That Sinking Feeling (Global Warming)

As we continue to defy the Kyoto Protocol, the islanders of the South Pacific watch anxiously as the rising waters wash away their future. Now they are joining forces to fight the tide

It's possible that Kiribati has failed to make much of an impression on many people. The most easterly island in the world, it reached its apotheosis in popular recognition at the start of this millennium, when wealthy travellers flocked there in order to see the first sun rise on a new century.

The chances are the island will fail to make any impression by 2100. For Kiribati (pronounced Kiri-bas) is one of a group of islands at risk of disappearing beneath the waves over the coming decades as a direct result of dramatic climate change - and the local people are facing a hard battle to have their concerns heard on a world stage.

Kiribati won't be the first casualty of global warming. One islet, Tebua Tarawa, has already disappeared; another, Tepuka Savilivili, no longer has any coconut trees.

Tuvalu, the world's second-smallest nation (after Nauru, which is also in the Pacific), consists of nine coral island atolls, the highest of which is only 12 feet above sea level at its peak. It's not the sort of nation that can generate much of its own greenhouse gases, but its 10,500 inhabitants expect to be among the first to feel the effects of global warming. The coastal line is gradually being eroded by the sea, and the island has been hit by high tides that sweep away trees and roads.

But, the threat of the advancing sea isn't just about being submerged. More immediately, the salt water is seeping into the soil, making it increasingly difficult for the islanders to grow crops. (Farmers have to use tin containers, filled with compost, instead.) In 2002, Tuvalu was hit by a record high tide, which covered much of the island and flooded its airport. The situation is deteriorating rapidly.

For the Tuvalun people, joining forces with similarly threatened people has certainly raised their profile, but their future security is far from being resolved. And despite their fears, most of those involved in their campaign are reluctant to move, although many worry that migration will be their only hope of survival.

"The object of the exercise of 'sustainable development' is to survive on the atolls forever... Sustainability is the idea that we can survive from day to day, and... ever after!" says Ieremia Tabai, a former president of Kiribati, and former chairman of the Association of Small Island States (Aosis).

So Aosis is lobbying the bigger states about the dangers that they - or we - pose to their continued existence. Simply, they want the developed world to slow global warming by reducing the production of carbon dioxide. The problem is that, as typically happens with the politics of small countries against large, nobody seems to be listening.

HE Teburoro Tito, the President of the Republic of Kiribati, likens the current situation to the farmyard. "It is like greedy piglets fighting over their share of milk from their ill mother. Instead of co-operating on how they could help save their mother, they were all carried away fighting for their share, and making their mother even more ill, until all of a sudden they found out that they had lost their mother and there was no more milk to live on.

"Some say that it is nonsense that we take today's standard of living back to the past, just on behalf of the protection of the environment. But saving energy does not greatly affect your living standards. Is wasting energy and living in luxury a highly civilized life? Don't you think that it is rather more civilized to think about the next generation, and the future of the earth, and to act accordingly?"

Fine words, but they have little impact in Washington, where, while the official White House position on climate change agrees with the scientists' findings - that it is happening - the US government is intent on finding ways of reducing the "carbon intensity of its economy" outside of the Kyoto Protocol. Among the things that the US Republican party has objected to about Kyoto is its proposal for "trading" carbon-dioxide emissions: "Why should George Bush pay a billion dollars to the Russian mafia to keep a car plant in Chicago open?" commented one senior figure of the idea.

Whereas Archimedes was able to tell King Hieron "give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth", small islands like those represented by Aosis have found themselves at the short end of the political leverage. They try; but there's something weariness-inducing about the pages of earnest politicking issued by the Small Island Developing States Network (which is intertwined with the Aosis) - not least in the plans for the Mauritius convention "to discuss recommendations for further and successful implementation of the Barbados Programme of Action", or the Concept Paper for the Waste Management Experts Meeting in Havana, Cuba.

Of course, these are important issues. But, when islands are sinking, it's questionable whether this is the way to effect change. And will the delegates be travelling to those meetings by that carbon-dioxide generator, the aeroplane?

