As Seas Rise, Maldives Seek To Buy a New Homeland 521
Peace Corps Online writes "The Maldives will begin to divert a portion of the country's billion-dollar annual tourist revenue to buy a new homeland as insurance against climate change. Rising sea levels threaten to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees as the chain of 1,200 island and coral atolls dotted 500 miles from the tip of India is likely to disappear under the waves if the current pace of climate change continues to raise sea levels. The UN forecasts that the seas are likely to rise by up to 59 cm by the year 2100. Most parts of the Maldives are just 150 cm above water so even a 'small rise' in sea levels would inundate large parts of the archipelago. 'We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own and so we have to buy land elsewhere. It's an insurance policy for the worst possible outcome,' says the Muslim country's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, adding that he has already broached the subject with a number of countries and found them to be 'receptive.' India and Sri Lanka are targets because they have similar cultures and climates; Australia is worth looking at because of the immense amount of unoccupied land in that country. 'We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades.'"
A myth. (Score:2, Insightful)
They have nothing to worry about, Global Warming is just a myth!
...Right?
If the summary is correct, and they are only 150 centimeters above water... than this isn't a very good place to build regardless of global warming or not. Your average over-sized wave could swamp the entire island.
Re:A myth. (Score:4, Funny)
only 150 centimeters
Obviously the islamists are helping their librul friends with their global warming scam by scraping the top off the island so that they can claim it is disappearing!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Don't they know that the Democrats now have total control of the US government and will sign the Kyoto Protocol, thus lowering sea levels?
The USA has already signed [wikipedia.org] the protocol. It has to be ratified, though.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A myth. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a Democrat and think of myself as an environmentalist and even I'm skeptical about the value of the Kyoto Protocol. What's the point in the Western countries tanking our economies to bring down emissions if China is bringing dozens of new coal power plants online and adding millions of new vehicles to the road?
A true environmentalist SHOULD be skeptical about a body of law explicitly allowing developing nations to pollute. This is an incredibly stupid thing to do, because there is not in fact any real benefit to it. The simple truth is that it is more cost-effective to be "green" over any kind of reasonable time scale.
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Re:A myth. (Score:4, Insightful)
agreeing to allow developing countries to increase emissions seems like an incredibly dumb idea to me
Are you kidding me?! Take a look at any 'developing nation' in Africa. Many people can't even get clean water, much less food, and you expect them not to increase emissions/go green?! These countries are printing million dollar notes because of absurd inflation and you are not allowing them to increase emssions?! Developing countries have no other choice than to use the cheapest energy source, period. As a country progresses, economically and technologically, they can begin to invest into cleaner technologies and eventually start to go 'green'. Even here in American it is still more expensive to consumer green energy than it is to consume oil and coal. With your complete and utter ignorance of economic conditions of developing countries and, it seems, the basics of economics, you should be more circumspect in questioning other people's intelligence.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:A myth. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a Democrat and think of myself as an environmentalist and even I'm skeptical about the value of the Kyoto Protocol. What's the point in the Western countries tanking our economies to bring down emissions if China is bringing dozens of new coal power plants online and adding millions of new vehicles to the road?
China wants our standard of living. The world simply cannot cope with 1.2 billion Chinese living at the current American/European standard of living. But if we clean up our act, then China may simply follow suit.
I would like to see progress made on green technology (which will translate into more jobs and economic recovery) so that we can bring emissions down and sell that technology to the rest of the World -- but why all of this focus on Kyoto when the protocol itself is inherently unfair to developed countries?
I agree Kyoto is a terrible (and quite possibly harmful) compromise. We do need some sort of international agreement, though. Hopefully Kyoto is a step towards something better.
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Rising ocean levels *proves* that *man* causes rising ocean levels.
Agreed. If it's the *ocean* that is rising, then it must be *fish* that are causing it. (or maybe too many whales?)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Well, in my experience, 90% of all people are idiots. And that's true for all races, sexes, religions and whatnot. 90% fucking idiots. That's rather depressing...
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I really don't get why people are so reluctant to consider that burning 80 million barrels of oil each day does not affect the climate. I keep hearing those "Oh, I don't believe it" voices on /., but really, is it anything else than an excuse for not changing a wasteful lifestyle? A bit like an addict would deny having a problem?
