United Nations “Climate Refugees�

[My Penis is hungry]

Some places just are not high above water, and never will be, this year my work is in the Pacific, and many countries I go to are like this, the photo I took a few months back, from the "new" bridge from one atoll to the next. The pale line visible under water is the "Old Road", it's gone, under water, it was above water, pretty conclusive to me.

 

Now this country is very crowded, however other atols are not. And some places in the Pacific, like Fiji, FSM, Tahiti could swallow up millions more people, and you'd still not be crowded. However they are not atols but all of them volcanic mountains.

[Dexi]

Watched a piece on the news last nite about the river delta in Bangladesh. "Rising sea levels" were mentioned no less than 7 times in 10 mins giving the impression that islands in the delta were disappearing due to this factor.Erosion by river water was given only a brief mention .No actual figures were given to prove whether sea levels are rising at all and if so by how much.

[Coss]

Some places just are not high above water, and never will be, this year my work is in the Pacific, and many countries I go to are like this, the photo I took a few months back, from the "new" bridge from one atoll to the next. The pale line visible under water is the "Old Road", it's gone, under water, it was above water, pretty conclusive to me.

 

Now this country is very crowded, however other atols are not. And some places in the Pacific, like Fiji, FSM, Tahiti could swallow up millions more people, and you'd still not be crowded. However they are not atols but all of them volcanic mountains.

 

I'm not wanting to be difficult, and I'm not arguing your post, just another perspective on this whole atoll thing.

 

1 - The oceans are one big pond - so a metre rise, or fall, will be measurable in Auckland, Sydney, San Francisco, etc etc - as well as at the atolls. There is very little geographical variation in the oceans' levels at different locations on the globe. Possibly less than a millimetre.

 

2 - Atolls are accumulations of coral debris in the most part. As you note, some Islands are Volcanic in origin. Atolls generally, are accumulated on the top of something, mostly volcanic cones under the water's surface, close enough to the sunlight to allow coral to flourish.

 

3 - The process of plate tectonics, plays a noticeable effect on the movement of land masses (both above and below water). I don't know what the Pacific Islands status vis a vis this process are, but for example, NZ sits astride a more or less, North to South intersection of a couple of plates. The western of these is getting very slowly closer to Australia apparently, but in 2009 a Fiordland Earthquake jumped us a whole 30cm closer, we'll be neighbours soon

 

There is also a height component to these movements. And as change is constant, we can say that most land masses (both above and below water) are rising or falling, by smaller or greater amounts, most of the time.

 

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plate_interactions - "The oceanic Pacific Plate is subducting under the Indo-Australian Plate north and east of New Zealand, but the direction of subduction reverses south of the Alpine Fault where the Indo-Australian Plate starts subducting under the Pacific Plate."

 

4 - Atolls come and go - I can't place the study at the moment, but one done in the 70s and 80s, noted, that after a Cyclone, many atolls in the study area (some 20 or so) had been all but obliterated, or degraded in size and area. Some 17 years later, most (not all) had reformed, a few, much larger than before. So from this we can see that an Atoll's substance, is reasonably dependant on wave action.

 

And from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoll - "For the atoll to persist, continued erosion or subsidence must be at a rate slow enough to permit reef growth upwards and outwards to replace the lost height."

________

 

So enough of that, from your photo, I reckon that the water level has not risen, or other wise scientists would be able to claim a (my estimation) 40 cm sea level rise and that would have made headlines all over the place. More likely in my opinion (and it's just an opinion), the floor of the lagoon has dropped or the Atoll has dropped, or the outlet of the lagoon has become restricted and is holding more water. Or even more likely, the man made foundations of the old road are disintegrating. It would be interesting to know what the foundations are, concrete? coral? sand? coconut fibre?

 

I listened to a reasonable sounding guy on the radio the other week who built schools and such and lived and married in Kiribati during the 60's and 70's. His comments were that he'd been back recently to see his daughter, and that Kiribati was shit-hole, so no wonder some people wanted to become climate change refugees (refused in NZ - http://www.3news.co.nz/nznews/kiribati-climate-change-refugee-leaves-nz-2015092314) and that he'd gone down to the seashore, where he'd gone in the 60s and 70s, to sit on the same rock he used to sit on and watch the sea. He noted that the high tide came in to the same place it's came to all those years ago.

[My Penis is hungry]

Kiribati is a shit hole, literally, don't go near anyone singing while in what looks like pristine clear water, they are singing because it's the local custom to do so while shitting.

 

Climate getting hotter or colder? I am not convinced it's either, but I also see on the shores of Kiribati shit washed up from other countries, polution that's floated 1000's of kms, and that is the problem, there are too many humans, and we pollute too much, way too much.

 

Does it cause global warming or freezing? I have no idea, but it does fuck up the environment.

[Coss]

"there are too many humans, and we pollute too much, way too much"

 

and now we in agree u and me