by David Clendon
On Wednesday night I had the pleasure of attending a meeting to hear from Pelenise Pilitati a well known community leader and climate activist from Kiribati.
As you can see from this Youtube clip, hearing Pelenise talk brings home the stark reality of the ways that climate change is already affecting Kiribati.
She described how in the southern islands of Kiribati many locals can only offer her brackish water when she goes to visit them, because that is all they have. She talked about the need for desalination plants, and for Kiribati to build more effective sea walls to protect their land from spring tides.
Myself with Pelenise, Luana and other supporters
After Pelenise’s speech, Luana Bosanquet-Heays a young Green activist from the Cook Islands, also launched a new petition that she has developed called “Protect our Pacific.”
Luana will use this petition to get the message across to our government that climate change is affecting all the Pacific Islands, but particularly the low-lying states like Kiribati and Tuvalu now.
We have to act now to reduce our emissions for these Pacific Islands to have any hope of long-term survival. And we also need to ensure that the Pacific Islands receive additional funds for adaptation to climate change in the May, 2010 budget.
Because, as Pelenise said, “Although we are all in the same boat in regards to climate change, it is my end that will sink first.”
Published in Environment & Resource Management by David Clendon on Fri, March 12th, 2010
Tags: climate change, David Clendon, Pacific Islands
More posts by David Clendon | more about David Clendon
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Kiribati is a goner. Not because of climate change. The people themselves have destroyed it. How? Sewerage. Because it is so low lying
islands like Kiribati, and there are many, are destroying their lands and water supplies through contamination of ground water. Sure, rising sea levels have made ground water more salty, thus causing crops to fail, but by far the biggest problem for small island nations is human
excrement.
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climate change is a huge promlem for low lying nationans, especially in the pacific, and it is important that emissions reductions globally occur rapidly.
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Perhaps we should send them copies of waterworld, they can use it as an educational documentary.
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The sea levels are NOT rising around Kiribati or Tuvalu.
Have you not seen the sea frame graphs?
Tectonic movements outweigh any rise in sea level. Consequently some seas are falling and others are rising but are generally stable, although particular decadal oscillations (as in 1998 from memory) can cause the oceans to pile up around some groups of atolls for a while.
Mining of coral reefs for roads and excessive extraction of water from the aquifers and the main problems.
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see the graphs from http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO60101/IDO60101.201001.pdf
Sea levels have risen at 4.3mm per year at Kiribati averaged over the last 17 years and 5.0mm py at Tuvalu.
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I suggest you look at accurate and reliable data. The Sea Frame measurements.
Go to:
http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/spsl3.pdf
It is a large file and takes a little while to download. But it is an excellent summary of all those island groups and their sea levels.
The earlier claims were based on unreliable measuring systems. Sea levels are notoriously hard to measure with any accuracy because there are so many variables especially in an active tectonic area like the Pacific.
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All Gray’s analysis does, is to add reports of nearby stations with less accuracy. He then throws in some irrelevant hand-waving. I would stop relying on Gray if I were you, you make yourself look like a fool.
Satellite measurements (http://sealevel.colorado.edu) are showing a world wide trend of 3.2 mm sea level rise per year. If Pacific island sea levels are not rising then you have to show that there is some reason why not. The BOM measurements are consistent with the satellite measurements.
This has been pointed out to you many times, yet you still continue to spout rubbish.
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Barry,
I am not telling lies.
I am just suggesting you look at data which is not being tortured into submission.
Look at table 13 in the Australian Met office report and tell me whether you see any sign of a significant rise in sea level at those locations. Remember we are dealing with claims that the population faces forced relocation from rising seas.
Then look at table 6 in Gray’s summary and again ask whether you see any significant rise from 1994 to 2008.
More importantly focus on the year 2000 to 2008 because this is the stable period with top gear.
4 or 5 mms per year is 50 mms a decade or 500 mms over a hundred years. This is not significant – it is lost in the noise. Coral grows faster than that. Tectonic plate movements overwhelm it.