Another problem is that even the politically devised systems we have in place to tackle climate change aren't working. When the Kyoto Protocol was being hammered out, Aosis demanded that the industrialised nations cut their carbon-dioxide emissions by 60 per cent by 2010. The industrialised nations agreed instead to reduce it, under Kyoto, to 95 per cent of its 1990 levels - which would be, by a 30 per cent cut, half what Aosis demanded. However, the US refuses to be bound by the treaty (which is quietly dying a death on parliamentary floors around the world); and the latest data - submitted to a governmental climate change conference in Milan in December - suggests that the combined emissions of Europe, Japan, the US and other highly industrialized countries could grow by 8 per cent from 2000 to 2010. That's about 17 per cent over the 1990 levels.

At that same meeting, European Union ministers proposed putting off their next meeting, in which they will discuss the release of £30m of relief funds to help "adapt to environmental changes". Aosis members were outraged. "To survive the dry periods we now need desalination plants run by solar energy, but we have no money for that," said Enele Soponga, who chairs the alliance and is also Tuvalu's ambassador to the United Nations. "We need money from the countries that created the emissions."

Even those ministers who had hoped that, by putting off the meeting until May 2005, they might give the Kyoto Protocol some chance to stagger back from the dead - perhaps helped by a favourable (read: Democratic) victory in the US and Russian presidential elections later this year - relented and agreed that they would instead meet again this year.

But the funds haven't been released. And climate change continues to grow apace.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that, at present rates, mean sea levels could rise by up to a metre by 2100. The rise has been attributed to the thermal expansion of the sea, which, in turn, will be boosted by runoff from land-based glaciers. (Sea ice, such as that in the Arctic, does not affect water levels when it melts, because it is already displacing its own weight of water.) Such a rise would mean that, at high tide, water would come up two metres higher than at present.

If the west Antarctic ice sheet were to melt (though there are no signs of this at present), the fall-out would add so much water to the oceans that global sea levels would rise by several metres.

But there are sceptics, notably those running the globalwarming.org website - funded by the right-wing Cooler Heads Coalition, who think that global warming isn't scientifically provable. (Notably, none of the Cooler Heads members lives in any of the threatened island states, or shows any signs of moving there; they're all safely ensconced in the US.)

The CHC argues that adopting Kyoto would damage America's interests, and that the effects about which Aosis have raised the alarm aren't all visible - and those which are can be the reverse of expectations. "New research has shown that sea level [at Tuvalu] has fallen by about 2.5 inches in the last 2 or 3 years," it argues on its website, "an apparently dramatic reversal from the 1.5 inch per year rise experienced throughout the earlier 1990s." It does somewhat spoil its triumphal tone by adding that: "Any potential global warming will actually cause sea levels to drop in the short term." Which surely means that the falling sea levels it reports confirm that global warming is happening.

But the undated page of the CHC's website doesn't identify the source of its research. And studies released by the South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project in October 2000 have contradicted this analysis, suggesting instead that while sea levels around Tuvalu dropped in the mid-1990s, they began climbing again in 1998, and have continued to do so. The best studies suggest that global sea levels are rising by between 1mm and 2mm per year. Which doesn't sound significant, until the Monitoring Project scientists point out that "this rate of change is about 10 times more rapid than the average over the previous 3000 years, as determined from the geological record".

But it's not just the rising sea levels that pose a threat to the islanders. Scientists predict that increasing temperatures will cause more tropical storms - the sort that generate higher waves, and which could mean inundation for the low-lying islands.

Mr Tabai says that "mother earth... is silently calling us to stop fighting over our selfish interests and to help her back to recovery. All she is asking, from each one of us, is to care for her the way she cares for us, and to learn to live in harmony with her."

But no words will change the fact that the tide will rise tomorrow on Kiribati, and Tuvalu, and Nauru, and the dozens of other islands. And that tomorrow, it will rise just a little higher than the day before.

While the islanders of Tuvalu live at the mercy of ever-rising waters, the Chinese are battling an altogether different storm that threatens to engulf them. Throughout March and April, huge sand storms blast across the city of Beijing, into Tianjin and onwards, as far as the Korean Peninsula and Japan. Known as "Yellow Dragons", the storms deposit millions of tonnes of sand along their way, choking the sky and submerging the rich topsoil that is so vital in helping the Chinese sustain their local agriculture.

