Sinking Pacific Island Is Actually Rising

Deuce said:

Right, the issue is that sea level rise means shifting the storm surge bell curve so that damaging surges happen more regularly.

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Well, theoretically that's a good point, but they already have to evacuate (temporarily) if a big storm comes through the area. They are not going to wait around to see if the storm is big enough to cover the last meter of elevation of the island with water.

A storm with a 15 foot surge, like what we saw near Galveston during Hurricane Ike, is already enough to submerge and wipe everything off of Tuvalu. Pictures of the island show old structures standing. Apparently such storms are rare there.

What if...? said:

Diameter. Not height.

Rising seas. Storm surge washes OVER these islands. Then recedes.

Salting the ****ing earth. Killing the crops and other plants.

Diameter has nothing to ****ing do with it until an island reaches a size where storm surges can't reach.

9 feet isn't ****.

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What was the maximum elevation ever recorded on this island?

What if...? said:

Again. Diameter doesn't have anything to do with salt inundation.

If you can't grow food in the salted ground you can't live there.

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How have the yields from agriculture changed year to year over the last several decades?

What if...? said:

Except you can't grow sweet potatoes anymore. Or most other crops.

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What if...? said:

The article jack Hayes posted specifically mentions the leffects of increased salination on plants due to storm surge.

Rain washes the salt down over time. These islands are by nature pretty pourous.

And the reefs are dying.

Which in terrestrial terms means the trees are dying, as that is the role they play in the reef ecosystem. Habitat, etc. Their spawn are a big part of plankton.

And that's new. So won't affect this study. (In fact, I need to check the recent data to see if the rates changed in the past few years.)

The whole "the world is always changing" canard is dangerously stupid.

Because while true, it leaves out the part where it changed enough sometimes to make the life we are accustomed to impossible. Too cold, too hot.

It all that aside, salting of the food crops is one of the issues.

Right now.

You are wrong.

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What if...? said:

This article isn't what you're crowing about.

It ONLY says loss of land won't be the reason they become uninhabitable.

NOT that they WILL remain habitable.

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The thrust of the paper on which this discussion is based is that the islands will remain habitable for a long time, perhaps indefinitely. They are not being washed away and they will not produce refugees.

Deuce said:

"Will still be habitable" isn't exactly a high bar.

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No change will happen to any significance in human terms.

Does that make it clear enough for you?

[h=2]Climate change creates free real estate in Tuvalu: “climate refugees” can all go home[/h]
[h=4]The Green Blob is going to have to get rid of satellites. Real data is so inconvenient.[/h]For years many people called scientists have assumed, like any smart 5 year old would, that islands are fixed blobs of rock and sand that just sit there and sink as oceans rise. Now satellite images show that three quarters of the islands in Tuvalu are growing rather than shrinking.
Total land area is up 2.9%. Total government funded scientists who predicted reality, down 97%.
Since our emissions helped create nearly a square kilometer of free real estate in Tuvalu, it seems only fair that they return any climate funds, and pay a royalty.
The whole of Tuvalu is 26km[SUP]2[/SUP] and about 10,600 people live there. Total GDP is $32 million. It’s a cheap marketing tool. In May last year, despite Tuvalu being used as an advertising posterchild for climate change for years, it had not received funding from the Green Climate Fund. In August 2017 UNDP finally promised $38 million. That’s theoretically an extra income equivalent to 20% of their GDP for the next seven years. No wonder these islanders are keen to talk “climate change”.
Scientists who have been getting it right for years are Kench (author of this study) and people like Nils Axel Morner.Organisations that are still getting this wrong include The IPCC and The World Bank. Another star of sea-level science is Dana Nuccitelli at Skeptical Science who said:
Nils-Axel Mörner’s claims regarding sea level rise are the very definition of denial, involving nothing more than conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated accusations of data falsification wich (sic) are easily proven untrue.
Indeed, highly adjusted tide gauges agree with highly adjusted satellite altimeters, and that land you see on satellite images is not there.
What’s the “definition of denial” Dana?
[h=3]‘Sinking’ Pacific nation Tuvalu is actually getting bigger, new research revealshttp://joannenova.com.au/2018/02/cl...-climate-refugees-can-all-go-home/#more-57393Keep reading →
[/h]

Jack Hays said:

". . . Surprisingly, we show that all islands have changed and that the dominant mode of change has been island expansion, which has increased the land area of the nation. . . ."

