By P Gosselin on 20. February 2022
Doom and gloom warnings by a 2021 World Bank report neglected a major mechanism: coral reefs.
Last October, just before Glasgow Climate Conference, the World Bank issued a report with a dire warning for the Marshall Islands. It claimed: “Rising sea levels in the atoll nation of Marshall Islands are projected to endanger 40 percent of existing buildings in the capital, Majuro, with 96 percent of the city at risk of frequent flooding induced by climate change.”
The startling claims were based on “new visual models” and that the rising sea levels were due to co2-induced warming.
But now we learn that the model inputs were garbage, and so the model outputs were garbage as well. Nothing of the sort is going to happen to the Marshall Islands anytime soon.
Analysis shows 4% growth from 1945 to 2010!
German climate site Die kalte Sonne here took a closer look at the dramatic claims and found the World Bank report had a grave error: they failed to account for the role that coral reefs play in island building.
A 2015 paper published by Ford et al indeed found that the opposite is happening: the islands are expanding and not sinking and shrinking. The paper’s abstract:
Using historic aerial photographs and recent high-resolution satellite imagery, shoreline changes on six atolls and two mid-ocean reef islands in the Republic of the Marshall Islands were analysed. Results reveal that since the middle of the 20th century more shoreline has accreted than eroded, with 17.23% showing erosion, compared to 39.74% accretion and 43.03% showing no change.”
Taken as a whole, the authors found a net result:
The net result of these changes was the growth of the islands examined from 9.09 km2 to 9.46 km2 between World War Two (WWII) and 2010.”
Die kalte Sonne called the findings “surprising”, and noted that the World Bank report made a serious mistake by neglecting the phenomenon that the islands are made of corals that grow along with sea level rise. When asked why the models ignored this critical factor, no reply was given.
Charles Darwin understood this in the 1830s.
Though his achievements as the top naturalist of Victorian Britain merited knighthood several times over, he never became Sir Charles because his demonstration that new species can arise without divine intervention was deemed far too naughty a proposition by the Church of England in his day.
Today Anglicans have come around to denouncing fundamentalist-inspired creationism and embracing evolution, which is in fact more biblical than modern creationism.
In this century, Darwin’s model of atoll formation has been generally accepted, with the caveat that sea level fluctuates due to glacial cycles.
https://eos.org/articles/rethinking-darwins-theory-of-atoll-formation
This geological insight alone merited knighthood. So too did his work on orchids and barnacles, quite apart from conceiving the unifying principle of all biology.
Pretty good work for a Cambridge theology grad.
Darwin, when he ‘came home’ after his adventures was going to write a new book = one that he told people was going to be MUCH more important than the evolution book.
Because he was away from home for about an entire climate (30 years) and when he returned, wondered where all the stones had gone in the recently ploughed field beside his house.
Previously the horses hooves ‘clattered’ on these stones.
But on his return, horses’ hooves and shoes didn’t clatter and he wondered why
He asked around, no-one knew, so he went out with a spade and dug a few holes
Lo-and-behold, there were the stones. Buried
There upon he discovered, contrary to popular opinion, the accretion of dirt. And coral islands. (Where is The Stuff coming from to make them bigger?)
Soil. Earthworms. Organic matter. Water and Nutrient (re) cycling & retention.
By understanding the accretion of soil/dirt, folks would have an understanding of its erosion and how that might ‘affect things’ ##
How different this climate madness would be if he hadn’t died before any much progress was made on his new book….
## What sort of things you wonder?
Are those things due to any surfeit of Richness and Intelligence?
It’s called SE contrived by AI aka GS
Darwin’s voyage on HMS Beagle lasted less than five years, not 30.
(Darwin) “There upon he discovered, contrary to popular opinion, the accretion of dirt. And coral islands. (Where is The Stuff coming from to make them bigger?)”
That’s why archeology work is digging! Although a lot of burial in their field is from windblown sand, floods and volcanic ash.
Dirt accretion? Or denser rocks sinking? I should think the latter more than the former.
Every year, the Earth accretes over 5,000 tons of cosmic dust. Of course this is an extremely tiny amount compared to the mass of the Earth, but over the eons, it slowly adds up.
It would take some serious eons … that works out to ten grams of accretion per square meter every million years.
w.
And yet, fossils millions of years old stick out of the ground.
Not saying you’re wrong, I get your point,
I’m just pointing out One of those things that make me wonder
Every year I marvel at how the river rocks rise and fall with the seasons.
There’s good evidence that Darwin used the work of Patrick Matthew as the source of his work on evolution.
