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Marshall Islands Consider Radical Measures to Survive Rising Sea Levels

posted by martyb on Sunday February 24 2019, @01:29AM   
from the I've-got-a-sinking-feeling-about-this dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

The far-flung Marshall Islands needs to raise its islands if it is to avoid being drowned by rising sea levels, President Hilda Heine has warned.

Plans are underway for national talks on which of the 1,156 islands, scattered over 29 coral atolls, can be elevated in a dramatic intervention to ensure safety on the islands.
...
Most of the islands are less than two metres (6.5 feet) above sea level and the government believes physically raising the islands was the only way to save the Marshall Islands from extinction.

Is the solution a viable one, or are the Marshallese more likely to join the Sea Gypsies?

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Original Submission

• "never question their predictions" "never question their predictions" (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:42AM (1 child)

  by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:42AM (#805863) Homepage Journal

  that their predictions are steadily getting more accurate is due to scientists steadily and iteratively questioning their assumptions.

  For example there's not as much CO2 in the atmosphere as we anticipated because the old models were not built to consider CO2 being dissolved in seawater.

  --
  Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]

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• Re:"never question their predictions" (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @01:31PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @01:31PM (#805920)

  For example there's not as much CO2 in the atmosphere as we anticipated because the old models were not built to consider CO2 being dissolved in seawater.

  What are you talking about? Climate models have taken dissolved CO2 in seawater into account since at least the 1970s (if not earlier), as the oceans have basically been recognized as the largest carbon sinks since anyone tried to model the carbon cycle in details.

  Now, because the oceans are so important and such a large contributor (and a complex one -- since they store a lot of CO2 in deep water and circulation currents can churn some of that to the surface and thus contribute MORE CO2 sometimes) -- there has been considerable refinement of the models for oceans over the years.

  For example, there was a lot of churning in the 1990s due to changes in ocean circulation, so they weren't absorbing as much, but some of that changed in the early 2000s and they started absorbing more again (and that shift wasn't predicted... I still don't know if it's completely understood as a natural cycle or not).

  But the idea that the oceans hadn't been included at all in climate models is preposterous.

  Parent