Global Warming: Rising Seas creates 70,000 Climate Refugees

Rising seas attributed to human induced global warming have submerged Lohachara island, once the home to 10,000 people. Unhinhabited Suparibhanga has also vanished, while the inhabited island of Ghoramara has lost two thirds of its area to the rising seas in the Bay of Bengal.

While we were all distracted by Christmas festivities, this sober news on the impact of climate change was published in The Independent (UK), about the inundation of various Sundarban islands in the Indian part of the delta region of the Ganges and Brahmaputra river, where they empty into the Bay of Bengal.

The region is considered remote and researchers at Calcutta's Jadavpur University discovered the submergence through examining satellite photos of the area. According to the report in the Independent, Dr Sugata Hazra, director of the university's School of Oceanographic Studies, said that there are now a dozen "vanishing islands" in India's part of the delta.

Australian Government Gagging Climate Refugee Issue

Friends of the Earth Australia have called on the Australian Government to recognise climate refugees and hold an investigation to prove the issue is not being silenced by the “greenhouse mafia”, as reported on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) program Four Corners.

The Four Corners program, The Greenhouse Mafia, also contained allegations of censorship against scientists speaking out on issues where their views were counter to Government policy on climate change.

More Info:
* ABC: Four Corners: The Greenhouse Mafia
* ABC: News in Science: Censorship 'just tip of iceberg'
* Friends of the Earth Australia Climate Justice Campaign
* Citizens Guide to Climate Refugees

Rising Sea Levels Create first Climate Change Refugees

As the world awaits the beginnings of the first meeting of the parties of the Kyoto Protocol in Montreal, the Carteret Islanders of the Pacific have already lost their battle to stay on their islands. This is the first instance of an entire cultural group forcibly displaced by climate change due to sea level rise doubling in the last 150 years caused by global warming. According to Norman Myers in A Citizens Guide to Climate Refugees, up to 200 million people may be displaced because of climate change by 2050. Many more islands and low level coastal areas are facing a crisis.

In conjunction with the Montreal meeting, an international day of action will occur on December 3, and also the launch of Climate Indymedia, bringing together the latest activist news and reports on climate change, and an alternative to the obfuscation of the mainstream media and corporate public relations.