Nils Axel Morner and Don Easterbrook told them so. So did Willis, who had some very similar ideas.
We’ve mentioned several times here on WUWT that the claims about sea level rise and sinking islands are overblown. For example, this idiotic publicity stunt by the Maldivian government, signing a legal declaration underwater, demonstrates just how far some people are willing to prostitute their victimhood for financial gain. The MO: You other countries warmed the earth, raising sea level which threatens our island. Pay up sucka!
Yeah, well, that scam is now going the way of Nigerian email.
From TV New Zealand:
An Auckland University researcher has offered new hope to the myriad small island nations in the Pacific which have loudly complained their low-lying atolls will drown as global warming boosts sea levels.
Geographer Associate Professor Paul Kench has measured 27 islands where local sea levels have risen 120mm – an average of 2mm a year – over the past 60 years, and found that just four had diminished in size.
Working with Arthur Webb at the Fiji-based South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, Kench used historical aerial photographs and high-resolution satellite images to study changes in the land area of the islands.
They found that the remaining 23 had either stayed the same or grown bigger, according to the research published in a scientific journal, Global and Planetary Change.
“It has been thought that as the sea level goes up, islands will sit there and drown,” Prof Kench told the New Scientist. “But they won’t.
“The sea level will go up and the island will start responding.
One of the highest profile islands – in a political sense – was Tuvalu, where politicians and climate change campaigners have repeatedly predicted it will be drowned by rising seas, as its highest point is 4.5 metres above sea level. But the researchers found seven islands had spread by more than 3 percent on average since the 1950s.
One island, Funamanu, gained 0.44 hectares or nearly 30 percent of its previous area.
And the research showed similar trends in the Republic of Kiribati, where the three main urbanised islands also “grew” – Betio by 30 percent (36ha), Bairiki by 16.3 percent (5.8ha) and Nanikai by 12.5 percent (0.8ha).
Webb, an expert on coastal processes, told the New Scientist the trend was explained by the fact the islands mostly comprised coral debris eroded from encircling reefs and pushed up onto the islands by winds and waves.
The process was continuous, because the corals were alive, he said.
In effect the islands respond to changes in weather patterns and climate – Cyclone Bebe deposited 140ha of sediment on the eastern reef of Tuvalu in 1972, increasing the main island’s area by 10 percent.
But the two men warned that while the islands were coping for now, any acceleration in the rate of sea level rise could re-instate the earlier gloomy predictions.
No one knows how fast the islands can grow, and calculating sea level rise is an inexact science.
Climate experts have generally raised estimates for sea level rise – the United Nations spoke in late 2009 of a maximum 2 metre rise by 2100, up from 18-59cm estimated in 2007.
Full story here. Even their source, the New Scientist was forced to admit the “good news” but says “sea level rise warnings stand”. Yeah, sure, whatever.
=================================
Here’s the abstract and the link to the paper. (corrected, the New Scientist provided link was originally bad)
The dynamic response of reef islands to sea level rise: evidence from multi-decadal analysis of island change in the central pacific
a South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, SOPAC. Fiji
b School of Environment, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand
Received 22 February 2010; accepted 13 May 2010. Available online 21 May 2010.
Abstract
Low-lying atoll islands are widely perceived to erode in response to measured and future sea level rise. Using historical aerial photography and satellite images this study presents the first quantitative analysis of physical changes in 27 atoll islands in the central Pacific over a 19 to 61 year period. This period of analysis corresponds with instrumental records that show a rate of sea level rise of 2.0 mm.y-1 in the Pacific. Results show that 86% of islands remained stable (43%) or increased in area (43%) over the timeframe of analysis. Largest decadal rates of increase in island area range between 0.1 to 5.6 hectares. Only 14% of study islands exhibited a net reduction in island area. Despite small net changes in area, islands exhibited larger gross changes. This was expressed as changes in the planform configuration and position of islands on reef platforms. Modes of island change included: ocean shoreline displacement toward the lagoon; lagoon shoreline progradation; and, extension of the ends of elongate islands. Collectively these adjustments represent net lagoonward migration of islands in 65% of cases. Results contradict existing paradigms of island response and have significant implications for the consideration of island stability under ongoing sea level rise in the central Pacific. First, islands are geomorphologically persistent features on atoll reef platforms and can increase in island area despite sea level change. Second; islands are dynamic landforms that undergo a range of physical adjustments in responses to changing boundary conditions, of which sea level is just one factor. Third, erosion of island shorelines must be reconsidered in the context of physical adjustments of the entire island shoreline as erosion may be balanced by progradation on other sectors of shorelines. Results indicate that the style and magnitude of geomorphic change will vary between islands. Therefore, Island nations must place a high priority on resolving the precise styles and rates of change that will occur over the next century and reconsider the implications for adaption.
(Corrected) Link to paper (paywall) is here
h/t to Purakanui
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So as long as the oceans don’t become acidified and kill the coral reefs, these island states will be fine.
Oops! I forgot.
See – heat makes things bigger too. Thermal expansion and all that.
I’d be more worried about the capsize hazard. Bigger islands are more unstable – or so I’ve heard.
2 metre rise my ass. There isn’t enough ice under threat of melting to cause anything like that and thermal expansion of the sea can’t come close either.
The Maldives is an Islamic theocracy which recently threatened a man with a jail term for publicly stating his unbelief. Why are we sending aid to these nutjobs?
@toby says: June 2, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Acidification? Yeah. Right!
Perhaps you mean an insignificant reduction in the sea’s alkalinity?
Acidification is another bogus piece of shroudwaving nonsense.
More chance of the islands being wiped out by an asteroid.