In 1831 a Perthshire farmer, orchard owner and botanist by the name of Patrick Matthew published a book titled “On Naval Timber and Arboriculture”.
https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/darwin-may-have-stolen-evolution-theory-perthshire-farm
OK, Ben, your comment induced me to look up the controversy of Matthew versus Darwin. An investigator named Sullivan utilized computer searches of scanned old books to show that Patrick Matthew actually used the phrase “process of natural selection” in his 1831 book. Matthew did not, however, explain the process in any detail and it is not clear how his writing was anything other than a brilliant thought, give him his due. Darwin, of whom there is no evidence actually had the Matthew concept explained to him nor read it, wrote the “Origin of the Species” in 1859 (with co-author). Darwin first wrote the book “Voyage of HMS Beagle”, and he left port on this voyage in1831, and there is no way the obscure book from Matthew was with him. During the voyage, which lasted 5 years, Darwin wrote extensive notes, even to the point of thinking out loud with his writing, and this is the reason Science Majors in Universities read the Voyage book, Darwin lays out the scientific thought process. It looks like there is room for both Matthew and Darwin in Science.
Yeah but rewriting history and defaming everyone one from history is an important political agenda of the day.
Of the day? The erasure of history and culture, downing of statues, vilifying the birth and influence of the Age of Reason/Industrial Revolution and proclaiming mathematics racist is Today.
Ron, Darwin published the Origin in 1859 with NO co-author! It is the work of his own.
With co-author Alfred Russel Wallace he presented a paper to the Linnean Society of London the previous year, 1858. In this paper there are well identified the ideas of each of the authors. And from Darwin’s point of view, it would be a very, very short sketch of his work, as he stated in the introduction of the Origin, a book he calls an “abstract” of his ideas; a five hundred pages long “abstract”… Wallace and Darwin’s paper has roughly a dozen pages.
The paper on coral reefs was published in 1842 and the Voyage in 1845: in both we can find some of the questions, interrogations, to which he was planning to propose an answer in his big book on evolution. This “big book” (I can’t remember his exact words) was never written: we have its “abstract” (Origin, 1859) and the Variation … under domestication (1868), which is a collection of facts; he never wrote something like a full syntheses.
Joao, thanks for the clarification. I read Voyage in Graduate “Philosophy of Science” class as an aspiring geologist, and it was an eye opener, mostly because of his notes.
I could say almost the same, I read it by my own decision (outside of the school programmes) finishing high school just before going to study biology at the university!
Cheers!
The origins of the idea of evolution were floating around. It’s clear that Charles Darwin was influenced by the ideas of his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin.
link
“The origins of the idea of evolution were floating around”
Yes! Enough to read the Introduction of the Origin: Charles Darwin makes there a very good review of the previous literature…
Perhaps the author of the link does not know the writings of Darwin… “stealing” a scientific idea is something absolutelly absent from Charles Darwin’s mind; to the point of very often being almost impossible to locate citations that he makes indicating only the name of the author. Darwin seems to never have forgotten to give credit to whom credit is due.
On the contrary, if the author of said link would have had the trouble of investigating the story he would be confronted with the fact that Charles Darwin even was disposed to let Alfred R. Wallace publish the evolution theory before him as its sole author, and that the presentation to the Linnean Society under the names of both took place at the insistent pressure of several of Darwin’s friends.
Please, try not to spread calumnies or calumnious insinuations.
And please take this comment of mine as a supplement to Ron Long’s at 2:42.
There is no such evidence at all. Had Darwin ever read the obscure book, he would have mentioned it in his forward.
The idea of “transmutation” had been around since the late 18th century. What it lacked was a mechanism. Lamarck’s suggestion of inherited acquired traits was found wanting. Darwin supplied natural selection and other testable hypotheses as to evolutionary processes.
Darwin’s teacher at Edinburgh, Robert Grant, was a transmutationist, who had cited Erasmus Darwin in his doctoral thesis. Grant fell on hard times due to his heretical beliefs, which fact might have delayed Darwin’s publishing. An anonymous 1844 book on the subject however was met with less religious opposition.
What Darwin lacked was understanding of the genetic basis of inheritance, which would later be derived from Mendel’s work on peas.
Christopher Hitches once told this joke from stage about Anglicans:
‘What do you get if you cross an Anglican and a Jehovah’s Witness? Someone who comes to your door and proselytizes you for no particular reason.’ 🙂
Hitch was a treasure. Sorely missed.
As far as I know, I was the first person to point out that modern climate alarmists were wrong about CO2 drowning atolls. See my peer-reviewed paper from 2004 here, which has 28 citations… and yes, I did take grief for it.
As for the full explanation, see my 2010 post “Floating Islands“.
w.
“Floating Islands” has a bad URL.
But here is the link found by the WUWT search: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/27/floating-islands/
Fixed, thanks.
w.
