Disappearing world: Global warming claims tropical island

Parent Cafe
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<p>For the first time, an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas. Environment Editor Geoffrey Lean reports
Published: 24 December 2006</p>

<p>Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India’s part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.</p>

<p>As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.</p>

<p>Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.</p>

<p>It has been officially recorded in a six-year study of the Sunderbans by researchers at Calcutta’s Jadavpur University. So remote is the island that the researchers first learned of its submergence, and that of an uninhabited neighbouring island, Suparibhanga, when they saw they had vanished from satellite pictures.</p>

<p>Two-thirds of nearby populated island Ghoramara has also been permanently inundated. Dr Sugata Hazra, director of the university’s School of Oceanographic Studies, says “it is only a matter of some years” before it is swallowed up too. Dr Hazra says there are now a dozen “vanishing islands” in India’s part of the delta. The area’s 400 tigers are also in danger.</p>

<p>Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years’ time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction.</p>

<p>Al Gore’s Inconvinient truth.</p>

<p><a href=“http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2099971.ece[/url]”>http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2099971.ece&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>And these guys expect us to believe that global warming is the only possible cause of changing coastlines in an active delta region?</p>

<p>Do they think none of us have ever seen the changes over time to the size and shape of a barrier island? I wonder how they explain the barrier islands that grow in size each year? Global cooling?</p>

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<p>Some times you just gotta love ID.</p>

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<p>What happened to the people of Lohachara island? Did they get evacuated?</p>

<p>Everyone needs to see ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and WAKE UP!</p>

<p>Edit: I just read the rest of the article and got my question answered.</p>

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<p>Yeah! Global warming is a load of ****. Damn liberal media…</p>

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<p>What I don’t understand is why there is so much resistance to global warming by the conservatives. Can someone please explain that? Why is global warming, which is now accepted as factual by scientists and is no longer considered a ‘theory,’ considered a ‘liberal’ issue? It seems to me that it should concern ALL of us and I don’t see why it is a divisive issue.</p>

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<p>Fitter Happier,</p>

<p>Other than the so-called bugaboo of the liberal media, what science do you have that demonstrates otherwise? It seems to me that there are very legitimate scientific reasons to be worried, and all the finger pointing in the world won’t change that.</p>

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<p>I was being facetious. Sorry for the misunderstanding.</p>

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<p>

Because most liberals confuse changing temperature with the cause behind the change in temperature. The Earth has warmed and cooled for as far back as we know. Too many liberals assume that because the Earth is warming, the change must be caused by man. How do we know this warming tread is caused by human activity rather than being the natural flow of the Earth? The science behind this is not as ironclad as liberals wish to believe. In short, the residence is not to global warming but rather to the cause of global warming. </p>

<p>I am not sure it makes a difference. I favor eliminating the use of oil in our country because the high price of oil props up very dangerous and destructive civilizations in the middle east. If it wasn’t for oil, many of those countries would return to their minimal existences and not endanger America with nuclear weapons.</p>

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<p>But why be so resistant to it? Why take the chance that the scientists who say that humans have accelerated gw (and there are MANY scientists who agree on this; it’s not just the liberals) may be RIGHT?</p>

<p>I think that many of those who are resisting do so because they think they’re going to get raptured up any minute so it doesn’t matter. At least a number of people have told me that. Which makes no sense to me because their own bible says God said to be good stewards.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>It’s not that.</p>

<p>Barrier islands come and go. They are, by defintion, sand bars that change continually. </p>

<p>I know. My father lived on one for twenty years. At one point, the ocean was splashing over his sea wall. A decade later, there was a quarter mile of sand dunes between his back yard and the water’s edge.</p>

<p>Global warming could explain the disappearance of a barrier island. But, so could shifting tides and redeposited sand – especially in an active delta region. Not to mention that a massive tsunami hit the region in question two years ago.</p>

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<p>everyone cares about the environment!</p>

<p>people fly around on private planes promoting conservation! (actors, al gore, etc)</p>

<p>… you mean private planes aren’t environmentally friendly? oh.</p>

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<p>“people fly around on private planes promoting conservation! (, al gore, etc)”</p>

