Tides to engulf pacific nation

[dArKeR]

Weather authorities in Tuvalu warned yesterday their small South Pacific nation is likely to be inundated by unusual tides later this week.

Tuvalu, home to 11,500 people living on nine scattered atolls all less than 4.5 meters above sea level, will be hit Thursday and Friday by "king tides" associated with the new moon, Hilia Vavae of the Tuvalu Meteorological Office said.

"We are not quite sure what will happen but we expect most of the areas will be flooded by the sea for an hour or so," she said.

http://www.etaiwannews.com/Asia/2004/02/17/1076983533.htm

[proud patriot]

1. I've been watching this story

Mother Jones had a story about Tuvalu last year .

Global Warming first refugees whose land dissappears
under the sea.

[A HERETIC I AM]

2. Here is my best Rush Limbaugh impression:

:::Blusterandflubber::: IT'S NOT GLOBAL WARMING! THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GLOBAL WARMING! IT'S JUST A HIGH TIDE! A LITTLE FLOOD!
GLOBAL WARMING IS A PLOY OF THE LIBERALS!


hows that? was i good? Did i capture his idiocy and arrogance?

:::bows to adoring, pitchfork and torch weilding mob::::::

[zeaper]

5. Crying Wolf??

Since sea level records don’t indicate that the level is really rising you have to wonder what the real motives are here.

Check out this link:

http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~camercha/climate/trust.html


(Scroll down)

[Dogmudgeon]

6. A decent, if somewhat muddled, website

It seems like the fellow (assuming it is a fellow) has just dipped his toe in the water of the Climate Change issue and is trying not to be bamboozled.

It's an excellent site overall, and does not try to pick a political side. However, he's missing out on several key issues that I'll just briefly outline.

1. He's still in the Global Warming vs Global Cooling argument. But the actual climatic change will be highly dynamic, and (mathematically) catastrophic -- possibly a 1-5 year-long heat wave followed by a very stormy 2-5 year period of ice age development. The most dramatic of the predictors think the heat wave phase began last year.

2. For all the brouhaha over the ozone hole, I'm beginning to think it's a 3rd-order effect of the changing climate.

3. His observation of the periodicity of ice ages is correct, but evidence is mounting that we humans have pushed the change. For instance, the CO2 graph taken at Vostok Station (Antarctica) shows the highest CO2 levels at an estimated 300 ppm at 320 kYA. However, current CO2 levels are averaging at 375 ppm, as high as the levels had been during the Permian Extinction.

4. His attention to the influence of geomagnetism is much welcomed. It's only recently been studied in connection with climate, and it seems to have a lot more to do with it than we ever thought.

5. His selection of temperature data is too limited, but it's typical of industry apologists, whom he probably got his info from -- his small bibliography is heavily weighted with them. A more complete picture would show the atmosphere beginning to undergo profound changes in its temperature and pressure "architecture". As the surface has been getting warmer, the thinner, cold stratosphere has been getting much colder -- and denser. There has also been an increasing difference between polar and equatorial temperatures and pressures, far beyond what had previously though to be normal. What we may be seeing is a world-wide temperature inversion getting started.

Overall, a three-star site, but you should not take it as being definitive -- not that any single source should be considered definitive. There is still so much we don't know about planetary climatology -- we don't even have the resources to properly monitor ocean temperature in the Atlantic Ocean, even though from 1950-1980, we had the entire ocean well-monitored with data-collection buoys.

--bkl

[Boomer]

3. An update after the flooding

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1050293.htm

Freak tides leave much of South Pacific's Tuvalu underwater

Freak tides have covered swathes of Tuvalu, with the government blaming global warming for the phenomenon it says may one day see the South Pacific atoll disappear beneath the waves for good.

The spring or king tides occur several times a year depending on the positions of the sun and moon and produce the bizarre effect of sea-water welling up inland creating lakes.

The tide reached its peak just before sunset on Friday local time.

The tides may not present an immediate danger to life but are damaging crop production and raising fears the islands may eventually have to be evacuated.

But scientists and politicians are divided over whether the Polynesian atoll nation that lies some 3,400 kilometres north-east of Australia, is sinking or whether the sea is rising.

Tuvalu has long warned it is at risk from a possible rise in sea levels perhaps caused by global warming....

[NNadir]

4. Canaries in the mine.

Of course, little attention will paid until it's Florida. But it WILL be Florida, and New Orleans, and many other low lying places.

Mostly it flies under the surface of the BIG IMPORTANT ISSUES like Gay Marriages, and Flag waving, and corporate tax rates, and whether John Kerry voted 100% exactly as every potential supporter would have, but the Greenhouse effect is very, very clearly in my mind, the most dangerous threat ever to face us on risk/expectation value terms. It is one of those issues, like nuclear war, that has the potential to heave our planet back to the age of unicellular life.

I am increasingly cynical though, that enough people will wake up and see this until it is way, way, way too late.