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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They should have listened to my Mother, she said “If you two can’t play nice together with your things, I’m going to take them away and neither one of you will have them!”
jim hogg (06:58:00) :
yes, archaeology/anthropology is also very heavily politicized
especially in regards to Indian history
Good link.
@ur momisugly colorado skeptic
That’s a good comparison of area with something most Americans are familiar with. Your numbers are a bit off though.
So how big is 110,000 sq ft?
From WikiAnswers:
Including space for parking can easily double the area taken up by those stores.
So basically an average big-box retail store plus parking lot are at least twice the size of Isle No Moore.
New Moore Island is now Isle No Moore. LOL
peace,
Tim
I doubt you’d find many geologists who’d buy into the rising sea level story. Nor geologists who buy into AGW in the first place. We’ve seen too many climate changes in the geologic record to buy into this little bump being human-caused.
Geomorphology was my major area of study for my geology degree. Its’ a wonderful combination of science and interpretative skills that allow one to see how landforms change over time and space, but it’s still all based on the science. Can’t get a karst landform over sandstone, you know.
Larry Geiger (09:59:05) :
I’ve looked, but I can’t find the article (which I think was on this site a while back) about South Carolina sinking into the Atlantic (ooops, I mean getting flooded by rising oceans:-)). Anyway, after a very cursory search (Google) I found several articles explaining very clearly the reasons for the sinking land (ooops, I mean rising oceans). The locals know the reasons why and they’re working to change some of them (again, pumping out fresh water, building canals and ditches, etc).
I live in Florida. Sand shifts. That’s why it’s called shifting sand! Sand comes and goes with the wind and the waves. Each year we spend millions (billions?) to put it back where it belongs:-) We know how to do it so perhaps we could send some consultants from the Corps of Engineers over there to help them. Maybe the Bangladeshis should get some dredges and dump trucks and put the sand BACK WHERE IT BELONGS!! Good grief.
And that’s exactly what the Army Corp of Engineers also do every so often to Folly Beach just south of Charleston SC. They dredge up the sand about a mile off-shore and dump it back on the beach. They have a lot of experience in doing so.
Rather silly, and expensive, but I’m not complaining because it is quite a nice spot. I wouldn’t blame them, though for not doing it anymore because it is, well, silly and expensive.
I do live quite low (about 9 feet above sea level) but cannot see rising oceans as a threat. The flooding threat comes from erosion and natural phenomena such as hurricane storm surge which has a nasty habit of changing the landscape where land meets sea (I also don’t see an increase in hurricane activity).
AP = all propaganda
Ha! Buy a Subaru! Took me 5 minutes and a screwdriver to slide a clamp off. You access the bulbs from under the hood. Subaru does have all that annoying eco crap marketing, but they make great cars.
—-
Now you’re talking, forget global warming, this is serious stuff. I’ve just spent four days trying to replace a front headlamp on our latest Toyata. I couldn’t believe it, you needed screwdrivers, and a spanner, and even then the cover needed a crowbard to remove a cover.
Read a book many years ago by a fellow who questioned the established archaeology of India because of these underwater cities he was diving too, some many miles off the coast of India. Of course he was treated like our Mr. Watts is by the Climatology establishment. He wasn’t rewriting the history himself, simply trying to get the old boys to possibly look at the suject again. He was a little bit off into left field, but brought up a lot of interesting points, many of which were debunked, other which are yet to be debunked. Anyway fun stuff. As a cartographer I was always intrigued by a few maps which showed Antarctica WAY before anyone had ever got close to it (ca. 16th Century), another issue he brings up.
and I discovered that my castles stand
upon pillars of salt pillars of sand
The Times website was carrying this on its front page earlier, complete with the picture of the submerged trees. Now, thanks perhaps to a number of comments pulling the story to shreds, it’s not even listed in the Environment section. You have to use the search facility to find it anywhere 🙂
Christopher Columbus (Cristobal Colón, in Spanish) departed in 1492 from Puerto de Palos in southern Spain with three small sail ships called “carabelas”. If you fly with Google Earth to these coordinates: (or type in the “fly to” box: “Puerto de Palos, Spain”
37º 12′ 40.10″ N — 6º 55′ 44.72″ W,
you can see pictures of replicas of these ‘carabelas’ in the Port.
