Disputed Island Disappears Into Sea 460
RawJoe writes "India and Bangladesh have argued for almost 30 years over control of a tiny island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have ended the argument for them: the island's gone. From the article: 'New Moore Island, in the Sunderbans, has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said. "What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Hazra.'"
HEY now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Always attribute to global warming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just one more reason why Global Warming rocks! (Score:3, Insightful)
Super! (Score:2, Insightful)
See, we just need to understand that global climate change isn't good or bad. It's both. It solves problems and creates them. We just have to accept that it will happen, and continue to do whatever we're doing. No need to change anything, just ride out the changes. We can live without coral and fish. It'll be fine. Because now we have less land to fight over. Which will result in less conflict because we'll be able to peacefully come to agreements about how to divide the less amount of remaining land that we now have. See? It all balances out.
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought global warming was a myth? Darth Cheney said so.
That was when it was cold outside. Now it's warm outside, so global warming must be real. It will go back to being a myth in a few months.
Re:Wait - what? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, 20,000 years ago the climate changed for other reasons [wikipedia.org]. No one has ever said that the only way the climate can warm is due to humans burning fossil fuels. Deniers like to act as if AGW proponents have said that, however. 'Tis just a strawman.
Second, 20,000 years ago we didn't have over 100 million people living in cities near the ocean. Over the next century, these millions of people will be displaced, or the land they're on will be protected, at a cost of trillions of dollars [pbs.org]. If we can avoid it by spending much less money, say, only one trillion dollars, it makes economic sense to do so.
Spending a trillion dollars sounds almost scary, except when you put in into context of saving several trillion dollars.
Except it wasn't sea levels rising... (Score:3, Insightful)
I know OMFG global warming is hip and all, but this almost certainly wasn't a case of rising sea levels. Sea levels are rising REALLY slowly. That isn't to say that a big hunk of the antarctic couldn't melt and slide off into the ocean and give me some beach front property, just that it hasn't happened yet. The island almost certainly simply sunk into the ground. The earth sucks stuff down and pushes other stuff up all the time. It happens.
Re:"Always attribute to global warming... (Score:0, Insightful)
Exactly! Global Warming...the left's choice of religion designed to enslave mankind. Nevermind that the Earth has changed from the moment it was formed, that islands have come and gone throughout history. It's all because of GLOBAL WARMING! Now bow down to your Global Warming Pope (Al Gore).
Re:Rising sea level? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HEY now. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about "blame". It's about predicting what will happen if we engage in a particular activity. The warming due to humans burning fossil fuels was predicted over 100 years ago [wikipedia.org], and we're now observing that predicted warming. We now have confirmation that burning fossil fuels causes warming, so we know we can lessen the warming by burning fewer fossil fuels.
If you know that germs cause disease, you can improve sanitation and lessen disease. It has nothing to do with "blaming" germs!
Re:Wait - what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Increases in sea level are not new phenomena.
Neither are world wars or mass extinctions, but I think we should work to avoid those.
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:2, Insightful)
Weather |= Climate
Re:Wait - what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Extinction of humanity sounds scary, except when you put it in context [wikipedia.org], species extinction is not a new phenomenon
Re:HEY now. (Score:2, Insightful)
Funny thing. The waters seem to rise and fall two times each day. I always thought the big circles in the sky had something to do with it.
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:5, Insightful)
Well to be fair, both sides of the debate have been using that fallacy, depending on how the weather has been in your local geographical area. It's THE major problem I've had with the climate change debate. The only public person I've heard who's actually tried to call people on it was Krugman over at the New York Times, who pointed out that by selecting your sample years carefully from the last 10-20 years, you can "prove" anything you want about the climate. He was arguing at the time against the anti-AGW crowd (as you might expect).
As for me, I'm inclined to think we do have some cause for concern, based on what little actual evidence I've seen from both sides of the debate. I'm by no means convinced that we have enough evidence to support one side or another. I also think we have some other very good reasons to reduce carbon emissions, including a need to reduce particulate emissions of all kinds (air pollution), reduce dependence on petroleum products (whose supplies are probably running out), reduce the "need" to colonize the Middle East (eliminate the causes of terrorism), etc.
I love how Global Warming has to be everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
This is clearly *not* global warming or "rising seas" but old boring "erosion" (I know, not fun).
Consider this - less than 30 years ago India could sent paratroopers to this island's "rocky shores" (sic).
