three-quarters of the islands grew during the study period, lifting Tuvalu's total land area by 2.9 percent, even though sea levels in the country rose at twice the global average. Co-author Paul Kench said the research, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, challenged the assumption that low-lying island nations would be swamped as the sea rose. It found factors such as wave patterns and sediment dumped by storms could offset the erosion caused by rising water levels.
This assumes that enough vulnerable locations will have such wave and storm patterns to be able to replenish what is lost by what is essentially a global flat raise of sea levels.
I don't read AC
If the ring is growing in thickness because coral is being dredged from outside the ring and then deposited on the inside of the ring by more frequent king tides that wash right over the ring, then perhaps those living right on the ring don't care about the size so much. They may care more about their thin soil being lost, salinated, and replaced by coral beach. Yes, having more surface area allows for more mitigation measures to be tried, but it is still a hard battle being fought because of sea level rise.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
These islands don't happen to be just above the water by pure chance, but because coral reefs grow until they hit the surface and then stop. When the sea level rises, the reefs will grow to match it.
Well first, that was supposed to be a metaphor for faith, and second, the world's tallest skyscraper is now built on sand, so any practical message in the metaphor is just another thing in the Bible that's hilariously outdated, like its complete lack of criticism for the institution of slavery.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You meab California won't be sucked into the ocean after all?
All of their island is literally a sediment. For it is a dead coral reef.
Coral reef is not sediment. FWIW my house is built on sediment. It is 600 feet aboove present day sea level in hills of red sandstone, sandstone being sand compressed and re-crystalised until it has become rock. Sandstone, limestone, chalk and slate are all sedimentary rocks.
Yup. It turns out that if you can think and plan ahead it's possible to live below sea level with much more primitive technology than we have today - basically earth walls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The construction method of dikes has changed over the centuries. Popular in the Middle Ages were wierdijken, earth dikes with a protective layer of seaweed. An earth embankment was cut vertically on the sea-facing side. Seaweed was then stacked against this edge, held into place with poles. Compression and rotting processes resulted in a solid residue that proved very effective against wave action and they needed very little maintenance. In places where seaweed was unavailable other materials such as reeds or wicker mats were used.
Another system used much and for a long time was that of a vertical screen of timbers backed by an earth bank. Technically these vertical constructions were less successful as vibration from crashing waves and washing out of the dike foundations weakened the dike.
Much damage was done to these wood constructions with the arrival of the shipworm (Teredo navalis), a bivalve thought to have been brought to the Netherlands by VOC trading ships, that ate its way through Dutch sea defenses around 1730. The change was made from wood to using stone for reinforcement. This was a great financial setback as there is no natural occurring rock in the Netherlands and it all had to be imported from abroad.
Current dikes are made with a core of sand, covered by a thick layer of clay to provide waterproofing and resistance against erosion. Dikes without a foreland have a layer of crushed rock below the waterline to slow wave action. Up to the high waterline the dike is often covered with carefully laid basalt stones or a layer of tarmac. The remainder is covered by grass and maintained by grazing sheep. Sheep keep the grass dense and compact the soil, in contrast to cattle.
But hey, not everyone can pass the marshmallow test like Northern Europeans I suppose. So they blame Northern Europeans for climate change and demand cash.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Stability and agriculture are the primary concerns, not just landmass. If the ocean is washing up new sandbars from storms while the island is sinking, and there's saline intrusion into the soil, the land area can increase while the island loses its arable soil, which is going to sap the islander's means to feed and support themselves.
So, representing this as any counter to Tuvalu's crisis is obtuse.
But hey, not everyone can pass the marshmallow test like Northern Europeans I suppose. So they blame Northern Europeans for climate change and demand cash.
The U.S. is failing the marshmallow test as we speak - huge tax cuts and massive spending increases at a time when the economy is already strong, and the GOP controls ALL branches of government. Apparently there are no longer any adults in charge who realize that if you don't pay down your debt during the good times, things will get really ugly in the bad times.
It's likely to create lagoons on land that had previously been coastal.
You are welcome on my lawn.
People don't remember what a scam "climate change" really is... -and don't like being reminded...
...
A brief recap:
There have been wild predictions of "runaway greenhouse effects" and of "new ice ages", back-and-forth, for 35+ years now.
The people making these claims have been consistently wrong, within just one or two years of making their great predictions.
So then they got the bright idea to change to warning of "climate change", so then they don't need to predict what will happen at all... They want you to believe that ANY bad weather, of any kind, proves that they were right all along....
And also, THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED!... AND ANY SCIENTIST WHO DARES TO QUESTION IT, IS UNFIT TO BE A SCIENTIST!...
And you believe that?
These people raised the debate by making failed predictions for decades, and now they are summarily declaring an end to the debate entirely--as well as excusing all their failed past predictions, and refusing to look foolish by making any more future (incorrect) predictions.
