PS I am making progress with my book – the dystopian fiction.   And the picture of the truck was taken a few days ago in northwestern New South Wales.    

October 7th, 2009 – “Walkabout” is a word we use here in Australia to let others in our community know we are going away for a period of time – perhaps to take more time to reflect on life.  

I’m off for a bit – going walkabout.  

PS I attended a lecture by Professor Bob Carter last night and was reminded that not so long ago the English speaking world believed all Swans to be white.   The photograph of the black swans was taken by Jennifer Marohasy in western Victoria, Australia, in October 2007.

He contacted me about six years ago when I was working on the Murray River and water issues. He expressed concern about Australia’s great artesian basin and over extraction of what he considered a finite resource.

We later corresponded over climate change issue. Lance believed we must try harder to understand the causes of natural climate change instead of assuming anthropogenic global warming. He was particularly interested in the oceans as a source of carbon dioxide. On June 24, 2009 he wrote:

“The relationship between CO2 and ocean temperature is ordained by the solubility relationship.   I attach [see above] a chart showing my experience curve for the only reliable temperature records we have. It is difficult to argue against a correlation of 0.99.  

I also attach [see below] my experience curve for Global average sea surface temperature and earth rotation. Note the correlation of 0.99.

The reason why SST, CO2 and LOD correlate so well is that they are all dependent variables. The external driving force is the independent variable. It is the electromagnetic field imposed on the earth which causes motion (rotation) and electromagnetically induced heating. The driving force is nominally from the Sun.

However, I do not believe that the Sun causes its own sunspots. I suspect the source is a pulsating emf from galactic sources. As health and time permit I will contemplate further.”

Lance died last week, on Thursday October 1.  He was 84 years old.

Since his dead I have learnt that before his official retirement Lance was a world authority on rock behaviour and tunnelling, a former president of the Institution of Engineers Australia, and a recipient of its highest award, the Peter Nicol Russell Memorial Medal.

He had worked on the Snowy Mountain hydroelectricity scheme and was once Pro-Vice Chancellor at Melbourne’s Monash University.

Lance did not consider nature or climate benign and man rather puny in the scheme of things… unless we harness science and ideas in practical ways to protect and nurture civilization. Thus Lance championed big infrastructure projects.

He encouraged me at different times, suggesting that it was important to stay “candid and thoughtful”.

Lance Endersbee died last week, but his ideas will live on.

******************

Links and Notes

Lance Endersbee: 

Emeritus Professor, AO, FTSE. ME, Hon FIEAust., Hon Mem Eng Inst Canada, F.ASCE. Former Pro Vice Chancellor, Monash University, 1988-9, Dean, Faculty of Engineering, 1976-88.

Extensive career in hydropower engineering and water resource projects 1950-1976 in Australia and overseas with Snowy Mountains Authority, Hydroelectric Commission of Tasmania, and the United Nations.

Vice Pres. Int Soc Rock Mechanics 1966-70. Pres. IEAust 1980, Cr 1967-80.

Recipient: Peter Nicol Russell award 1986, Chapman Medal 1967, Warren Prize 1963.

Book, A Voyage of Discovery, a history of ideas about the earth, with a new understanding of the global resources of water and petroleum, and the problems of climate change. 2005.

Blog posts:

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/02/carbon-dioxide-versus-temperature/ 

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2007/09/the-atmosphere-is-thin-and-oceans-shallow-an-illustration-and-note-from-lance-endersbee/ 

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2007/09/atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-levels-follow-sea-surface-temperature-a-note-from-lance-endersbee/

 On Line Opinion Author:

 http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/author.asp?id=261 

The Great Artesian Basin and Plutonic water  http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1215

In his book Out of the West: A Historical Perspective of the Western Division of NSW, former Western Lands Commissioner, Dick Condon, says there were 34 severe dust storms at Wagga Wagga during the period 1944-45, many so bad that it would have been necessary to turn the lights on in order to see inside the average sized house.  