Seas were rising 2mm per year until 2000 and 5mm per year thereafter, so we are talking about a rise of 2*20 + 5 * 10 = 90 mm , less than 10cm, or for those US-residents - about 3.5 inches.
I am sorry, but something smells fishy here - a place can't be 3.5 inches above water surface and have "rocky shores" which paratroopers can walk on. Consider that a tidal range in those parts is at least a few feet, so those 3.5 inches would have to completely disappear under water once or twice a day. That would make this land a "shoal" by any maritime definition.
If this island no longer exists it is because it has been washed away, as these things often occur, especially in river deltas - perhaps after a cyclone or hurricane. Nothing to see here, move along.
Re:Reminds me of kids. (Score:4, Insightful)
You appear to have forgotten about soil erosion, which is a big problem with unconsolidated soils which are recently submerged.
And regardin edification, you can't just build stuff on disputed land. Israel does that but it only does that because the people they are oppressing can barely muster any rocks to throw at them. You don't do that to a nation which has a semblance of an army.
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:5, Insightful)
Local weather != global climate.
Remember, while you were shovelling 9 feet of snow, Vancouver had to truck it in for the Olympics and south Alaska was having record highs. (The usual Arctic wind that keeps those places cool got pushed south a lot.)
Admittedly, trying to justify it with everything that happens is moronic. Weather patterns are massively complex. In the end, what you have to look at is the year to year trend, and by that measure, 200X was the hottest decade on record.
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:5, Insightful)
This is pus... (Score:5, Insightful)
So the Wikipedia (I know) says New Moore Island was never higher [wikipedia.org] than two meters above the water. Oh, and that was at low tide. Was this any more than a shoal?
Are you (or the FA writer) claiming the ocean there has risen as much as more than a meter???
I call BS. In fact, I suspect it was erosion that has claimed this island. Maybe, MAYBE accelrated by a few centimeters rise in ocean level, if at all. Wind and water do just fine on their own. In fact, the island was close to, if not within, the main channel of the outlet of the Hariabhanga River. Erosion and currents probably did it in.
What a pantload. Global warming? More likely predictable current-based erosion.
New Moore Island wasn't much of an island. The river took it back.
Re:Reminds me of kids. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Reminds me of kids. (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoken like somebody who has no idea the power that moving water has.
Water takes material from some places and piles it up in others, and it's incredibly hard to dispute with it. You might look at a sandbar that has been stable for decades, and think maybe I could shift it a bit to suit myself, or make it a little higher and have an island. Forget it. That sandbar is the result of self-organized criticality. It *looks* stable, but the individual sand grains in that sandbar are constantly changing.
My wife grew up near the ocean, and there was this semi circular reef extending from two points on the shore that comes out of the water on spring tides, when you can walk the whole thing. Many times I've surfed my kayak over that reef into the deep water inside. The reef consists of cobbles ranging from the size of a grapefruit to the size of a soccer ball. One day one of the neighborhood kids had an idea: if we breech the reef at one point, we'll be able to anchor our boats inside the reef and not have to pay for a slip or launch fees. Next low tide he had the entire neighborhood carrying rocks away from the selected point, until they'd converted the reef into a pair of breakwaters creating an artificial harbor. It was an impressive feat, but the first storm -- not even a *big* storm mind you, and you couldn't tell the spot they excavated from any other spot. There literally was no trace left of their labors.
What you'd have to do with this sunken island is create a new, artificial island using huge granite boulders like they use in breakwaters; or maybe you could set up coffer dams and build a reinforced concrete sea wall. But you have to admit that you're creating an artificial island.
The reason that India and Bangladesh are fighting over this is to establish Law of the Sea rights to the surrounding water. They are trying to evade negotiations over resource disputes by appealing to a "natural" right in artificial law. Using an uninhabited island to establish territorial sovereignty is dicey enough. Using an *artificial* island is clearly absurd.
They should just resolve the underlying dispute, instead of using legal flim-flammery.
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no "both sides" of the debate. There's the science, which universally points towards global warming (hell, we've even noticed that over the last forty years, migratory birds in the United States have been getting smaller [wordpress.com], which is indicative of generally rising temperatures due to Bergmann's rule [wikipedia.org]), and then there's the people with a PR department, who are busy making it look like there's a debate. Even calling it a "global warming debate" is a victory for them, because the evidence for global warming shows up everywhere.
comprehensive data pool (Score:1, Insightful)
Talking about the hottest decade on record is like me saying I'm the tallest person in my chair.
