Too bad for Klaus and Greta.
A new paper shows islands are young, dynamic creatures, and mother nature is mean. And nothing we see today on Indian or Pacific Islands is unprecedented. All the panic about islands disappearing is nothing compared to what nature does all the time. Indeed, man-made climate change, if it has done anything at all — has been a boon for islands in the last fifty years.
Thanks to Kenneth Richard, at NoTricksZone for finding the paper: Recent Shoreline Changes To 1100 Pacific Islands ‘Dwarfed’ By Change Magnitudes Of The Past
The new paper by Kench et al looked at 1,100 islands across the Pacific and Indian oceans, and even though CO2 levels rose from 325 parts per million to an apocalyptic 420ppm, the average island got bigger instead of smaller, and only 3 small uninhabited islands completely disappeared. And when we say small, some of the islands we are tracking are mere 30 metres wide sand spits. Is it really fair to call that an “uninhabited island”?
The world may have Olympic-sized junkets every year because shorelines have moved 40m in the last fifty years, but it turns out that shorelines moved 200 meters before anyone built a coal plant.
This, below, is just the last fifty years in the life of Kandahalagalaa Island, and about 20% of the island has shifted.
Currently sea levels are rising 3mm a year, but in its short life sea levels at Kandahalagalaa have already gone down and up some 900 mm without humans doing a damn thing.
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