Mr Condon suggests the dust storms during the 1982-83 drought were not as bad as those during the period 1885 to 1945 because of the much improved conditions of the landscape in the semi-arid and arid grazing country in western New South Wales.

In contrast, it is generally agreed that bushfires are getting worse.  

In Inferno, The Day Victoria Burned, journalist, Roger Franklin, explains that the bushfires of February 2009, while not without precedent, were worst than earlier fires.   For example, Black Friday, 1939, according to Mr Franklin, consumed twice as much countryside, but less than half as many lives.   He goes on to suggest that for all the theorizing and inquiring, we are losing ground when it comes to managing fire and that unless the “winds change in the corridors of power” next time will be worse.  Much worse. 

It seems that we are getting better at managing drought and worst at managing fire. 

Landholders certainly learnt the lessons of over-clearing and overgrazing, which left a lot of country bare in the early days of settlement, contributing to intense dust storms. 

A lot has changed since 1945: adoption of minimum tillage, wind breaks and, of course, the success of government-sponsored programs to control rabbits.  
But when it comes to implementing management practices to reduce the impact of wildfires, well, the efforts of landholders are generally not supported by government policy.  

Indeed, while Landcare and other government-sponsored environmental initiatives encourage planting of windbreaks, they prohibit bulldozing of firebreaks. 
It seems governments have a myopia of sorts when it comes to land management; an inability to see the bigger picture.  

While trees are an important part of many landscapes, there are times and places when many should be sacrificed for the protection of lives and property from fire.    

Indeed, if we are to reduce the intensity of wildfires there are lessons to be learnt by government from success in reducing the intensity of dust storms and it is simple: empower landholders.  

In particular, give farmers and foresters incentives to improve land management, including not only the right to plant trees, but also to cut them down.

****************

‘Inferno: The Day Victoria Burned’ was available from bookstores nationally on October 1, and is $39.95 hardback.

This note was first published as a column in The Land newspaper on Thursday October 1.

Many in Samoa claim the warning system in place failed because an alert was only received after the tsunami hit.  The official line has been that when the earthquake is close to land, the technology is such that there is simply not time for adequate warnings.  

Brisbane-based engineer, now publisher, John McRobert, disputes this assessment claiming major earthquakes have precursor seismic shocks hundreds of kilometres below the Earth’s surface, and the transmigration of the energy, and the path to the surface can be accurately predicted:

“IN the early 1960s, a visionary Chief Engineer of the Queensland Co-ordinator General’s Department, John Kindler, called all of his engineering staff to a meeting (there were about 40 of us). He gave a dissertation about how development close to the frontal dunes at the Gold Coast was of concern, and of the (even then) huge economic risk of major storm assault on the coastline. He asked for two volunteers to spend a few years at the Dutch Delft Hydraulic Laboratories, the world’s leaders in handling storm erosion. Two volunteers stepped forward and from that the Beach Protection Authority was established to perform some excellent work in protecting our coastline from storm damage. The group was eventually absorbed into the Harbours and Marine Department.

In those days, Australia was considered to be a stable geologic platform with no volcanic activity, very few local earthquakes, and the word ‘tsunami’ wasn’t even in the lexicon.

The action was around the ‘Ring of fire’ in the Pacific, and in 1962, the failure of earth scientists to warn inhabitants of the New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands of a damaging volcanic eruption demanded action, and this resulted in a remarkable collaboration between Dr Claude Blot, a French volcanologist, and John Grover, an Australian earth scientist, who found and proved answers to long lead-time, accurate, early warning of volcanic eruptions and great earthquakes. They showed that these major events had precursor seismic shocks hundreds of kilometres below the Earth’s surface, and the transmigration of the energy, and the path to the surface could be accurately predicted. Some of the most dramatic examples of this is told in John Grover’s book, Volcanic Eruptions and Great Earthquakes (here I have to declare that this book was published by my company).