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:5, Insightful)
"Well to be fair, both sides of the debate have been using that fallacy, ..."
Well, to be fair, there are idiots all over the political and ideological map. Sometimes they end up in your camp, sometimes in the other camp. You can't judge who's right by who's got more idiots on their side...
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:2, Insightful)
Except that the scientists have PR departments too, and what we get from the scientists is PR, and not actual evidence. This isn't the fault of the scientists, it's in part the fault of the sad state of scientific education (in North America, at any rate), the sheer complexity of the science involved (climate science is hard and few of us have time or inclination to become climatologists), the recent skew of the major North American media toward infotainment and newstainment instead of plain old truthy news reporting, and other reasons.
I can go check out your links, and even agree with them, but they mean almost nothing to me because I don't have any way to check the accuracy of the migratory bird data, no easy way to know whether Bergmann's Rule is controversial or settled, or know whether the effect described in the rule is attributable to climate exclusively or to other factors.
I don't know these things because (1) I'm a law student, not a climatologist (2) nobody in the media is talking about this kind of data and (3) nobody in the PR departments of the sciency people or their opponents is using this kind of data in their public debates.
What do?
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:5, Insightful)
When you only look back a couple hundred years, the global warming figures look absolutely frightening. Go back about 1000 years and it doesn't look nearly as bad. Go back about 20,000 years and you start to wonder if we should be cranking up the global furnace as fast in order to make the next Ice Age, which is inevitable and devastating, not quite so bad. On that time scale the current warming trend is insignificant and irrelivant. How do you compare a change of less than a degree over the last 150 years (which was coming out of a mini-ice age) to fluctuations of 10-20 degrees over the course of a few hundred years which is what occurs in an Ice Age?
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that the Global Warming scare actually hurts the environmental movement. The theory got elevated to gospel, but there is still not enough evidence to prove human interference is the absolute cause. The fact of the matter is being more energy efficient is better for the Earth, the economy of the world, and quality of human life in general. Using Global Warming Armageddon to scare the masses into going green has not had the affect that was desired. People who were already green-minded just became more green, and those who doubt still haven't changed and in fact probably thumb their noses in defiance. Make environmentalism desirable through economic means and it will catch on much better.
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but the problem right now is that the idiots are running the asylum. Evaluating public debate in America basically amounts to trying to decide which camp of idiots is more likely to be right than the other camp. In the context of the climate change issue, failure to back the right camp of idiots will likely have disastrous consequences, as it's the idiots we back who are going to make policy.
Sinking? (Score:1, Insightful)
The island is clearly sinking. The oceans are not rising. Go look at the data. A plate shifting or some seismic event caused this island to sink. Not global warming.
Re:Reminds me of kids. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that the scientists have PR departments too
Um, what...?
That's news to me. So who funds the scientists' PR departments? Where do they hire their PR agents? Is it one PR agent per scientist, multiple PR agents per scientist, or does each university fund a communal pool of PR agents and contract them out to the scientists? What do I have to major in to become a PR agent for a scientist?
(1) I'm a law student, not a climatologist
Well, then your opinions on climatology aren't worth much then, are they? Perhaps you might want to consider leaving the climate science to the climate scientistsm who've published literally tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers on the subject. Oh, and their "PR departments", too ;)
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)
In addition to those two questions, factor in these other two questions:
What's the cost if we do something about it, but scientists were wrong (i.e. there isn't any real global warming, or at least human-caused warming) vs. the benefits of doing nothing in that case....
and
What's the cost if we do nothing about it, but scientists were right (i.e. human-caused global warming is quite real and accelerating), vs. the benfits of doing something in that case...
Re:Global warming? Or.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite true. And I say this as someone who agrees with the ~97% of active, publishing climate scientists who accept global warming. You can't just point to something that matches one theory or another and say that it's caused by that theory. That's unscientific. That assumes that there can only be one cause for a given course of action. Another couple examples of it on the pro-warming side are Atlantic hurricanes and the Kilimanjaro glaciers. A good example on the denier side is all of the people trying to argue that a cold, snowy winter in the US means that global warming is fake -- as though US = World and "1 year's weather" = Climate. Just like weather provides a huge amount of noise atop the climate signal (in this case, due to a record North Atlantic Oscillation), sandbars form and get erased on their own. No sea level rise required.
