How To Lead a Nation That's About To Be Swallowed By the Sea 289
merbs writes: Anote Tong, the president of low-lying Kiribati, has spent nearly a decade trying to save his people from rising sea levels. There's a good chance he will not succeed. This is how he leads a nation that will likely not exist in 100 years. Motherboard reports: "Kiribati’s fate provides a rare glimpse of the future world under climate change. The tiny island nation is the canary in our global coal mine, and it will bear the brunt of climate change more intensely and much sooner than nearly anywhere else. 'We cannot keep doing what we are doing,' Tong said. 'Because we may be on the front line today, but other countries, other societies, other communities will be next.'"
gills behind the ears (Score:3)
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Make up a bullshit Global Warming disaster and tell them it's all their fault.
I believe humans are changing the climate. I also believe global warming is being leveraged as a political excuse for much more localized man-made problems. Every year at the UN we hear the same tired sob stories from heads of states blaming the obvious gross mismanagement of their own lands on "climate change".
I'm all for crunching complex models in gigantic computers as long as outputs include error bars and make useful predictions. I just wish people would find a way to disconnect science from the pol
Re: How to Extort Money from Rich Nations (Score:3, Interesting)
It's worse than that. Actual measurements show the islands are growing not shrinking.
It's all just an attempt to extort money based on lies.
However the bleeding hearts just never bother to do any actual research.. They just want to feel self important by 'supporting the cause'.
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That's actually true - but still a bold-faced lie by omission:
"Et tu, Brute?"
A sealevel rise of 1 to 3 millimetres per year isn't going to inundate anything for millennia.
To higher ground? (Score:3)
I hear some of these low-lying nations are spending what money they have to buy land in other countries... so they can pick up their people and move there. I guess they're also buying agreements to take on their citizens, but that'll be kind of hard to enforce, eh? Without a country or anything, that is.
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Indeed. In wealthy regions or those that (theoretically) are living in long periods of peace, it is challenging but "interesting" to think Where do we put a few million Dutch? in Germany? In a New-New-Zealand bought from Sweden or Spain?
In poorer regions, it will be a nightmare. Bangladesh is growing fast beyond the current 160M. Even before climate change driven disasters, they already suffer a lot from flooding. Imagine a large % of those 160M+ people need relocating. Terrible stuff - they should be talki
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Bangladesh is begging foreign countries to take their surplus population. They have literally exceeded their land carrying capacity.
Capitalism? (Score:2)
Bangladesh hasn't really passed by Feudalism, and doesn't seem to want to. It seems to be more in the market to go full Islamic theocracy, with no room for any other worldview.
Re:To higher ground? (Score:5, Informative)
Why can't they just build levies around the island an canals.
Because they are a tiny little nation, and they cannot muster the resources. The smaller the nation, the larger the ratio of coastline to area...
Other countries build entire islands so it shouldn't be impossible.
Very large countries build very small islands. Their whole nation is a very small island. Actually, it's way worse than that; their nation is a collection of small islands [wikipedia.org]. They would have to build a whole lot of walls, and they don't have a whole lot of mass to build them with.
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Why can't they just build levies around the island an canals.
Because they are a tiny little nation, and they cannot muster the resources. The smaller the nation, the larger the ratio of coastline to area...
No no, they just mine all the land they have, and pile it on top of all the land they mined it from.
Should be able to raise their altitude infinitely.
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because that would:
a) cost way more than the GDP of the country.(only $170 million).
b) simultaneously kill their GDP, as it largely depends on people coming to their island for the beaches. who wants to sit at the top of a wall to get their sun?
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They could make the money back in spades by becoming the first country to build an arcology and transplanting their population and catering to the beach goers still.
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Why should they foot the bill for such a project (assuming it's even doable), when it's other nations that are causing the problem? That's especially true if the costs may exceed this tiny nation's income.
Now one can argue about how much of this problem is man-made, and how much is natural causes. And you can argue about how costs should be divided between nations that contribute(d) to the problem. But even then, some part of the problem is man-made, which means the *fair* thing to do would be to pay com
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Why should they foot the bill for such a project ...
