By Steven Goddard and Anthony Watts
From the New York Daily News via Associated Press reports :
Global warming resolves 30-year land dispute between India, Bangladesh: Coveted island sinks
By NIRMALA GEORGE, Associated Press Writer Nirmala George, Associated Press Writer – Wed Mar 24, 9:29 am ET
NEW DELHI – For nearly 30 years, India and Bangladesh have argued over control of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have resolved the dispute for them: the island’s gone.
New Moore Island in the Sunderbans has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said. “What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming,” said Hazra.
Note in the map below that the island was a river estuary, meaning it wasn’t made out of rock as claimed. It was made out of mud and sand. From Wikipedia:
The island was situated only two kilometers from the mouth of the Hariabhanga River. The emergence of the island was first discovered by an American satellite in 1974 that showed the island to have an area of 2,500 sq meters (27,000 sq ft). Later, various remote sensing surveys showed that the island had expanded gradually to an area of about 10,000 sq meters (110,000 sq ft) at low tide, including a number of ordinarily submerged shoals. The highest elevation of the island had never exceeded two meters above sea level. [1]
…
The island was claimed by both Bangladesh and India, although neither country established any permanent settlement there because of the island’s geographical instability. India had reportedly hoisted the Indian flag on South Talpatti in 1981 and established a temporary base of Border Security Forces (BSF) on the island, regularly visiting with naval gunships. [3][4]
The AP claim (probably from Seth Borenstein) is that global warming induced sea level rise has submerged the island, and that is complete nonsense.
Let’s look at sea level trends in the region. Here’s the NOAA Tides and Currents map of the area from their interactive web site.
NOAA’s nearest tide gauge shows sea level rising in that region at 0.54 mm / year, which means that would take nearly 2000 years for sea level to rise one meter. See the plot below:
Note that since the island was first discovered in 1974, the sea level graph above shows 19.4 mm (0.76 inches) rise based on a rate of 0.54mm/year.
Sea level rise is a relative phenomenon. It can be caused by sea rising, or land sinking. Sort of like sitting on a train at the station, and you can’t tell if your train has started moving or the adjacent one.
Looking at a satellite image of the Bangladesh delta, one can see how tides, currents, silts, and other factors shape what is a tenuous boundary between land and sea:
Temporary estuary islands and sandbars appear and disappear all the time worldwide. Sometimes it can take a few years, sometimes a few centuries. Note that most of the area near South Talpatti Island is only 1-3 meters above sea level anyway, which means that such low lying islands made of mud and sand are prone to the whims of tide and currents and weather.
Low lying islands are modified by nature on a regular basis. For example we have Chandeleur Lighthouse in Louisiana
From USGS:
The lighthouse was situated on land until Hurricane Georges (September 28, 1998). After that the island had eroded from under the lighthouse such that the lighthouse appeared to be in open water. Since Georges, although the island had reformed behind the lighthouse, the lighthouse remained in open water. The pre-Ivan photo (August 11, 2004) shows the lighthouse in open water about 30 m from the shoreline, and the northern tip of the island was relatively broad and extended several hundred meters north of the lighthouse.
…
It was probably the cumulative effect of four hurricanes in 7 years that resulted in the deep erosion (evidenced by lack of shoaling) seen now after Hurricane Ivan.
And looking further back in time, islands have disappeared before: from the Sarasota Herald – May 29, 1937
While we are on the subject of islands disappearing into the Indian Ocean, even more interesting is the 2002 discovery nearby of a 9,000 year old city, submerged 36 metres off the coast of India.
==================
The city is believed to predate the Harappan civilisation
Lost city ‘could rewrite history’
By BBC News Online’s Tom Housden
The remains of what has been described as a huge lost city may force historians and archaeologists to radically reconsider their view of ancient human history.
Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 36 metres (120 feet) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be over 9,000 years old.
The vast city – which is five miles long and two miles wide – is believed to predate the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than 5,000 years.
=================
How many Hummers were they driving 9,000 years ago? Chalk up another clueless AGW claim. Sea level rises and/or land subsides, estuary flows change, and sandbars appear and disappear. In this case of a tiny sandbar/island near the Bangladesh delta, it has nothing to do with global warming.
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See my take on this story at:
http://peacelegacy.org/articles/sea-level-rise-global-warming-i-dont-think-so
This story has been doing the rounds all over the media over the last few days but it seems to actually originate from February. Professor Sugata Hazra could well be the alarmist at the centre of all the fuss, as suggested by this article I found from a journalist on the ground at the time.
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/dc-comment/climate-change-hoax-sinking-island-316
Steve in SC (03:53:19) :
I remember the New Jersey took some fire from an island off the coast of Vietnam. The New Jersey returned fire and sank the island. (literally!)
