From the “we told you so” department, WUWT Reader Paul Carter says in Tips and Notes:
A new study shows that Pacific Islands are resilient to sea level changes.
“Dynamic atolls give hope that Pacific Islands can defy sea rise”
A study by Paul Kench, Professor, School of Environment at University of Auckland.
“It is widely predicted that low-lying coral reef islands will drown as a result of sea-level rise, leaving their populations as environmental refugees. But new evidence now suggests that these small islands…”
See http://theconversation.com/dynamic-atolls-give-hope-that-pacific-islands-can-defy-sea-rise-25436
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Yes, we told you all about this right here on WUWT back in 2010 in an essay titled “Floating Islands” by Willis Eschenbach. Willis wrote then:
Regarding atolls and sea level rise, the most important fact was discovered by none other than Charles Darwin. He realized that coral atolls essentially “float” on the surface of the sea. When the sea rises, the atoll rises with it. They are not solid, like a rock island. They are a pile of sand and rubble. There is always material added and material being lost. Atolls exist in a delicate balance between new sand and coral rubble being added from the reef, and atoll sand and rubble being eroded by wind and wave back into the sea or into the lagoon. As sea level rises, the balance tips in favor of sand and rubble being added to the atoll. The result is that the atoll rises with the sea level.
Figure 2. Typical cross section through a coral atoll. The living coral is in the ring between the dotted green line and the beach. The atoll used for the photo in this example is Tepoto Atoll, French Polynesia.
Darwin’s discovery also explained why coral atolls occur in rings as in Fig. 2 above. They started as a circular inshore coral reef around a volcanic rock island. As the sea level rose, flooding more and more of the island, the coral grew upwards. Eventually the island was drowned by the rising sea levels, and all that is left is the ring of reef and coral atolls.
Coral atolls have proven over thousands of years that, if left alone, they can go up with the sea level. And if we follow some simple conservation practices, they can continue to do so and to support atoll residents. But they cannot survive an unlimited population increase, or unrestricted overfishing, or overpumping the water lens, or unrestrained coral mining. Those are what is killing the atolls, not the same sea level rise that we’ve had for the last hundred years.
Read it all here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/27/floating-islands/
[UPDATE]
Someone in the comments asked about priority regarding the ideas in my 2010 post.
The person to claim priority for noticing the dynamic nature of atolls is Charles Darwin. Amazingly, he discovered the dynamic nature of coral atolls before he had ever seen one.
However, in terms of priority for my 2010 post, I’d have to cite my 2004 paper in Energy and Environment, the journal that alarmists love to hate on. It was published as a “Viewpoint”, and as such, unlike my other two articles in E&E, this one was not peer-reviewed.
In that study, I traced the origins of the atoll hysteria to a 2003 Sierra Club article. That article is ground zero for the “coral atoll climate refugee we’re all DOOOOMED” meme. What I found was previous research showing that the atoll they said was dying from climate change was actually being eroded because in World War II the protecting outer reef had been cut through.
Finding that previous research showing the actual reason their poster child island was being reshaped was a formative experience for me. That study totally blew the Sierra Club BS out of the water.
Nor is the current study the first recent notice by scientists of the dynamic nature of atolls. See my other post on the subject, “The Irony, It Burns” …
w.
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The Monster (@SumErgoMonstro) says:
April 23, 2014 at 7:16 am
So rising sea levels are no threat to atolls, at all. [Yes, I’m an incorrigible punster. Don’t incorrige me.]
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The Marshall Islands had a Bikini, but after the nuclear blast, there was no Bikini Atoll.
While we are unloading puns . . . .
Like the atolls, the alarmists should just grow up.
Gamecock says (April 23, 2014 at 9:45 am): “The Marshall Islands had a Bikini, but after the nuclear blast, there was no Bikini Atoll.”
I volunteer in the name of science to go to the Maldives for a month or a year, at government expense of course, to observe first-hand how this works. 🙂
Gary Pearse says (April 23, 2014 at 6:41 am): “It is the same with deltas, which will be the next big Nobel-grade (degraded level since the last century) discovery made by these dark age savants.”
The New York Times, the not-too-distant future:
GLOBAL WARMING NO THREAT, IPCC SAYS
According to IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri, “newly discovered evidence” proves that earlier fears of human-caused climate change, though prudent, were baseless…When asked if the IPCC would now disband, Mr. Pachauri retorted, “Of course not! We’re now free to investigate the much more serious threat of precipitously dropping human IQ!”…The IPIQC’s first annual Conference on Global Stupidity meets in Tahiti in three weeks.
When contacted for comment, Nobel Laureate Al Gore would only say, “Whoa! Give that man a Nobel Prize!” Mr. Gore was hurrying to testify before a congressional committee on ocean acidification to urge lawmakers to set up an international exhange for acid offsets.
