The Maldives: trouble in paradise

Sounds pretty cool. Mass migration! Anyone for Barbados?

This is so sad. Hopefully something will be done before its gone.

In my opinion it will BE the Ross Ice Shelf that gives us the splash in the face to wake us up. Unfortunately when it goes it will make the tsunami of 2004 look like a ripple in a pond. And the US can say goodby to Florida and NY.

Keep a close eye on it guys.

Thanks so much for these excerpts and your good work.

We face these and many other far reaching outcomes of our 'Business and Living as usual' actions of the past. What is now needed is a collective awakening by the masses. We in these forums often find ourselves preaching to the converted and singing to the choir of those already knowing our cries. In my book 'ZERO Greenhouse Emissions - The Day the Lights Went Out - Our Future World', I call the common man to arms in a way that they may be inspired to achieve what we all desperately need. Change - Scraping inappropriate subsidies to polluting industries and setting policy that is needed to combat the future we face. This can and must be achieved by the common man so as to give our global political leaders the mandate they need to enable policy. You may think it self serving to promote my book - It is not. It is serving you. It is serving the mother and the father of the child we are putting in harms way. Those I will commit to reaching out to. It is those we need to hear the message
Thankyou - to the converted. Please reach out to those that aren't.
Bob Williamson
Founder & Chair
Greenhouse Neutral Foundation
www.strategicbookpublishing.com/ZEROGreenhouseEmissions.html

We can swing by the tip of New Zealand where for the first time you can catch a glimpse of icebergs bobbing along the coastline. Of special interest in the region is the Ross Ice Shelf in West Antarctica. Similar to the media the Larsen B Ice Shelf received when it collapsed into the sea in 2002, an estimated 500 billion tonnes of ice made quite a splash and at a speed which took everyone by surprise, so you may need to keep the camera at the ready for the Ross Ice Shelf.”
The prescient Professor David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey predicted in 1993 that the Wilkins Ice Shelf connecting Charcot and Latady Islands on the Antarctic Peninsula was likely to be lost within thirty years. He nearly missed it in March 2008, and I guess might have been closer with his prediction had he said fifteen years. He reported: “Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened. I didn’t expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread—we’ll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be.” This time satellites (ICESat) witnessed the collapse of 160 square miles, an area seven times the size of Manhattan, which scientists reported as the beginning of a “runaway” disintegration of Wilkins Ice Shelf, an area of 5,282 square miles (13,680 square kilometers). Ted Scambos, a glaciologist from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado–Boulder was the first witness, having camera at the ready via NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). With a call from Ted to the team of the British Antarctic Survey and the dispatch of a Twin Otter aircraft, they managed some dramatic shots as an iceberg the size of the Isle of Man (41 by 2.5 kilometers) broke away from the ice shelf. Jim Elliot (of the British Antarctic Survey team) on board the Twin Otter said: “I’ve never seen anything like this before—it was awesome. We flew along the main crack and observed the sheer scale of movement from the breakage. Big hefty chunks of ice, the size of small houses, look as though they’ve been thrown around like rubble—it’s like an explosion.”
The West Antarctic ice shelf, with an estimated 30 million cubic kilometers according to British Antarctic Survey researchers, could provide additional freshwater to sea levels of between 5 and 17 meters. The Ross Ice Shelf is the size of France, so when it goes it will make the Larson B look like a ripple in a pond. Once this genie is let out of the bottle, the glaciers behind it can have a free unhindered ride on their trip to the sea.

As suggested by Al Gore's analogy of the frog.
We are just like him.
'Drop a frog into hot water and he will jump out. Drop it into cold water and gradually turn up the heat and it will stay there until it perishes'.

We humans with gradual climate change will just sit in the water until it boils.

We need a quick spalsh in the face to wake us up. This may come from the Ross Ice Shelf. My next posting on this issue is an extract from the book www.strategicbookpublishing.com/ZEROGreenhouseEmissions.html

Bob Williamson

The sad truth of climate change is, it is too late for places like this. The melt is for the time being irreversible and the ball set in motion from our continued lack of effort is going to roll for awhile. Good luck Muldavians.

This is the new "trail of tears" and we will be seeing much more in the coming years. I agree that the nations responsible should help them, but are reservations, like that of the Cherokee, the answer?

Yes, and I suspect we will surely see more caring about it when it is NY, London, or Shanghai. Poor people don't seem to matter in this equation though they are suffering more from it. This is surely a test of our morality as well and unfortunately I have to agree with you regarding our treatment of peoples in our past as compared to the present.

Tuvalu in the southern Pacific is now almost completely uninhabitable. Its population is being relocated to neighbouring New Zealand and some to Australia. To try to maintain their heritage they are asking for a portion of either Australia or New Zealand be set up as a new soverign state for Tuvaluians. Sound similar to those of the Indian Nations?

Like those displaced in history these too and those from the Maldives will need our help in relocating their lives. The past suggests we will not be fair to these and other environmental refugees. Tuvalu will go under, as will the Maldives. It will not immediately affect those that are the main cause of the problem.

As New York, London and Shanghai and other low-lying coastal cities submerge, where will these people go?

One thing is sure - we will see.

Bob Williamson
www.strategicbookpublishing.com/ZEROGreehouseEmissions.html

Sounds good to me, along with their politician friends who keep giving them subsidies.

I think all the filthy "energy" companies should foot the bill.

Excerpt from article:

For more than 1,000 years a traditional calendar of sea-and-wind patterns known as the nakaiy existed in the Maldives, its frequent changes so reliable that its patterns were passed from father to son.

Ahmed Waheed shakes his head when talking of the nakaiy now. Resting in the shade of the cabin of his boat with his crew, the 53-year-old says the traditional period of calmer weather between December and April is now much more changeable, with higher winds and rougher seas. “But why should we be afraid of the sea level rising when our life is the sea?” he says, to which the rest of his crew nods.

“One of the biggest problems we face is a lack of understanding of how our islands are changing,” concedes Aslam, the country’s environment minister, who was recently held hostage for several hours by islanders in the south demanding he set a date for providing their community with a new harbour. He refused to bow to such pressure and eventually had to be set free by police.

As we sit talking, Aslam laughs off the incident, but sympathises with the frustration of his countrymen. “We welcome the international scientific community to come to the Maldives and use us as a laboratory for understanding the dynamics of our islands and the global implications of climate change,” he concludes.

When Nasheed joins us for supper, I am reminded of something that the young president said earlier: “The Maldives is the canary in the world’s carbon coal mine.”
_______________

And if you think this is still a "hoax" you need to open your eyes.