It was more like picked it out of the water, made a large hole, then dropped it back.
*bloop!*
Meanwhile, back on topic, the *state* of New Jersey’s famed sunny, sandy, surfy, boardwalk-rimmed shoreline is moving south at about six inches per year, all courtesy of wave action and the ocean currents. It would have entirely relocated and turned Delaware Bay into Delaware Lake by now if it hadn’t been for the Corps of Engineers.
Ummmm — and the annual winter storms which replace the sand on the beaches with sand from the shallows through
— *ahem* —
wave action and the ocean currents.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am not an oceanographer — but I’ve swallowed my share of wave-born sand.
I can only recommend the superentertaining lectures by Nils-Axel Mörner – an expert on sea levels – who is often showing many of these silly things that lead people to believe that the sea levels are quickly changing. He’s been to many of these places and found similar resolutions. Some of the “sea level rises” were really man-made. Locally. But they forgot to hide all the traces. 😉
The Independant’s suitably named reporter “Andrew Buncombe” has a further quote from Professor Hazra, as follows:
“It is definitely because of global warming,” said Professor Sugata Hazra of Jadavpur University in Kolkata. “The sea level has been rising at twice the previous rate in the years between 2002 and 2009. The sea level is rising in accordance with rising temperatures.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/rising-seas-claim-island-at-centre-of-30year-dispute-1927002.html
bunkum: Definition, Synonyms from Answers.com
“bunkum also buncombe n. Empty or insincere talk; claptrap.”
This sandbar is the equivalent of a holy relic for the AGW faithful and, the AGW promoters of course.
GLOBAL WARMING CAUSES BLACK DEATH………in 14th Century
This from Sciencedaily: (Cloud cover proxies in Tree rings?)
————————————————————-
Summers Were Wetter in the Middle Ages Than They Are Today
ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2010) — The severe epidemic of plague known as the “Black Death” caused the death of a third of the European population in the 14th century. It is probable that the climatic conditions of the time were a contributory factor towards the disaster. “The late Middle Ages were unique from the point of view of climate,” explains Dr Ulf Büntgen of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) in Birmensdorf, Switzerland. “Significantly, there were distinct phases in which summers were wetter than they are today.”
What exactly took place at the time can be reconstructed today by studying the annual growth rings of old oak trees. “Annual growth rings provide us with an accurate indication of summer droughts for each individual year, dating back to late medieval times,” adds Professor Dr Jan Esper of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Together with colleagues at the universities of Bonn, Gießen, and Göttingen, Büntgen and Esser managed, with the aid of the information provided by tree growth rings, to identify for the first time the summer drought periods over extensive areas of Germany in the last 1000 years. Their results have been published in the leading specialist journal Quaternary Science Reviews.
Using dendrochronology, the researchers have been able to demonstrate, for example, that a ridge beam in an old timber-framed house in the city of Kassel must have come from a tree felled in 1439. In this technique, the pattern of annual growth rings is compared with those in already dated wood samples. “We can thus determine the exact age of every beam,” says Büntgen, describing the process. The ridge beam can also provide information on whether past summers in Kassel were wet or dry. “If a summer tended to be wet, the trees generally grew faster, thus resulting in wider growth rings,” Esper explains. However, the information available from one beam is not enough to allow reliable conclusions about the climate in Kassel in 1439 to be reached. A large number of wood samples are required.
For their survey the researchers analyzed 953 different pieces of oak. To obtain information on the more recent past, they took wood from living trees. They also took samples from wooden construction elements of old timber-framed houses, castles, and churches, thus roughly covering the period of the last 1000 years. All construction wood samples were obtained in the north of the German state of Hesse and the south of Lower Saxony, while the living wood came from the region of the Kellerwald-Edersee National Park. “Oak trees in this area are particularly sensitive to climate change,” states Büntgen, explaining why these sites were selected. The oldest wood sample used in this survey dates back to the year 996 A.D., a time when the Holy Roman Empire was just coming into being. A total of 135,000 individual growth rings were measured to obtain a detailed overview of the history of rainfall in Germany, covering major eras ranging from the optimal Medieval climate (warm and humid) through the Little Ice Age (dry and cold) to that of the Industrial Climate Change (dry and warm).
More summer rain between 1350 and 1370
The late Middle Ages were characterized by two distinct wet periods in Central Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries, separated by dry summer weather between 1300 and 1340. “The increase in summer rainfall between 1350 and 1370 is remarkable and occurred exactly at the time when the plague broke out and spread across the entire European continent,” Büntgen specifies. This was followed by a generally drier phase from the late 15th century to the early 18th century. More wet summers occured at the beginning and at the end of the 18th century, while a trend towards a drier climate has developed over the last 200 years.