Because they are the ones that benefit. Why does the world owe a Kiribati resident a problem-free life on a tropical island? Why does the Kiribati's problem with sea level take precedence over the Russian who wants to heat his home in the winter? Or the guy in India or Africa who wants running water and air conditioning in the summer? Or the Chinese woman who wants to buy fresh fruits and vegetables that need to be transported to her town?
Re:To higher ground? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not just be honest and say "Why does the Kiribati's problem take precedence over the American who wants a bigger SUV to tow his boat down his vacation home on the man-made lake so he can fish for trophies?"
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Why not just be honest and say "Why does the Kiribati's problem take precedence over the American who wants a bigger SUV to tow his boat down his vacation home on the man-made lake so he can fish for trophies?"
Actually, GHG emissions from the US are trending down while other countries' emissions are trending up sharply [ornl.gov]. So your weird, angry finger-pointing is out of date.
But even if it weren't, try answering your own question. Why does the Kiribati resident matter more the the American? Why do thousands of Kiribati matter more than millions of Americans?
Re:To higher ground? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does a Kiribati life matter more than an American's trophy fishing?
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Why does a Kiribati life matter more than an American's trophy fishing?
I understand. You think Kiribati residents will just stand there as the water rises year after year and in 50 or 100 years it will be over their heads and they will drown. What did Kiribati residents do to deserve the extremely low opinion you have of them?
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Actually, GHG emissions from the US are trending down while other countries' emissions are trending up sharply [ornl.gov]. So your weird, angry finger-pointing is out of date.
Not by a long shot... Per capita the US is still one of the biggest polluters when it comes to greenhouse gasses (if not the biggest). Taking that graph you linked, China emits just under 2x the amount of CO2 the US does. But does so with >4 times the number of people. Likewise India emits less than half what the US does, with ~4x bigger population. And while the EU is certainly a big emitter, it emits less than the US while having >1.5x bigger population.
That's of course with 2011 figures accordin
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Actually, GHG emissions from the US are trending down while other countries' emissions are trending up sharply [ornl.gov]. So your weird, angry finger-pointing is out of date.
Not by a long shot... Per capita the US is still ...
Does the climate realize it should care about per capita emissions rather than absolute numbers? I don't think temperatures and sea levels respond to that kind of equivocation.
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Per capita production matters because if you want to reduce the production, you have to understand who is producing it.
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...if you want to reduce the production, you have to understand who is producing it.
It's trending down in the US because it's being reduced by "who is producing it". In some other countries, it's trending up because it's being increased by "who is producing it".
It's not like the per capita GHG emissions are staying the same and the population is changing either. Per capita GHG emissions trends are in the same basic direction as absolute trends.
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Does the climate realize it should care about per capita emissions rather than absolute numbers? I don't think temperatures and sea levels respond to that kind of equivocation.
It's pathetic that you would dismiss the population differences between the countries in your graph when you had previously asked:
Why do thousands of Kiribati matter more than millions of Americans?
Why should the millions of US citizens be justified in causing more damage to the environment than the billions of people from the other countries? If you don't care who suffers just so you can lead the lifestyle you want, why not commit to your ideals fully? Put on a pirate hat and just invade other countries to plunder their resources!
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Why should the millions of US citizens be justified in causing more damage to the environment than the billions of people from the other countries? If you don't care who suffers just so you can lead the lifestyle you want...
I thought that was the whole point of this story. Kiribati residents are owed a lifestyle regardless of the tradeoffs everyone else in the world would have to make for their lifestyle to be maintained. It leads to the still-unanswered question "why does one group matter more than another?".
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I thought that was the whole point of this story. Kiribati residents are owed a lifestyle regardless of the tradeoffs everyone else in the world would have to make for their lifestyle to be maintained. It leads to the still-unanswered question "why does one group matter more than another?".
