Sinking Islands
- 3 May 06, 02:12 PM
If you look on a map of the Pacific Ocean there are many unimaginably remote coral atoll islands. One group of islands are known as the Karibati (pronounced Kee-ree-bus). As one source writes, "they are far away, untouristed, hard to get to and deeply religious...". Here's a which gives some indicative geographic and population information of the Karibati. For our series on global warming, this looks like an important place to visit. Sea levels are rising globally and these coral atoll island nations are low lying in the extreme - And there's fear amongst the population that they will have to evacuate. We hear that their fresh water is already being infiltrated by the sea (there's a fresh water cell beneath each island) and they too, like the rest of us, experience more frequent extreme weather events. I could get Gabrielle to stand on the island and actually broadcast from the first nation state to leg it because they fear being engulfer by the sea.
But hold on...is it as easy as that. Another group of islands (Tuvalu), near the Karibati in Pacific terms, and with similar problems, was recently visited by a photo-journalist whose article was published in the journal . I spoke with a geographer from Cambridge University who also told me something important about the formation of coral atoll islands. They are basically fomed by lumps of coral being torm off fringing reefs and tossed in the middle by big storms. Storms are an essential force in the formation of a coral atoll - And arguably, so my collaborator told me, storms are the force that will make them grow bigger and higher. But can that happen on a realisitic human time scale???. I think this is a darn good reason to go and have a look for ourselves....That rather comforting Gaia paradigm that the earth can heal it's self is all well and good, but, as always, are people part of that picture? And I haven't even mentioned what the effects of ocean acidification might have on the life in the sea around the islands - on which the islanders also depend. And that's another global warming story which you'll hear a lot more about. See you next time - I'll find you a good news story. One where life is truly triumphant.
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What did they blame previous periods of climate change, that have happened before, in Earth's long history, before the politically correct environmentalists got in on the act?
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Of course climate change can happen naturally. Today, it can also happen as a result of human actions or as a combination of natural causes and human action. Periods of climate change before humans existed certainly happened naturally, but that does not preclude human influence on, or human cause in, the climate change we witness today.
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