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Land area is not the only factor in storm surge damage. Height above sea level also matters.

Jack Hays said:

On the contrary, it is.

"Co-author Paul Kench said the research, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, challenged the assumption that low-lying island nations would be swamped as the sea rose.
"We tend to think of Pacific atolls as static landforms that will simply be inundated as sea levels rise, but there is growing evidence these islands are geologically dynamic and are constantly changing," he said.
"The study findings may seem counter-intuitive, given that (the) sea level has been rising in the region over the past half century, but the dominant mode of change over that time on Tuvalu has been expansion, not erosion."
It found factors such as wave patterns and sediment dumped by storms could offset the erosion caused by rising water levels.
The Auckland team says climate change remains one of the major threats to low-lying island nations.
But it argues the study should prompt a rethink on how such countries respond to the problem.
Rather than accepting their homes are doomed and looking to migrate to countries such as Australia and New Zealand, the researchers say they should start planning for a long-term future.
"On the basis of this research we project a markedly different trajectory for Tuvalu's islands over the next century than is commonly envisaged," Kench said.
"While we recognise that habitability rests on a number of factors, loss of land is unlikely to be a factor in forcing depopulation of Tuvalu."
The study's authors said island nations needed to find creative solutions to adapt to climate change that take into account their homeland's evolving geography.
Suggestions included moving populations onto larger islands and atolls, which have proved the most stable and likely to grow as seas rise.
"Embracing such new adaptation pathways will present considerable national scale challenges to planning, development goals and land tenure systems," they said.
"However, as the data on island change shows there is time (decades) to confront these challenges."


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-02-pacific-nation-bigger.html#jCp

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Considerable national scale challenges.

Which part of "considerable challenges" translates to "everything is fine?"

Deuce said:

Considerable national scale challenges.

Which part of "considerable challenges" translates to "everything is fine?"

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Small island nations always face considerable challenges. Everything is fine as usual. I'm sure you're disappointed the islanders don't face catastrophe, but you'll just have to learn to live with their happiness.

Deuce said:

Land area is not the only factor in storm surge damage. Height above sea level also matters.

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It helps, and the islanders are not in danger.

LowDown said:

Tuvalu in the South Pacific has been touted as a prime candidate to be a victim of global warming due to rising seas. The island nation has figured bigly in the global climate conferences, like polar bears on shrinking ice floes, they are poster boys for climate refugees to be.

The Prime Minister of Tuvalu addressed COP 21 gathering of leaders pleading for action on the climate agenda.

However, a recent study shows that the island isn't sinking, it's rising. Or, at least according to aerial surveys, it's getting larger. One would think that this would lighten the heart of the Prime Minister, but I doubt it.

One must consider the possibility that the land will rise independently of the sea level or the atoll will change due to other factors.

Pictures of the island show that much of the land is a good 2 or 3 meters above sea level. At the current rate of sea level rise it will be a long time if ever before the island goes under.

https://phys.org/news/2018-02-pacific-nation-bigger.html

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Go figure.

Just like land sinks in the places the alarmists like to tout massive sea level rises.

Sea level rise acceleration (or not): Part III – 19th & 20th century observations

Posted on February 10, 2018 | 47 comments
By Judith Curry
“We are in the uncomfortable position of extrapolating into the next century without understanding the last.” – Walter Munk
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. . . Around the beginning of 19th century, sea levels began to rise, after several centuries associated with cooling and sea level decline. There are only a few historical tide guage records that extend back to 1800, with several along European coasts. Improved time series analysis methods do not support the statistical significance and likelihood levels of the IPCC’s conclusion that sea level rise has accelerated in the 20th century relative to the 19th century.
Recent analyses of 20th century sea level rise find significantly lower values than were cited in the IPCC AR4 and AR5. These lower values between 1900-1990 are more consistent with integral constraints from mass budget analyses. These lower rates of sea level rise have major implications for the assessment of sea level rise and its acceleration in the satellite era since 1993 and also for the baseline scenario of 21st century sea level rise.
There is substantial multi-decadal internal variability in the sea level change record, including an apparent ~60 year oscillation. This variability confounds analyses of sea level rise acceleration and attribution to human caused climate change. . . .