Inhabited Island Vanishes Forever Underwater 408
PhreakOfTime writes "For the first time the rising ocean levels have washed away an inhabited island. Lohachara island was at one point home to some 10,000 people. It, along with several other spits of land near the Indian mainland, is now permanently underwater. From the article: ' As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities. Eight years ago ... the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.'"
Satellite photos (Score:5, Interesting)
WHERE are the rest? (Score:4, Interesting)
If this island has "been covered" (as opposed to having "sank") where are the rest of the islands that should also be completely covered by the sea?
Could it just possibly be an issue of that island sinking?
If not, then I think you've gone past blind faith.
Re:"unprecedented" (Score:1, Interesting)
Subsidence (Score:3, Interesting)
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?news
(Kolkata Newsline)
Careful measurements of sea level change around the globe show similar numbers. Larger reported changes are usually due to subsidence (sinking land), erosion, annual rain (monsoon, hurricane) related flooding and poor land management. Talk a walk on your nearest beach and figure out how many years it would take at three mm/year before anything interesting would happen. Or be noticed.
Re:The corruption is really, really scary, actuall (Score:1, Interesting)
Asian Brown Cloud -- Perhaps it plays a role? (Score:3, Interesting)
An extensive impact study of the Asian Brown Cloud can be found Here [unep.org].
Also some "Quick Facts" on the Asian Brown Cloud may be found Here [adb.org].
And well, if you just Google it [google.com], you can become a complete expert!
Could Asia be doing itself in here? Surely, the ABC has a significant impact on their environment that simply cannot be ignored -- unless, that it, your goal is to milk the West of money. But hey, perhaps the ABC is having a significant impact on our climate here in the West and perhaps we should be bilking them for money!
Ain't Geopolitics grand?
Re:First Time? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, the issue isn't really, are we ruining the holy earth and should we immediately move heaven and earth (so to speak) to restore it to some static, Platonic, ideal. The issue is, are we prepared to deal with the human fallout when 144x10^6 Bengalis decide they 're not going to quietly slip beneath the waves to avoid inconveniencing us. Foreign aid directed towards building Polders in affected areas, controlled migrations starting now while low-lying areas are converted to non-permanently inhabited farmland, and similar moves are probably warranted, unless you want to take the chance that some enterprising soul isn't going to come up with the "relocate us to Kansas or we set off a Nuke in NY Harbor" solution.
It was a lot easier for a few hundred to few thousand proto-Hamptonites 10K years ago to move inland and to higher ground when there was less competition and fewer of them. A last minute exodus from some overly-inhabited sub-tropical delta into higher-ground already occupied by a couple hundred million current inhabitants is going to be less smooth a transition.
We used to call these islands "sand bars" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But temperatures are rising on Mars! (Score:1, Interesting)
big empty words (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ongoing damage, political opposition to change (Score:3, Interesting)
Build a majority of your house underground, and you can do nearly ALL of your heating and cooling via solar + geothermal heat pump.
Build your house as a 1/2 underground monolithic dome, and you can do ALL of your heating, cooling, and electrical via solar + geothermal heat pump.
Collect your water from rain water, purify it, and than pump it out through a septic system. Feel free to pour out all the waste into the environment, as long as you use 100% biodegradable cleaners/chemicals (buy from us! www.biogenesis.com)
In short, you don't have to cut your standard of living; just build prudently, and somewhat against the grain.
I don't have the money to do this yet, but my parents will be moving into such a house in the near future, and as soon as I can afford it I will, too. Incidentally, I live in a well insulated ~800 ft^2 apartment, and my electrical/gas combined is about $50-60 a month.
Aren't these just river delta islands? (Score:1, Interesting)
You know, if there's a single reason why I am still a little skeptical on this stuff, it's the hysterically reported articles like this that, whan you really research them, evaporate.
No politics for me. I couldn't care less about the oil companies one way or the other. I have no agenda. It's just this bullshit journalism.
Re:Mod parent flamebait (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't say that calling global warming 'highly doubtful' is inflammatory. While I have no doubt that continued destruction and pollution of our environment will have profound if not irreversable negative impact on our planet, attributing the sinking of an island to global warming is irresponsible journalism at best.
While ocean levels are rising around the world, Arctic levels are falling http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5076322. stm [bbc.co.uk] and the model predicting the globabl warming trend cannot explain why.