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We shouldn't be wasteful, and I agree that we may be effecting the climate, but stories like this just smack of "the sky is falling" all over again. Why can't we have environmentalism without the alarm? Thats the kind of environmentalist I am, I just want to attempt to stop being wasteful and live more frugally and more in-line with nature (now I know its impossible to be completly CO2 free, but we can do better then we are now.)
There are better ways to combat environmental problems then alarmism.
Re:A myth. (Score:4, Interesting)
Because if we didn't have the alarm, then people in Maldives would drown instead of buying new land.
Re:A myth. (Score:4, Funny)
I've met Phil - he's the sort of guy to go out to his back and throw an extra gallon of engine oil on his tire fire just to spite the Maldivians.
Re:A myth. (Score:5, Interesting)
GCMs have energy conservation added to them by hand.
At least all the ones I've looked at do.
To a computational physicist that means they are non-physical. They don't and can't make any serious claim to modelling climate.
Attempts to compare the results of GCMs to actual temperature readings have shown more anti-correlations than correlations, and that's without even correcting for the heat island effect, which makes the comparison worse.
The use of "average global temperature" is unphysical. Temperature is an intensive thermodynamic quantity. It cannot be averaged in an inhomogeneous substance like the atmosphere. Atmospheric heat content should be used, but isn't.
So, anyone who takes GCMs seriously needs to answer these questions:
1) Why do you believe unphysical models are a sound basis for strong public policy measures?
2) Why do you believe disconfirmed models are a sound basis for strong public policy measures?
3) Why do you believe that an unphysical global average temperature is even worth talking about (that is, why aren't you talking about global atmospheric heat content?)
I believe dumping gigatonnes of garbage into the atmosphere is a bad idea, and that our policies should be drifting in the direction of reducing that. But I also believe that people who are making strong claims about the future of global climate based on GCM results are badly mistaken about the strength of their conclusions, and as a scientist I care far more about what is TRUE than what will motivate people to change.
It is wrong to mislead people in order to get them to change.
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computational physics work with assumptions that would make a climatologist blush, and models are always non-physical.
Two words, data quality. Computational physics models are calibrated against reliable test data by building REAL examples of what is being modeled. That's the only real way to know if the assumptions used are going to allow reliable results. Our data for most variables in GCM's don't even amount to 100 years worth before relying on projections and estimates. Better still, virtually all the m
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That's great, and I'm sure there is an effect. But any visible measures being taken today are mostly at the individual consumer level... cutting vehicle emissions 20% will reduce total carbon release, what, 1%? It's probably not even measurable.
I'm not as much concerned about the CO2 in our atmosphere as I am about the even larger amounts of heavy metals, radioactive isotopes, and all manner of other poisons that are released into the air, ground and water all around the world by industrial activity. They a
Ruh Roh (Score:5, Informative)
"Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1991). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 27 billion tonnes per year (30 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 2006) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2, through 2003.]. Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of more than 8,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 3.3 million tonnes/year)! (Gerlach et. al., 2002)"
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/index.php
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's actually not true.
Compare this [wikipedia.org] with this [usgs.gov], and you'll find that your Random Regurgitated Factoid is, in fact, bollocks.
Thanks for playing PAFOOYA (Pull A Fact Out Of Your Arse).
Greenhouses (Score:3, Informative)
The greenhouse effect works. It's the basis of ... er ... greenhouses. Glass is an "odorless colorless" substance that's transparent to visible light but blocks infrared. Light enters the greenhouse, hits something inside, the innards warm up, the warm objects try to re-radiate the energy as infrared, and the glass stops that IR getting out aga
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Pollution also just happens to contribute to the global climate. Ozone depletion due to man made chemicals also contributes. Why qualify the warming with a probably - the fact that the earth has been heating up is indisputable. The cause is contentious, but at the very least we are contributing to and exacerbating the problem.
Re:A myth. (Score:4, Informative)
No it's real (probably), but it's not man-made.
You mean it's real, and it's probably man-made. There is still some discussion about that last part because climate and sea levels fluctuate naturally, but theory has predicted that rising CO2 levels will cause oceans to rise, and now that it's actually happening, that same theory is still the best explanation. There's also sun spots and stuff like that, but those explanations leave a gap. A gap that's nicely filled by the theory that rising CO2 levels cause global warming.