If that is the way that you want to play it, perhaps you can answer the question yourself. Why does your lifestyle matter more than the entire world? After all, it is not just one single nation that is affected by climate change. If your nation is causing the globe to heat more than anyone else except one other country and yet you have only 4% of the world's population, why should you matter more than everyone else? Do you think that is fair? Do you think that you should be able to do anything you want no m
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Except everyone is just minding their own business. The woman in China who wants fresh vegetables that have to be transported to her is minding her own business. As is the African who wants running water, and the Indian who wants air conditioning, and the American who drives to work and the Russian who heats his home. And everyone else.
The difference seems to be that you hate the US. Go ahead. It still doesn't answer the basic question of why the Kiribati resident matters and the Russian doesn't. Unle
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> Why does your lifestyle matter more than the entire world?
Where did that question come from? Because it wasn't this discussion.
> If you really are as selfish and arrogant as you appear then perhaps you wouldn't notice the hypocrisy
"I don't think temperatures and sea levels respond to that kind of equivocation." was simply astute. I think this is where you went off the deep end.
> the world wouldn't care if the people Kiribati lived or died
It doesn't. People have lived and died for millen
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Re:To higher ground? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sneaky, very very sneaky. US are tending (wonderful wishy washy word that) down from a peak well and truly above what other countries are barely starting to catch up to and not to forget the US outsources a lot of it's pollution to other countries, the US gets the products and they get shit wages, very bad working conditions and uncontrolled pollution but of course that is their governments fault. This ignoring the US standard invade and conquer if you refuse to sell your resources for funny money and provide working in poverty labour.
So semi floating cities in tsunami and tropical cyclone zone, well, I suppose that will work for as long as it works right up until the first major tsunami or tropical cyclone and the millions or mourners point it out as a really bad idea.
The only sound thing they can do is establish a treaty with another country to accept those people as citizens and establish a trust for them, based around trading off access to the fishing and mining resources, via that country to commercial players.
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Even if you don't feel we have any moral obligation I would argue this: Why is it that we have ships, soldiers, weapons, military advisors, spies deployed across the world at
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What is that an argument for? If people "care", will things work out differently? Will anyone ever return the favor and "care" about the US?
GHG emissions from the US are trending down, whereas they're trending up for other countries. If that continues, will the US be to blame in 40 or 50 years? Do you think there's something more productive for people to do than finger-pointing and blame-distribution?
Re:To higher ground? (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine I weighed 700 pounds and last year I consumed an average of 5,000 calories a day. This year I cut that back to 4,800. The trend is down. My neighbor weighs 180 pounds and last year he consumed 2,700 calories a day. This year he consumed 2,800.
Yes, I'm heading in the right direction while my neighbor is not, but it's easy to see that I've got a much more serious problem than he does. The trend matters but what also matters is whether change is happening quick enough.
To answer your question, I think the US has made some strides but has a long way to go. In 40 or 50 years we are likely to still be be producing dangerous amounts of CO2. So, yes we will still be to blame, as will China and any number of other countries. Perhaps that won't be true.
I agree that taking responsibility is more effective than blame. As far as productive things to do go, a number of years ago I left my job and started working for an organization that does energy efficiency research.
What have you done?
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I don't think the Russian who wants to heat his home is acting unethically. Nor the Indian who buys air conditioning, nor the Canadian who flies to Europe for vacation, nor anyone else going about his or her daily life.
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Why does the Kiribati resident matter more the the American? Why do thousands of Kiribati matter more than millions of Americans?
Why does your son or daughter's life matter more than my potato chips I'm munching on tonight?
Because we are not ISIS you asshole. You might be a sociopath but it ain't a good quality. And for the record, I do care more about your kids than my potato chips. Its as clear as beer pee you have no outlook other than your own Randian view, only you skipped the enlightened part of the self interest.
So have a bag of potato chips, and hope they televise it for your lulz when they drown.
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Another one of you. You think Kiribati residents will just stand there as the water rises over the years and in 50 or 100 years it will be over their heads and they will drown. Is it just Kiribati residents you think are that stupid? Or do you also look down on other people based on their race or nationality?
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Good post, would mod up if I had points.
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Actually, GHG emissions from the US are trending down while other countries' emissions are trending up sharply. So your weird, angry finger-pointing is out of date.
