In Regard to Tarawa
Map of Pag-asa Island – China’s property
I ran across this on another site, regarding the notion that rising seas are a threat to the atoll that embraces the island of Tarawa, the scene of some intense fighting between the US military and the Japanes in the Pacific during World War II.
The hysterics about climate change have degraded into finger-pointing, ridiculous acts of public idiocy by people gluing themselves to sewer covers or moving doors using an acrylic glue that has to be dissolved in order to get off those spots, or lose some skin. Anything made with acrylics, including some of the paints I used to use for works on canvas, are derived from petroleum byproducts, which is why these idiotic activities don’t impress me and a lot of other people.
In regard to Tarawa, the World War II battle for it, and how it is NOT going to disappear under the alleged rising seas of the Pacific: it is a coral reef. And if you know even a smidgeon of anything about coral reefs, you know that they grow UPWARD, constantly building upward-bound volume to be at the level of the most oxygenated waters available, which are near the ocean surface. If you know anything about increased water volume on a planetwide basis, a 1.5mm rise in overall sea level can be determined by looking at a ruler with inch and metric measurements on it. I have a tape measure with both.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/09/20/tarawa-and-the-war-against-sea-level-rise/
If you know anything about the battle for possession of Tarawa, you know that the fighting was so intense that it should have shredded that island. Now, 70-plus long years later, it is more solidly supported by its own reef-building surroundings, but has changed its outlines just slightly as the reef critters continue to add to the atoll’s volume of land mass. There are aerials, old and new, at the link.
Also, please look at the image of Pag-asa island, which is a manmade island in the South China Sea, built by the Chinese government. Anyone still think Tarawa will be inundated by 1.5 millimeters of water? Anyone? Bueller?
Excuse me while I fall down laughing.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves"
How come it didnt tip over with all those Marines and airplanes on it. Maybe they could have pulled it closer to Japan with all those ships and ropes they had back then.
My own view, admittedly speculative, is that a lot of the hysteria over rising sea levels has been brought about because a large proportion of the American news media is centered on the island of Manhattan. Wag the dog. And personally, I have a hard time getting teary-eyed at the prospect that the New York Times might have to *gasp* move to New Jersey.
Some interesting points of comparison which also tend to be ignored are that there are substantial portions of coastal areas which have already been subject to landfill. San Francisco Bay, for example, is now about one-quarter smaller than it was prior to the Gold Rush in 1849.
Another example on an even larger scale is that it’s been estimated that one-third of the state of Florida is built on reclaimed swamp. What happened was that starting back in the 1920s, developers brought in dredges to carve out canals. What was dredged up was then dumped to make usable real estate. Anybody who has been to Florida is probably aware of those twisty miles of subdivisions where each lot has its own waterfront and boat dock.
Point being that rising sea levels alone, even if true, hardly pose an existential threat. In some cases they might even have a net benefit.
Omigod! NYT might have to move to Joisey???? Da horror!!! (Falls down laughing, makes loud thump, scares cat.)
Some of the reason San Fran Bay is smaller is also related to ships that sunk long ago there and weren’t recovered. Just as there are old ships buried in silt in the York River, left over from the Colonial Revolution, there are ships at the bottom of some harbors that are undiscovered for now.
Back during the last glacial maximum (the Wisconsin Maximum) Florida was a whole lot bigger than it is now. Lots of things were like that. Looking forward to our next real bout with Mother Nature, as we’re in a grand solar minimum and have been since about 2006. I really do expect to see wilder and wilder weather ahead.
Another thing that the media doesn’t mention, or ignores, is the water that exists underground in the islands… Water that’s brought up for consumption. That water is being used faster than it could be replaced. Result? Something else is filling the void left behind. In this case, part of the island. Not sea level rise, but a part of the islands filling in the void left by water brought up by the people living on the island.
Give us all an effing break with this crap. There has always been weather and “climate change.” It’s called seasons, orbits, tilts if the Earth and the list goes on. Accurate records have only been kept for the last 150 some odd years. They can’t tell us exactly how the weather is going to be next week, much less 10 20 100 years from now. Right out my front door used to be ocean front and even under water at one point. Now Tybee Is is 120 miles away. All the hills on Manhattan got graded down decades ago by order of the city. The Great Plains was an inland sea. We commented about this last week when oblowme bought his ocean front 15 mil love nest. It’s all a bunch of phony baloney and just another way to separate us from out money. When our time is up, it’s up; we’ve had the flood already, the firey meteor is next, or maybe all the volcanoes, or all the nukes, or all the hot air that the politicians are putting out.
Tarawa/Beito was another example of piss poor planning on the part of higher that got a lot of Marines Killed. Sadly, higher made some of the same type piss poor planning moves in other actions with the same tragic results.
Good article and some nice linkies Ex. Tanks!
Thanks, 5th/77th!
Agreed. We have decent records going back 150 years, and therefore we think we figured everything out. The problem is, we have environmental evidence going back at least 25000 years showing that this has been going on for a very long time and the sea level rise actually seems to be slowing down:
20,000 years ago, My house in NH was under a mile of ice.
12,000 years ago, you could walk from England to Finland (Doggerland) because the sea level was over 100′ lower than it is now. If the rise were linear, that would mean that sea levels have increased at an average of 8″ per 100 years.
8,000 years ago, the Sahara was grassland and forests.
Like I said, this shit has been going on for a long time.
A good size tropical cyclone would make quick work of China’s man-made islands. And that would be a shame.
Wait – it looks like there’s nothing holding that up!!!! How is that possible?!?!?!? Is it riding on inflated cushions?
Do they have surfing competitions there?
Typhoon season hasn’t started yet, has it? I want to see what happens, too. Thanks for the photo, AW1Ed!
Mmmyeah, it would be a crying shame for the Chinese if a Typhoon were to lay waste to that manmade island….
As long as sea levels do not rise too fast, coral will grow up to reach for more sunlight. If the water rises too fast, the stuff in the dark dies. It is an amalgam of “dim” and “bright” light species.
and it is amazingly adaptable.
Volcanic islands sink with time, absent adequate fresh lava. The rocks of such islands are basaltic, thus dense and water absorbing. (other than pumice, some of which floats on water.) Over time, the volcanic islands sink in the crust. The older the basaltic sea floor, the deeper the water, same effect. (Absent continental structure).
Continents are rafts of lower-density (but vastly tougher) Granite, floating on the mantle, and floating over basalts, thus the seabeds tend to go under continents where plates collide. Older sea floor subducts under newer seafloor stuff.
The bottom of the Marianas trench is the oldest known seafloor. It is -vastly- deep.
Those islands are sinking, naturally. Look at the chain we call Hawaii. The big island is new, and growing. All others to the west are older, eroded heavily, and sinking. The underwater remnants of that chain span much of the Pacific. The seabed plate is moving over a fixed “hot spot”.
Continents “float”, thus when ice-covered sink somewhat, and rebound when freed of recaps. That uplift is ongoing in North America, and created the high velocity Colorado River that dug the Grand Canyon. (on a former shallow inland Sea)
But the climate freaks ignore all of that. Oops.
Geology is fascinating stuff!
Missed a segment.
Coral-only atolls are growths on basalt seamounts, thus a re-growth on old volcanic structures. Thus they sink with time, growing up if they can survive.
Exceptions are the continental edge ones like Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
Of course there is more land now. Look at all the steel and iron we piled on to it!
Regarding the ocean rising, has anyone notified the previous Commander-in-Chief? He just spent a shit ton o’ money on an ocean front manse in Martha’s Vineyard. Be a crying shame if something happened to it🤣