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3. Is climate change occurring at a rate faster than our models of previous climate cycles predict?
ANSWER: Yes.
4. Does climate change affect humanity?
ANSWER: Yes. It heavily impacts our food supply, living conditions and economy. Putting stress on those three things also destabilizes governments.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Australia? (Score:5, Funny)
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Here in the UK we've survived for generations on recycled water but Queenslanders would rather go parched than drink 'shit'.
Re:Australia? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually you're wrong. Yes the very center of Australia is harsh unpopulated desert. However there are also large stretches of the north coast of Australia which remain uninhabited. These areas are tropical, have large monsoons and could sustain a fairly large population. In fact it's been proposed for a while now that in North Western Australia there be more settlement of people/industry. (I'm an Aussie by the way.) I don't know how receptive the general population will be to a new settement in the north. Especially with heavily islamic Indonesia next door which does house terrorism. I'm sure the Maldivean people are friendly and all but I don't know what the general Australian population will think of it all. On the other hand it does look like the Maldives are pretty relaxed about morality considering it is a massive tourism destination, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
either deadly venom or sharp teeth or is a koala ...which of course has both. ;)
But Australia has no borders (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but Australia, the country, is entirely contiguous with the continent. I can't imagine us (now or in the future) being very receptive to the idea of another country buying their way onto the continent and having to set up borders etc.
Besides, who'd want to move from a tropical archipelago to - let's face it - a desert? Sri Lanka is a much more likely candidate.
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Yes, but Australia, the country, is entirely contiguous with the continent.
Ehhhhhh? What continent is New Zealand in, then?
Re:But Australia has no borders (Score:5, Interesting)
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Sri Lanka is a much more likely candidate.
A country that is fighting civil war to prevent an ethnically based breakaway state? If that is justified, how can selling part of the country be justified?
The war has also made people very nationalist, so giving up territory is likely to go down pretty badly. The Buddhist fundamentalists are not going to like having 370,000 Muslims added to the population either. See here [lankadissent.com] for one example.
The same objection as you have to Australia selling land, that it would introduce land borders for the first time,
Re:But Australia has no borders (Score:5, Interesting)
*sarcasm* Yes, specially since Australia has always been of the Australians, and nobody has ever tried to muscle their way into the territory before. It would be a totally new concept for the continent of Australia. */sarcasm*
Good grief. At least the inhabitants of the Maldives are suggesting to *pay* for the land they're looking at. 385,925 (July 2008 est.) people should be able to find a home somewhere and it saddens me to think that people's first reaction is like yours.
Having said that, I feel for the people's plight since I am a Dutch citizen. Lord knows we won't be keeping our feet dry easily if the water levels rise that much. At present, my birth place is already 7 meters below sea level as it is. Thing is that there are 17 million of us, not ~400000.
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Well, you only have about 90 years to prepare for the possibility that your birthplace will be 7.5 meters below sea level. Better get started right away.
Seriously, this problem is moving in slow motion - it's not like we're talking sea levels rising a meter a year or anythi
Re:But Australia has no borders (Score:4, Interesting)
The trouble with walls, as we saw recently in New Orleans, is that if they break you're fucked.
What we learned from New Orleans is that if you ignore 25+ years of warnings that you need to build a higher wall than you will be screwed if you don't. I hate to be cold towards those people, but the folks from NO were ass holes to a lot of people that went down to help them. The NO incident should never have happened. It was their own fault. Now all other US citizens are paying for their inaction. Now all those tiny communities around NO that got wiped out is another story; I don't mind giving government money/help to them. They at least were nice to most that came down to help them. They also didn't get nearly the news coverage of the big corrupt city that screwed itself.
Also seeing the things NO has totally wasted the federal money on really irritates me. A part of me would have rather just had most NO population moved out and dispersed around the country to never come back. If they need to rebuild/repair a port then they could build it up river on slightly higher ground.
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And you're an asshole for making sweeping generalizations based on anecdotes and, most likely, for speaking about subjects on the sole basis of hearsay from idiot reporters.
