Photographic Evidence

Aotea is located near south of Raglan, New Zealand. These two photos are both taken in the same place above the same house. The first was taken in 2/1/1965. The second was taken in 25/8/2013. Comparing the two, anyone can see that the sea levels have risen and a combination of that and erosion has lead to the land reducing size. A fair chunk of the land has been eroded and a house is gone along with the surrounding bush.

                       

                                                      Picture taken from Google Maps

No matter what people say is the cause of the change, with this, no one can deny that sea levels are rising and that the land is falling away as sea levels continue to do so. Imagine what Whitianga could look like if the same happened here.

Image from Whitianga Waterways - Teara

This may be the final post for this blog. The purpose of this blog is for people to make people aware that sea levels are rising and invoke action among the community. For those who read it, I hope this blog helps!

After the Storm

At around 9:30 pm on the night of Tuesday 10th June, locals of Whitianga got a warning that a storm was coming through. A few hours later, it came smashing in. in the morning, we woke up to see a trail of destruction left in its wake. One resident on Simpsons beach lost their home, a great tree some say was over 100 years old was torn over and there was dirt, sand and twigs all along the waterfront.

Signs where tipped over and thrown about.

Lean is the new Straight.

And there was flooding everywhere.

The storm had some serious effects on the beaches of Whitianga. Simpsons beach had now become from white to black as the normal shell sand was removed to leave the iron sand underneath.

Brophy's beach at first glance doesn't seem to bad. It's the grassy park area above it that has is worse off with massive puddles that do good impressions of lakes.

Buffalo beach has suffered land loss. Roots of trees where exposed and the banks where washed away by tides. Grass was barely held sandbanks together and some the erosion comes dangerously close to pathways and seats.

Here the bank has receded to the point were it is 20cm from the path and 1m above the actual beach.

Here the bank has eroded to a mere 44cm. You can stretch your feet over the side!

When the storm hit, it wasn't even at high tide. And yet, there is evidence of just how high the tides came up the shore everywhere. 

Imagine in a decade or so when the tides have risen and another storm hits. I wonder how high the tides will be then. The flooding not only could be worse but the tides might mere meters from people's doorsteps.

NASA report: Antarctic Ice Caps Melting is "Unstoppable"

A recent report from NASA has said that ice caps melting will happen whether we want it to or not. For the Rising Sea Levels issue, this is a major development and all the more reason why people should be discussing and in turn doing something about it.

A article in The Guardian revealed that via a European Satellite, we now know that "Antarctica is shedding 160 billion tonnes a year of ice into the ocean." The cause is the heat in the water slowly melting and "eating away" away at the sides of the glaciers, over the last 20 years. This will add up to 1.2 meters of future sea level rise, cementing the fact the sea levels will rise at the very least, 1 meter. One report from the Guardian indicated the possibility that Middle East and Asia could experience severe flooding and another brought up question on whether or not scientists realize the full threat of this issue.

 This was a comment made on one of the reports from Hot Topic:

"The bottom line is clear: even if the global community succeeds in hitting a 2ºC target and the atmosphere stays under 450 ppm CO₂ , we are going to have to say goodbye to the current coastline and everything built there. The long transition has begun in earnest. We can but hope that it is a process slow enough to allow us to adapt."

That doesn't sound good.  One consolation is that while it will happen, it is assumed that it will take centuries to complete. Hopefully, that will give us time to prepare and 'adapt'.

For the articles used and for more information, here are several websites that can help further or give you a better understanding:

• Acrtic Sea Ice News and Analysis
• Doubling of Antarctic Ice Loss
• How Much Could Sea Levels Rise?
• West Antarctic Ice Melt is Unstoppable
• Point of No Return (Hot Topic): Ice Melt Inevitable
• Sea Level - The Guardian
• Vision believes scientists underestimate Rising Sea Levels

How Can We Give Whitianga a Sustainable Future?

An International Problem to a Sustainable Future

A Sustainable Future is something that most of us want, but we have challenges and obstacles to face in order to achieve it. Some stare us openly in the face while others are more discreet and creep up on us, so that by the time they are a major problem to us, we have done nothing to prepare for them. This blog is about one of those discreet problems.

The sea makes up most of the world, a good 70% of it. But the time when we could live in the sea was millions of years ago. Nowadays, we have to live on land. With a growing population, we are consistently filling that 30% of land each year. Rising sea levels could cause us some problems especially for a small town like Whitianga where a majority of the town resides on the beachfront.

An ad for Mountain Dew said "You want to get to easy? Ok. There are no shortcuts. To get to easy you have to go through hard." This can actually be applied for this situation. It won't happen overnight and it won't happen without hard work or cost.

If we want a sustainable future, land where we can still live on then we have to start thinking about what we can do to make sure that it happens.