[Coral-List] Fw: Chagos MPA - Continuing international dispute overboundaries
Ulf Erlingsson
ceo at lindorm.com
Wed Sep 29 10:13:24 EDT 2010
Let me point out that the argument that atolls will sink due to sea
level rise due to global warming fails to take into account the
geomorphological mechanisms by which atolls are created and grow.
They grow, slowly, through coral reef growth (as should be no news to
anyone on this list), through littoral processes, and through
chemical precipitation, i.e., when the water gets supersaturated with
respect to CaCO2 the calcium is precipitated in layers on ooid sand
grains, eventually building up large land masses such as the Bahamas.
The problem is only when the sea level rises quicker than these
processes can keep up with. However, the predicted rise in sea level
is much smaller than the quickest and largest sea level rise in the
recent past. See http://erlingsson.com/authorship/CIS2GOM.html
Of course, that event did drown large areas that are now sea floor,
but others managed to remain above water. A question of interest is,
naturally, what lessons we can learn from that event.
Ulf
On 2010-09-28, at 22:41, Douglas Fenner wrote:
> But those same atolls may not be
> inhabited much longer, due to sea level rise.
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