But you will also see that the port from where Columbus set to sea is now about 5 km away, east of the Atlantic. It seems that either the sea level went down or the terrain went up. New land was formed by sedimentary deposits carried by two rivers flowing there, and a and a long tongue of new land makes the way to the sea about 9 km long.
I love it when this sort of thing comes up and someone (in this case, Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur Uny), makes an obviously spurious claim.
I then call up good old Google and search for a link between the said “expert” and Pachauri and invariably get something like…
http://www.actionforaglobalclimatecommunity.org/documents/PotsdamSeminar-ParticipantsList_000.pdf
(Hint, scroll down to the Indian members) Wonder if Patchy has got a grant for Hazra at any point in time? May be worth searching for!
What a surprise! Another sea level rise poster child is located on a river delta. The island ’emerged’ in 1974. What do you want to bet that 1974 was a flood year? Or, did sea level drop at that time due to global cooling?
Keith (16:31:15) :
Did you notice that a lot of the Times comments were taken almost word for word from this article? WUWT has many direct and indirect effects across the Internet.
Islands, if you can really call this an island, that form at the mouths of deltas emptying in the sea come and go all the time. Silt and mud deposits are brought in and out by storms and seasonal monsoons. To say this is global warming is just political punditry and NOT science.
Once there was Old Winchelsea!!
Not any more.
“The history of Winchelsea
Old Winchelsea drowned (1233-1287)
The success of Old Winchelsea was shattered by the start, in 1233, of a prolonged period of exceptionally turbulent weather (climate change?)* that lasted until 1288. A long series of severe storms accelerated the eastward longshore drift of shingle in the Channel and started to break up the shingle bank on which Old Winchelsea was built. It is ironic that it was these same forces that had created the shingle bank in the first place. From 1244, Winchelsea was receiving regular grants towards its sea defences and the reclamation of the Walland Marsh ceased.”
http://www.winchelsea.net/visiting/winchelsea_history_pt4.htm
*I contend that 55 years of bad weather would indeed constitute climate change and that this is solid evidence that the Medieval Warm Period 950-1250 AD had then tragically become the Little Ice Age.
More at http://www.theresilientearth.com/?q=content/medieval-warm-period-rediscovered
Yep, this totally disproves global warming. /s You people have the logic and reasoning abilities of four year olds.
Reply: Approved for entertainment value, but refrain from any direct attacks on Mark, please limit any comments to discussing the piercing logic and content of his observations. ~ ctm
RE: The request for info on the Indian city under water. You may not like the sources 🙂 but there are many such under water cities and at least one fat book detailing them by Graham Hancock called “Underworlds”, ISBN 0-141-00017-1.
As for a mechanism that can sink cities that deep in short order, the first three chapters of the otherwise somewhat speculative book, “Atlantis of the West: The Case For Britain’s Drowned Megalithic Civilization” by Paul Dunbavin describes in detail how a very small change in axial tilt can produce sea level changes of a couple of hundred metres rather suddenly. It is a fascinating read and worth the price of the whole book. Sea level changes are maximised at 45 Deg Lat, roughly 300 m per 1/2 degree tilt change. Small changes can be induced by a high latitude comet strike or perhaps other (Earthly) internal mechanisms/slips/changes such as irregular ice cap melt. Dunbavin examines the Irish sea and surrounds and I believe Dogger Bank went under in the same way.
Collisions induce a wobble one of which can still be detected 5000 years later. Apparently there are stone field fences in Wales running into the water and they continue across the floor of the Irish sea. That suggests inundation rather than a gradual rise. The Earth is an oblate sphere with a lot of water sloshing around, ‘flung out’ by the daily rotation. Tiny % changes in tilt because of changes in the centre of mass produce surprisingly large changes in sea level at 45 degrees Lat because water is free to move around. The math and motions are in the first chapters. For example the core has a slightly different axis from the mantle etc.
