Lauren-Kristine Pryzant and John F. Bruno have written on what we will have to do as the ice melts after the CO₂ rise before coastal areas disappear due to rising sea-levels! They basically write a book review in PLoS Biology, but in fact put most of global warming into a coconut shell for us!

In the current drought and heat, causing wildfire and the most severe of storms, we have seen something of the global warming catastrophe that looks likely to literally engulf us. While marsh and mangrove are the most likely losses, the effect of wind fetch on the erosion of Arctic shorelines has been noticed recently. The cost of relocation and rebuilding is beyond almost all coastal communities.

Human macro-ecological case studies are being assembled to assess how to approach all the global warming – among them is, “Adapting to a Changing Environment: Confronting the Consequences of Climate Change,” published in 2011 by McClanahan and Cinner. Coastal East Africa is far removed from the western world’s concerns on climate. There coral reefs protect coastal communities from weather and produce the local fish and tourist industry. With ocean warming, the corals can disappear and the actual coast is eroded by the storms and waves that didn’t make it that far previously.

Net fishing on Aitutaki Island, Cook Islands. Coral reef fisheries like this are threatened by climate change; Credit: © Lauren-Kristine Pryzant / doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001387.g002

In the Cook Islands here, but also in the Indian Ocean, atolls have almost disappeared, but the larger islands are under threat when the corals die. To enhance the capacity of a community to adapt, without leaving hardship, then poverty then dependency is the subject of the book.

The authors attempt to explain how to test strategies, but political machination and refusal to accept the obvious are problems we all face in the global warming area. North Carolina’s recent blocking of coastal erosion protection policies is quoted as an example from a different part of the world. Earth Times has previously reported of course that the Carolinas represent a one-metre high rising sea-level “hot-spot.” Our response of course is, “No comment.”

Reducing greenhouse gases is naturally outside the scope of a book confronting its consequences. Mitigation is the in-word still, but instead of stopping the emissions at source, some scientists are intent on adaptive planning (or “adaptation”.) This response is also being blocked by those who don’t seem to know any better. This leaves the African nations, as the basis of this book, wondering how they can react.

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Topics: Climate / Oceans