Neemia-McKenzie visited Tamana, Abemama, Butaritari and Kiritimati [ed: no page sorry]. He asked the people about the changes that they had experienced in the last 30 years. He details small changes; for instance, the people no longer go barefoot since the ground is too warm, coconuts dry faster, and coconut oil no longer useful as a salve since it now melts off their skin.
The biggest fear among the islanders, however, was coastal erosion. (from Kiribati the island disappearing beneath the waves):
When we came here 11 years ago, the sea was about two metres further away,” says Mr Tsuria, who lives in the village of Eita, on Tarawa, the densely populated main atoll. “I am very worried, but there is nowhere for us to move to. All of the land is occupied and anyway, I have no money for another plot. What will become of my children and my grandchildren?”
The rising waters are obstructing their causeways, but worse, they are reaching the first row of coconut palms that are vital to their survival. Some of the palms have begun to topple.
Tsurias well water is now brackish, his Taro plot infertile. Two nearby uninhabited islands, Tebua Tarawa and Pikeman, no longer exist. The Mormon Church imported tonnes sand from Australia to construct their new Church.
The only high land in the archipelago is Banaba. This is the island that the colonial British mined, exhausting the sole natural resource: phosphorous. The supply ran out shortly before they granted the country its independence. This country in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, its inhabitants among the first to welcome the new millenium, may become the first environmental refugees.
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Those who composed the ELEVEN (11) comments on this article about the quality of the grammer, etc., are asinine. There wasn’t even ONE comment about the goodness/bad of the article.
I think you all generated enough hot air to kick global warming up a notch right there…!
As for the article, it was interesting — but I seriously wonder if the person interviewing the islanders didn’t influence or point them in some yea-those-were-the-good-old-days direction.
jon
The very first comment started by saying it was a good story (thanks!). And I for one welcomed all of the comments. I know if people like me get stories unedited onto the front page readers might be driven away. But I feel a need to provide content, I enjoy the site.
And agreed, not only did the scientist live there, he used to be employed in its government. He definitely has a personal interest in the matter. I would find it difficult to be impartial in the interviews.
in your little user box on the right-hand side of every page… Then, instead of “All Comments”, select “Topical” only – and voila, all those “asinine” editorial comments magically disappear!
See the little red boxes around those comments?
That identifies them as EDITORIAL comments, exactly the spot for discussions of grammAr, etc.
I’ve personally been labeled by quite a few adjectives in my life, but “asinine” has never been one of them.
I, too, noted in a post that I found the author’s comments informative and interesting.
Yours truly,
Marikay
“grammer” -> “grammar”
“goodness/bad” -> “quality” or “reality of”
So is this article an anecdote of islander anecdotes?
The researcher didn’t mention learning anything about what the islanders did a thousand years ago during the Medieval Warm Period. If the island was inhabited then.
For the Northern Hemisphere, the current decade is warmer now than at any time in the past 1,000 years (IPCC 2001). The Medieval Warm Period was not global. SEWilco, where do you get your scientific information from?
The global average temperature of the Earth has only increased by about half a degree in the past 100 years. It is amazing that human societies are so sensitive to this change in global temperature.
The 5 degree C temperature increase in the next 100 years forecast by some computer models is pretty scary in comparison.