Rising sea level surprise, according to a report in ABC (Australia) News in Science 3 June 2010 and Global and Planetary Change online 21 May 2010.
Arthur P. Webb of Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission, Fiji and Paul Kench of School of Environment, The University of Auckland, New Zealand have studied aerial photos of 27 islands taken between 20 and 60 years ago and found 80 percent of the island had remained stable or increased in size. The results surprised those who believe Pacific Islands were doomed to disappear below global warming induced sea level rise. The researchers still believe sea levels are rising but the islands can keep up with it or even outgrow it.
Kench commented: “Some of those islands have gotten dramatically larger, by 20 or 30 percent. We’ve now got evidence the physical foundations of these islands will still be there in 100 years.”
Island growth is due to a number of processes. In their article the researchers wrote: “Results contradict existing paradigms of island response and have significant implications for the consideration of island stability under ongoing sea-level rise in the central Pacific. First, islands are geomorphologically persistent features on atoll reef platforms and can increase in island area despite sea-level change. Second, islands are dynamic landforms that undergo a range of physical adjustments in responses to changing boundary conditions, of which sea level is just one factor. Third, erosion of island shorelines must be reconsidered in the context of physical adjustments of the entire island shoreline as erosion may be balanced by progradation on other sectors of shorelines.”
Editorial Comment: Who would have believed it? Al Gore certainly never suggested it and Prince Charles and the Archbishop of Canterbury still haven’t spotted it. There remains no excuse for the sea level rise scare tactics being used by politicians to introduce new “save the earth” taxes to increase their powerbase. Instead, we should be studying the earth, learning to live with the changes that are occurring, use the resources wisely and reminding ourselves that the earth will be sustained by its Creator until it pleases Him to bring it to an end. (Ref. climate change, geomorphology, Oceania)
Evidence News, 23 June 2010
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