- Jamero, lead researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Tokyo, said the dominant discussion about sea-level rise focuses on “people fleeing the sinking island, the ‘end-of-the-world’-type narrative”.
“But when I went to these places, it’s completely different. People don’t want to leave their homes, they have found a way to live their lives, to adapt, even to enjoy the floods.”
Jamero said staged relocations – where people move to larger islands for forecast major weather events, such a king tides coinciding with typhoons – was negotiated between the islanders and government officials.
“What really struck me was how the government really listened and actually changed their approach,” Jamero said.
The Tubigon government has focused on education, offering scholarships to high school and college students from the islands, in order to induce relocation more naturally, over two or three generations.
I think the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is selling a best case scenario. The sea level is not going to creep up. I was walking in Miami Beach with my daughter last weekend, and told her that one day she will be able to tell her kids about how she walked in Miami before it was gone. And they’re worried it could be getting worse. Some researchers are concerned that the giant glacier could become increasingly unstable in the coming years, eventually spiraling into a pattern of unstoppable retreat. If that were to happen, it could potentially unleash enough ice to raise global sea levels by 10 feet.Glacier, which has recorded some of the most rapid melt rates out of anywhere in Antarctica. Currently thought to be pouring about 50 billion tons of ice into the ocean each year, scientists estimate Thwaites is responsible for about 4 percent of global sea-level rise all on its own.
Reality for me was when Zurich:Re bumped up the rates they were charging other insurance companies to write policies in coastal areas. It was like "have whatever cosmology you want about this, we're here for the benjamins." That was maybe ten years ago. Now the Navy is doing FONOPs in the Arctic Ocean because they can and they're building fourteen sea walls to protect naval bases. I saw the hole thing this morning. Miami at 10ft.
That's part of what makes this a compelling article. Because of the quakes that caused the islands to dip a bit, the flooding started relatively abruptly. If sea levels rise faster than we expect, this might become a pretty common scenario. Between you, me, and anyone else reading this, I'm actually not that surprised the people on these islands are staying. Humans are pretty resilient and can survive under so many conditions that can be considered less than ideal. That said, I think as situations where communities are facing hardship due to climate change start cropping up more and more, we need to ask some very important questions. Are people staying because they genuinely want to stay, or because there are too many barriers to relocating? If there are barriers to relocating, we need to figure out what they are and what we can do to help address them. If people genuinely want to stay, then we need to look at the challenges that will face them if they do and how some of them can be addressed. For example, for this community here, the flooded houses, the floating waste, and the hampered ability to grow food in the community are all issues that are cause for concern, but also ones that can probably realistically be tackled with the right knowledge and resources.