Tucson Citizen.com
Wry Heat - by Jonathan DuHamel

Star’s Story Lacks Facts

by on Mar. 25, 2010, under Climate change

This morning, the Arizona Daily Star reprinted an Associated Press story about the submergence of a small island in the Bay of Bengal between India and Bangladesh. The story implied that global warming caused a sea level rise that inundated the island. Not so.

Here’s the rest of the story. According the Wikipedia, the island in question is situated among the delta islands of the Hariabhanga River and is a mud and sand island, not a rock island as reported by the Star. The island, essentially an ephemeral sand bar, emerged after a cyclone in 1970 and was first noticed by American satellites in 1974. The highest point grew to about 6 feet above sea level.

Data from the nearest sea-level gauge at Vishhakhapatnam, India, shows a sea level rise of 0.74 inches since 1974. The Star story claims a sea level rise of 2 inches in the last decade. However, sea level is relative; it can be caused by rising water or sinking land. Sand bars and temporary estuary islands, such as the one in question, commonly appear and disappear depending on the effects of currents, tides, and weather. A sea level rise of one or two inches would hardly affect an island that stood up to 6 feet above sea level. In other words, there was nothing usual in the disappearance of the island. It’s only claim to fame was that the two countries were disputing ownership.

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  • Stardude1234

    Am I reading this correctly….you’re quoting Wikipedia for fact checking. Are you dumb?
     
    By the way, the Star didn’t write the story. They get the story from the AP wire, which is supposed to be checked by the desk editors. Blame the AP folks, not the Star folks.

    • Jonathan DuHamel

      I know, I know, but occasionally Wikipedia has good info and I did say it was an AP story. 

    • Ferraribubba

      Hey Stardude 1234: Let me ask you a question. Are you dumb?
      In his first sentence, Mr. DuHamel states that the Star story is a reprint of an original Associated Press story.
      I don’t know how it could have been any more plain to you, unless you wanted it in all CAPS!
      Yer pal, Ferrari Bubba
       

  • Jim Hunt

    This is exactly right.  Besides water rising, land subsides or washes away.  Californina is not falling into the Pacific.  the entire North American continent is drifting to the west , thus the building of the western moutains.

  • Stardude1234

    “…not a rock island as reported by the Star.”

    “The Star story claims a sea level rise of 2 inches in the last decade.”

    “Star’s Story Lacks Facts”
    C’mon man. You’re taking the Star to task over an AP story…the Star didn’t write it. The Star didn’t research it. The Star just pulled it because it’s an interesting piece. The folks there probably didn’t even edit it, or if they did, it was just to write the headline. I’d be willing to guess most people here don’t know where the Bay of Bengal is. Get your facts correct and don’t use Wikipedia.

    • Jonathan DuHamel

      One more time Stardude (do you work for the Star?). I know the Star did not edit the AP story because they cannot edit them by contract. The point of my comments is that the story blamed the disappearance on global warming. That contention is nonsense since such islands come and go frequently and naturally. The sea level rise data do not support the contention either. The Star can pick and choose which stories it prints and it seems to print many more stories promoting climate alarmism than not. In fact I have documented this content bias and called them on it. The Star claims they don’t have access to other stories. Believe that?

  • Jonathan DuHamel

    I see that the Star printed another AP science fiction story today: “Global catastrophe foreseen if coral reefs finally vanish ” ( http://tinyurl.com/yhc7zx4 ). For a more realistic look at coral health see my article: Corals and Carbon Dioxide

    • ldonyo

      Disaster, especially fictional disaster, sells well. Facts rarely do.

  • stardude1234

    Star Dude does not work at the Star. Star Dude isn’t even in Tucson at the moment. Star Dude does not believe your claims that ” it seems to print many more stories promoting climate alarmism than not.”

    Star Dude has other things to worry about than arguing with someone who cites Wikipedia as fact and thinks that the paper has a certain agenda. And what exactly would the paper gain by promoting this so called “climate alarmism” agenda?

  • wryheat

    I agree that Wikipedia is often unreliable. However, in this case the basic information about the island came from Indian newspapers which reported on a release from an Indian university. The story was picked up by Yahoo news, among others, and repeated by Wikipedia. Wikipedia provided a good summary. The island is in fact a sand bar, but a rock jetty had been built on the island – that’s probably where the some news organizations got the impression that the island was bedrock.
    The sea level data are from NOAA, see their chart here.
    As for the Star’s apparent content bias, last May I kept track of stories printed by the Star vs stories available. The Star overwhelmingly printed alarmist stories.

  • Jonathan DuHamel

    Shortlly after posting my last comment I came upon this statement from a sea level expert (posted on the SPPI.org blog):
    The birth and death of an island in the Bay of Bengal
    By Nils-Axel Mörner
    In 1970, the Bay of Bengal was struck by the very powerful Bhola Cyclone. This was a truly disastrous event with a casualty in the order of 500,000 people. This event also caused severe coastal damage. Vast quantities of sediment were set in suspension, and there were significant turbidity flows.
    At the boarder between India and Bangladesh, these sediments transported down the river accumulated in a muddy sand-bar that grew into an island. This newly-created island came to be called South Talpatti or New Moore Island.
    There is nothing strange in this. Islands come and go for local reasons triggered by sudden events and longer-term dynamic forces.
    On 25 March, 2010, it was suddenly announced that the island had disappeared. Many, including scientists (for example Sugata Hazra, professor in oceanography at Jadavpur University in Calcutta), took the island’s disappearance as an expression of a rapidly rising sea level.
    The fact, however, is that it has nothing to do with any global sea level rise, but is attributable to local dynamic factors operating in this part of the Bay of Bengal.
    So, the Island of South Talpatti (New Moor Island) was born in 1970 and killed in 2010. The island had a short lifetime of only 40 years. The ultimate cause of its birth was cyclone damage. The cause of its death is likely to be local dynamic influences operating in this part of the huge delta, and it is surely not an effect of a rapid global sea-level rise.
    Over the last 40 years we record a virtually fully stable eustatic sea level, even in the Sundarban delta of Bangladesh. The disappearance of the island is by no means a sign of global sea-level rise.
     
    Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner is the former head of the Paleogeophysics and
    Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Swe-
    den. He is now retired

  • mike f

    Q: what is an ‘economic geologist’, in this case ?
    Guess: someone who roots around in the mountains of money deposited by Big Oil and displays their nuggets as scholarly achievement. Clearly the intent here is not to mislead a gullible public.

    • wryheat

      An economic geologist is one who applies the geological sciences, and uses the tools of chemistry, physics, biology, and botany, to explore for and develop mineral deposits. The minerals may include industrial minerals such as gypsum, limestone, or fluorite, metals, and fossil fuels. Economic geology also includes research into how mineral deposits form and new ways to detect them.

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