“We think that our results will also be useful for historians, as it may possible to associate droughts with famines and perhaps even large-scale migration events,” is the view shared by the climate researchers Büntgen and Esper. The researchers hope that collaboration between the natural and social sciences in interdisciplinary research projects will, in future, provide more information on the links between climatic and social processes of change. They themselves will be continuing their research into the Medieval plague epidemic, the Black Death.
————————————————————-
There’s nothing quite so sweet as getting the rest of the story.
Read this piece of typical AP nonsense the other day and, without any further digging, thought it smelt of three day old fish. Just from the description of the island’s location, the “story” was weak. Don’t journalists have even a rudimentary knowledge of geographical features, such as river deltas? A good chunk of Bangladesh is delta, just begging to be flooded on a regular basis, with islands that come and go.
Good point, Thon (01:30:14), that’s precisely what I was thinking – just about every major river Delta in the world is located in a subsiding basin. That’s why the rivers flow there, of course. The weight of the sediments over time only serve to reinforce the subsidence. This is the underlying problem with the Mississippi delta where New Orlean is located, and I don’t doubt that the Ganges delta has the same problem. (which of course is only a “problem” when men get involved)
The land in these areas is sinking – the land has *always* been sinking, and it always *will* be sinking. The only way to counteract this is to allow the rivers to flood in the spring and let the sediments build back up – but that messes with human structures, so we generally don’t like that solution, either.
The current UK government – hopefully soon to be assigned to the dustbin (trash can) of history – still believes in rising seas, as predicted by dodgy manipulation of data by official climate institutions:
http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page22924
On the subject of unfounded climate scares, my favourite remains the ‘acidification of the oceans’, which amongst other things, will supposedly wipe out all the coral reefs.
Question: how does a very weak acid H2CO3 attack CaCO3? Answer: it can’t.
Mankind produces around 26 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually – assuming all of it – which it isn’t – is absorbed by the 1.3 billion cubic kilometres of ocean, then you will find the carbon dioxide content of the ocean will rise by about one part per million every half century.
Very simply, the maths and science rarely matches the scare.
Another SUNKEN CITY, this time in the pacific ocean, 60 km. west from the peruvian port of Callao, found in 1961 by the Duke University:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/28906862/Sunken-City
Here’s a silly question I forgot to add — will AP run a story if this island should one day suddenly and magically reappear?
“A lie told often enough becomes truth”
-Vladimir Lenin
Not only estuary islands and sandbars, but volcanic uprisings as well, such as Graham Bank in 1831, that was claimed by England, France, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, etc. France and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies almost came to blows over it … until it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
There is a 26 mile long barrier sandbar in front of the New Jersey coast called Long Beach Island. It used to be a nice place, but it has gotten all touristafied of late. The north end of the island is a township called Barnegat Light because of its lighthouse. The first street in the township is 3rd street. There used to be a first and second street once upon a time. They were washed away in a hurricane long before I was born. Indeed, in one of the hurricanes during the 1960s, the island was cut into five pieces. They have pumped sand back into those holes so its one island again. Building your house on a foundation of sand is indeed a hazardous way to do it. Now if Rockall were to go under water, that would be something else.
johnnythelowery (06:07:49) :
GLOBAL WARMING CAUSES BLACK DEATH………in 14th Century
But with the tree rings as proxies for rainfall we are in the same position as for temperature – too many variables. A ‘Heisenberg’ of tree ring studies would likely be complaining at this point. Then again, maybe correlation isn’t causation. Sounds wooly to me.
As a harbomaster on a man made lake and avid sailor for 40 years, I saw several islands dissappear. One in particular is about 3 foot under and many boaters run aground on it. It is called erosion. Several were covered with trees. Climate changes and always has. Shorelines and beaches are in constant change.
The warmongers are hunkered in urban bunkers and seem totally oblivious to geological and geographic change events.
There is a complete industry that does dredging. For the urban myth makers, dredging is due to erosion and depositional events. It is NOT due to the bottom of the waterway moving upward. Igt is not due necessarily to the top of the water moving downward,
JohnB.
Thanks for that. As a sceptic by choice, and probably natural inclination to a degree – damned genes – I always try to keep a weather eye open for the agendas at work, and your point is well taken about the possible resistance to the concept of such a city’s existence on the part of those who might have an interest in promoting all things deriving from the Abrahamic religions and their histories, and also perhaps a more powerful resistance – which you may have meant : that deriving from the “conventional” wisdom. The established position on anything tends to be hard to shift. The Fairbridge Curve thesis I mentioned earlier being a good example: ridiculed initially, only to become widely accepted within a couple of decades.
There is also of course the possibility of a diametrically opposed motive on the part of the individuals (and nation) who seek to persuade us that this “city” exists.