I'm not a bullshit scientist, but that kinda sounds like bullshit to me.
I'm not a US citizen, so US party politics is not something that matters a great deal to me. I wasn't sure if there were documented facts concerning debt levels and US Presidents, so I went digging and came up with this:-
https://www.thebalance.com/us-...
It's a single source, so of course could be complete hogwash, but it's a start. According to the records there, every single US president all the way back to Herbert Hoover [directly before Franklin D. Roosevelt] added to the US Debt.
Unfortunately, even these figures don't tell the whole story, because we have to consider both debt and deficit, in which the former is the amount the US owes, and the latter is the rate with which the former is changing.
I make this distinction because, in recent memory, Bill Clinton has been the only US president who has actually decelerated the increase in US national debt. When he left office [IIRC] he did so leaving his successor, George W. Bush, with a tiny budgetary surplus. It's also instructive to look at the scale of the change in the debt position between Presidents. For example, George H.W. Bush left office with a national debt 54% greater than the one he inherited. Bill Clinton had trimmed that to a 32% increase. George W. Bush doubled-down on his Father's spending policies and managed a 101% increase in national debt. In the case of the two Bush Presidents, the increases were likely driven mainly by military spending to support the wars that they started.
Now, I'd absolutely have to agree with you if we look at Obama's record. He added $7.917 trillion to the US national debt, a 68% increase, which puts him somewhere between Bush Father and Bush Son and way beyond Clinton's record. However, it has to be remembered that Obama won office in late 2008 and became President in Januaru 2009. In other words, less than 6 months after the 2008 financial crash had really hit home.
What Obama did during his 8 years in office was, in economic terms, kick the can down the road. These are unarguable facts - the record speaks for itself. The reason *why* this is the case is obviously going to be highly partisan and subject to fierce debate. But the fact remains that the chief reason that Obama's record on the economy stands where it does is simply because he inherited one of the worst financial crises in living memory from his predecessor. The damage was done during the 8 years that George W. Bush spent in office [with increased military spending and tax cuts]. Obama just papered over the cracks and kicked the can down the road.
But the record is pretty clear - with the exception of Coolidge and Warren Harding [who served immediately before him] every US President from the First World War to the present day has added to the US debt.
Here's a reason. Take a pile of sand, put water around it, as the water level rise, so the sand pile subsides and look the sand is lower and more spread around. So take a sand island, with trees and stuff up to say 3m above high tide. Raise the water level and more and more of the land is washed into the sea at high tide. A low tide you might have a larger island but at high tide it is under water, not really all that useful. Raise the water level high enough and you might have quite a large sandbar that is below sea level at high tide and supports only limited marine life, where once a smaller tree lined Island used to exist.
Of course you can do what China did and add material to raise the low lying formation and create a useful Island. In it's way much like moving a rig to the location and anchoring it or even a ship, you got there first you developed it or anchored there and no one can really drive you off with infringing international territory and vessel sovereignty or man made island sovereignty in international territory (so the island is yours but the territory around it, is not, except what is need to secure the stability of the man made island). Right up until the next major tsunami and then everyone goes for a swim.
There you go, Tuvalu could invite Chinese investors to create land, the land would be Tuvalu but the Chinese investors would own the land they create. The US would probably invade and kill everyone so maybe not, the US government is not in the control of the American voter, not in the least.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Its a pop science, not pseudo-science site. Its accurate, but simplified, and its widely respected in the scientific community as a reliable and accurate public science site.
However. You want actual papers huh?
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~ste...
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holoc...
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holoc...
http://science.sciencemag.org/...
http://www.pnas.org/content/pn...
I'm sure theses others, but those where just some of the references off the *very* page you dishonestly try to handwave as 'pseudoscience".
You can't just throw mud like that at widely respected sources of information without at least justifying who so much of the scientific community is wrong, but random AC on the internet is right
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Democrats don't hold a candle to Republicans when it comes to increasing national debt. It's already been said, but it's worth noting that the last Republican to lower the deficit on average was Nixon, yet Clinton and Obama both managed it. Reagan started what's now a time-honored tradition of Republican presidents dicking over the next generation by driving up the deficit through some combination of unfunded tax cuts and increased spending.
Dispute this with "alternative facts" all you want, but there's nothing tricky about the math - just look at the chart. And the thing is, it is DELIBERATE on the part of the "conservatives"... they decided to institute a "starve the beast" philosophy in the Reagan era, where they intentionally drive up debt to try to force government spending down. Similar to charging up your credit cards to try to force yourself to be more frugal.
Just spend 2 minutes actually reading and you'll see. The GOP has become the debt party and the instant gratification party, and this latest move of massive spending ceilings and unfunded tax cuts is just more of the same. The biggest shame is that Schumer's no better in this case, he's crowing right along with them about selling out our grandkids.