The Grover/Blot team was broken up for political reasons – it was deemed more politically acceptable to let the events happen without warning, than to make a prediction which could be wrong and which could therefore create unnecessary panic.

John Grover died a few years ago, but his work is being continued by a seismologist based in Canberra, Dr Dong Choi. After the Sumatran tsunami, I asked Dr Choi if it could have been predicted. The answer sent prickles up the back of the neck when he said ‘The data fits’.

But mainstream academia refused to review the John Grover book, and here we have seen another fast and furious catastrophe in the Samoan region. It had no warning. How would the Gold Coast cope?

We are spending billions chasing a will’o'the’wisp gas called carbon dioxide which is essential to life on Earth, and which is driven by climate, not by puny man-made emissions, and ignoring real research as to how to predict and manage natural cataclysm.

Where are our priorities?

John McRobert
Brisbane, Australia “

In response to recent suggestions by Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre that the official reconstructions may have been fudged, Keith Briffa, from the Climate Research Unit associated with the UK Met. Office, has responded explaining that there was no cherry picking of data in the development of the reconstructions used by the IPCC and others, rather, the methodology is not yet robust.  

Given this admission from a leading UK climate scientist, it would perhaps be appropriate for the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri,  to now advise world leaders that there are potential problems with the methodology used in the development of key assumptions underpining the consensus view on anthropogenic global warming and that until further notice, the big meeting in Copenhagen should be postponed.

Following is Professor Briffa’s response:   

“MY attention has been drawn to a comment by Steve McIntyre on the Climate Audit website relating to the pattern of radial tree growth displayed in the ring-width chronology “Yamal” that I first published in Briffa (2000). The substantive implication of McIntyre’s comment (made explicitly in subsequent postings by others) is that the recent data that make up this chronology (i.e. the ring-width measurements from living trees) were purposely selected by me from among a larger available data set, specifically because they exhibited recent growth increases.

“This is not the case. The Yamal tree-ring chronology (see also Briffa and Osborn 2002, Briffa et al. 2008) was based on the application of a tree-ring processing method applied to the same set of composite sub-fossil and living-tree ring-width measurements provided to me by Rashit Hantemirov and Stepan Shiyatov which forms the basis of a chronology they published (Hantemirov and Shiyatov 2002). In their work they traditionally applied a data processing method (corridor standardisation) that does not preserve evidence of long timescale growth changes. My application of the Regional Curve Standardisation method to these same data was intended to better represent the multi-decadal to centennial growth variations necessary to infer the longer-term variability in average summer temperatures in the Yamal region: to provide a direct comparison with the chronology produced by Hantemirov and Shiyatov.

“These authors state that their data (derived mainly from measurements of relic wood dating back over more than 2,000 years) included 17 ring-width series derived from living trees that were between 200-400 years old. These recent data included measurements from at least 3 different locations in the Yamal region. In his piece, McIntyre replaces a number (12) of these original measurement series with more data (34 series) from a single location (not one of the above) within the Yamal region, at which the trees apparently do not show the same overall growth increase registered in our data.

“The basis for McIntyre’s selection of which of our (i.e. Hantemirov and Shiyatov’s) data to exclude and which to use in replacement is not clear but his version of the chronology shows lower relative growth in recent decades than is displayed in my original chronology. He offers no justification for excluding the original data; and in one version of the chronology where he retains them, he appears to give them inappropriate low weights. I note that McIntyre qualifies the presentation of his version(s) of the chronology by reference to a number of valid points that require further investigation. Subsequent postings appear to pay no heed to these caveats. Whether the McIntyre version is any more robust a representation of regional tree growth in Yamal than my original, remains to be established.

“My colleagues and I are working to develop methods that are capable of expressing robust evidence of climate changes using tree-ring data. We do not select tree-core samples based on comparison with climate data. Chronologies are constructed independently and are subsequently compared with climate data to measure the association and quantify the reliability of using the tree-ring data as a proxy for temperature variations.