The global sea level is a statistical artifact and tells us nothing about what is happening in any given location.
The variation from the geoid can be plus or minus 90 metres between different points on the globe. The sea levels on much of the East coast of NZ are falling because of the rising tectonic plates.
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And Barry (and others) accusing people of telling lies on such matters is not conducive to civilised discourse.
These are complex areas and people are entitled to have different opinions which are firmly held and which can be supported by the available evidence.
When Einstein challenged the Newtonian paradigm of the universe he never suggested that those who supported Newton were telling lies.
IN fact, such accusations are the antithesis of scientific debate because science is founded on skepticism. If a theory cannot be refuted by an experiment it is not scientific – but is dogma, or metaphysics if you prefer the Popperian term.
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However, Barry,
I should be acknowledge that you may well be a teenager and of course teenagers know everything while we geriatrics are only too aware of how little we know.
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How come Gray’s figures don’t agree with the BOM figures? Has he used residuals figures and then said there is no trend? (The residuals figures have the trend subtracted, so of course there is no trend in them.) Who is Vincent Gray anyway?
Trevor.
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This has all been covered before. You must have missed the points I made in a thread a few months ago? I can’t find the thread now (perhaps you or someone else can); I have no desire to go over the whole thing again, its already been done to death.
Sea levels are rising at many of the Pacific Island sites reported on in the BoM reports (and the sea level rises have been corrected for subsidence or rising of the land). Use the actual reports from the BoM for your research rather than relying on Gray’s interpretation of them. Gray doesn’t have many clues about the weather and climate of the Pacific. In earlier versions of his report he confused cyclones with El Nino! The version you link to has mostly corrected this, but he has missed at least one of his earlier errors: on page 14 he writes:
“There has been no change in sea level from 1997 to 2008, 11 years. The previous period 1993-1997 was slightly lower, and has been used to provide an upwards trend of 8.7mm/yr which does not apply to the past 11 years. This behaviour is similar to several other records and suggests that the cyclone of 1998 might have altered the adjustment of the equipment.”
So not only does he continue to confuse El Nino with cyclones, he then claims the event has altered the “adjustment of the equipment”. In other words, the results don’t show what he wants to see, so he has to invent a reason why not to believe them.
Gray is a crackpot who should be ignored; just go to the original reports and interpret them for your self; they’re pretty easy for an educated lay person to understand.
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Owen,
“The sea levels are NOT rising around Kiribati or Tuvalu.”
If you state something that disagrees with all the available evidence then you can expect to be accused of lying. If you preface it with something like “I believe” or “Vincent Gray says”, then you are safe.
The BOM reports are raw data. It is Gray who has tortured it. Does Gray believe that a cyclone altered the adjustment of the satellites too? Their data shows the same behaviour.
“4 or 5 mms per year is 50 mms a decade or 500 mms over a hundred years. This is not significant – it is lost in the noise.”
It may not be significant to you, but it is pretty insulting to people to tell them that they are getting lost in noise, when their islands become uninhabitable. 50cm over a hundred years is a disaster for low lying atolls.
Even if you mean statistical significance, then you are wrong. It may not be significant for one Island, but averaged over all the islands it becomes significant.
barry
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Kiribati will be washed away shortly.
Storm surges like those near Hastings this week will effect many low lying areas worldwide. Cyclones, typhoons, hurricanes will become more common with greater destructive power as the climate changes as a result of human intervention.
Do you think the acceleration of climate change is causing more and stronger earthquakes.
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No: Kiribati will not be washed away shortly (though it depends on your definition of shortly I guess).
Yes: Storm surges will (and currently do) affect many low lying areas
Not proven (but likely no): Cyclones etc becoming more powerful and common
No: Climate change is not causing more or stronger earthquakes
Please find out more about the subject before you give the “skeptics” ammunition which they will try to use to discredit the good science as well as the bad.
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The correlation between the post little Ice Age warming and incidence of storms has been one of the most contentious issues to come out of the IPCC studies.
The arguments both for and against surfaced very early in the piece and one famous specialist in hurricanes resigned over the claims made in one of the IPCC reports.
