Sea level rise: Difference between revisions
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== Postglacial == | == Postglacial == | ||
Based on oral traditions gathered at least 21 locations in mainland Australia, cross-referenced with geological data, Aboriginal transmissions of coastal drowning | Based on oral traditions gathered at least 21 locations in mainland Australia, cross-referenced with geological data, Aboriginal transmissions of coastal drowning recall the effects of postglacial sea-level rise more than 7000 years ago. | ||
The most compelling arguments for the authenticity of these 21 stories is that | The most compelling arguments for the authenticity of these 21 stories is that | ||
(1) they come from almost every part of the Australian coast; and | (1) they come from almost every part of the Australian coast; and | ||
(2) they tell essentially the same story, yet one that is specific to a particular coastal | (2) they tell essentially the same story, yet one that is specific to a particular coastal geography. | ||
geography. | |||
Postglacial sea-level rise must have had a massive impact on the social lives of Aboriginal coastal dwellers. Within 12,000 years, greater Australia lost 23 per cent of its landmass, most of which may have been occupied. Generation after generation would have had to renegotiate land tenure arrangements with inland neighbours, and make stay-or-go decisions about island/lowland clan estates. Though slow inexorable sea-level rise may seem to pale against sudden flooding events, postglacial civilizations must have lived with high levels of awareness that inundation was taking place, and for a long time. | Postglacial sea-level rise must have had a massive impact on the social lives of Aboriginal coastal dwellers. Within 12,000 years, greater Australia lost 23 per cent of its landmass, most of which may have been occupied. Generation after generation would have had to renegotiate land tenure arrangements with inland neighbours, and make stay-or-go decisions about island/lowland clan estates. Though slow inexorable sea-level rise may seem to pale against sudden flooding events, postglacial civilizations must have lived with high levels of awareness that inundation was taking place, and for a long time. | ||
After the sea level stabilised 6000–4000 years ago, what would be the motivation to continue telling sea-level-rise stories? In the formation of land sovereignty, complex land-naming and land-relating processes become inculcated in ritualised ways within a corpus of traditional knowledge, and are usually explicit in rite-of-passage ceremonies as evidence of claims to land. For example, one plausible explanation for the Indindji people of coastal Queensland continuing to tell the story of Mudaga, the island named after the pencil pines that once grew on it -- for thousands of years after it was no longer visible -- is if that story were part of an explicitly taught package of stories inherited through Indindji stewardship genealogy. For the existence of Mudaga, even submerged, constitutes evidence of knowing one’s country by spelling out one’s relationship to that country. Without such ritual ceremony, the transmission of such stories across perhaps over 100 generations would seem to be implausibly vulnerable to chance link-breaking.<ref name = "Nunn + Reid 2016">Patrick D. Nunn & Nicholas J. Reid (2016) "Aboriginal Memories of Inundation of the Australian Coast Dating from More than 7000 Years Ago," Australian Geographer, 47:1, 11-47, DOI: 10.1080/00049182.2015.1077539</ref> | '''After the sea level stabilised 6000–4000 years ago, what would be the motivation to continue telling sea-level-rise stories?''' | ||
In the formation of land sovereignty, complex land-naming and land-relating processes become inculcated in ritualised ways within a corpus of traditional knowledge, and are usually explicit in rite-of-passage ceremonies as evidence of claims to land. For example, one plausible explanation for the Indindji people of coastal Queensland continuing to tell the story of Mudaga, the island named after the pencil pines that once grew on it -- for thousands of years after it was no longer visible -- is if that story were part of an explicitly taught package of stories inherited through Indindji stewardship genealogy. For the existence of Mudaga, even submerged, constitutes evidence of knowing one’s country by spelling out one’s relationship to that country. Without such ritual ceremony, the transmission of such stories across perhaps over 100 generations would seem to be implausibly vulnerable to chance link-breaking.<ref name = "Nunn + Reid 2016">Patrick D. Nunn & Nicholas J. Reid (2016) "Aboriginal Memories of Inundation of the Australian Coast Dating from More than 7000 Years Ago," Australian Geographer, 47:1, 11-47, DOI: 10.1080/00049182.2015.1077539</ref> | |||
== Climate Foreknowledge == | == Climate Foreknowledge == | ||
Revision as of 20:38, 9 February 2023
As sea level rise continues to accelerate amidst climate collapse[1], a recent study published in early 2023 found that sea level rise will cover more than twice as much land in the global South as older climate models predicted, correcting for inaccurate radar estimates used to anticipate sea level rise in the global South.[2][3]
Science History
Postglacial
Based on oral traditions gathered at least 21 locations in mainland Australia, cross-referenced with geological data, Aboriginal transmissions of coastal drowning recall the effects of postglacial sea-level rise more than 7000 years ago.
The most compelling arguments for the authenticity of these 21 stories is that (1) they come from almost every part of the Australian coast; and (2) they tell essentially the same story, yet one that is specific to a particular coastal geography.