“We have not yet had a chance to explore the details of McIntyre’s analysis or its implication for temperature reconstruction at Yamal but we have done considerably more analyses exploring chronology production and temperature calibration that have relevance to this issue but they are not yet published. I do not believe that McIntyre’s preliminary post provides sufficient evidence to doubt the reality of unusually high summer temperatures in the last decades of the 20th century.

“We will expand on this initial comment on the McIntyre posting when we have had a chance to review the details of his work.

K.R. Briffa
30 September 2009

Briffa, K. R. 2000. Annual climate variability in the Holocene: interpreting the message of ancient trees. Quaternary Science Reviews 19:87-105.
Briffa, K. R., and T. J. Osborn. 2002. Paleoclimate – Blowing hot and cold. Science 295:2227-2228.
Briffa, K. R., V. V. Shishov, T. M. Melvin, E. A. Vaganov, H. Grudd, R. M. Hantemirov, M. Eronen, and M. M. Naurzbaev. 2008. Trends in recent temperature and radial tree growth spanning 2000 years across northwest Eurasia. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 363:2271-2284.
Hantemirov, R. M., and S. G. Shiyatov. 2002. A continuous multimillennial ring-width chronology in Yamal, northwestern Siberia. Holocene 12:717-726.”

**************************************

Notes and Links

from http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2000/   [Thanks to Nick Stokes for the link.]

Yamal: A “Divergence” Problem, by Steve McIntyre, 27 September 2009
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7168

Also http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/09/leading-uk-climate-scientists-must-explain-or-resign/

Photograph of Professor Briffa from http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/photo/keith2007b.jpg

Mr McIntyre’s analysis of the data – which he had been asking for since 2003 – suggests that scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the Hadley Centre associated with the UK Met. Office  have been using only a small subset of the available data to make their claims that recent years have been the hottest of the last millennium.   When the entire data set is used, Mr McIntyre claims that the hockey stick shape disappears completely. [1]    

Mr McIntyre has previously showed problems with the mathematics behind the ‘hockey stick’.   But scientists at the Climate Research Centre (CRU), in particular Dr Briffa, have continuously republished claiming the upswing in temperatures over the last 100 years is real and not an artifact of the methodology used – as claimed by Mr McIntyre.     However, these same scientists have denied Mr McIntyre access to all the data.    Recently they were forced to make more data available to Mr McIntyre after they published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society  -  a journal which unlike Nature and Science has strict policies on data archiving which it enforces.  
 
This week’s claims by Steve McInyre that scientists associated with the UK Met. Office have been less than diligent  are serious and suggest some of the most defended building blocks of the case for anthropogenic global warming are based on the indefensible when the methodology is laid bare.    

This sorry saga also raises issues  associated with how data is archived at the UK Met. Office with incomplete data sets that spuriously support the case for global warming being promoted while complete data sets are kept hidden from the public –  including from scientific sceptics like Steve McIntyre. 
 
It is indeed time leading scientists at the Climate Research Centre associated with the UK Met. Office explain how Mr McIntyre is in error or resign.

***********

Notes and Links

[1] Yamal: A “Divergence” Problem, by Steve McIntyre, 27 September 2009
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7168

The above chart shows the difference when the entire data set (black line) as opposed to a subset (red line) is used to reconstruct temperature.   The chart is accompanied by the following comment from Mr McIntyre:  “The next graphic compares the RCS chronologies from the two slightly different data sets: red – the RCS chronology calculated from the CRU archive (with the 12 picked cores); black – the RCS chronology calculated using the Schweingruber Yamal sample of living trees instead of the 12 picked trees used in the CRU archive [leaving the rest of the data set unchanged i.e. all the subfossil data prior to the 19th century]. The difference is breathtaking.”