You want a flame war? We can do that. Or, you stop believing in the fallacy of a single cause. Katrina was a natural disaster, an engineering disaster (with many complicated aspects), a governmental disaster (at all levels), and a humanitarian disaster (the most visible part). And Katrina is only a small part of the problem: you are appa
Makes me recall Bangladesh (Score:5, Interesting)
Nasheed's quote at the end of the summary really made me recall Bangladesh, where my parents are from. It's another country that is under major threat from climate change. I've often wondered what Bangladeshi people would do when the flood waters finally get bad enough to make the country uninhabitable, through no fault of their own (most of the people there are remarkably poor). I once read a touching BBC article where a village farmer complained that he was losing his country so Westerners could drive in their cars.
I always thought most Bangladeshis not killed by cataclysmic flooding would escape into neighboring countries, especially West Bengal in India, but the Maldives seems to have a "good" (at least practical) idea. Sadly the Bangladeshi government is too inefficient, corrupt, and schizophrenic to manage something as well thought out, costly, and long term as that.
I fully expect to have to explain to my kids that Bangladesh was where their grandparents were from but that it no long exists (above the ocean, anyway).
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
I'm guessing they'll migrate to other countries, something many of them seem to have no problem with. A lot of Londoners are Balgladeshi.
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Well, I'd argue that it takes some money to immigrate, especially these days - the vast majority of truly poor people in Bangladesh can't do this (which is why the Indian government is so angry about poor Bangladeshis sneaking into India).
There's actually an interesting class distinction here - many of Bangladeshis in England were poorer (and did things like manual labor, restaurants, etc.) while those that immigrated to the U.S. in the 60s and 70s where much better educated and middle class and entered tho
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I couldn't point at someone and say "he is Bangladeshi", so I don't know if there are communities of Bangladeshi immigrants in London who are so tightly nit that they refuse to intergate, but for Indians and other peoples from that region of the world, they tend to become "Londeners" by the second generation.
The UK is not the country it was 150 years ago. London today is a very multicultural place.
Re:Makes me recall Bangladesh (Score:4, Interesting)
The UK is not the country it was 150 years ago. London today is a very multicultural place.
That, in my experience, tends to remove people's sense of UK identity and tie them more strongly to that of their homeland. I worked with a Bangladeshi as my boss for a year in London, who was clearly second-generation or later. He still referred to Bangladesh as 'my home'.
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Incidentally, how long before a Londoner of Bangladeshi background is no longer Bangladeshi and is just a Londoner? Three generations? Four?
If you can eat a pork pie slathered in marmite without puking, you pass the test.
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Sadly the Bangladeshi government is too inefficient, corrupt, and schizophrenic to manage something as well thought out, costly, and long term as that.
Yes, that is too bad. Or they might have been able to build something like this. [wikipedia.org]
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One would hope - but the government's poor and there is no political will to do anything. Bangladesh is no Maldives.
Re:waterworld...or canal world (Score:4, Informative)
Virg
Good advertising! (Score:5, Funny)
How interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope he reads it, or a staffer does - seeing as he just got a promotion and might be a little busy.
--
Keep One Eye Open on Craiglist.com - Search hundreds of communities from one place with one click [bigattichouse.com]
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Ps - I'm not trolling by saying the Gvt is encouraging it, that's just how I w
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Re:How interesting (Score:4, Funny)
Nah, they would be declared a terrorist nation, invaded, and all its citizens would be shipped off to Guantanamo. This would be a lot cheaper...
But at least they wouldn't be drowning.
(I'm going to Hell...)
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I think the problem is defining what is an environmental refugee and when do you send them back. Clearly if your country is underwater now isn't the time to send you back. But what if your island gets hit with a category 4 hurricane 3 times a yea
Generic Rhetoric Comment (Score:5, Interesting)
I helped a photographer assemble footage for a piece he's doing about this. He's gone there and stayed with Mohamed Nasheed for a few years running. The place is small enough that everyone more or less knows everyone. From what I saw they are incredibly pragmatic and dignified about this. They don't want a handout but would like to bring the world's attention to it. There are dozens of similar smaller nations that will not have the luxury of money to perchance buy their way out of this. I suspect, when this reaches critical mass, money won't be much of factor anyway. I hope the entire world will be able to be as calm and dignified and take a cue from the way they're currently dealing with it.
