Pacific islands growing not shrinking, says old study

[FarCenter]

Huge compensation claims filed by Pacific states including Tuvalu have been hit by a three-year old study, dramatically "rediscovered" by New Scientist magazine today. The study concluded that many Micronesian islands are growing, not shrinking.

“It has been thought that as the sea level goes up, islands will sit there and drown. But they won’t," Professor Kench at the University of Auckland in New Zealand told the mag.

Kench has been saying us much for a while, but most editors shunned the news.

Kench's study was published in in the journal Global and Planetary Change in November 2007, and last year he told Associated Press that islands apparently rebuild themselves.

Five years ago Pacific islands became a tragic poster children of Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. The BBC called the Maldives "a paradise faced with extinction".

But just four of the 27 islands studied by the team - chosen because sea levels had risen in the past sixty years - had diminished in size. The other 23 had expanded, one by as much as 60 per cent.

The islands apparently expand their mass by accumulating sediment, and through natural processes - not surprisingly, since they're built on live biomatter: coral.

<SNIP>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/03/pacific_islands_ok/

[Uncle Joe]

1. I wonder if dying coral is turning in to sediment,

and thus temporarily increasing the size of these islands?

The islands apparently expand their mass by accumulating sediment, and through natural processes - not surprisingly, since they're built on live biomatter: coral."

Reuters) - Carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming are also turning the oceans more acidic at the fastest pace in hundreds of thousands of years, the National Research Council reported Thursday.

"The chemistry of the ocean is changing at an unprecedented rate and magnitude due to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions," the council said. "The rate of change exceeds any known to have occurred for at least the past hundreds of thousands of years."

Ocean acidification eats away at coral reefs, interferes with some fish species' ability to find their homes and can hurt commercial shellfish like mussels and oysters and keep them from forming their protective shells.

Corrosion happens when carbon dioxide is stored in the oceans and reacts with sea water to form carbonic acid. Unless carbon dioxide emissions are curbed, oceans will grow more acidic, the report said.

Oceans absorb about one-third of all human-generated carbon dioxide emissions, including those from burning fossil fuels, cement production and deforestation, the report said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63L4XP20100422

<snip>

Thanks for the thread, FarCenter.

[kenfrequed]

2. I wonder...

Who selected these 27 islands in micronesia. Seriously there are many tens of thousands of islands in the Pacific. This study and the noise following it sounds like typical anti-global warming BS.

[FarCenter]

3. Here is the article in New Scientist -- I don't think they are anti-global warming.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627633.700-shapeshifting-islands-defy-sealevel-rise.html

[kenfrequed]

4. Intersting.

You cite The Register initially which seems to give of the slightest of jabs at "climate change" scientists and then when I state by concern about global warming deniers you then reveal the New Scientist sorce (which has not jabs against "climate change scientists"). Why didn't you lead with the original source?

[Uncle Joe]

5. Now that you mention it, I did notice the Register has what looks a vulture on it's front page.

They may have issues with the thought of preserving life.

[kenfrequed]

6. Well...

Scan the other articles on the website. Lots of climate denial BS.