Sea level rise is primarily a long-term threat, and primarily when compounded with storms (rather than on its own). It starts out slow but accelerates significantly over time.
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)
You're a law student, right? So when you come out of your cocoon and bloom into a full-fledged lawyer, will you explain every nuance of case research to your clients? Will you explain in excruciating detail the specifics of which laws apply? Will you explain the finest, tiniest aspect of how those laws are enforced? Will you, in short, force each and every one of your clients to have a law degree?
Or will you just give them an overview and expect that they rely on your expertise as a lawyer to cover the details, which is why they hired you?
Anyway, you can look at the evidence yourself. The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report is freely available; you might want to start with Working Group 1's report [unibe.ch] and work your way onward from there. Your law school's library may have access to relevant papers as well, which are mentioned in the IPCC reports; if not, it can probably special order them for you. Further, there's a ton of blogs out there written by scientists that tend to discuss global warming if you look for them. Finally, I'm sure there's a climatology department somewhere near you; you can start e-mailing them (or go over there and talk to them!) if you have specific questions.
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)
The people who are not sure are not sure because they don't know enough to have confidence. Sadly these same people conveniently have assurance from other things to which they are ignorant. For some reason when a product of science may have a negative implication to the person, insecurity ensues...
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)
You hurt your cause by calling anyone who questions your conclusions "deniers." That is an immediate red flag for anyone with a skeptical bent.
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)
Global warming means that the annual average temperature of the Earth is increasing, and not that local temperatures are necessarily increasing across the board.
The effect it does have on local weather patterns, is that it makes them more variable. So what a person will experience at a given location should be an increase in the frequency of strange weather patterns.
Also, no data or event on its own is proof of anything (except that the data was measured and that the event was observed to occur). They can be used as compelling evidence, but you can be fairly certain that someone who confuses evidence with proof likely doesn't understand the scientific process.
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the cost of doing something about it (in terms of food production, delayed development, reduced energy availability) compared to the cost of not doing something about it (in terms of food production, lost occupied land, ecological diversity). It's those numbers that I've never seen realistically presented, and it's those numbers that should inform the decisions. Why don't we see those numbers? Because it's really really hard to figure them out, probably impossible with our current understanding of climate, geology, ecology, economics, and sociology.
One of my pet peeves is that those are political questions, not scientific questions. It's a legitimate position to say that we should do something even if the hypothesis might be wrong, but saying that we should do something does not equal scientific proof. This isn't directed specifically at you, nor am I saying whether the hypothesis is right or wrong, I'm only trying to point out that there should be a certain amount of seperation between the scientific and political parts of the discussion.
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)
There's the science, which universally points towards global warming
Until you can create replicas of Earth (and probably a large part of the solar system as well) in a laboratory and arrange predictable, repeatable experiments, I don't think any science-oriented person should be making such absolute statements.
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why the people who want to "DO SOMETHING!" to halt the Earth's natural warming process scare me more than anything else. If they should succeed in reducing the temperature by so much as half a degree, they could throw us into a new ice age (and do so very rapidly, as climate changes go), and it's quite possible that this could upset the cycle to the point that we never come back out of it.
Imagine a few years in a row like "the year without a summer" and wonder where you'll be growing crops sufficient to feed humanity.
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)
You're attacking him, and yet, if anything, he implied that he might even agree with your view. And yet you completely missed his point.
First of all, yes, scientists do have PR departments. They're often called "media relations" or something of the sort, and most universities and independent research organizations have them. They're involved in publicizing the results of research, because the appearance of an article in what to many people is an obscure publication may otherwise go largely unnoticed. Many people have heard of Nature and Science, but how many people know about Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences? Aside from the relative obscurity of these publications, they can be fairly expensive* for most people. Some publicity is helpful to those who do publish in those journals.
Secondly, I would ask you what you do. Are you a climatologist? If so, your dismissive attitude towards his quite valid concern about access to the data is one of the things that has made many people dismissive of the science. If not, then your opinions on the subject would, by your words, be essentially worthless. I suspect that you fall into the latter case, since you were not aware of the publicity assistance that is available for many scientists. On that basis, why should we trust your opinion on the validity of the science?
* Nature and Science run $199 and $146, respectively, for one-year subscriptions. JAS is available only to members of the American Meteorological Society, and then runs $200 for the average person ($60 for Associate Membership plus $140 for the subscription for 2010 issues, access to 2008 and 2009 journals extra).
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)