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I mentioned this in a comment about Bangladesh on this story - and I agree, fundamentally, this is a dignified way to try and deal with this problem - but is it unreasonable for a country to be "undignified" if "don't have the luxury of money" to buy their way out of this problem? If you agree that global warming is man made, then is it unreasonable to think that the people suffering the most consequences (like the Maldives or Bangladesh) or some of the people least responsible?
Re:Generic Rhetoric Comment (Score:5, Insightful)
(I'm uninformed on Bangladesh so I cannot comment on them specific.)
Other places either wait for help (which will never arrive from the uninformed or the uncaring) or will be forced to just make a run for it at the last moment. Displaced refugees NEVER works. This proves out time and time again. Even the poorest of nations could start asking to allow very small groups to be allowed in now in an effort to begin a relocation program. Nasheed, when queried on keeping his people together, says that in 50 years he does not expect them to maintain much if any of their culture. He knows the idea of just displacing one group into another never works and is planning on blending his people in small increments.
As for agreeing it's manmade, I'm still on the fence on that. Man-helped, no doubt. And should we carbon-whores pay into a sollution, yes we should. The people of nations like this are on the very low end of responsible. (But even the Maldives have concrete roads and cars!) But we've only walked erect a few million years. The face of this planet in that space of time has changed. In a billion years this planet's face has changed dramatically. So change is a constant. We just don't adapt as well as other species. We like finding blame and do not seem to flow well this type of change.
There is a reason... (Score:4, Funny)
"Australia is worth looking at because of the immense amount of unoccupied land in that country. "
There are very good reasons why we have an immense amount of unoccupied land in Australia...
Picture Fallout 3, minus the radiation and ruins. And water. And trees. And people. Feel free to leave in the giant bugs and mutants though...
Re:There is a reason... (Score:5, Funny)
Feel free to leave in the giant bugs and mutants though...
Hey, if you're going to talk about John Howard at least mention him by name!
I leave it to the reader to guess whether he's a giant bug or a mutant. Or both. ;-)
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Srilanka or Kerala would their main options (Score:3, Interesting)
The lowest point in the Netherlands (Score:4, Insightful)
Is 7 meters(ca. 21 feet) below sealevel and we are not leaving. Running is a bad solution. Fight the water because it will fight you. Feet getting wet? Build dams and dykes and stay safe. That idea is probably 10 times cheaper and more efficient than the whole "move everyboy out and buy a new homeland plan".
Re:The lowest point in the Netherlands (Score:5, Informative)
The article specifically says that building seawalls around the many islands is prohibitively expensive.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:The lowest point in the Netherlands (Score:4, Informative)
Build dams and dykes and stay safe.
Ever tried building dams and dykes around 1190 small coral islands? Look at this picture of Malé, the capital: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Male-total.jpg [wikipedia.org] Is it still worth living there with a 10 meeter dam around your city?
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They should consider connecting the islands together where it is fysically possible. If they do that they will kill 2 birds with one stone that way. They're able to stay safe and are able to get extra land.
Second point unrelated to this reply; Look at this picture, the island was never safe to start with. One big wave and the island's gone.
Um (Score:3, Funny)
If Denmark was a series of extremely tiny islands, you'd have a point. But it's not, so you don't.
Re:Um (Score:4, Interesting)
Old chart of the Netherlands(not the same as Denmark, go read a map):
http://ivan.ahk.nl/kaarten/lagelandenromeins.jpg [ivan.ahk.nl]
Modern chart of the Netherlands:
http://ivan.ahk.nl/kaarten/netherlands.jpg [ivan.ahk.nl]
Massive areas were flooded in the Middle Ages in the Netherlands. Instead of hiding on high ground we beat the water and founded a nation that is mostly below sea level. It takes a certain state of mind to do this. Once you start surrendering to the water, you lose. And you will keep on running from any danger that comes in your path.
Re:Um (Score:5, Informative)
It takes more than a state of mind, and you're dismissing their problems too easily.
1. The Netherlands took 1000 years or more to get where we are now. For the last 100 years, we've been continuously building major infrastructure to keep dry feet.
2. The Netherlands has money to burn (and has been in that fortunate situation for hundreds of years now). We spend on the order of the Maledives' entire GDP ($ 1.5 B) every year.