One of the debates is how do you turn frequency and severity into a singe “measure”.
However, one thing we do know is that during the last century (and probably in this one) the number of lives lost has diminished (because of better forecasting and better emergency services) while the value of property damaged has increased – because more people live on the coast in places like Florida. Also insurance claims have increased because of the higher values of the property destroyed and the fact that more people can now afford insurance.
Also we are much more aware of these events because we see them happening in real time on TV while we watch our dinner so people sense they are more frequent.
Obviously this is a field ripe for claim and counterclaim. Although frequently the apparent disagreements are more about bad reporting than real conflict. (See severity and frequency)
However, historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Warm Period are also known as the Benign Periods because generally warm weather was less damaging than the cold periods. For example the great Pacific migrations leading even to NZ and Easter Island had a great boost during the Medieval Warm Period and ground to a halt during the Little Ice Age. That’s why the Maori canoes stopped coming here when they did and the Europeans did not arrive until the end of the Little Ice Age.
Climate certainly shapes our history, as Fagan explains in “The Long Summer”.
The English and Spaniards never really defeated the Vikings. The Little Ice Age just locked the Vikings in their harbours and the English, Spaniards, Portugese and Dutch could come out to play.
Generally however, for most human civilisations warm has been good and cold has been bad.
Not surprising really.
Human activity can cause earthquakes. One of the great earthquakes in the Punjab was triggered by the filling of a massive hydro dam. The dam burst and killed about 30,000 people and suddenly hydro became the deadliest form of electricity on record. (A lot were killed by the Dam busters to during the second world war.)
Nuclear power remains the safest form of generation in terms of measured deaths where you can count the corpses. (As opposed to computer models etc.)
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Warm might be good for human civilisations, but hot isn’t.
Hydro may have the highest number of counted casualties, but coal might have a higher total if it were possible to actually count those killed by various diseases as the result of coal smoke, along with radioactive gas released and miners killed through exposure (as opposed to miners killed in accidents.
Earthquakes may be triggered by climate and human activities but they would have occurred anyway. In some cases, triggering a greater number of smaller earthquakes is less damaging than waiting for one really big quake.
Trevor.
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Trevor29
Isn’t that what I said?
The actual measured deaths from coal mining in China last century were massive, and state secrets for much of the time.
Some measures of coal deaths do count real people who have died in hospitals from “miners lung”.
On an average annual rate (if my memory serves me correctly) coal is certainly the deadliest, no matter how you count it.
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Owen,
See! you can argue without making totally incorrect statements. The statements about increased hurricane intensity ARE contentious, and remain to be proved convincingly. Of course higher sea levels also aggravate storm damage.
As to the effects of the MWP and LIA, you seem unable to mention how contentious they are. Even the timing is unclear. However some of your statements above can be challenged. Perhaps the LIA stopped Maori migrations but there is absolutely no proof. We don’t conclusively know when the first and last (pre-European) canoes arrived, but some most likely happened during the LIA. Commerce with the Chathams certainly happened within a 100 years before European arrival. European, and Chinese long distance sea journeys happened at all times in the second millenium, and if the LIA stopped Europeans from getting here why didn’t they arrive before that?
As to climate shaping history: it brings us back to the original topic. Pacific Islands history is going to be shaped by sea level rise, whether we choose to believe it or not.
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Owen – you said that hyro suddenly became the deadliest form of generation. On an annual basis, I can’t argue. However you didn’t give a time frame, or say when hydro lost that top spot, so I interpreted what you said as hydro holding the all-time deadliest form of generation. So thank you for the clarification and agreement.
Arguably, hydro generation was not responsible for 30,000 deaths. Rather shoddy practices were. Nuclear has the same issue – Chernobyl should never have happened if good practices had been followed and even if it had, the consequences would have been significantly less if appropriate precautions had been taken beforehand, and the responses had been sensible rather than affected by national pride.
Trevor.
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News today.
Two cyclones in the Pacific.
One near Solomans now category 5 with 200kmph winds.