I’m wondering…….if the land mass is growing …….what on earth are we comparing to get “sea level”. It’s stuff like this that amazes me. It couldn’t possibly be that the sea level isn’t changing, it must be that land is growing!!!! Yea, that’s the ticket!!!………see the next crisis……we’ll grow out of the atmosphere and we’ll all suffocate!! The sky isn’t falling we’re growing into it!!!!
Poor, poor earth…..with the rising of sea levels and mass of ground growing, (all due to CAGW of course) it will inevitably burst from its seams and explode! 🙁
Nothing that surprises me, as I have shown in the past:
http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2009/07/sea-level-decline.html
http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2009/12/tuvalu-is-rising.html
I’ll do another study this Summer, to figure out how things are going…
Ecotretas
Ummm…isn’t it obvious that coral reefs and islands associated with them grow as sea level rises? Sea level increased hundreds of feet since the depths of the last ice glaciation, and I don’t expect that the coral reefs stuck up a few hundred feet and waited for the ocean to rise and cover them.
Recently a Czech power company CEZ decided to change machinery in one of its power plants for new one – more effective one. Then a diplomatic protest note came from Tuvalu to the Czech Foreign Department.
The article says that “the United Nations spoke in late 2009 of a maximum 2 metre rise by 2100, up from 18-59cm estimated in 2007”.
As far as I know, the revised estimate was made in a document prepared by a group of scientists, not by the UN or the IPCC. Anybody has more specific reference for this update of “UN” estimates of sea level rise by 2100?
I hate paywalls
Much as I thought. Coral atolls will keep building up as sea level rises. even sand islands will keep up as long as there is sufficient material brought in by wave action.
Some 15,000 to 18,000 years ago there was rapid sea level rise as the continental glaciers melted. I expect someone has done an investigation into the size of coral islands at that time and compared them to today. I think there have been measurements of the Great Barrier Reef, as it has existed through several floods and ebbings of sea level in the last ice age.
I know there are guyots, especially north of Hawaii, but don’t know how far below sea level the tops are, or when they were submerged, they sank as the extinct volcanoes were eroded and as they moved off the doming of the sea floor under the Hawaiian hot-spot. The water might have been too cold for corals to keep building up.
It the water goes up, they won’t have to walk as far to go to the beech.
That must have hurt the New Scientist.
With all these presumed sea level changes I’m getting dizzy.
There’s a story at the bottom of the link above that quotes an EU commission:
So the cost has “fallen” from 70 billion to 81 billion?
Reminds me of George Orwell’s 1984:
“Choco rations have been increased to 25 grams per week, up from 30 grams per week.”
sheesh, does anyone really believe that any of these fools know squat?
The Pacific plate can hiccup and affect sea levels more than that and most of these islands are on it’s edge.
The whole region is tectonically active. Islands have risen several meters in a few minutes. Is it surprising that due to magma displacement other islands would sink?
Tuvalu likes propaganda. The Prime Minister said global warming was like “a slow and insidious form of terrorism”
They also beat the Nobel committee to the start line with the issuance of postage stamps featuring Obama.
See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/SeaLevelRising.htm
Crikey! The massive, ( stay with me I’m being generous here, again ), 2mm per year sea rise is going to inundate the Maldives when? Surely the Maldives are rising faster then the 2mm per year? Or is it all to do with rent seeking, surely they are, “entitled”, being poor and stuff.
Didn’t that nice Dr. Nils-Axel Mörne send them the good news?
Oh yes, he bloody well did, they chose to sensor it. Sigh.
And the answer is – eat less meat:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7797594/Eat-less-meat-to-save-the-planet-UN.html
There was an paper published fairly recently in Quaternary Research describing how coral growth is used to monitor sea level changes. Ahh, here it is: “Microatoll record for large century-scale sea-level fluctuations in the mid-Holocene” Yu, Zhao, Done, Chen (pp. 354-360 Vol. 71, No. 3, May 2009)
So these are flat-topped atolls that just barely break the surface of the ocean. So lets imagine they begin perfectly conical in shape and the water level is some 10 meters from the top. Coral will grow to almost the water line creating “shoulders” on the cone. Now imagine water rises again. The coral growth moves up the cone. Now say it drops. Coral growth moves down the cone. After tens of thousands of years, you can take a “core sample” and see where the sea levels have changed over time. These particular micro-atolls are also located where there is no discernible change in the underlying crust causing any changes in altitude of the atolls themselves. It is a very stable location, at least on the scale of this interglacial.
So it turns out that sea levels peaked somewhere between 7050 and 6600 years ago
and were about 2 meters higher than today. There have been periods of abrupt sea level drop. One recorded about 3300 years ago was a drop of around 1.5 meters (Holocene evolution of a drowned melt-water valley in the Danish Wadden Sea – Pedersen, Svinth, Bartholdy).
So basically sea level changes all the time. Sometimes by rather large amounts over relatively short periods of time (century scale). The expectation that sea levels (or temperatures, for that matter) should remain “stable” over century scale time periods seems unreasonable as they have never been particularly stable in the past.
Island politician: “Rising seas are shrinking our islands, drowning our homes, and destroying our livelihoods! We demand compensation from the responsible industrial nations!”
Scientist: “Good news! Your islands are actually growing! There is no danger!”
Politician: “Who the @ur momisugly#$% asked you?”
If they replace their fresh water pumping stations with desalinization plants the incursion of sea water into the existing fresh water wells will stop, too.
So now we know – the reason why the sea level is rising is because the land area is increasing. Simple physics:
More land area = less sea surface = higher sea level to hold the same water volume.
If the current trend continues it means that we’ll eventually run out of ocean surface area . No ocean surface, means no fishing, and billions will be straving. Even worst – without oceans the poor polar bears will not be finding any baby seals to eat and die. Now – that’s a strong image!
We must act now to stop the increase of the land mass area, or our grandchildren and the polar bears will die!