Postglacial sea-level rise must have had a massive impact on the social lives of Aboriginal coastal dwellers. Within 12,000 years, greater Australia lost 23 per cent of its landmass, most of which may have been occupied. Generation after generation would have had to renegotiate land tenure arrangements with inland neighbours, and make stay-or-go decisions about island/lowland clan estates. Though slow inexorable sea-level rise may seem to pale against sudden flooding events, postglacial civilizations must have lived with high levels of awareness that inundation was taking place, and for a long time.
After the sea level stabilised 6000–4000 years ago, what would be the motivation to continue telling sea-level-rise stories?
In the formation of land sovereignty, complex land-naming and land-relating processes become inculcated in ritualised ways within a corpus of traditional knowledge, and are usually explicit in rite-of-passage ceremonies as evidence of claims to land. For example, one plausible explanation for the Indindji people of coastal Queensland continuing to tell the story of Mudaga, the island named after the pencil pines that once grew on it -- for thousands of years after it was no longer visible -- is if that story were part of an explicitly taught package of stories inherited through Indindji stewardship genealogy. For the existence of Mudaga, even submerged, constitutes evidence of knowing one’s country by spelling out one’s relationship to that country. Without such ritual ceremony, the transmission of such stories across perhaps over 100 generations would seem to be implausibly vulnerable to chance link-breaking.[4]
Climate Foreknowledge
As early as 1959, Shell Oil was warned about the potential consequences of global burning such as sea level rise and the role its fossil fuels played in generating the crisis.[5]
Impacts
Earthquakes
The melting of ice and glaciers contributes to both land uplift and sinking; records of sea level rise and vertical land shifts during the end of the last ice age have been correlated by scientists with greater earthquakes. [6]
Based on these records, even after the ice has gone, such land shifts can continue for thousands of years afterwards[7]
Earthquakes in recent times have also been associated by scientists with glacial melt:
"Glacial melt (contributed) to a 1958 M7.8 earthquake in Alaska. That earthquake unleashed 30 million cubic meters of rock, causing a massive rockslide that slammed into the waters of the Gilbert Inlet and caused the world’s largest tsunami runup ever recorded—1720 meters."[8]
Geographies
India
With more than 20 percent of India’s population (about 250 million people) living within 50 kilometers (31 miles) of the sea, the country’s 7,500-kilometer-long coastline is considered the world’s most vulnerable to the impacts of climate collapse, in particular sea level rise.
Over the past 25 years, four of the over 100 islands constituting the Indian Sundarbans (population 4.5 million) have already disappeared: Bedford, Kabasgadi, Suparibhanga, and Lohachara - the first inhabited island in the world to disappear. The inhabitants of these islands became India’s first climate refugees.
In the Sundarbans, Sagar Island is the largest and most populated with more than 200,000 inhabitants. Coastal erosion is happening here faster than anywhere in the world, having risen by ~3cm/year over the last two decades. The area has lost almost 12 percent of its shoreline in the last four decades.
As sea levels rise, salinization creeps into the soil and can ruin crops for multiple seasons while devastating farmer livelihoods. Crop failure can be so dramatic on some parts of the island that a large portion of male residents are forced to find work elsewhere.
By 2050, without coastal defenses, sea level rise would 'erase' Mumbai at high tide.[9]
Pacific Atolls
In 2017, the US Geological Service published a report on sea level rise and Pacific atolls, which concluded:
...lowlying atoll islands will be annually flooded by seawater sooner in the future than predicted by the previous efforts that only took sea-level rise inundation into account. Not only will such flooding impact terrestrial infrastructure and habitats, but more importantly, it will make the limited freshwater resources non-potable and thus may force inhabitants relying on groundwater to abandon their island-nations in decades, rather than centuries, as has been previously suggested. [10]
Sources
- ↑ https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16022022/sea-level-rise-noaa-report/
- ↑ https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07022023/sea-leve-rise-developing-nations/
- ↑ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2022EF002880
- ↑ Patrick D. Nunn & Nicholas J. Reid (2016) "Aboriginal Memories of Inundation of the Australian Coast Dating from More than 7000 Years Ago," Australian Geographer, 47:1, 11-47, DOI: 10.1080/00049182.2015.1077539
- ↑ https://www.climatefiles.com/shell/1959-shell-earths-carbon-cycle-article/
- ↑ https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/climate-change-eruptions-earthquakes/
- ↑ https://www.preventionweb.net/news/can-climate-change-cause-more-earthquakes-and-volcanic-eruptions
- ↑ https://www.air-worldwide.com/blog/posts/2021/11/climate-change-may-influence-earthquakes/
- ↑ https://thediplomat.com/2020/05/in-the-indian-sundarbans-the-sea-is-coming/
- ↑ Dr. Curt Storlazzi et al., “The Impact of Sea-Level Rise and Climate Change on Department of Defense Installations on Atolls in the Pacific Ocean (RC-2334): U.S. Geological Survey Administrative Report for the U.S. Department of Defense Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program” https://www.serdp-estcp.org/Program-Areas/Resource-Conservation-and-Resiliency/Infrastructure-Resiliency/Vulnerability-and-Impact-Assessment/RC-2334/