Well… it was much appreciated so perhaps er “good grief” ?
Not to make “light” of non-drowning atolls.
I’ll stop now
Yes Willis, I remember that 2010 post! You were right, as usual
WIllis, you likely were the first in the field of climate science to point out the climate scientists were wrong about drowning of corals. It was well-known to geologists from the 19th Century, probably from Louis Agassiz who in ~1840s was the first to suggest a Continental Ice Age which sequestered a lot of water (giant meltwater Lake Agassiz in Manitoba memorializing his work and much studied by we students living on the floor of this former lake) and from Darwin’s remarkably confident statement on coral island growth.
I studied corals in geology in the late 1950s and later in postgrad recall mention of the 120m of drilling through continuous coral carbonates and into volcanics by the US Gov prior to atomic bomb tests and their correct interpretation as growth keeping pace with sealevel rise. Similar was the drilling of the Mississippi delta which encountered stream gravels at a the same depth.
In several comments over about 15yrs of of WUWT, I was especially critical of climate scientists who considered themselves “earth scientists” promoting drowning coral islands and river deltas.
Darn. I traced your work back only to 2013, Willis.
Never let the truth stand in the way of a good (scary) story.
No, no you don’t understand. We are all doomed and the world’s going to hell in a handcart. Please stick to the agreed script.
That report mentions a few sea level rise scenarios, and says this…
“This study modeled and visualized the impact from three sea level rise intervals: 0.5 meters (m), 1m, and 2m. Exactly when Marshall Islands will face a specific sea level rise scenario cannot be determined. ”
They then pretty much ignore this pesky admission and seem to suggest to the unwary reader that a sea level rise of 1m by the year 2120 is a distinct possibility.
Do the authors of these things sleep OK at night?
No really.
They wake up every half hour to repack the bong.
“Die kalte Sonne called the findings “surprising”…..” Really! All geologists would not find it surprising. But the climate mob ignore history and geological evidence because it doesn’t agree with their agenda.
Die Kalte Sonne was being charitable.
Embarrassing ? They probably know that they’re not telling the truth and couldn’t care less…as long as it’s profitable or satisfies political goals.
Presumably, we can look forward to a report on the economic prospects of the Marshall Islands from the IPCC?
So, yet again, whatever greentards say the exact opposite is actually true.
griff says that this totally ignores all the extra extreme weather we are now getting every year. Like somewhere getting 0.01 percent more than its average rainfall. Anyway, models beat observation any day of the week. And, moreover, global warming means that some islands will actually increase in size. Climate scientists have been saying this for a long time.
Griff says a lot of things – 99% of the time they’re completely wrong
And the other 1% is purposely wrong
I don’t think he would react to this with that. This article is flawed for another reason. Please note that the Ford study is very likely correct, together with the World Bank report. The apparent contradiction is only for the ones who are not well versed in scientific language. Please read again what the actual assertions were.
I got “in danger of flooding from climate change”.
What did you get?
Okay, one by one.
So all in all, it is very likely that our friend, Gosselin, misunderstood* these articles. You, following your bias, loudly celebrated his… error.
*(This is the friendly assumption, friendly to him. It’s much better if we assume he acted out of stupidity instead of deceit.)
nyolci February 21, 2022 2:26 pm
OK, one by one:
Pierre is talking about relative sea level, so more frequent flooding indeed means sinking and shrinking.
You really, really, should read the article before commenting. It says:
NOT five islands. ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN ISLANDS.
As to the causes of accretion, “agriculture”? You really are clueless about atolls. I lived on one for four years. Atolls are momentary hesitations in moving rivers of sand and coral rubble. “Agriculture” consists of pits where they grow babai, and coconuts. And on atolls, there’s no “sediment” to accrete. There’s sand and coral rubble. Period.
And the reason for accretion has been well understood since it was discovered by Charles Darwin—sand and coral rubble are added to atolls by a healthy reef surrounding the atoll, so as the sea level rises, the atoll rises as well. See my post “Floating Islands” for a full discussion.
The Capital is on Majuro atoll. This is only one of several studies of this question by Ford and Kench. The study expressly cites a previous study, by the main authors of this study:
That study found that Majuro is accreting (expanding), not eroding. So there was no reason to study it again. Thus, your objection is a joke.
Not 5 islands. ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SEVEN islands.
First, the rate of sea-level rise in Majuro is unchanged in ~ thirty years.
And there is no indication from other Pacific tide stations that sea levels was rising more slowly before that.
Next, actually, the Ford study is divided into several sections:
4.1 Shoreline changes WWII-2010
4.2. Shoreline change 1970s-2010
4.3 Shoreline change WWII-1970s-2010
Let me close with this quote from the study (emphasis mine):
Note the other studies by Ford and Kench, the authors of this study.