Mann, Michael E.; Bradley, Raymond S.; Hughes, Malcolm K. (1998), “Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries” (PDF), Nature 392: 779–787, doi:10.1038/33859, http://www.caenvirothon.com/Resources/Mann,%20et%20al.%20Global%20scale%20temp%20patterns.pdf  

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy#cite_note-17

CRU Refuses Data Once Again
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6623 

http://climateresearchnews.com/2009/09/the-hockey-stick-is-dead/

Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute puts it this way, “The melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan Plateau will deprive the Indus, Ganges, Yangtze and Yellow rivers of the ice melt that sustains their flow during the dry season and the irrigation systems that depend on them.”

But according to Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, it’s a case of cognitive dissonance.  He explains:

“In other words the supply of melt water from the melting glaciers is threatened by the melting of the glaciers. This is correct in that if the glaciers melt completely there will be no more melt water from the glaciers.

“What if the glaciers were not melting due to a colder climate? Then where would the irrigation water come from? How about if the glaciers were advancing 100 meters per year toward the villages that need the melt water for irrigation?  

“How does the logic of this situation escape these bright minds?

“It snows every winter in the Himalayas. When the snow melts it fills the rivers. Where there is net melting of the glaciers this adds additional water to the rivers.

“But they can’t have it both ways. If they want to have continued melt water from the glaciers then the glaciers must continue to melt.

“Seeing that the glaciers are finite in size this would eventually result in no glacier, and reliance on annual snow melt.”

*****************

Notes and Links

Read more from Patrick Moore, Greenspirit Strategies Ltd., at www.greenspirit.com

The UNEP report is ‘2009 Climate Change Science Compendium 2009’ which can be downloaded at http://en.cop15.dk/files/pdf/compendium2009.pdf [4MB] .

The report is summarized in the newsletter at http://en.cop15.dk/news/view+news?newsid=2193

Read Lester Brown at http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/plan_b_updates/2009/update82

The image of Bhutan glaciers melting is from http://pnb.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Glacial_lakes,_Bhutan.jpg  . Thanks Wikipedia.

And more on glacial lakes here: http://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/en/imgdata/topics/2008/tp080402.html

And so much more on melting glaciers at google:

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Himalayan glaciers ‘melting fast’
14 Mar 2005 … Melting Himalayan glaciers could lead to catastrophic water shortages, a conservation group warns.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4346211.stm  

Himalayan Glacier – Glaciers of Himalayas – Himalayas Famous Glaciers
It is the second largest glacier in the Himalayan region. Shigar River, which is a tributary of the Indus River, originates from this glacier. …
www.himalaya2000.com/himalayan…/himalayan-glaciers.html

Himalayan Glacier Melting Observed From Space
The Himalayan glaciers are melting under the effect of global warming. However, the extent of this melting remains difficult to assess from ground surveys …
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070327113346.htm

Himalaya Glaciers,Glacier in Himalayan Range,Glaciers in …
Glaciers in Himalaya – Provide information on various glaciers in uttaranchal region of india himalayan range, glacier in himalaya, himalayan glaciers and …
www.travel-himalayas.com/himalayan…/uttaranchal-glaciers.html

Himalayan Glaciers Seem to Be Growing: Discovery News
5 May 2009 … In the Western Himalayas, a group of some 230 glaciers are bucking the global warming trend. They’re growing.
dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/05/05/himalayas-glaciers.htm

“Dr Andy Derocher, the outgoing chairman of the PSBG and Professor at the University of  Alberta, wrote to inform Taylor that he was not welcome at the 2009 meeting of the PBSG.

“Keep in mind as you read his comments (below) that Taylor had arranged funding to attend the meeting in Copenhagen, and has been at every meeting of this group since 1981. With 30 years of experience in polar bear research, it goes without saying that he has something to contribute to any discussion about polar bear conservation. This is the original email from Derocher to Taylor explaining why he was not invited:   

Hi Mitch,

The world is a political place and for polar bears, more so now than ever before. I have no problem with dissenting views as long as they are supportable by logic, scientific reasoning, and the literature.  