Ok now I'm pissed.. regardless of what direction I point there is a little sticker on the back of it saying "Made in China"
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Regardless of what the emissions are today, if you look at historical emissions, it's Western countries that have contributed to the vast majority of anthropogenic CO2 that is in atmosphere now, and that is the proper definition for accountability purposes.
So yes, British, German, French, American etc citizens have warmed their houses by paying for that with deferred drowning of some Pacific Islanders. I don't know about your personal morals, but in general, being in distress is not considered an excuse for
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Regardless of what the emissions are today, if you look at historical emissions, it's Western countries that have contributed to the vast majority of anthropogenic CO2 that is in atmosphere now, and that is the proper definition for accountability purposes.
Why do historical emissions matter more than the same amount of current and future emissions?
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Because they kickstarted the process. Even if we stop emitting completely now, the warming is going to go on for quite a while courtesy of all the CO2 already in atmosphere.
It's not that they matter more in general. It's that when the islands are actually going to get flooded for real (or rather sometime before, when it's still possible to do something about the people), you'll have to look back at the entirety of historical emissions up to that point to divvy up responsibility.
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Because they kickstarted the process. Even if we stop emitting completely now, the warming is going to go on for quite a while courtesy of all the CO2 already in atmosphere.
I'm still not sure what you are saying here. Does 1 ton of historical emissions raise the sea level more than 1 ton of future emissions? How much more? If it's a lot more, then large future emissions can correctly be said to be less and less significant.
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No, a ton is a ton. All I was saying is that when you account for over 100 years of emissions that Europe (including Russia) and US did, it dwarfs everybody else [wri.org], even China. And so you need to look at each country's share in historical emissions since we started burning fossil fuels, as opposed to just the current year's share.
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Because it is dishonest to put words in his mouth. He asked you why you'd deny billions of brown people running water and air conditioning and all the things we already have.
I'd like to hear the answer to that myself.
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Do you think helping the Kinbati means denying "billions of people" anything?
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It's actually a similar question. Note that they can't even answer the question when it's Kiribati residents vs. the hated bourgeois American middle class. The notion that "these people matter and these other people don't" is one that seems to dissipate when you ask the simple question "why?".
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It's actually a similar question. Note that they can't even answer the question when it's Kiribati residents vs. the hated bourgeois American middle class. The notion that "these people matter and these other people don't" is one that seems to dissipate when you ask the simple question "why?".
You have utterd the biggest false dichotomy ever made by man. It isn't that Americans will be losing their land if these people are not losing their land.
It isn't even giving up quality of life, unless your hobby is burning old tires in the back yard.
Regardless, you win one internet for the false equivalence.
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Probably by using an ocean-going dredging machine that shoots the material up onto the beach and then use that. At least for the time being. Or we'll just move 'em. It's not like we're gonna just let 'em drown or anything. It's pretty much a given that someone will take them in and someone will fund it. Hell, I might even help a little now that I'm aware of this particular problem. I'll look into it in the morning before we head off to the museum again. Who knows?
Anyhow, per your tire burning comment above.
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Because they are the ones that benefit. Why does the world owe a Kiribati resident a problem-free life on a tropical island?
The difference between adults and children is that adults have to take responsibility for problems, even problems that they have only contributed to, rather than caused.
Why does the Kiribati's problem with sea level take precedence over the Russian who wants to heat his home in the winter? Or the guy in India or Africa who wants running water and air conditioning in the summer? Or the Chinese woman who wants to buy fresh fruits and vegetables that need to be transported to her town?
It doesn't take precedence - it's the same problem. The Russian won't be able to heat his home when the economy collapses due to climate change. These people will still need to pay to move to new technologies because in fact, climate change doesn't go away, not matter how long you ignore it. It's annoying like that. Eventually, we will have
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> The Russian won't be able to heat his home when the economy collapses due to climate change
Er.... out of all the countries on Earth, with the possible exception of Canada, I struggle to think of a country that's more likely to be a net beneficiary of climate change than Russia.
Obligatory joke: In Soviet Russia, climate changes YOU...