Next time, read the damn study BEFORE you make a fool of yourself. Turns out that it’s not Pierre Gosselin who is the clown in this circus …
w.
Pierre Gosselin is never a clown unless, perhaps, he is entertaining children. 🙂
Nyolci has been caught misrepresenting and outright lying a number of times on WUWT.
griff is in desperate extreme need of some extra-intelligence…
Are we surprised? Of course not! The pattern has been set and the MSM will not publicise any such stories that undermine the prevailing view – we are all doomed!
Anyone who has read “State of Fear” by Michael Crichton will know that the accepted “science” ignores unwelcome facts. First published in2004, and perhaps the first widely read explanation of the “urban heat island” effect.
One day, truth will prevail…
The BBC, ITV, C4 etc etc haven’t heard that there is a cargo ship ablaze from prow to stern near the Azores.
But that’s probably because the cargo is, er, EVs.
Truth will prevail? What on earth makes you think that?
This was always the problem in the Marshall islands –
“Coastal erosion, which is both a result of natural processes and human activities, has been identified as one of the most serious consequences of beach mining, reef blasting and nearshore dredging. This problem is not unique to Majuro, and is common around the Pacific. Majuro is particularly vulnerable to coastal erosion given its small size, high level of economic development and high population density resulting in a large amount of infrastructure being located along its coasts”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265066052_Economic_assessment_of_the_true_costs_of_aggregate_mining_in_Majuro_Atoll_Republic_of_the_Marshall_Islands
And yet sea levels around the world continue to rise. That’s simply a fact of the data.
And that rise is purely natural. It has nothing to do with someone driving an SUV.
At catastrophically rising levels, or at a rate that is so small as to be imperceptible to the average person?
One needs to be careful to distinguish between relative SLR and absolute SLR. Both can be factual.
Guess which one matters more to islanders?
I’m with you Barry. The nutters on this site just want to turn a blind eye to the fact that the seas are screaming up our shores at a rate of 2mm per year. How others can be concerned about other things in their life when this is happening is beyond me.
I proposed to my local city council that they should deposit wheelbarrow loads of sand above high tide marks, and leave buckets & spades so that in sea rise emergencies, kids could toss a few spadefulls of sand from the piles onto the beach, and keep the seas at bay.
I also told them that if they don’t like this solution, I have others.
(h/t Groucho)
The millimeter tidal wave. Worth reposting.
75 % of beaches around the world are stable or accreting.
Really ? Isn’t 100% of the island at risk from high water at any freak wave event ? Those coral chunks got to the top of those 8 meter ASL “hills” somehow.
Obviously, the World Bank is not going to publicly acknowledge their sophomoric mistake, nor will 99% of the MSM publish any article citing this error and its data-based correction.
I was thinking the other day about the nature of propaganda and thought is there a better way to describe these doom purveyors then as “Merchants of Death”? That term has been used to describe arms dealers but seems more apt for these folks b/c clearly their intent is to create fear of death in order to stampede the masses.
Hopefully some day all folks who comment here will stick to the subject under discussion.
Mark,
We here visiting WUWT on a regular basis are accustomed to posts by such as WE and DM, which are rigorously researched and documented.
You don’t even clearly identify your bogus graphs, love the car production going to 0 by 2025,. At least most of us will live to see that, without some political upheaval like what is happening in Canada, Marshal Law, all the projections in your graphs are laughable
PLEASE provide SOMETHING to back up your ridiculous comment.
Thank you in advance for your “fleshing out” of your assertions.
Drake
at this rate the Marshall Islands will cover the entire ocean by 2035
Sites don’t do things. People do things on sites.
Of course the islands are growing. Man-Made Global Warming is making them hotter, and when things get hotter, they expand.
When asked why the models ignored this critical factor, no reply was given.
Silence in reply. No surprise there.
Isn’t that always the way when these fraudster organizations get called out after reality contradicts their claims.
World Bank island modelers must have been ever so professional. How is it that they didn’t know the Marshall Islands are coral atolls?
Back in 2017, Willis Eschenbach posted an outstanding essay (they’re all outstanding) on parrotfish and the health of coral atolls. Parrotfish graze on corals and produce coral sand, which deposits on the island. The living coral and thus the atoll rise conjointly with sea level.
Willis has written about this as far back as 2013. In the 2013 post, Willis wrote a very perspicacious surmise: “Ecological alarmist scares have a lot in common with zombies. They seem to eat up people’s brains,…”
Apparently the snack tragedy has bigly diminished the brains of managers at the World Bank and their atoll modelers. They didn’t essay a mechanism known for at least 9 years to govern the size of coral atolls.
Clearly, the World Bank should have consulted Willis.