Introduction “When it comes to climate change, I think we (humanity) look like early man jumping and screaming around fire. Terrified and Awed. What we need to do now is to stand back and consider our realization, working to understand it fully, before we simply decide either to jump into the fire or to run away from it.” Link to article in Scientific American Link to Original Report in Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 11, No. 5 Afriend of mine passed along an article published in Scientific American titled, “Sea Level Rise Swallows 5 Whole Pacific Islands”. The article serves as a call to action, warning us of the dangers of sea-level rises associated with climate change. A casual reading by someone who already recognizes the threat of anthropogenic climate change leads the reader to the conclusion that human-induced sea-level rise has resulted in “5 whole pacific islands” being swallowed by the sea. However, upon a more in-depth look at the research behind the study of 33 islands in the Solomon Island chain, it becomes apparent that there are more factors in play than sea-level rise linked with climate change. Albert et al. point out that erosion and coastal flooding are other factors that play a role, but the article revolves around sea-level rise and climate change. The effects that wave energy and erosion have on the Solomon Islands are introduced in the main text, but these two factors are not mentioned in the conclusion of the article. Other factors like deforestation, and overpopulation of low-lying reef islands are not discussed at all in the Scientific American article. Before diving into the text, I want to discuss the 5 disappeared islands that are the subject of the article’s title – key word, islands. Discussing the differences between an atoll and an island is a little bit like the differences between squares and rectangles. All atolls are islands, but not all islands are atolls. Atolls are created as coral reefs grow and are, “thrust up from the sea by earthquakes or left as a ring when a mountain collapses.” Most commonly, atolls lie just above sea level, have salty soil, and lack drinkable groundwater sources. Only the largest atolls in the Solomon Islands, Rennell and Bellona, have fresh water naturally available to inhabitants. The Scientific American article uses the phrase, “low-lying reef islands” to refer to the atolls studied in the Solomon Islands, past and I will do the same for the remainder of this article to avoid confusion.

Author’s Note: Originally, I had wanted to illustrate the importance of viewing a situation holistically before jumping to conclusions. If this applies to the authors of the article, it applies to myself as well as I write this. As I said in a discussion with the friend who sent me the article, once I dug a little deeper and read the original report that was published in Environmental Research Letters I had far fewer issues with what I was reading. Originally, I had wanted to illustrate the importance of viewing a situation holistically before jumping to conclusions. If this applies to the authors of the article, it applies to myself as well as I write this. As I said in a discussion with the friend who sent me the article, once I dug a little deeper and read the original report that was published in Environmental Research Letters I had far fewer issues with what I was reading. The truth is that a publication like Scientific American must find a way to appeal to a large audience, and oftentimes this means that startling headlines and big claims obfuscate the original research at hand. This isn’t a unique problem to climate change studies; it exists in everything from foreign affairs reporting to archaeological studies. In my haste to put on my skeptic hat and get critical the Albert et al. article for jumping to conclusions, I had inadvertently begun to jump to my own conclusions about the validity of their arguments without consider the entirety of their research. I’m not sure there’s a solution to the problem other than taking personal responsibility to do your own research. And that applies to both sides of an argument. In the article in question, I think they did try to squeeze more out of the report than there really was – but I gained more from following-up and reading the original report than I did from deconstructing the article. It’s definitely less fun than getting into heated debates and pointing out holes in an argument – and I do believe there is a time and place for that.

Solomon Islands Background

“Low-lying reef islands in the Solomon Islands provide a valuable window into the future impacts of global sea-level rise. Sea-level rise has been predicted to cause widespread erosion and inundation of low-lying atolls in the central Pacific. However, the limited research on reef islands in the western Pacific indicates the majority of shoreline changes and inundation to date result from extreme events, seawalls and inappropriate development rather than sea-level rise alone.”

The disappeared islands addressed in the title, “Sea-Level Swallows 5 Whole Pacific Islands” range from one to five hectares, supporting tropical vegetation at least 300 years old. One island was home to 25 families, and has lost more than half of its habitable area since 2011. Despite having a low population density throughout history up to this point, human settlements in low-lying coastal areas and reef islands are increasing due to restricted flat land adjacent to the coast.

“The limited research that has been conducted to date on the responses of reef islands in the western Pacific indicates that reef islands are highly dynamic, with coastal erosion and inundation threatening infrastructure, resulting generally from extreme events, human armouring of shorelines (e.g. seawalls) or inappropriate planning and development rather than sea-level rise alone. The volcanic islands of Melanesia are typically considered to be less vulnerable to sea-level rise due to high elevations and low population densities.”

Why study the Solomon Islands?

The article begins to make a case for a specific study of the Solomon Islands by pointing out that over the past 20 years, “[the sea level] has risen at almost three times the global average, around 7-10 mm per year since 1993.” This is impressive, and you might be wondering what is causing the sea to rise so much faster in the Solomon Islands. The article only provides a brief and partial explanation, “this higher local rate is partly the result of natural climate variability.”

