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Subject: gl:  Islands disappear under rising seas

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_368000/368892.stmet90622/sc/fi

BBC
Monday, June 14, 1999
Islands disappear under rising seas
By Environment Correspondent Alex Kirby

     Two South Pacific islands have disappeared beneath the
waves, as climate change raises sea levels to new heights.
    They are Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea - which ironically means
"the beach which is long-lasting" - in the island state of
Kiribati.
    Neither island was inhabited, though Tebua Tarawa was used
by fishermen.

Swamped by the sea

    The news is reported in the Independent on Sunday newspaper,
which says predictions of the danger are coming true more
quickly than anyone had expected.
    The South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP)
says other islands are at risk, both in Kiribati and in nearby
Tuvalu.
    It says most of the coastline of the 29 atolls of the
Marshall Islands is suffering erosion.
    On one, second world war graves are being washed away.

Pressure on people

    All three island groups have experienced severe flooding by
storms and high tides, and populated islands are now being
affected.
    And even where the seawater is not a direct threat,
livelihoods are being damaged as salt poisons the soil.
    The small island states of the world contribute only 0.6% of
all global warming pollution, but they are suffering
disproportionately.
    They cannot afford to protect themselves.  To build a
temporary sea wall for one Marshall Island atoll would cost $100
million, more than twice the wealth the country produces
annually.

Warm water problems

    In the Indian Ocean, the beaches of a third of the 200
inhabited islands of the Maldives are being swept away.
    President Gayoom of the Maldives says: "Sea-level rise is
not a fashionable scientific hypothesis.  It is a fact."
    The rise in levels is happening because water expands as it
warms up.  Coastal areas of countries like the USA, China and
Bangladesh are also threatened.
               Although considerable uncertainty still surrounds the
probable impact of global warming, the best estimate is that sea
levels will rise by about half a metre over the next century.
    But the process is unlikely to stop then, because the rise
in levels observed today is caused by warming that happened
decades ago.
    Today's warming, which is more serious, will cause levels to
rise higher when it eventually makes its impact felt.
    The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change is Robert Watson.  He told the Independent on Sunday:
"Once the process is set in motion, it cannot be slowed down in
anything less than a few millennia."

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