3. For a long time, land reclamation projects were extremely unambitious, no more than what a farmer and his personnel could achieve in the off-season. Each year the farmer would add another few hundred m of dikes and reclaim a patch of land. After 100 years of that, you've got quite a bit of land, but this only works if the area you're working is shallow marshes. The Maledives don't have that easy option. They would need to go for the expensive option (working directly against the ocean) immediately.
4. All of our (.nl) efforts were directed at shortening the coastline, which is easy enough if most of the area is land with low marshes in between. The Maledives would need to fortify 650 km of coastline in short order.
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I hate to break it to you but Mother Nature/Gaia will always win. You might get lucky and never see that day but all the Netherlands is doing is postponing the inevitable. Something will change (earthquake or water rising higher than expected or whatever) or someone will make a mistake (engineering error or faulty construction or whatever) or _something_ and then Mother Nature/Gaia will remind you that she is boss. We live at her mercy. Seriously, not to be all n
Re:The lowest point in the Netherlands (Score:4, Informative)
I hate to break it to you but Mother Nature/Gaia will always win. You might get lucky and never see that day but all the Netherlands is doing is postponing the inevitable.
Don't worry. We've got lots of lifeboats in case our country sinks. Which has already been happening for quite some time now, by the way. Even when you're not comparing with the sea level, our land in sinking. The continental shelf is moving downward, the soil is drying out. Were sinking it at least three different ways at the same time. We're good at sinking.
Here's a recent example - New Orleans was almost destroyed _by a storm._ Building a city in a region that is dangerous is stupid. Sorry to be so blunt, but it is.
Not at all. It's quite often very profitable to build a city in a dangerous area. Slopes of volcanoes are very fertile, for example. The mouth of a river (like Netherland or New Orleans) is a great place for a port.
I don't know about New Orleans, but Netherland is rich enough to continue fighting for a few more centuries.
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Wait i know this one... Infinite!
Build another island (Score:2, Informative)
Obama is president so (Score:5, Funny)
Not only will he lower sea levels in the long run, ;)
but in the short term, he can teach them to walk on water.
Manhattan (Score:4, Funny)
this looks like a problem that needs a scifi fix (Score:4, Interesting)
There was a group of dreamers a while back with an idea they called the Millennium Project. One of their ideas for solving the population crunch was creating artificial islands to populate the empty reaches of the equatorial waters. I don't remember all of the details of their plan, it's been years, but the islands themselves would be created by pulling calcium out of sea water, I think using some form of electrolysis. You lay metal grids in the water, run a current, and the calcium grows on the grid like sugar on a string with rock candy.
The islands themselves would be like giant dinner plates floating on the water, but I assume with enclosed flotation chambers so a good sloshing wouldn't sink them as it does with the dinner plate. The goal here would be extremely green and low-impact living so the islands would generate their own power via green and renewable methods, crops would be grown on the upper surface, and waste would be recycled. The experience here would be less like a cruise ship and more like low-impact commune living.
The habitat itself would have a submerged lip around the edge that would be perfect for the formation of corals and home for shallow water fish. Even if the island were moored in deep water, it would be a a fine habitat, much like a volcanic island can rise from the abyssal plane and suddenly there's a nice shallow water habitat for fish.
The really cool part is that these islands could theoretically be free-floating, drifting with the currents and floating around the world, using powered propulsion only when pushed too close to obstructions.
These islands represent a fairly interesting idea in population management. Right now, we have too damn many people on the planet. Now I know we're not going to get people to reduce population the way we're living now, there'd be blood in the streets if anyone forced them to. And not doing anything will just lead to ecological collapse, mass starvation, wars, and the population will be whittled down through attrition. But if we could get people a safe, clean, sustainable standard of living away from the cycle of poverty, the west has already shown that birthrates will naturally stabilize and begin to decline. The problem manages itself without coercion.
I don't know how likely it would be but I think it would be extremely cool if the islanders could just build their own replacements and say "fuck global warming, we're ready for it." Maybe the Dutch can join them, not sure how much longer their dikes can hold out.
Blown out of proportion ? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Or how about buying a shitload of dirt?
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Wouldn't constructing floodbanks (dikes) be a must cheaper option? Here in Amsterdam we live 1.5 meter below sea level but I have no reason to worry...