<p>How do you know? The last I had heard was that Al Gore takes commercial flights and goes through security like rest of the people.</p>

<p>There was also a segment in the movie. They randomly selected 10% of all the scientific articles ever published and peer reviewed by other scientists. 0% disagreed with the findings. More than half of the popular press disagrees with global warming.</p>

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<p>Even President Bush has decided that the melting icecaps are endangering polar bears.</p>

<p>That’s about as far as he goes though…Kyoto be damned. The oil profiteers depend on global warming! :)</p>

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<p>lealdragon,</p>

<p>I know this is late, but the site’s been having disagreements with me lately</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Keep in mind, however, that “theory” in layman’s terms and “theory” in science are very different beasts. In layman’s terms, the word theory and hypothesis blend together. In science, a theory “a theory is a proposed description, explanation, or model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation.” This means that we have both the fact that the earth is warming (at least in the short term, this is inarguable) and the theory as to why it is doing so. Global warming, therefore, is both a fact and a theory.</p>

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<p>UCLAri, thanks for the clarification.</p>

<hr>

<p>Here is something interesting:</p>

<p><a href=“The Times & The Sunday Times: breaking news & today's latest headlines”>The Times & The Sunday Times: breaking news & today's latest headlines;

<p>New proof that man has caused global warming
From Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent, in Washington</p>

<p>The strongest evidence yet that global warming has been triggered by human activity has emerged from a major study of rising temperatures in the world’s oceans…</p>

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<p>There’s nothing wrong with the planet that the sudden disappearance of 5.5 billion people wouldn’t fix…</p>

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<p>“There’s nothing wrong with the planet that the sudden disappearance of 5.5 billion people wouldn’t fix…”</p>

<p>Don’t forget cows. They were recently identified as potentially a major cause.</p>

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<p>“Don’t forget cows. They were recently identified as potentially a major cause.”</p>

<p>Most definitely. It’s the methane gas they emit.</p>

<p>But, it is the fault of humans that there are so many cows. They are being raised artificially to support humans’ beef habit. So it’s still the humans who are responsible.</p>

<p>from <a href=“How to Go Vegan & Why in 3 Simple Steps | PETA.org”>How to Go Vegan & Why in 3 Simple Steps | PETA.org;

<p>"…Many people are trying to help reduce global warming by driving more fuel-efficient cars and using less electricity, but by far, the most effective thing that you can do to fight global warming is to go vegetarian.</p>

<p>The billions of chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows who are crammed into factory farms each year in the U.S. produce enormous amounts of methane, both in their digestive processes and from the feces that they excrete. Scientists report that every molecule of methane is more than 20 times as effective as carbon dioxide is at trapping heat in our atmosphere.45 Statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency show that animal agriculture is the single largest cause of methane emissions in the U.S.46 Raising animals for food is causing global warming.</p>

<p>A recent report by EarthSave International, based on the work of leading climate scientists, shows that adopting a vegetarian diet is far more effective at reducing global warming than is reducing emissions from cars or power plants. This finding was confirmed by a groundbreaking study at the University of Chicago, which detailed the enormous environmental advantages (as well as the personal health benefits) of adopting a vegan diet. Read an article about the University of Chicago study, or read the study in its entirety.</p>

<p>Although methane makes a larger impact on global warming than carbon dioxide does, curbing carbon dioxide is also important, and animal agriculture is a major source of this gas as well. A calorie of animal protein requires more than 10 times as much fossil fuel input—releasing more than 10 times as much carbon dioxide—than does a calorie of plant protein.47 Feeding massive amounts of grain and water to farmed animals and then killing them and processing, transporting, and storing their flesh is extremely energy-intensive. In addition, carbon dioxide is released from animal manure. While driving a hybrid Toyota Prius instead of a “regular” car saves the equivalent of just more than 1 ton of carbon dioxide a year, a vegan diet generates at least 1.5 fewer tons of carbon dioxide than does the average American diet.48 Adopting a vegan diet is more important than switching to a “greener” car in the fight against global warming.49 …"</p>

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<p>Actually Mars is warming up too. It’s polar ice caps are receeding. It’s amazing that our pollution has reached its ugly arm outside our own planet. Damn those oil companies.</p>