I do believe, as do many Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) members, that for the sake of polar bear conservation, views that run counter to human induced climate change are extremely unhelpful. In this vein, your positions and statements in the Manhattan Declaration, the Frontier Institute, and the Science and Public Policy Institute are inconsistent with positions taken by the PBSG.

I too was not surprised by the members not endorsing an invitation.

Nothing I heard had to do with your science on harvesting or your research on polar bears – it was the positions you’ve taken on global warming that brought opposition.

Time will tell who is correct but the scientific literature is not on the side of those arguing against human induced climate change.
I look forward to having someone else chair the PBSG.

Best regards,
Andy (Derocher) …

Keep reading here:  http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/exile_for_non-believers.html
Pdf here:  http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Nova-Exile_for_non_believers.pdf

‘Exile for Non-Believers’, by Joanne Nova, published by the Science and Public Policy Institute, September 2009 

Photo Credit: Susanne Miller, United States Fish and Wildlife Service   http://www.fws.gov/home/feature/2008/polarbear012308/polarbearphotos.html

These are the conclusions from Willis Eschenbach who lives in Honiara, Solomon Islands.  He explains why:

“Much has been written of late regarding the impending demise of the world’s coral atolls due to sea level rise. Recently, here in the Solomon Islands, the sea level rise has been blamed for salt water intrusion into the subsurface “lens” of fresh water under some atolls. Beneath the surface of most atolls, there is a lens shaped body of fresh water which floats on the seawater underneath. The claim is that the rising sea levels are contaminating the fresh-water lens with seawater.

These claims of blame ignore several facts. The first and most important fact, discovered by none other than Charles Darwin, is that coral atolls essentially “float” on the surface of the sea. When the sea rises, the atoll rises with it, and when the sea falls, they fall as well. Atolls exist in a delicate balance between new sand and coral rubble being added from the reef, and sand and rubble being eroded by wind and wave back into the sea.

When the sea falls, more sand tumbles from the high part, and more of the atoll is exposed to wind erosion. The atoll falls along with the sea level. When the sea level rises, wind erosion decreases. The coral grows up along with the sea level rise. The flow of sand and rubble onto the atoll continues, and the atoll rises. Since atolls go up and down with the sea level, the idea that they will be buried by sea level rises is totally unfounded. They have gone through sea level rises much larger and much faster than the current one.

Given that established scientific fact, why is there water incursion into the fresh water lenses? Several factors affect this. First and foremost, the fresh water lens is a limited supply. As island populations increase, more and more water is drawn from the lens. The inevitable end of this is the intrusion of sea water into the lens. This affects both wells and plants, which both draw from the same lens. It also leads to unfounded claims that sea level rise is to blame. It is not. Seawater is coming in because fresh water is going out.

The second reason for salt water intrusion into the lens is a reduction in the amount of sand and rubble coming onto the atoll from the reef. When the balance between sand added and sand lost is disturbed, the atoll shrinks. This has two main causes — coral mining and killing the wrong fish. The use of coral for construction in many atolls is quite common. At times this is done in a way that damages the reef as well as taking the coral. This is the visible part of the loss of reef, the part we can see.

What goes unremarked is the loss of the reef sand, which is essential for the continued existence of the atoll. The cause for the loss of sand is the indiscriminate, wholesale killing of parrotfish and other reef-grazing fish. A single parrotfish, for example, creates about half a tonne of coral sand per year. Parrotfish and other beaked reef fish create the sand by grinding up the reef with their massive jaws, digesting the food, and excreting the ground coral.

In addition to making all that fine white sand that makes up the lovely island beaches, beaked grazing fish also increase overall coral health, growth, and production. This happens in the same way that pruning makes a tree send up lots of new shoots, and in the same way that lions keep a herd of zebras healthy and productive. The constant grazing by the beaked fish keeps the corals in full production mode.

Unfortunately, these fish sleep at night, and are easily wiped out by night divers. Their populations have plummeted in many areas in recent years. Result? Much less sand.

