UN causing atoll to sink

I was reading an article from Irene about how 100,000 people concerned about the spewing of carbon into the atmosphere flew to Bali for a conVacation, when I came across more tales of sinking islands. I did some homework on that, a little below. For now, a quick look at the Bash At Bali from the AP:

...The U.N. estimates 47,000 tons of carbon dioxide and other pollutants will be pumped into the atmosphere during the 12-day conference in Bali, mostly from plane flights but also from waste and electricity used by hotel air conditioners.

If correct, Goodall said, that is equivalent to what a Western city of 1.5 million people, such as Marseilles, France, would emit in a day.

But he believes the real figure will be twice that, more like 100,000 tons, close to what the African country of Chad churns out in a year

Chris Goodall is the author of the book "How to Live a Low-Carbon Life." I don't know how he could possible question the UN's facts about global pollution.

More from AP story leads into the sinking island yarn:

But no one expects concrete results here, with closed-door talks expected to be a battle over language and nuance, including whether emission reductions should be voluntary or mandatory and whether developing nations should have the same restrictions as industrial countries.

"We don't need talk, talk, talk," said Ursula Rakova, 43, of Papua New Guinea's Carteret islands, describing how the rising sea has destroyed once-fertile farmland on her island of Huene and split the land mass in two....

So, no concrete results and more carbon in the air than I will produce for the rest of my life. But, they are our saviors, so they can kill as many as they have to in order to save the world.

The Cateret islands are NE of Australia, the coral sea area, I believe. The story making the rounds about the place is global warming is flooding out a whole civilization on the island of Huene. (It was .6 sq miles of coral on a volcano before the farm land was inundated.)

Knowing that the area is subject to tectonic movement, including subduction, I Googled stuff like "Subduction Huene" or in the Coral Sea, etc. I got back pages of newspaper articles online that were, indeed, the same article repeated that said the folks were the first victims of global warming and the very high tides were washing stuff away. Great headlines are easy when you don't have to worry about your assumptions.

Finally, I found, abandoning the chaos of the media and the obscurity of the geological abstracts (those guys are the worst):

"It has also been suggested that the movement of tectonic plates could be responsible. The islands lie in one of the most complex tectonic areas of the earth. They sit next to a plate convergence zone at the boundary of the Pacific Plate, Indo-Australian Plate, and South Bismark Plate on a subduction zone next to the New Hebrides Trench (Bougainville Trench), where the earth's crust is disappearing. There is an active volcano on Bougainville Island, 86km away.

It should be noted, that the Carteret islands are built entirely on a base of coral that sits atop of an extinct volcanic mount. In the usual course of events, such islands eventually subside simply due to the underlying volcanic rock being worn away and not replenished. The Carteret islands are a classic example of such coral islands in their final stage of existence. Interestingly, Charles Darwin was the first to propose such a system of creation and submergence". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carteret_Islands

The New Britain subduction zone, which is in the area, someplace, finds the plate declining some 6 mm/yr. [3 Gene Units] If you look at the map, above, you can see the poor atoll is right in harms way, vis a vis plate movement (the crunched up sea bottom is the give away.)

So, rather than a rising ocean causing mischief, there are two well-established explanations, having nothing to do with UN scientists, that explains Carteret's plight. Either the island is sinking under its own weight and ocean movement, is heading down with its tectonic plate, or people like attendees in Bali are raising the ocean level by jet travel. Occam's razor might do well, here.

So, I won't argue if you think the sea is rising when land gets wet and the sun rises when it appears over the eastern horizon. Simple science. Oh, the sun rises because the rooster calls it.

I know better, now, than to do further research in this vein as true believers don't listen and think it is OK for 100,000 government and ngo hacks to fly the furthest reaches of the earth, a resort island, in order to tell me how I have to stop farting so often. So, as with all religions, we believe what we believe, until we hate what we believed when we realize we were conned.

That is the next step, the emergence of vocal and angry ex-warmers. This is the cycle of all religions. Amen.