To provide a little more depth on the subject of variable sea-level rise rates, I’ve included quotes from Michael D. Lemonick in an article from Yale Environment 360, a publication of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. “If the idea of local differences in sea level comes as a surprise, it’s probably because the experts themselves are only now beginning to fully realize what might cause such differences, and how significant they might be. One factor, which they have been aware of for decades, is that the land is actually rising in some places, including northern Canada and Scandinavia, which are still recovering from the crushing weight of the Ice Age glaciers that melted 10,000 years ago. That makes sea-level increases less than the global average would suggest, since these land areas are rising a few millimeters a year.”

In addition to geologic factors, sea-level inconsistencies are caused by shifting ocean current which may draw water from one coastal area and displace it in another. I can’t speak to the specific numbers involved to prove that the 7-10 mm per year sea-level rise in the Solomon Islands is caused by geologic changes and oceanic current shifts rather than the melting of polar ice caps and glaciers, but I think it is fair to say that we should take these other factors into account before labeling it “human-induced sea-level rise”.

There is a trend in the article to lump sea-level change with another effect in order to prove a point. Sometimes this methodology seems counterproductive, as in the section where the authors discuss the influence of wave energy in coastal erosion. In their study, which focused on the coastlines of 33 reef islands (atolls), they found that, “islands exposed to higher wave energy in addition to sea-level rise experienced greatly accelerated loss compared with more sheltered islands.” This suggests that higher wave energy combined with sea-level rise leads to increased coastal erosion. However, the twelve islands that were located in low wave energy areas, “experienced little noticeable change in shorelines despite being exposed to similar sea-level rise.” In this case it appears that sea-level rise alone does not lead to coastal erosion. Despite this anomaly, the article proceeds to address the threat of sea-level rise, while abandoning any further discussion of the threats of higher wave energy.

The Human Element

“Rapid changes to shorelines observed in Solomon Islands have led to the relocation of several coastal communities that have inhabited these areas for generations. These are not planned relocations led by governments or supported by international climate funds, but are ad hoc relocations using their own limited resources.”

Here is a disturbing development. Of course it is bad when communities have to relocate, and worse when the communities already lack resources. What the article fails to mention is that the Solomon Islands have been experiencing issues with overpopulation due to a scarcity of habitable land. Despite having a low population density compared to other Pacific Island nations, the majority of human settlement has occurred in low-lying coastal areas. Reef Islands (atolls), the subjects of the study have become increasingly densely populated because they provide flat land near the coast. The article goes on to state that some of the coastal villages that have been relocated were originally established by missionaries in the 1900s. These villagers have, “retraced their ancestral movements to resettle old inland village sites used by their forefathers.”

The villages being abandoned lie on the coastlines of atolls, and were settled relatively recently under the supervision of (what I assume to be foreign) missionaries. This isn’t to say they don’t deserve sympathy, or an effort to support their relocation, but maybe there is good reason that the ancestors preferred living inland rather than on the coasts until a population increase forced them to expand. I’m getting a little bit too far into conjecture here, but by their nature, atolls were once submerged underwater. Is it a cause for alarm when they are submerged once more?

Additionally, the role that deforestation plays in coastal erosion is not discussed in the article. Valuable as a trade commodity, timber accounted for up to 70% of the Solomon’s GDP over the past decade, and government restrictions (or lack thereof) have failed to maintain a sustainable rate of logging. I’m not going to speculate about whether or not deforestation is a contributing factor in the case of these disappeared islands, but it is unfortunate that the article fails to mention deforestation once.

Conclusions

While they discussed a few other factors in the text of the article, the conclusion boils down to this: “Interactions between sea-level rise, waves, and the large range of responses observed in Solomon Islands – from total island loss to relative stability – shows the importance of integrating local assessments with traditional knowledge when planning for sea-level rise and climate change.” The author’s also cite, “the importance of integrating local assessments with traditional knowledge when planning for sea-level rise and climate change.”

My biggest gripe in reading this is not that they assign sea-level rise as a major threat caused by climate change, but that they omit any other causes. In their limited study of 33 islands and their coastlines, it appeared that wave energy was the primary threat; however sea-level rise and climate change remain the focus of the authors.

Rather than what they scientists chose to analyze in their study of the Solomon Islands, I am concerned with what they neglected to study. Namely: why is the sea-level rising at 3x the rate in the Solomon Islands when compared to other parts of the world? What are the effects of deforestation on coastline erosion? Are humans being dislocated because of climate change, or did they settle in areas previously uninhabitable due to coastline variability and poor soils on low-lying reef islands?

In a closed environment, studying the effects of controlled sea-level rise and wave-energy on the coasts of low-lying reef islands might provide a compelling argument for the investment of billions of dollars into developing nations facing challenges associated with climate change. I think it is too much like prescribing a medication before making a diagnosis when we are throwing billions of dollars at a problem we don’t fully understand.

Many articles, written in a similar style to Sea Level Rise Swallows 5 Whole Pacific Islands, simplify the world at large with subtitles like, “evidence confirms dramatic climate change effects in the Solomon Islands,” but these claims do the public a disservice. It creates a situation where someone in agreement can latch on to powerful statements which matter-of-factly describe the reality of climate change, and someone in opposition can easily poke holes in argument that seemed to be decided before the article was written.

In the end, the reader is able to take away what they choose – whether it’s the wisdom and foresight of the authors, or their lack of skepticism and perspective. If it appears as though the authors have made their stance on an issue before they began writing, what is the reader left to do other than take their own stance before they begin reading?