Our SUVs have accomplished what decades of negotiation could not

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

NEW DELHI – For nearly 30 years, India and Bangladesh have argued over control of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have resolved the dispute for them: the island's gone.

New Moore Island in the Sunderbans has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said.

"What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Hazra.

...

India and Bangladesh both claimed the empty New Moore Island, which is about 3.5 kilometers (2 miles) long and 3 kilometers (1.5 miles) wide.

...

There were no permanent structures on New Moore, but India sent some paramilitary soldiers to its rocky shores in 1981 to hoist its national flag.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100324/ap_on_sc/as_india_disappearing_island

[Ban Hammer 13,443]

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/248420-nature-solves-a-territorial-dispute/

late......

[My Name Is Nobody 3]

You have anything new to post?

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Global warming got us out of the last ice age. Thank you God Al Gore.

[SMR 368]

I don't doubt the island is submerged. But I suspect this has much more to do with erosion, shifting land masses, and tidal conditions than global warming. If sea level had really gone up, beaches everywhere would be submerged.

[Scott & Lai 12]

I don't doubt the island is submerged. But I suspect this has much more to do with erosion, shifting land masses, and tidal conditions than global warming. If sea level had really gone up, beaches everywhere would be submerged.

Yep, by about six feet.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

If sea level had really gone up, beaches everywhere would be submerged.

The Secret of Sea Level Rise: It Will Vary Greatly by Region

Sea level, according to the best current projections, could rise by about a meter by 2100, in large part due to melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. But that figure, too, is just a global average. In some places — Scotland, Iceland, and Alaska for example — it could be significantly less in the centuries to come. In others, like much of the eastern United States, it could be significantly more.

And among the most powerful influences on regional sea level is a surprising force: the massive polar ice sheets and their gravitational pull, which will lessen as the ice caps melt and shrink, with profoundly different effects on sea level in various parts of the globe.

If the idea of local differences in sea level comes as a surprise, it’s probably because the experts themselves are only now beginning to fully realize what might cause such differences, and how significant they might be. One factor, which they’ve have been aware of for decades, is that the land is actually rising in some places, including northern Canada and Scandinavia, which are still recovering from the crushing weight of the Ice Age glaciers that melted 10,000 years ago. That makes sea-level increases less than the global average would suggest, since these land areas are rising a few millimeters a year.

Around the periphery of where the glaciers sat, by contrast — places like Chesapeake Bay and the south of England — the land was actually squeezed upward during the Ice Age by the downward pressure nearby. The resulting “glacial forebulge” has been sinking back ever since, also at an average rate of a few millimeters a year, so sea level rise is greater than average in these regions.

And in some coastal areas — most notably along the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana — the land is falling as well: Thanks to massive oil and gas extraction, the continental shelf is collapsing like a deflated balloon. “The rate of subsidence measured at Grand Isle, Louisiana,” says Rui Ponte, of the private consulting firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc, “is almost 10 millimeters per year, compared with two or three in other areas.” That’s especially problematic for a city like New Orleans, which already lies partly below sea level.

Ponte said that these local instances of rebound or subsidence will subtract or add a couple of inches to the global increase in sea level over the next century, depending on the region.

A bigger effect will come from changes in prevailing winds, which can push water consistently toward the land or keep it at bay. The trade winds that blow west across the tropical Pacific, for example, move water in the same direction, boosting average sea levels by as much as 24 inches on the western side of the ocean — in places such as the Philippines — compared with those in northern South America. If those winds shift with climate change, so would local sea levels.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

I have a pickup truck AND a mini-Van. Glad I could be of assistance.

[Empress of Groovy 373]

I have a pickup truck AND a mini-Van. Glad I could be of assistance.

Gary, you're a man of many contradictions.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Gary, you're a man of many contradictions.

But I live in Vermont and they say it will be 9 degrees tonight! Farhenheit. I love global warming!

[SMR 368]

The Secret of Sea Level Rise: It Will Vary Greatly by Region

Sea level, according to the best current projections, could rise by about a meter by 2100, in large part due to melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. But that figure, too, is just a global average. In some places — Scotland, Iceland, and Alaska for example — it could be significantly less in the centuries to come. In others, like much of the eastern United States, it could be significantly more.

And among the most powerful influences on regional sea level is a surprising force: the massive polar ice sheets and their gravitational pull, which will lessen as the ice caps melt and shrink, with profoundly different effects on sea level in various parts of the globe.

If the idea of local differences in sea level comes as a surprise, it’s probably because the experts themselves are only now beginning to fully realize what might cause such differences, and how significant they might be. One factor, which they’ve have been aware of for decades, is that the land is actually rising in some places, including northern Canada and Scandinavia, which are still recovering from the crushing weight of the Ice Age glaciers that melted 10,000 years ago. That makes sea-level increases less than the global average would suggest, since these land areas are rising a few millimeters a year.

Around the periphery of where the glaciers sat, by contrast — places like Chesapeake Bay and the south of England — the land was actually squeezed upward during the Ice Age by the downward pressure nearby. The resulting “glacial forebulge” has been sinking back ever since, also at an average rate of a few millimeters a year, so sea level rise is greater than average in these regions.

And in some coastal areas — most notably along the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana — the land is falling as well: Thanks to massive oil and gas extraction, the continental shelf is collapsing like a deflated balloon. “The rate of subsidence measured at Grand Isle, Louisiana,” says Rui Ponte, of the private consulting firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc, “is almost 10 millimeters per year, compared with two or three in other areas.” That’s especially problematic for a city like New Orleans, which already lies partly below sea level.

Ponte said that these local instances of rebound or subsidence will subtract or add a couple of inches to the global increase in sea level over the next century, depending on the region.

A bigger effect will come from changes in prevailing winds, which can push water consistently toward the land or keep it at bay. The trade winds that blow west across the tropical Pacific, for example, move water in the same direction, boosting average sea levels by as much as 24 inches on the western side of the ocean — in places such as the Philippines — compared with those in northern South America. If those winds shift with climate change, so would local sea levels.

As I said, this has to do with movements in land masses. It's not about sea level. The fact that a island located at the mouth of a river became submerged is not a surprise. It's called erosion.