I don’t CARE if they sink or rise. The few thousands of people can be -moved- for pennies rather than crippling the world economy trying to geoengineer the oceans…
Mpainter has a good point. The Louisiana sea level “rise” is not the actual water rising, but the subsiding of the land.
Years ago we built levees along the river and the annual floods could not deposit sand, silt and dirt in the delta. There’s also the underground pressure of the water to consider. So one of my relatives saw his slab foundation grow above its original level until the whole thing was exposed. This was in New Orleans, but same thing in other areas nearby.
The neatest thing is that the marsh plants and critters move to meet the changes in the sea level. So the basic “rules” are still in action, same as the coral reefs. Hmmmm….
This is likely part of the slow retreat that the climate science world is starting to make from their alarmist views as the evidence turns against them. The wacko alarmists won’t change their tune, of course.
There hasn’t been any sea level rise in Monterey Bay or San Francisco Bay (as measured at Alameda) in a very long time.
When I was smaller, we lived in an area some 900ft above sea-level underlain by massive limestone beds, which us kids discovered contained all sorts of fossils of undersea life. The obvious conclusion then & now was that the Koch brothers paid to have those fossils put there to make a mockery of the alarmists’s arguments.
Dynamic atolls, dynamic response, old hat.
Now check out this bit of odd behavior from the Polynesians.
New is the new old.
Darwin was right! … Again!
Our neighbors are little more than apes!
James Strom says:
April 23, 2014 at 8:24 am
The person to claim priority in this is Charles Darwin. Amazingly, he discovered the dynamic nature of coral atolls before he had ever seen one.
However, in terms of priority for my 2010 post, I’d have to cite my 2004 paper in Energy and Environment, the journal that alarmists love to hate on. It was published as a “Viewpoint”, and as such, unlike my other two articles in E&E, this one was not peer-reviewed.
In that study, I traced the origins of the hysteria to a Sierra Club article. That article is ground zero for the “coral atoll climate refugee we’re all DOOOOMED” meme. What I found was previous research showing that the atoll was actually being eroded because in World War II the protecting outer reef had been cut through.
Finding that previous research showing the actual reason their poster child island was being reshaped was a formative experience for me. That study totally blew the Sierra Club BS out of the water.
Nor is the current study the first recent notice by scientists of the dynamic nature. See my succeeding post, “The Irony, It Burns” …
w.
Sooner or later someone will come along and say “Atoll you so”. (sorry….)
John F. Hultquist says:
April 23, 2014 at 8:38 am
John, as you point out, some of the atolls are in trouble. The key is that the trouble is man-made. As long as it could be blamed on climate change, people could ignore the real issue—all of the atoll problems are indeed manmade, but none of them have anything to do with CO2.
The most deleterious actions of humans are killing the parrotfish, mining the coral, and cutting through the reef. However, there are number of less deleterious actions. Even barefoot humans walking on coral atolls are a force of erosion.
The good news, of course, is that damage that is done can be stopped and in many cases undone. The key to the health of the atolls is the health of the reef. Mostly, folks don’t have to DO anything. They have to STOP doing things.
If the atoll dwellers simply stopped killing parrotfish, mining the coral, and cutting through the reef, things could be reversed. If the reef is healthy, the atoll will abide.
However, an atoll’s fresh water is a very limited lens of water with minimal replenishment. As a result, the number of humans we can permanently park on such a tiny heap of sand has a very strict upper limit … a limit which is routinely exceeded by the atoll dwellers with predictable results. Then they drink up all the water in the lens, and then complain that “climate change” is making their wells salty …
So there’s one other thing they have to STOP doing.
But the good news is, in general the problems of the atolls are both man-made and man-fixable.
Best to all,
w.
Gamecock says:
April 23, 2014 at 8:50 am
Curiously, an atoll is both very robust and very delicate. Tons and tons of coral rubble and sand wash up on it every year, and tons and tons of coral rubble and sand wash off of it every year, removed by the endless action of wind and wave. And yet, despite being just a momentary hesitation in a slow-moving river of coral rubble and sand, year after year, the atoll abides.
When the pile of rubble and sand gets too high, the wind cuts off the top of it. That’s why there are no high atolls. And when it gets too low, the wind can’t get a good grip, so the incoming rubble and sand tends to stick around and build it up. Robust.
The atoll exists as the balance of the two flows, gains and losses of coral rubble. And the incoming flow of coral rubble and sand is the production of what in this context is best thought of as a single living organism that built the atoll—the coral reef that the atoll is built on.
If the incoming flow of coral rubble is reduced because of reduced health of the reef from any cause, the atoll will shrink in size.
And if the coral reef dies, the atoll dies with it. The atoll will soon be washed away by the unending tropical wind and wave.
