Let's drown 'dem savages!

Zepp

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In case you had any doubts, yes, the title of this thread is meant sarcasticly.

Tiny Tuvalu Fears Future Is Beneath the Pacific

Fri Jan 14, 2:08 PM ET Science - Reuters

By C. Bryson Hull

PORT LOUIS (Reuters) - The islands in Tuvalu where Enele Sopoaga visited his aunts as a boy are gone, swallowed by the rising seas surrounding the Pacific archipelago.

The taro roots his family have eaten for generations grow less robustly each year due to increased salt water, and drinking water that used to be as fresh as new rain has become brackish, he said.

"These are the indications to show us something is happening, something terrible," Sopoaga, Tuvalu's ambassador to the United Nations (news - web sites), told Reuters on Friday.

Standing no more than 12 feet above sea level, many believe Tuvalu would be among the first island nations in the world to disappear as sea levels rise.

Since the 1980s, the nation of 11,000 has advocated stronger measures to cut greenhouse gases. Sopoaga spent most of the week advocating just that at a U.N. conference in Mauritius on small island problems.

Islands worry that rising seas, which a U.N. panel of 2,000 scientists has linked to global warming caused by burning fossil fuels, could submerge them. A minority of scientists dispute the findings as based on erroneous climate models.

The islands have traditionally been at odds with industrial nations, who bristle at any suggestion their emissions are to blame.

Delegates at the conference said the strategy produced at the meeting of island leaders and senior diplomats, including U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites), gave little to islands beyond recognizing their position that climate change is happening now.

Doubters, Sopoaga said, should visit Tuvalu.

"My memory is going as a little boy to visit my aunts on this beautiful island, with three houses and kitchens. Twenty-five people lived there," he said. "Now of course those houses have all gone. It's just sand."

Other small islands in the lagoon of his home island, Nukufetau, are beneath the waves or have been reduced to uninhabitable patches of sand, devoid of vegetation.

There is great confusion among Tuvalans about the future of the islands, and whether they should move away, he said. And other countries cannot see why that may be their only option.

"People say 'why don't you move your people inland?' There is no inland. It's all coastal," he said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...=4&u=/nm/20050114/sc_nm/environment_tuvalu_dc

To me, the last part sounds sadly reminiscient of the attitude the U.S. government took towards Native Americans in the 19th century. How does it sound to you?
 

Makalakumu

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So, if you are in the market for a hummer, know that you are contributing to the complete destruction of 11,000 people's lives.
 

Feisty Mouse

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*Sigh*

If anyone would like some good material, compiled from multiple peer-reviewed and highly respected scientific sources, on global climate change, check out

http://www.ucsusa.org

Good information, no Chicken Little stuff.

ETA: Sorry, I think this sounds sarcastic about the original post, which was not my intent at all. My sigh was because I really would like more people to take the largest environmental issue we are facing seriously.

Members of island nations are already being forced to - and forced out. The way of life for other people, like "Eskimos" in the north, is having to change, too, as the ice melts more, changing their entire hunting/foraging patterns.

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/global_warming/page.cfm?pageID=497
 

GAB

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Hi all,

If you have read any of Carl Sagan then you probably are in the 5% of the population or less. He has one view, and a very good one in my opinion.

Then I have read G. Gordon Liddy and he has his views, unfortunatly more people are aware of him then the first mentioned.

We can all help but we are going to reap what we have sown.

Who would have thought we would be seeing close up's of Titan 20 years ago?
Carl Sagan did!

Regards, Gary
 

Kreth

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GAB said:
If you have read any of Carl Sagan then you probably are in the 5% of the population or less. He has one view, and a very good one in my opinion.
I remember being fascinated by his PBS show as a kid ("billions and billions of stars"), and then when I found out that my dad had actually met him, well, that's all it took to impress a budding computer geek... ;)

Jeff
 

Feisty Mouse

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Kreth said:
I remember being fascinated by his PBS show as a kid ("billions and billions of stars"), and then when I found out that my dad had actually met him, well, that's all it took to impress a budding computer geek... ;)

Jeff
COOL!
 

hardheadjarhead

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GAB said:
Hi all,

If you have read any of Carl Sagan then you probably are in the 5% of the population or less. He has one view, and a very good one in my opinion.


I've read Broca's Brain, Billions and Billions, Dragons of Eden, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark, and listened to the taped version of Pale Blue Dot (read by Sagan...an ill Sagan...himself).

Carl Sagan is one of those great authors (and they're rare) who can bring science and reason to the masses. He's bright, but not condescending. He's enthusiastic, but not strident.

If every high school student in America read Demon Haunted World, Broca's Brain, and Dragons of Eden, I think it would start an intellectual revolution in the United States.

Can you tell I like him?

As to global warming...well, eventually we'll lose much of the coastline of Florida, Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Virgiana and Louisiana. New Orleans will disappear.

So much for the South rising again, eh?


Regards,


Steve
 

Makalakumu

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hardheadjarhead said:
So much for the South rising again, eh?

Well, they are going to have to...or drown. ;)

Global Warming! A great way to make red states blue.

:partyon:
 

GAB

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Hi,

I became aware of him when I read "the dragons of eden" The cosmic calender was/is pretty cool. Good way to put the whole thing in perspective.

Billions and Billions, his last Book was a good read. I like his style also.

Regards, Gary

hardheadjarhead said:
I've read Broca's Brain, Billions and Billions, Dragons of Eden, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark, and listened to the taped version of Pale Blue Dot (read by Sagan...an ill Sagan...himself).

Carl Sagan is one of those great authors (and they're rare) who can bring science and reason to the masses. He's bright, but not condescending. He's enthusiastic, but not strident.

If every high school student in America read Demon Haunted World, Broca's Brain, and Dragons of Eden, I think it would start an intellectual revolution in the United States.

Can you tell I like him?

As to global warming...well, eventually we'll lose much of the coastline of Florida, Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Virgiana and Louisiana. New Orleans will disappear.

So much for the South rising again, eh?


Regards,


Steve
 

Kreth

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hardheadjarhead said:
I've read Broca's Brain, Billions and Billions, Dragons of Eden, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark, and listened to the taped version of Pale Blue Dot (read by Sagan...an ill Sagan...himself)
Ok, a bit of serendipity/cooincidence here... I just finished rereading The Talisman (King/Straub) last night after reading Black House. At one point in the story, one of the characters is reading Broca's Brain.

Jeff
 

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