{"id":1680,"date":"2020-03-08T05:03:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-07T18:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/?p=1680"},"modified":"2020-03-08T05:04:53","modified_gmt":"2020-03-07T18:04:53","slug":"climate-change-will-leave-islanders-homeless-study-01-oct-2012-heres-another-dud-prediction-by-flim-flammery-that-i-missed-where-sea-levels-have-failed-to-rise-at-twice-the-global-average-hist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/?p=1680","title":{"rendered":"Climate change will leave islanders homeless: study. 01 Oct 2012. Here’s another dud prediction by Flim Flammery that I missed where sea levels have failed to rise at twice the global average. “Historically, the low-lying island of Saibai has been at-risk from inundation for some time, with families relocating to Seisia in 1947 after a combination of wet season rain and king tides” They’ve already been washed away during low C02, but if it happens now, it’s climate change."},"content":{"rendered":"

Climate change will leave islanders homeless: study (2012, October 1). Torres News (Thursday Island, Qld. : 1957-2015)<\/i>, p. 1. Retrieved March 8, 2020, from https:\/\/trove.nla.gov.au\/newspaper\/article\/255046706?searchTerm=climate%20change%20in%20australia&searchLimits=#<\/a><\/p>\n

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A NEW report is predicting thousands of Torres Strait Islanders will be homeless within the next century due to the effect of climate change.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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2007 Australian of the Year Professor Tim Flannery launched the report, The Critical Decade:<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Queensland climate impacts and opportunities, on September 25 in Brisbane.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The study predicts the sea level rise in the Torres Strait will be double the global average,<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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forcing islanders to evacuate to higher ground, including to mainland Australia.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Climate Commissioner and report author Will Steffen told SBS it was no longer a question of “if<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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islanders would have to move, but “when”.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“We do note in the report that we are projecting average sea levels will rise probably between<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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half a metre and a metre, compared to 1990 levels, by the end of the century,” he said.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“So it obviously makes a difference whether we end up at the lower end of that, or the upper end, as to how soon and how much we will have to relocate people from those islands.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“But we will hit one metre eventually, and go beyond one metre – so the question isn’t ‘if’, the<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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question is ‘when’.”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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About 7000 people live on 18 of the 274 islands in the Torres Strait between Cape York and the coast of Papua New Guinea.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The report states that the worst case scenario would mean large sea- level rises could completely inundate these islands forcing communities to relocate to mainland Australia.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“Because the Torres Strait islands – some of them – are extremely low-lying, and because they have a rapid rate of sea-level rise compared to the global average, they are at some risk,” Mr Steffen said.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“If you look around the world, in fact, obviously there is a lot of concern for low-lying islands in many of the ocean basins, but we tend to forget the Torres Strait islands are amongst the most vulnerable around the planet,” Mr Steffen said.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Historically, the low-lying island of Saibai has been at-risk from inundation for some time, with<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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families relocating to Seisia in 1947 after a combination of wet season rain and king tides<\/strong> flooded Saibai. In 2008, king tides began washing graves from the Saibai cemetery out to sea.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“Most of these inundation events are obviously coupled with things like king tides,” Mr Steffen said.<\/div>\n
“It is these inundations that are causing the problems.” Mr Steffen said the science indicated that for some of the islands, complete inundation was “inevitable”.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“I believe there are also some preliminary plans to move or relocate some of the people from some of the very lowest-lying islands, which obviously under most threat.”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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He said the average height of the communities on Boigu and Saibai were already below the height of the highest astronomical tide, or the “highest tide under average<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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conditions”.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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He said the sea levels would not stop rising in 2100, and would likely eventually rise “up to several metres”.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“We simply have to plan for it  not only in the Torres Strait islands, but in other parts of the Australian coastline and obviously other island countries around the world.”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climate change will leave islanders homeless: study (2012, October 1). Torres News (Thursday Island, Qld. : 1957-2015), p. 1. Retrieved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[737,672,61,587,138,139,137,1229,1228],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1680"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1680"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1682,"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1680\/revisions\/1682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}