According to Greenpeace, the problem of desertification in this region currently threatens the lives of 400 million people. The economic loss to the country has been estimated at about $6.5bn per year.

As in Tuvalu, one of the major contributing factors to this displacement is global warming. And while Beijing itself is not blameless in its energy consumption, appeals to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, as stipulated at Kyoto, have been met with reticence by the Western world.

Meanwhile, the Chinese authorities have undertaken a massive reforestation scheme in a bid to halt the reach of the dusty winds. The plans include the planting of a "green wall" of trees and plants that will stretch from Beijing to Inner Mongolia. But these efforts will only paper over the cracks. Unless the world takes joint action to curb carbon dioxide emissions and adopt the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, desertification, sea-level rise, floods and droughts will continue to threaten some of most vulnerable nations on earth.

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3 posted on 01/05/2004 4:31:26 PM PST by Support Free Republic (If Woody had gone straight to the police, this would never have happened!)

Ah, here's a nice game of misdirection played by the writer. The waters are definitely rising on this island, he claims, and that might well be true. But it DOES NOT FOLLOW that those rising waters are the fault of man.

Instead, though, we're supposed to say "Ooooh, the waters ARE rising, we really DO need Kyoto."

Yeah, right.

B.S.!!!! If the oceans were rising, all islands and not just Tuvalu would be sinking. Tuvalu is sinking because they there have mined beach gravel for construction, which gives the appearance that the ocean is advancing and therefore rising, but it is a lie!!

Because of tectonic plate movement, lots of places see a rising or falling of the local ocean. It all depends on the local plate conditions.

These idiots assume all land is stationary, and only the ocean changes.

11 posted on 01/05/2004 4:59:02 PM PST by narby (McGovern lost in 72 - and launched the left's takover of the Dem party)

The wind has blown that yellow dust out of Mongolia for many centuries. It turns the sky yellow and gets gritty dirt everywhere. I saw it in Korea every year during the seventies. What are they trying to pull, suggesting this is some global warming thing? Global warming may be a fact, but citing inappropriate anecdotal evidence of it is not going to help the cause.

Global warming ping.

Don't worry. The Yellowstone super volcano will 1) save us from global warming and 2) kill off all the pesky dinosaurs.

Scientists closely monitoring Yellowstone. 200 degree ground temperatures reported.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1050165/posts

Mining underwater solids should help reduce the water level by making the basin larger. We should be doing our part by damming the lava in Hawaii and sediments in the Mississippi so it doesn't displace ocean water.

One could also pump ocean water onto the land in cold climates where it would freeze.

Looks like Mars could use more water. We could send some there.

All kinds of possibilities beyond just kowtowing to Kyoto.

America's east coast has been sinking for millions of years and the west coast rises up.

You can see old beach lines on the California cliffs.

It's called tectonics and it dwarfs any effect from "so-called" global warming.

16 posted on 01/05/2004 5:14:44 PM PST by CROSSHIGHWAYMAN (I don't believe anything a Democrat says. Bill Clinton set the standard!)

It's all those people in the water that raise the level.

Every time Ted Kennedy drives off a bridge, the water level rises.

"The wind has blown that yellow dust out of Mongolia for many centuries. It turns the sky yellow and gets gritty dirt everywhere. "

Yup. The Sahara blows dust all over Florida every year. It's high in iron content and causes explosive algae growth in the Gulf of Mexico too.

Is it just me, or does the radical left want to believe that everything they do has dramatic effects on the Earth? You know, sort of a "powerful victim" deal, or something to that effect...

Also, I haven't done any research into this, but it seems to me that our planet is something of a self-correcting system. You know, as in, Excessive Warming Caused By CO2 Overload -> Excessive Evaporation Caused By Excessive Warming -> Excessive Condensation in Atmosphere -> Excessive Cloud Cover -> Reduced Sunlight -> Reduced Heat -> Reduced Threat to Reduced-Intellect Environmental Wackos (along with the rest of us)....

20 posted on 01/05/2004 5:37:54 PM PST by SgtSolomon (A proud contributer to Global Warming - read "evil conservative")

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