The third reason for salt water intrusion into the lens is the tidal cycle. We are currently in the high part of the 18 year tidal cycle. The maximum high tide in Honiara in 2008 was about 10 cm higher than the maximum tide in 1996, and the highs will now decrease until about 2014. People often mistake an unusually high tide for a rise in sea level, which it is not. There has been no increase in the recorded rate of sea level rise. In fact, the global sea level rise has flattened out in the last couple years.

What can be done to turn the situation around for the atolls? There are a number of essential practical steps that atoll residents can take to preserve and build up your atoll, and protect the fresh water lens:

1. Stop having so many kids. An atoll has a limited supply of water. It cannot support an unlimited population. Enough said.

2. Catch every drop that falls. On the ground, build small dams in any watercourses to encourage the water to soak in to the lens rather than run off to the ocean. Put water tanks under every roof. Dig “recharge wells”, which return filtered surface water to the lens in times of heavy rain. Catch the water off of the runways. In Majuro, they have put gutters on both sides of the airplane runway to catch all of the rainwater falling on the runway. It is collected and pumped into tanks. On other atolls, they let the rainwater just run off of the airstrip back into the ocean …

3. Conserve, conserve, conserve. Use seawater in place of fresh whenever possible. Use as little water as you can.

4. Make the killing of parrotfish and other beaked reef grazing fish tabu. Stop fishing them entirely. Make them protected species. The parrotfish should be the national bird of every atoll nation. I’m serious. If you call it the national bird, tourists will ask why a fish is the national bird, and you can explain to them how the parrotfish is the source of the beautiful beaches they are walking on, so they shouldn’t spear beaked reef fish or eat them. Stop killing the fish that make the very ground under your feet. The parrotfish and the other beaked reef-grazing fish are constantly building up your atoll. Every year they are providing tonnes and tonnes of fine white sand to keep your atoll afloat in turbulent times. You should be honoring and protecting them, not killing them. This is the single most important thing you can do.

5. Be very cautious regarding the use of coral as a building material. An atoll is not solid ground. It is is not a constant “thing” in the way a rock island is a thing. An atoll is an eddy, an ever-changing body constantly replenished by a (hopefully) unending river of coral sand and rubble. It is a process, wherein on one side healthy reef plus beaked coral-grazing fish plus storms provide a continuous stream of coral sand and rubble. This sand and rubble are constantly being added to the atoll, making it larger. At the same time, coral sand and rubble are constantly being eaten away, and blown away, and eroded away from the atoll. The shape of the atoll changes from season to season and from year to year. It builds up on this corner, and the sea washes away that corner.

And of course, if anything upsets that balance of sand added and sand lost, if the supply of coral sand and rubble per year starts dropping (say from reef damage or coral mining or killing parrotfish) or if the total sand and rubble loss goes up (say by heavy rains or strong winds or a change in currents) the atoll will be affected.

So if coral is necessary for building, take it sparingly, in spots. Take dead or dying coral in preference to live coral. Mine the deeps and not the shallows. Use hand tools. Leave enough healthy reef around to reseed the area with new coral. A healthy reef is the factory that annually produces the tonnes and tonnes of building material that is absolutely necessary to keep your atoll afloat. You mess with it at your peril.

6. Reduce sand loss from the atoll in as many ways as possible. This can be done with plants to stop wind erosion. Don’t introduce plants for the purpose. Encourage and transplant the plants that already grow locally. Reducing water erosion also occurs with the small dams mentioned above, which will trap sand eroded by rainfall. Don’t overlook human erosion. Every step a person takes on an atoll pushes sand downhill, closer to returning to the sea. Lay leaf mats where this is evident, wherever the path is wearing away. People wear a path, and soon it is lower than the surrounding ground. When it rains, it becomes a small watercourse. Invisibly, the water washes your precious sand into the ocean. Invisibly, the wind blows the ground out from under your feet. Protect your island. Stop it from being washed and blown away.

