For the first time, an inhabited island has sunk into the watery embrace of Varuna

[IglooDame]

I'd give the article more credence if they'd actually mentioned anywhere in the article the actual measured amount of sea level rise per year. The only numbers they cite are numbers of people displaced.

 

[Tee Kay]

omg you're not actually blaming the dissapearance of an island off India on CONTINENTAL DRIFT? Surely you know that it takes thousands upon thousands of years for plates to move a few metres.

As for you Global Warming deniers i suggest you open your eyes and see what's really happening.

 

[Sidhe]

omg you're not actually blaming the dissapearance of an island off India on CONTINENTAL DRIFT? Surely you know that it takes thousands upon thousands of years for plates to move a few metres.

As for you Global Warming deniers i suggest you open your eyes and see what's really happening.

Some people have a healthy amount of cynicism, others I'd place in the same camp as intelligent designers, ie trying to posit reasoned scientific discussion as wrong because of an agenda. Luckily though most people are just misguided not genuinely delusional like creationists .

I'd say though that in this case it's sloppy journalism that's at fault and the article needs a bit more science talk to give it some credability, so the criticisms are probably warranted.

 

[bhsup]

If they had worded that first sentence...

"Rising seas, caused by totally natural, non man induced global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when mother nature really shows how powerful she is.

Then it would of course be realistic.

 

[Sidhe]

If they had worded that first sentence...

"Rising seas, caused by totally natural, non man induced global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when mother nature really shows how powerful she is.

Then it would of course be realistic.

That would be scientifically dubious though to claim it either way without backing it up with more details, which is where the article falls down, it's not what it's saying it's the way it's saying it, anyway here's something with at least a little more scientifc credence.

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn10799-shorelines-may-be-in-greater-peril-than-thought.html

Shorelines may be in greater peril than thought

* 19:00 14 December 2006
* NewScientist.com news service


Previous estimates of how much the world's sea level will rise as a result of global warming may have seriously underestimated the problem, according to new research.

The study, published in Science, uses a new "semi-empirical" method instead of relying purely on computer modelling. While some modelling significantly underestimates the amount of sea-level rise that has already been seen over the last century, the new method matches the observed rise very closely, says Stefan Rahmstorf, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, who conducted the new study.

The existing computer model deviates even more from the actual observations built into the new estimates included in a draft of the next report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due to be released in February 2007.

The draft report says newer climate models now suggest a rise only half as great as projected in the previous IPCC report. But that draft may be revised before its release to reflect the new research that suggests the rise will be greater than the IPCC's previous estimate, Rahmstorf told New Scientist.
Capital cities

For a given amount of warming, Rahmstorf says, the rise in sea level "could well be twice as much as was so far expected, based on the last IPCC report".

At the top of the range of possible temperature rises estimated by the last IPCC report, the rise could be as great as 140 centimetres by 2100. That would be bad news for cities like London and New York, which lie close to sea level, and would leave them facing an increased risk of devastating storm surges. Even the lowest predicted temperature rises would cause a 50 cm rise, Rahmstorf says.

The predictions in the previous IPCC report – its third – ranged from 9 cm to 88 cm by 2100, and the initial draft of the next report was to cut those figures in half. But Rahmstorf, who is a lead author of the paleoclimate section of the upcoming report, says he hopes his new results will be incorporated before IPCC 4 is officially released in February 2007.
Search for meaning

Rahmstorf says there are so many possible factors and feedback mechanisms that affect sea level that it is almost impossible to derive a meaningful model of future rises from purely physical modelling. Instead, he uses a method similar to that used for calculating tide tables.

The method relies on actual observations of past changes in sea level, and their correlation with temperature changes, to derive an estimate of the amount of increase expected for a given temperature change.

Rahmstorf acknowledges that the simple linear extrapolation derived using the new semi-empirical method will not hold good over a timescale of millennia, but he argues that it is a good approximation for the next century. However, the strongest conclusion of the new work, he says, is that uncertainties in sea level rise predictions are far greater than expected.

"We should not take this risk," Rahmstorf says. "We should start with very effective emission reduction measures. The global temperature increase should be kept to under 2°C."

"We still have some work to do to improve our comprehensive physical models, especially for ice sheets," says Richard Alley, at Penn State University, who specialises in ice sheets and glaciers. "But given the difficulties with modelling ice sheets etc., Rahmstorf’s approach is clever and useful."

Journal reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1135456)

 

[IglooDame]

Thank you Sidhe for injecting some facts into this.

Now, 1.4 meter sea level rise over the next century doesn't strike me as anything to write home about. Yes, that rise compounds the potential flooding problems caused by spring tides and storm surges, but coastal areas are already expected to be subject to that already.

 

[JerichoHill]

That's so odd, because I just read an article in the economist that had the sea level rise projections dropping! Don't have it in front of me now, but...

Based on your assumptions, your projection many years out can be wildly different.

 

[Sidhe]

That's so odd, because I just read an article in the economist that had the sea level rise projections dropping! Don't have it in front of me now, but...