I’ve hunted for photographs and video footage but have only found suggestions that the waters are never clear enough to allow for the taking of pics or video footage. However in this day and age it shouldn’t be difficult to show representations of the sonar picture in 3D. I also thought that the alleged age of the city – 9000 years – might be just a little too late to fit with the advance of the sea following the last ice age. 12,000 years plus might be a better fit. But, of course I’m only speculating. I’ve read also that the alleged artefacts from the site have been strongly disputed, with some analysts suggesting a natural explanation for their existence or their positioning.
There is too much unjustified certainty throughout most, if not all, of the sciences imv, and I frequently find myself doubting claims on the net, even on WUWT, though I agree entirely with the dismissal of the Moore Island sensationalism.
I suggest whoever wrote the AP article visit the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The Outer Banks are formed by the gulf stream current and winds. It is a large sandbar. Highway 4 runs through the Outer Banks and sometimes, the ocean waves wash over the highway. A common sight is to see sand being cleared off the highway. Cape Hatteras lighthouse had to be moved because of the shifting sands. After one of the many hurricanes that hit the Outer Banks, it cut Hatteras Island in half. Highway 4 has a bridge named the Bonner Bridge over what is called Oregon Inlet. Because of the shifting sands, Bonner Bridge is in deplorable shape. It is ranked a 2 out of a scale of 10 for bridge quality.
Sand is always shifting. I remember seeing islands around Cape Lookout lighthouse that are no longer there today and there are other islands there that didn’t exist when I went there as a kid. When I was a kid, we used to camp in front of the lighthouse, back when it was still owned by the Coast Guard and not the National Park Service. That was living rough. But I remember well how much the water changed from year to year. Just study the Outer Banks to learn how much sand can shift.
This report about the disappearing island because of AGW is ridiculous. “Islands” come and go in any estuary. A good size cyclone makes so many sandbars ( underwater and above-water ). If the flow of river waters have been diverted in any sizeable way in that area, the cyclone-made sandbar becomes an island. in other cases, existing islands disappear. it is a constant.
“Chalk up another clueless AGW claim.”
——
This isn’t the first time Gorbalists have tried to sell disappearing Sundarban islands as the victims of global warming. Back in December 2006, the same esteemed climate witch doctor, Sugata Hazra, tried to sell global warming with the loss of Lohachara island at the mouth of the Hooghly River, which is about 70 miles to the west:
http://tinyurl.com/2q5ama
I’m kind of surprised, though, that Hazra is still relying on his MS in Global Warming to sell his malarkey and doesn’t realize he now needs a PHD in Climate Change.
Should there be future Sundarban island victims in the future, there is a nice, gridded and indexed, 1955 US Army map collection of most of the India for reference here:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/india/
(Have to H/T Tim Blair where I first read about Lohachara:
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/island_erased/)
The new Chicken Little, Seth Borenstein, has done it again. This ridiculous misinformation story clogged up my Yahoo news page yesterday.
I can hear Dr. Mörner laughing all the way from Sweden.
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
[Yeah yeah I know we have the highest “rise” rate on the East Coast of the USA…..but that has more to do with aquifer depletion, land use, sitting on the edge of a mile-deep 35 million-year old meteor impact crater, and isostatic rebound of land to our north from glacial suppression in the last IA…not to mention thermal expansion of the Atlantic due to the warm AMO].
While these claims (island loss due to sea level rise due to global warming) are patently absurd to us, our political leaders believe every word because it bolsters their convictions and provides more cover for Cap and Tax. The warmists see nothing illogical in their plan to destroy western economies to save a sand bar.
Since the predicted perennial summers have turned to snow, evermore increasing cyclones have turned to water spouts, droughts and fires from Australia, California and even the Amazon have been drowned out by rain, doomed glaciers and arctic ice are reloading…. sea-level has become a bit of a straw to grasp onto and like grasping onto a straw in deep water, one does such foolishness in desperation.
I have suggested before that we enveigle a sedimentologist to do a post on the phenomena and dynamics of sedimentation in rivers, lakes, deltas, coastlines-beaches, etc. to head-off this AGW flight to the sea. It is a very interesting subject for all. My knowledge of sedimentology unfortunately is that of the average geologist but I have put forward a few bits and pieces on deltas – how they form, how they sink, how they rise to the occasion of sea-level rise and erode during sea-level declines – the fact that the Mississippi delta grew 120m in height after the end of the last ice age to keep pace with the rising sea level – Bangladesh’s deltas and everyone elses have done the same thing. Anyone out there that would care to contribute to a broader education on this delightful subject?
Why do people expect natural things to remain in stasis where not a grain of sand shifts? Is it more to do with their fear of change?