7. Monitor and build up the health of the reef. You and you alone are responsible for the well-being of the amazing underwater fish-tended coral factory that year after year keeps your atoll from disappearing. Coral reseeding programs done by schools have been very successful. Get the kids involved in watching the reef. Educate the people that they are the guardians of the reef. Talk to the fishermen.

8. Expand the atoll. Modern coastal engineering has shown that it is quite possible to “grow” an atoll. The key is to slow down the water as it passes by. The slower the water, the more sand builds up. Slowing the water is accomplished by building low underwater walls perpendicular to the beach. These run out until the ends are a few metres underwater. Normally this is done with a geotextile fabric tubes which are pumped full of concrete. In the atolls the similar effect can be obtained with “gabbions”, wire cages filled with blocks of dead coral. Wire all of the wire cages securely together in a triangular shape, stake them down with rebar, wait for the sand to fill in. It might be possible to do it with old tires, fastened together, with chunks of coral piled on top of them. It will likely take a few years to fill in. Here’s a before and after picture of the system in use on a beach (not an atoll), taken three years apart. Note the low height and triangular shape of the wall extending out from the beach and continuing underwater (made of 3 concrete-filled geotextile fabric tubes). This  triangular shape does not attempt to stop the water currents. It just slows them down and directs them toward the beach to deposit their load of sand. Eventually, the entire area fills in with sand.

Of course to do that, you absolutely have to have a constant source of sand … like for example a healthy reef … with lots of parrotfish. That’s why I said above that the single most important thing is to protect the fish and the reef. If you have beaked fish and a healthy reef, you’ll have plenty of sand and rubble forever. If you don’t, you’re in trouble.

Coral atolls have proven over thousands of years that, if left alone, they can go up and down with any sea level rise. And if we follow some simple conservation practices, they can continue to do so and to support atoll residents. But they cannot survive an unlimited population increase, or unrestricted fishing, or overpumping the water lens, or unrestrained coral mining.

Willis Eschenbach
Honiara, Solomon Islands

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Further Reading:

On sea level rise in Honiara: Pacific Country Report Sea Level & Climate: Their Present State Solomon Islands June 2006, http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO60031/IDO60031.2006.pdf

On global sea level rise levelling off: University of Colorado at Boulder Sea Level Change,  http://sealevel.colorado.edu

On Darwin’s discovery: Darwin, C., The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882, 1887

“No other work of mine was begun in so deductive a spirit as this; for the whole theory was thought out on the west coast of S. America before I had seen a true coral reef. I had therefore only to verify and extend my views by a careful examination of living reefs. But it should be observed that I had during the two previous years been incessantly attending to the effects on the shores of S. America of the intermittent elevation of the land, together with the denudation and deposition of sediment. This necessarily led me to reflect much on the effects of subsidence, and it was easy to replace in imagination the continued deposition of sediment by the upward growth of coral. To do this was to form my theory of the formation of barrier-reefs and atolls.” (Darwin, 1887, p. 98, 99)

On the results of coral mining and changing the reef: Xue, C. (1996) Coastal Erosion And Management Of Amatuku Island, Funafuti Atoll, Tuvalu, 1996, South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC), http://conf.sopac.org/virlib/TR/TR0234.pdf

On the same topic: Xue, C., Malologa, F. (1995) Coastal sedimentation and coastal management of Fongafale, Funafuti, Tuvalu, SOPAC Technical Report 221

On parrotfish creating sand: http://www.seacortez.com/fish/scaridae.html

On the cause of erosion in Tuvalu: Tuvalu Not Experiencing Increased Sea Level Rise, Willis Eschenbach, Energy & Environment, Volume 15, Number 3, 1 July 2004 , pp. 527-543

On expanding island beaches: Holmberg Technologies, http://www.erosion.com/

On the dangers of overpopulation: Just look around you …

Photograph via Walter Starck.