Based on your assumptions, your projection many years out can be wildly different.

That's why there is no firm concencus even amongst scientists, the whole deal is so complicated that most environmentalists will give a +/- value for their work. Given Sr=e^x*(t+s/xn*t) is the rise in sea level Sr is accurate to +/-5 % sort of deals.

And of course if the numbers you plug in are wrong in the first place then there's an exponential increase in error for every subsequent year. Not an easy field to make firm assumptions on.

Have you got the article? It may well be that as of yet this particular model is not widely used as it's very new, it looks promosing and is said to be more accurate, but time will tell?

Is The Economist likely to have an agenda or is it likely to be unbiased, you can't rule out that either in either camp

 

[blackheart]

If they had worded that first sentence...

"Rising seas, caused by totally natural, non man induced global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when mother nature really shows how powerful she is.

Then it would of course be realistic.

That's funny because people with PhDs in the matter, aka scientists, disagree with you.

 

[bhsup]

That's funny because some people with PhDs in the matter, aka scientists, disagree with you.

I fixed your quote to make it accurate.

 

[blackheart]

I fixed your quote to make it accurate.

Right, and some scientists say bigfoot exists.

 

[Rossiya]

It's really disheartening to think that islands are being submerged by the sea, thousands of islands, both inhabited and not, are at risk. Of course, we are not helping the situation with all the global warming.

 

[IglooDame]

It's really disheartening to think that islands are being submerged by the sea, thousands of islands, both inhabited and not, are at risk. Of course, we are not helping the situation with all the global warming.

Don't be disheartened - there can't be too many inhabited islands at risk from a 1-meter rise in sea level.

 

[Sidhe]

Don't be disheartened - there can't be too many inhabited islands at risk from a 1-meter rise in sea level.

The most damage will come to low lying coastal cities, especially in high tides and storm weather, lots of flooding which will be particularly damaging to developing or third world countries, and storm weather is also forecast to increase, so I wouldn't get too complacent, 1 meter is actually quite sizeable.

 

[IglooDame]

The most damage will come to low lying coastal cities, especially in high tides and storm weather, lots of flooding which will be particularly damaging to developing or third world countries, and storm weather is also forecast to increase, so I wouldn't get too complacent, 1 meter is actually quite sizeable.

But see, that flooding is transient, not permanent. 1 meter is going to cause relatively little permanent flooding. Saying that storm surges and tides will effectively have an extra meter added to them is a far cry from "coastal areas will become uninhabitable".

And I'm not saying that global warming isn't a big problem, I just take exception to the implicit Waterworld sort of disasters that some of the more extreme global warming doomsayers spout breathlessly.

 

[Sidhe]

But see, that flooding is transient, not permanent. 1 meter is going to cause relatively little permanent flooding. Saying that storm surges and tides will effectively have an extra meter added to them is a far cry from "coastal areas will become uninhabitable".

And I'm not saying that global warming isn't a big problem, I just take exception to the implicit Waterworld sort of disasters that some of the more extreme global warming doomsayers spout breathlessly.

That goes without saying, there's a lot of half baked fear mongering out there, and it actually detracts from people who are trying to present less biased material, of course the trouble is that many people can't understand in depth analysis, but then that's where magazines like New Scientist and Scientific American help, they're less sensationalist; short of studying for a degree though, or post grad courses, your never going to get anything really great in the popular media.

 

[North King]

It's been clearly documented that sea levels are rising much faster now than they have before, and with the newly discovered phenomenon of global dimming and its decline, global warming may well become a much greater problem. It's surprising how people can still deny it when this is the first inhabited island in thousands of years to sink into the sea...

(And that picture Urederra posted is, 1) a debatable site anyway, since there's much more credible disagreement as to whether it's man-made or not, and 2) If it was artificial, it likely sank into the ocean with the rebounding of sea levels after the Ice Age, which honestly, is not something you can blame anymore. So yes, this is major news, to have an island sink into the sea. Personally, I'd rather not have the risk on my doorstep... no matter how "small" it is.)

 

[Perfection]

What about good ol' erosion?

Given the sensationalist nature of the claims, and the lack of data cited, I think a fair amount of skepticism is warrented. I'm not going to say that it wasn't global warming induced sea level change, but I haven't been given good evidence to believe that it is.

 

[Sidhe]

Just as a matter of interest The Independant tends to be quite liberal, so it's best to take some of it's articles with a pinch of salt, it's not extremely biased towards one side like the Daily mail so it's more credible on certain issues, but as with all papers ask what bias it has too.

 

[IglooDame]

It's been clearly documented that sea levels are rising much faster now than they have before, and with the newly discovered phenomenon of global dimming and its decline, global warming may well become a much greater problem. It's surprising how people can still deny it when this is the first inhabited island in thousands of years to sink into the sea...

Excuse me? First inhabited island in thousands of years to sink into the sea? I think you're getting a bit breathless there, yourself.