The issue is really with the unique geography of the Maldives. The country is actually a chain of 1,000+ tiny islands - some of them barely large enough to actually be called an island. You'd have to import all the raw materials for those dikes, and you'd wind up with more wall than land in many places.
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It's actually.....Republic of Maldives.
http://www.presidencymaldives.gov.mv/pages/index.php [presidency...ves.gov.mv]
http://www.maldivesinfo.gov.mv/home/index.php [maldivesinfo.gov.mv]
Re:Australia's unoccupied land (Score:4, Insightful)
Just for the convenience of keeping borders "manageable", I doubt any place they occupy can be elsewhere but on a seashore. Who'd want to lock themselves in a country, only to have them embargo you over a trade dispute? I mean, being land-locked is bad enough, but being bad locked inside a country that's bigger than you, whose standing army outnumbers you and who doesn't like you anymore?
On the other hand, maybe New Zealand will offer a better deal.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe they could move to Alaska. Lots of water there. Most of it is currently frozen but if the global warming experts are correct, Alaska will soon be a pleasant place to live. Like Seattle or Vancouver.
Of if they prefer the east coast, Newfoundland/Labrador should be a nice area in 2100. Like Maine but with lots of open land.
Also:
If the Maldives president was serious, he would start encouraging his people to leave NOW - one family at a time. That way the task of moving 0.3 million people will be mana
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Hey, I live in Florida, you insensitive clod!
Re: (Score:2)
Enjoy the water.
Creepy Crawler in Indiana.
Re:A simple question (Score:5, Informative)
A simple answer: between 1993 and 2000, the mean rate was 3.1mm/year [wikipedia.org], and it is increasing. These islands are like, 150 centimeters above sea level. Not much margin there.
Re:A simple question (Score:4, Interesting)
I love how that Wikipedia entry states, with absolutely certainty that the rising sea level is mainly a result of man-made global warming.
What I find interesting is that there is strong archeological evidence of populations thrived when the climate was warmer and the seas higher. One example being prehistoric Japan, 4000 BC to 2000 BC, when the seas were believed 5 to 6 meters higher. The indigenous population declined significantly when temperatures dropped.
These people on the Maldives would be screwed whether or not anyone wants to blame global warming. I suppose I'm being insensitive, but maybe they should have thought twice when they decided to settle land that's pretty much at sea level sitting out in the middle of the Indian ocean.
Frankly, I'm tired of this alarmist crap. I completely believe that the climate is changing, but when hasn't it been changing? This notion that humans are responsible for screwing everything about is about as arrogant, in my mind, as the belief people once had that humanity was at the center of the universe.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Arrogant? Why? We have the ability to wipe most human life off the planet in about an hour using nuclear weapons. Why is it arrogance to think we could do it in 50 years by other means?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
To some extent, it's pretty irrelevant whether humans are changing it or not. The true question is "What is the cost of the changing climate, and what is the cost of fixing it?" This of course begs the question of whether the change is manmade or not, but it's not the starting point.
No, the effect humans are having is ALL that matters when trying to figure out the cost of 'fixing' climate change. The cost of preventing climate change is 100% dependent on how much our activity can impact it. If our influence
Re:A simple question (Score:4, Insightful)
3.1mm/yr, and the entire country is only 115 sq. miles [wikipedia.org], with a third of the population in the capital city, which sits on less than 1 square mile [wikipedia.org]. Additionally, from a brief glance at the most populous towns/villages [wikipedia.org], it looks like another third of the population is residing on no more than 10 sq. miles.
Would it really be more cost effective to move the entire population to a new "homeland", instead of investing in efficiently condensing the population, and building a levee system around the current well-developed, and incredibly expensive-to-replace infrastructure?!!?
This smells like a "Poor us!" bid for attention and money, playing off of the "green guilt" of the rest of the developed world.
In other words...I'm calling shenanigans.
Re:A simple question (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheers
JE
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Numbers from the USGS. [usgs.gov]
If East Antarctica melts, we're looking at a 64.8m rise in sea level.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That calculator is doing it wrong, and the web page was clearly written by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.
Re:Moving to India? Forget it (Score:4, Informative)
A plague on both your houses - and on the people who modded up this partisan bullshit. 1. There has been plenty of Hindu on Muslim violence since independence, and 2. not all Muslims are terrorist, for fuck's sake.