EARTH CHANGES

All the disappearing Islands: real estate even scarcer

Despite the reef-building mechanisms of corals that keep atoll islands from succumbing to the waves, global warming could cause the sea to expand and rise faster than the corals could fortify themselves against it, and these fragile spits of sand might disappear beneath the waves that tossed them into being in the first place.
Faced with inundation, some people are beginning to envision the wholesale abandonment of their nations. Others are buying higher land wherever they can. A few are preparing lawsuits that will challenge the right of the developed world to emit the greenhouse gases threatening to cause the flooding of their homelands. But whatever their actions or inactions, the citizens of tropical island nations are likely destined to become the world's first global-warming refugees.

[Antarctic evidence to help global warming predictions : NZ scientists are leading a $27 million, 10-year research project at Antarctica to figure out how global warming will affect global sea levels in the next century.]