Bogus Global Warming Story - Lohachara Island

by Sarah D. | December 27, 2006 at 03:39 pm

8150 views | 0 Recommendations | 2 comments

The headline screamed "Disappearing world: Global warming claims tropical island" informing us that for the first time an inhabited island had been deluged by the ocean, due of course to global warming. The story fails to mention that Lohachare Island disappeared 22 years ago, and that the entire region of The Sundarbans is a river delta. It also fails to mention that the disappearance of the island has been attributed to erosion rather than global warming.

Satellite imagery shows that the sea level in the Sundarbans has risen at an average rate of 3.14 centimetres a year over the past two decades - much higher than the global average of two millimetres a year.

Which begs the question, is the sea rising this much exclusively in this region? Or are they failing to take into account erosion when they make this statement?

And note that in the same BBC article quoted above, they mention a temple that was "devoured by the sea" during British rule. There is historical evidence that some of the islands in question have sunk below sea level many times in the past.

Back in 2004, the author of this bogus story claimed that Great Britian would be hit by an Ice Age, within our lifetimes, due to global warming. Two years later he was wondering "where all the snow had gone?"

Update - Global Warming Blamed for Island Sinking is a Hoax

More on the physical features of the Sundarbans.

About half of the Sundarbans is under water (Lahiri, 1973) and the rest of the landscape is characterised by low-lying alluvial islands and mudbanks, with sandy beaches and dunes along the coast. As with the rest of the Bengal Plain, alluvial deposits are geologically very recent and deep, sediment of just the last few million years being as much as 1,000m thick (Seidensticker and Hai, 1983).

Also, the average altitude reaches 10m at most.

A skeptic chimes in with some very simple questions:

If islands are sinking, we're in trouble. Unless, of course, they would have sank anyway, which, considering it's located in a delta, stands to reason.

Exactly!

yeah, found simular info on wiki, then your page poped up, but being located on a delta is the first part of it, everyone knows those islands go away and get reformed.... well everyone but lousianans...

NowPublic