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Er.... out of all the countries on Earth, with the possible exception of Canada, I struggle to think of a country that's more likely to be a net beneficiary of climate change than Russia.
But how likely is "more likely"?
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You might want to read up on what changes would happen in both of those countries if the temperature increased. Seriously, it's not as rosy as you imagine.
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It doesn't take precedence - it's the same problem. The Russian won't be able to heat his home when the economy collapses due to climate change.
Hmm. That's something new. Please explain the mechanism of this "economy collapse" due to climate change, and especially why you think it will affect a Russian's ability to afford to heat his home. Gradual changes over several decades don't tend to cause modern economies to collapse.
Eventually, we will have to reduce our GHG output. Now is the best time because now (a) we have the finances, not later, when we are made poor, but still facing the same problem and (b) renewables are at price parity, and due their flexibility and low startup costs, ideal for places like india and africa, since you don't need to spend quidtillions on poles and wires.
The longer we leave it, the more expensive (in real terms) it will be.
The trend for the last couple hundred years has been that technology becomes cheaper and available to more people. You seem to be saying this trend will reverse in the future. What will cause it to reverse? How?
And while a
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You could ask the Chinese woman who wants fresh vegetables, or the Indian and African fellows who want air conditioning and running water. What do you think they'd say? Perhaps they would say they understand, but they aren't willing to give up what's important to them to benefit the Kiribati.
What kind of restitution/solutions do you think these people should offer? An alternate place to live, at least. What else?
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Re:To higher ground? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been to the Netherlands, and I've cycled along the dykes and levies. And they could be built because the coast of the Netherlands is a large intertidal zone which falls dry and gets flooded again during the tide. Even some miles away from the coastal line, the sea is no deeper than ten feet during the flood, and the islands at the dutch coast can be reached by car during the low tide. And it's not a single dyke, it's a whole system of levies and water locks and pumps, reaching several miles into the land.
Kiribati has barely any intertidal zone, and only one larger island (Kirimati). Every other island has less than 10 square miles. There is simply no space at the coast to even built something similar to the dutch coastal protection. With the exception of the vulcan island of Banaba, all other islands have less than five feed elevation above the sea level. There not even enough building material on the islands to construct any levies.
Re:To higher ground? (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that. The Dutch system of coastal protection got built over centuries, and much of it in the 20th century, when the country, i.e. the state, finally came into some money. Even then, to build the system out to its current, world-class level, the state had to borrow enormous amounts of money, the last of which was only recently paid back. And this was a prosperous, fully industrialized country. Until the dawn of the 20th century BTW, and even during it, there were regular and major floods, with sometimes 1000s of casulties, in spite of the coastal protection already in place. The last of these floods took place after World War II. Disclaimer: I am Dutch.
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Sure, a lot of coastal protections were built in modern times, but that didn't stop people from digging major canals manually in earlier centuries. The Noordzeekanaal was dug by handpower, as were the canals around the Haarlemmermeerpolder. And Holland wasn't nearly as over-populated then as it is now. The point being: it can be done, if you want to. If you spend your time actually fixing your problem instead of whining about it...
Also, Vikings are from Scandinavia, not the Netherlands.
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The ground is water permeable.
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> The ground is water permeable.
So dig Florida-style finger canals to create new, valuable waterfront property to sell to foreigners for vacation homes, and use the revenue to pay for raising the rest of the main island for Kiribati's own residents.
Permeable ground just means you can't rely on levees or dikes to keep land that's below sea level dry. Raise the terrain itself (via dredged fill dirt) above sea level, and the problem is solved. The city of Chicago literally raised most of its land & buil
Re:To higher ground? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Island are Atolls, they are made of coral sand, so the harsh reality is the coral reef is the levies. When the coral reefs are healthy, the Parrotfish [wikipedia.org] grind up the coral into coral sand which is then washed up on the atoll. This with wind and wave erosion results in an auto-regulation, the atoll stays a few meters above sea level as the sea level raises and lowers. When the Atolls population increases pollution and over fishing pushes the reefs into an unhealthy state and the replenishment of eroded sand decreases and the atoll shrinks. Humans as dig water wells and as fresh water is used the ground subsides.
