The Canary in the Coal Mine
In days of yore, coal miners would take a caged canary into the mine with them as the birds were more sensitive to poisonous gases than humans; if the canary died then the miners got out – alive. ‘Climate sceptics’ have long accused ‘climate activists’ of (to continue the metaphor) breeding highly sensitive canaries and looking for dangerous coal mines. Up to now I’ve studiously respected this site's motto as being a place where ‘numbers count’ and stayed out of debate. After a recent paper on ‘vanishing islands’ in the Solomon Islands archipelago I felt I had to comment. I was partly spurred on to do this by a guest post by David Middleton on the wattsupwiththat.com web site. The paper in question is “Interactions between sea-level rise and wave exposure on reef island dynamics in the Solomon Islands” (Albert et al, Environmental Research Letters, Volume 11, Number 5). The headline message of the paper was “..we present the first analysis of coastal dynamics from a