Another unexplained action is while consensus is that the planet is getting warmer and glaciers are melting, the Antarctic ice sheet - by far the biggest in the word is actually growing larger: http://www.iceagenow.com/Growing_Antarctic_Ice_She et.htm [iceagenow.com]. Glaciers in California are also growing: http://dwb.sacbee.com/content/news/story/14317368p -15234887c.html [sacbee.com]
Given that the Northern Hemisphere at least is getting warmer, this is not entirely a bad thing as the food growing season is longer, and the increased productivity is an economic boon. From this government report on climate change: http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/nationalasses sment/overviewmidwest.htm [usgcrp.gov] "With an increase in the length of the growing season, double cropping, the practice of planting a second crop after the first is harvested, is likely to become more prevalent. The CO2 fertilization effect is likely to enhance plant growth and contribute to generally higher yields. The largest increases are projected to occur in the northern areas of the region, where crop yields are currently temperature limited."
But with the increase in global temperature, the worlds deserts would increase in size causing more environmental destruction you say? Not so - the Sahara desert, the largest desert in the world, is actually shrinking, again contrary to the global warming model. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17523610.300 -africans-go-back-to-the-land-as-plants-reclaim-th e-desert.html [newscientist.com]
So given all of these environmental observations (not minor discrepancies but huge anomalies) that are contrary to the global warming prediction, I think its perfectly acceptableto have doubts as to the actual cause of sinking islands.
Warming issues in NH not all positive (Score:3, Interesting)
Up in British Columbia, Canada, vast amounts of pine forests are being destroyed due to the mountain pine beetle - an insect that was formerly kept in check during extended freezes in winter. The pine forests here are just devastated - it's really shocking to see places that were green a year or two ago that are now all brown and black. We just haven't had the temperatures to control it and it's not looking like we'll get them any time soon.
While there may be positives to a global warming trend, they would most likely be balanced out by negatives - new pests and diseases will be able to make inroads that they weren't able to before.
Re:The corruption is really, really scary, actuall (Score:1, Interesting)
Coral are incredibly sensitive to variations in the salinity and temperature of their environment, in that if the mean water temperature wanders by more than two kelvin (up or down) or the local halinity drops by a few ppt they cannot sustain their symbiotic zooxanthellae and expel them. These stressors are at top of the list. Others include increased UV spectrum intensity, variations in notch intensity in phycoerythrin (and sometimes chlorophyll and other accessory pigment) absorption spectra (stronger intensity is worse). Many of these stressors are clearly driven by natural processes, however there is also significant evidence of human mediated stress upon coral reefs. One of the most readily demonstrated human-caused stresses on large reefs has fallen off in recent years: increases in local nutrient levels thanks to fertilizer run off and the algal blooms that result are very bad for the zooxanthella-coral symbiosis.
Ultimately when chlorophyll is forced to expel their photosynthesizing symbionts (because the latter essentially start poisoning the host when operating outside of its normal range) both tend to die. Coral can reuptake other "cohorts" of zooxanthellae which are interoperable in the new environment, if they are available, but the zooxanthellae essentially become food for other organisms.
(This can be especially bad since large expulsions of the zooxanthellae can worsen local stresses upon not only corals but other phototrophs, including potential replacements, and other organisms which are sensitive to metabolic byproducts of whatever feasts upon them. Vicious cycles have been observed.)
The breakdown of symbiosis is usually called "coral bleaching" because visible pigments are generally concentrated only in the zooxanthellae and it's vivid wording for what coral masses look like (since coral is mostly calcium carbonate structurally) during and after a large expulsion event.
Not only is coral bleaching bad for the coral (killing it), and nearby organisms sensitive to the immediate impact upon the food chain (some heterotrophs consume coral mainly to get at the zooxanthellae, which they cannot consume in an unbound/ex-coral form; various organisms suffer from an increased concentration of unbound nutrients, decomposition, and so forth), but also many reef dwellers survive through camouflage adapted to the particular colouration of the zooxanthellae adapted to the local environment. Even if corals survive by being able to take up a new cohort of zooxanthellae after a change in the envieronment, those zooxanthellae are likely to have different colouring because of pigment differences (heritable changes in pigment ratio (and to some extent structure) changes are the main mechanisms by which zooxanthellae populations vary in their suitability to the coral). Consequently, beautifully coloured reef creatures that are good at hiding in and around a reef in a particular environment suited for a given dominant coral-zooxanthella phenotype pairing suddenly stand out (especially during a bleaching event, when the coral very quickly almost entirely white) and are often quickly eaten or starved.
Reefs can only grow near the top of the ocean (since their algal symbionts need to photosynthize) and the outside of reefs. During normal erosion, these are the bits that fall away, becoming foundational debris on which coral columns (coral islands) grow. When coral is stressed growth falls below the replacement rate, and the reef begins to erode.
This is not a normal process. Normal processes have reefs growing quicker (sometimes much quicker) than the replacement rate.
Reef shrinkage is clearly caused by environmental change. This is true no matter what impact humans have on the dominant environment changes various large reefs are suffering the hardest.
A great deal of human influence seems pretty obvious for a variety of reasons, but obvious solutions unfortunately seem expe