So yes … delicate, even in the natural world. Not every atoll lives forever. Reefs grow and change and die even without man’s interference.
But the real modern danger is man. Deeply wounding a coral reef is no problem for modern man. Hunt the parrotfish, they sleep at night and are easy prey. Use cyanide and explosives to do your fishing. Mine the coral to build tourist high-rise buildings, as the Maldives have done. Cut through the reef, kill it with chemical runoff, choke it with sediment, reefs are living creatures that can easily be wounded. And when the reef is weakened, when the health of the reef declines, the production of coral rubble and sand slows down, or even in extreme cases stops … and the atoll shrinks in the first case, and in the second case, slips beneath the waves.
So yes .. delicate, particularly in the modern world.
w.
mpainter says:
April 23, 2014 at 9:03 am
I’m still puzzled. You say
1. “Galveston sea level data” (never identified) conclusively shows that there has been no sea level rise this century.
2. The Galveston data is affected by some “immeasureable” amount of subsidence.
Huh? Aren’t those two contradictory?
In fact, subsidence around Galveston is curious. Some of it is from sediment compaction, but the majority of it is from the pumping of water and oil. And far from being “immeasureable”, it can be and is being measured in a couple of ways, GPS and inSAR. See the USGS publication on Galveston situation here for a full discussion.
Next, for the last 20 years there has been in effect a program called SEAFRAME, which uses GPS data to provide subsidence-corrected tidal data from points across the Pacific. Guess what … sea level is indeed rising, Galveston or not.
mpainter, I’m no expert on Galveston. But you and I have the worlds biggest library on our desktop with the world’s smartest librarian. It took me about two minutes to do a quick literature scan regarding subsidence in Galveston. Google is your friend.
Huh? A link to the NOAA information you reference would have been nice.
But no, there is no central fabrication plant for fabricating the sea level data. It comes in a host of forms and places, and the data is held in a variety of locations, all of which are compared to each other in a variety of ways by a variety of researchers, including myself. The satellite data definitely has its problems, but that is true of every dataset.
So no, mpainter, the “Galveston sea level data” does NOT show what you claim. It doesn’t show that there is no sea level rise this century. That is an incorrect interpretation of the Galveston sea level record. Here’s that record, by the way, from the PSMSL.
Best regards,
w
Professor Rip Van Winkle, alias Paul Kench, awakes from his long slumber to experience an eureka moment. Coral atolls grow upwards as sea level rises or the atoll base subsides. Who’d of thought? Professor, please go back to sleep and thus contribute to salvaging the reputation of science.
A GUY NAMED WILLIS SHOWED ME THIS LOOONNG AGO! And it didn’t cost me or th’ Taxpayerz a Dime.
He’s one smart feller.
A new study shows…..how coral atolls form in the first place
I’m pretty sure I was told about this at school in the 1950s, in biology, or more likely, geography.
Of course, that was the time that every pupil asked the geography teacher why the continents looked like they fitted together, and was told it was purely coincidental.
I think all this talk about sea level rise (and that underwater fake meeting) is Atoll tale…
Weren’t there some articles here a while back about crustacean (or other) deposit accumulation building the atolls faster than the sea (supposedly) rose?
Coral Atolls are easily proven to be able to cope with changes in sea level. Every one knows that coral only survives in a depth of water from 0 to 70 meters and then it cannot live. I guess no one noticed that most atolls have a coral base depth somewhat greater than that. Thousands of meters in some case, for example Eniwetok reef is 4610 feet tall. http://www.ibri.org/Tracts/reefstct.htm
Like the author explains, the reef grew as the local sea level rose ( or the sea bed sank).
It does not require a great academic brain to figure things out.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
As a boy, to avoid being suffocated by boredom in classrooms, I used to open the wrong book to the wrong page, and try to figure out where the coastlines lay 12,000 years ago when the seas were roughly 350 feet lower. (I wanted to figure out places Atlantis might have been.)
It was an interesting thought-experiment to consider what happen to a coral Island’s lagoon, if an ice-age drops the sea level 300+ feet. In some cases I supposed the island would erode and remain at sea level, but in other cases the coral is compacted into a sort of limestone that takes longer to erode. In such cases the lagoon would remain a geological feature, first as a swamp, (at first mangrove, and then fresh water), and then as a flat and fertile feature on an island, 300 feet above sea level. I decided that was where the outposts of Atlantis would grow their crops, and was busy drawing a map of the geology of such an ice-age island, when the teacher tapped my shoulder.
The pity was that the teacher who taught geology in my boyhood managed to make a fascinating subject so boring and so tedious that listening to her caused your eyeballs to fall out and roll into the room’s corners, (or towards the schoolgirl’s legs.)