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Nicely explained here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/201... [wattsupwiththat.com]
Simply put, atolls with no people on them manage to stay level with sea level even though sea level has been rising for millennia.
Atolls with people have problems. Blaming CO2 levels for recent problems with erosion when there has been no increase in the rate of sea level rise probably is pointing the finger at the wrong cause. It does allow them to ignore the real cause (too many people) and try and extort money from the first world to help cope.
Not the first time (Score:2, Interesting)
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For the generation that move it moight be tough, but for their children they will have access to far greater health, education and career opportunities previously unknown to them.
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There's plenty of proof that human actions can dramatically alter our environment. Just look at the Aral sea for example.
Personally I believe we should be acting on the best scientific information we have. It's not perfect and we are learning more all the time, but institutions like NASA have sent probes to then ends of the solar system, have landed a rover on Mars, and returned people from space. I trust the
Re:Not the first time (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe we should be acting on the best scientific information we have.
I couldn't agree more. We should act on scientific information, not the politics of wealth and not the politics of guilt. And the science should itself remain independent and untainted by politics (otherwise it isn't really science).
I am willing to accept whatever unbiased science tells me. If I don't like that answer, too bad for me. It is what it is.
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It is not the first time a population has to move because of adverse climate effects. It happened all the time through the history of humanity.
Plot twist : there's nowhere else to go now, because of the 7+ billion humans.
Re:Not the first time (Score:5, Informative)
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Spoiler: the desert is a great place to build sprawling metro areas (Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dubai, Salt Lake City...). The Sahara (just to name one) is really fucking huge, and it's unlikely to either flood or be covered in glaciers anytime within the next million years.
I fail to see the problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Throughout the history of the Earth, its crust has constantly been recycled. Areas once above the ground and above the sea have descended downward and have been replaced with new land. This will continue to occur. Just as Kiribati and the Maldives are descending into the sea, other islands are being born by volcanoes. The Himalayas were once under water, including the peaks of mountains like Everest, at the bottom of the Tethys Ocean. Sea levels have risen and dropped by over 100 meters in the past. There's
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Cue the World's Smallest Violin (Score:5, Informative)
Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level: Christmas Island I [psmsl.org]
Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level: Christmas Island II [psmsl.org]
Spot the clear blub blub trend, Try hard. ~1mm rise per year. Maybe.
Meanwhile a typhoon could arrive next year with a 8 foot storm surge that swamps the atolls completely.
DISCLAIMER: Grew up in the Caribbean, nailed doors shut from the inside and held on tight for Hugo and Marilyn. People died. '~1mm/yr climate refugees' on a coral atoll really sound like whiny scammers to me. In terms of threat level it's like that movie, Frogs.
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1 mm per year is one foot in 300 years. It's completely plausible that a one foot change could swamp major parts of the United States, not to mention Pacific islands. And they'd feel the effects long before then.
No, 1 mm per year is 0.984252 foot in 300 years.
If only there was an easier and more consistent way to convert and express measurements...
If humanity can't even agree on a measurement system, how are we supposed to make the required compromises on global warming issues?
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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. â" 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' â" Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. -- Emerson
Emerson talks about not being afraid of contradicting yourself over time.
I am talking about the standardization of the measurement system, which would facilitate trade and cooperation between countries.
If anything, this quote argues in favor of the US switching to metric by contradicting this stubborn posture of sticking with the imperial system.
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Century? 300 Years? Freeman Dyson, the most brilliant physicist on the planet, has said not to worry about it, because in 50 - 60 years or so we're going to have the energy from renewable sources problem licked, we will dig nothing out of the ground for our energy, and put no CO2 into the atmosphere. At that point, CO2 concentrations will start down, and our problems of too-cold winters will just be beginning (He didn't say the part about the too-cold winters, that's just my speculation. )
The point is t
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And roughly ten thousand times as much agricultural land is lost in any given year to new office parks, golf courses, condos, and discount retail stores.