Humans inability to control their climate, risks the lives of more innocent Pacific Islanders.
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What on Earth do you think we can do about cyclones.
They are a commonplace.
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Genji,
You might like this: “Why don’t we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them?” http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html
Seriously though, TCs are a normal aspect of tropical weather. They are not caused by human activities affecting the climate.
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If TC’s are not the result of climate then why do they exist.
My contention is that human intervention in the climate is intensifying the TC’s to the point where they become dangerous.
To have two category 5 storms a few 100 k’s apart is extremely unusual in the part of the planet.
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Genji-
I have only 5th form geography to back up my understanding of this, but here goes:
Tropical cyclones occur at transitional seasonal intervals (like the spring and autumn equinoxes) when the variation between summer and winter temperatures inverts. They tend to vary in frequency and magnitude, but occur at reasonably predictable intervals. All over the tropical zone of the pacific ocean.
Just like the monsoon season, in SE Asia.
Samiuela, please feel free to correct me, or improve my summation!
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As I ride my bike to gym/shops etc. I notice hardly any other cyclists,
only a few older asians.
Is it safe to assume therefore that everyone driving a vehicle is a sceptic. If so then we will never convince them.
So that is more evidence for the sceptics.
The fact that everyone is driving proves that there is nothing to worry about.
Therefore, I am not in the least concerned about some of my comments which may give sceptics ammunition. To me, everyone by their actions are sceptics.
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Genji,
It is about evidence. There is some evidence for global warming increasing storm intensity, but it is far from conclusive. If you say things that are not supported by the evidence then you are just like the denialists.
Secondly people’s reaction to knowing things varies. Some people, when they discover global warming want to stop emitting carbon immediately. Unfortunately that is impractical for most of us. My personal reaction is to keep my carbon footprint below 80% of average. That means I can live comfortably, and still take part in society. If we can reduce the average, by encouraging others to respect the environment, then I will have options for reducing my footprint even more.
Not all car drivers are sceptics. Some are driving to the bike shop to pick up a bicycle. Some agree with the global warming science and don’t care.
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Genji,
You can find out about TCs here (and in many other places):
http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/cyclone/about/about-tropical-cyclones.shtml
Barry is right; your arguments must be based on rational arguments supported by evidence; you may not be aware how difficult incorrect information from well meaning people makes a scientist’s job when trying to explain things such as climate change. Furthermore, the “denialists” will get as much mileage from such mistakes as they can, the best way to combat this is to be as clear, accurate and concise as possible.
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Who’s to say wether my ideas are accurate or not. Has any scientist begun to investigate the impact on weather with CO2 at 450ppm. I doubt it.
Also what is the average carbon footprint for NZer’s
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“Not all car drivers are sceptics. Some are driving to the bike shop to pick up a bicycle. Some agree with the global warming science and don’t care.”
some may be unable to cycle, for health or disability reasons.
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genji – the link samiuela provided states that tropical cyclones requie sea temperatures above 26.5C to form. Therefore the scope for such cyclones to form will increse as higher CO2 levels lead to increased temperatures including sea surface temperatures. (NIWA have already reported a consistent rise in sea surface temperatures around New Zealand.) This does not prove that AGW will cause more and bigger cyclones but it is certainly a possibility.
Trevor.
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Genji,
There is a huge amount of research going on about the effect of a warming climate (presumably caused by greenhouse gas emissions) on the weather. One can’t attribute any individual extreme weather event to climate change, but what meteorologists try and do is work out whether extreme weather events will become more severe, more common, shift in location and so on. Its a pretty difficult area of research, and there are still lots of questions to answer, but there are lots of people working on it.
Trevor29: its not quite as simple as warmer sea temperatures lead to more or stronger TCs. A warm sea surface is just one ingredient required for a TC to form; there are other things which can inhibit or enhance the chance of one forming (if you are interested, you should be able to find plenty of information on the web about the factors required for tropical cyclone genesis). Thats why its still not certain what the impact of a warmer climate on these storms is.
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Thanks Samiuela.
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