Comments on: Prudent planning: President of Maldives wants to move his island nation

By: Phillip Huggan

Phillip Huggan — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:03:32 +0000

There are many inhabited Canadian Arctic Archipalego islands that should have meaningful aquifers once Arctic Ocean melts. The real question is what is the economic development? Arctic areas (and probably all currently uninhabited land areas) will still be expensive to service. It looks like people moving from drowning areas will need some sort of skill development now to counter the loss in tourism revenue. Maybe save for wind-turbines to fund refining new Arctic minerals uncovered? It looks like now, mangement of Trust revenue is more pressing than actually securing new real estate.

By: Ruth Brandt

Ruth Brandt — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:09:54 +0000

I recently saw an interesting documentary – Kivalina: The Canary in the Mine

It tells a similar story of a community being submerged by the rising ocean and larger storms, though on a much smaller scale. Kivalina is one village – among quite a few – in Alaska who is looking to relocate and is suing the oil companies for their part in the denial campaign. I think the case is supposed to go to court sometime this month.

Anyway, it’s worth seeing if you can find it.

By: Neil Howes

Neil Howes — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:21:44 +0000

Joe,

Coral islands are all about 4 feet above sea level, we need to know at what rate corals can grow to know if they are keeping up with the present 3mm/year rise and if they can grow at 10mm/year (1meter maximum expected in next 100 years). Island growth is also due to storm washed coral accumulating on beaches. It’s not clear that island growth cannot exceed coral growth. Barrier reef growth is probably more critical to protecting islands.

How does 4-5 feet/century become 1-2 inches per year? (0.5 to 0.6 inches/year by my calculations).

[JR: Because the rate accelerates -- thanks to higher temperatures, polar amplification, and presumably the drop in altitude of the ice sheets themselves. Most of the 4 to 5 feet will be in the second half of this century (I hope).]

By: Rick

Rick — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:29:00 +0000

maybe you should focus on the 6 or 7 B. people as the problem. If so then then you could see about solving the worlds problems by reducing birthrates to 1 per woman for a couple generations – then just like that we’re down to 2 or 3 B.

Might even work except for the cultures that are having 4 or 5 births per woman.

By: paulm

paulm — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:06:27 +0000

“adaptation” is a mostly a euphemism for what humanity will be doing if we keep emissions anywhere near business as usual.

Even at 2C there is going to be a lot of “suffering” or “misery”

I wont be surprised if there is going to be migration away from places like Australia as it succumbs to more extreme drought. In fact this might happen before places like the Maldives have to be abandoned.

The reality is ~6billion people will not be able to live on this planet in the next 50yrs.