Underwater cities seem (roughly) to be in places where the sea level change is maximised by these events. One thing is for sure: monotonic sea level rise may be true globally on average, but certainly not regionally (is that the right word?) at any given point.
Fairbridge found multiple East Auz rises and falls of up to 2 metres within 20 years over the past 8000 years. Doesn’t seem unusual.
If only we’d had global warming in the 12th Century UK, the press would have had a field day with this one as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunwich
“Dunwich was the capital of East Anglia 1500 years ago and was a prosperous seaport and centre of the wool trade”
But then storm surges and erosion demonstrated than no matter how many churches you build, nature wins. Which is a shame, because had it survived it may have become the home of CRU. Now it just has a rather fine chip shop and a nice inn for quiet weekends. I’ve dived there, but combination of silt and visibility means there’s not much to see. I was also disappointed as a child to learn it wasn’t Lovecraft’s Dunwich.
Slightly OT but bear with me …
Re: Mike Haseler on replacing headlight bulbs.
It’s not just Toyota that offers such challenges. Just about any car designed since the early 90s seems to have similar constraints. Tail light clusters can be just as bad. Some worse.
And that is just an indication of a more global problem. Design and application decisions are made based on different criteria to those applied 3 or 4 decades ago. Indeed laws are written, Health and Safety being one of the more visible (no pun intended) on the basis that people are incapable of doing anything for themselves. Once that is the case then there is no need for designers to make it possible for people to do things for themselves …. and business loves the idea of charging tens of dollars for the job of changing a sub ten dollar bulb.
I don’t know who set up the European Hi-Viz jacket scam but of they kept control of the rights they must be very rich by now. Flourescent yellow is the new black.
And so we are all conditioned to accept such developments for our benefit and lose the ability to consider things rationally – the lamp changing expert at the Toyota dealer will do that for us. So it is with everything else in life, and once we stop thinking about the need to know how stuff happens we will accept anything. Even the concept of AGW. Without a thought. Just as intended.
(BTW having battles with changing bulbs fromnt and rear on a small Itialian FIAT I discovered the trick was to remove the entire light assembly unit. Much easier then removing the battery which would then, potentially, necessitate electronics re-sets and stuff like that. The only up side is that in general automotive bulbs seem to last longer these days than they used to when they were easier to change. Perhaps the two things are connected.
There are rumours that certain cars of German design origin require for the front of the car to be dismantled before a bulb can be change. Strangely in parts of the EU is is still law, enforcable by on-the-spot roadside fines, to carry a spare set of bulbs in order to provide immediate rectification when a bulb blows. The two ideas seem mismatched don’t they? But then so do so many of the matters related to climate as discussed here, so we should not be surprised in either case since the complement each other in terms of social philosophical thinking.)
Totally unprecednted; land simply appearing, and disappearing in the Delta system of major rivers; who’d a thunk it ?
I bet you an an Amazin amount of land appears and disappears around the Amazon Delta too. I know we have that happen even in San Francisco bay, where a lot of land around the SFO airport has simply arisen out of nowhere; they’ve even built whole cities on previously non-existing land; Foster city for Example.
So around SF, the ocean levels are falling; probably enough to compensate for the ocean falling around Bangladesh.
I suggest that the Government of Bangladesh put up signs on the road; pointing in the direction of uphill, to show the people where to go, as the sea rises.
So NOAA has a tide gauge indicating 0.54 mm, not 0.53 or 0.52?
Gosh! Tide gauges with an accuracy of +_ 10 microns !!!!
NOAA is such a hoot!
http://sppiblog.org/news/the-birth-and-death-of-an-island-in-the-bay-of-bengal
How does an island sink and yet , it’s mainlands shoreline doesn’t rise ? Maybe the media should of ‘PhotoShop’ed the satellite photos like Gore did .