Declare War on the Sea! (Score:5, Funny)
I guess Caligula had it right, he was just 2000 years ahead of his time.
Billions of people vs. thousands (Score:3)
We just had this topic a few days ago [slashdot.org]. Are these stories supposed to convince us that billions of people around the world should give up on affordable energy for the convenience of thousands living on Pacific atolls? Does India owe it to Kiribati to keep the Indian people artificially poor for another half century until non-carbon energy is cheap enough?
If not, then what's the point? "Kiribati leaders feel sad about what they think will happen in 50 years"? Lots of people who tell themselves sad stories (whether true, false, or unknown) about the future feel sad about it.
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It's not just Kiribati that is affected by rising sea level. All along the US East Coast and Gulf Coast will be affected. Just ask the people of Miami,FL and Norfolk, VA about nuisance flooding which is only going to get worse as sea level continues to rise. The US West Coast is affected too but geography makes it less of a problem over the short one.
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Yes. But the point is "what about Kiribati's future?" isn't a persuasive argument for millions or billions of people changing anything significant. If you want to say millions or billions of people should change for their own good, then say that instead.
Incidentally, I'm also not super sympathetic to rich coastal dwellers with beach houses.
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Kiribati is history. All they can do is leave. There will probably be 20 or 30 feet of sea level rise over the next several centuries. That's the minimum of how long it will take the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to reach a new equilibrium. The last time CO2 was 400 ppm sea level was over 60 feet higher than now. It's not just the rich in Miami and Norfolk that are being affected.
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Not really. Most of South Florida was ORIGINALLY low-lying, but AFAIK, it hasn't been legal to build a new structure whose main living floor isn't at least several feet above sea level since at least 1926. Our roads don't flood because of rising sea levels, they flood because our county government is criminally incompetent and doesn't maintain storm drains properly.
Disaster for TIGHAR (Score:2)
Without Kiribati, Gillespie will have to move his Amelia Earhart search/scam to another island...
Sea-level threat? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, when you live on an island barely six feet above sea level, passing hurricanes have threatened (and have succeeded in the past) to wipe these islands clean. But the threat of sea level changes, which have been slowly rising since the last Ice Age, is moot because, in recent times, most of these Pacific atolls have grown in size, due to increasing biomass of growing coral.
http://news.nationalgeographic... [nationalgeographic.com]
Cutting emissions, IMHO, will have no observable effect on these islands. But I can't blame the natives, though, for trying to get the rich nations of the world to give them free transport to higher and safer havens.
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It's probably too late for emissions cuts to save Kiribati (or Miami, FL for that matter) but the sooner emissions are cut the less overall sea level rise there will be. The last time CO2 levels were 400 ppm sea level was over 60 feet higher than it is now. It may be that there's already that much sea level rise baked in and it's just a matter of how long it takes to get there.
Climate Change (Score:2)
First of all:
1) Climate Change is a natural response to the Earth's ability to support life.To thwart the Earths ability to prevent or adapt either through increasing the surface area of the oceans as compared to land, or through geoengineering projects more than likely will destroy the biosphere.
Contrary to what these scientists will tell you, shining a heat lamp on a beaker filled with CO2, although a useful experiment, is not exactly the same as a 4 billion year old Biosphere, created through wholly unkn
heartfelt (Score:4, Funny)
My thoughts and prayers go out to the Kiribati, because that's all they're gonna get and I ain't fucking giving up my giant SUV. No way.
Re:heartfelt (Score:5, Funny)
Can someone please translate this sentence into English for me? What is the "reverse" of "no effect whatsoever"?
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An opportunity (Score:2)
For those that believe that climate change is a liberal conspiracy to keep India poor, this is an excellent opportunity to buy out an entire country from a motivated seller.
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Cement was invented over 3000 years ago (Score:2)
If the island will be unihabitable in 100 years (Score:3)
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I liked it when they went to whore houses around the world.
N Korea was even better than Liberia.
Already been Done (Score:3)
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make it someone else's problem
We lack skilled engineers to solve this problem. If the government would only increase the H1-B limit, we could lick this in no time!