The island of Lohachara reappears!

It was always one of the lamest global warming/rising sea level scare stories ever, that is, the disappearance of the island of Lohachara in the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal.   Breathtaking in its studied refusal to look at the already long available evidence that the islands in this group come and go and move all the time in response to tidal flows and other factors.   It also confirmed the fact that Geoffrey Lean is possibly the most incompetent environment writer for any newspaper in the world, though his Amazon rain forest doomed by drought story, which actually got the results of a study completely arse about also stands out amongst his ignorant scaremongering!     Tim Blair Sunday, June 07, 2009 at 12:22am     Recall the tragic island of Lohachara, eaten by global warming some years ago: Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India’s part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.   The story, by the Independent on Sunday‘s environment editor Geoffrey Lean, was a complete crock, omitting even a vague date of the island’s removal. And now, as Achintyarup Ray reports, Lohachara is back: The island is there in front of one’s eyes. Says boatman Mukunda Mondal (41), “Yes, the island is emerging. I have noticed it for the past one year. It’s clearly visible in winter.”   Judhisthir Bhuian, now a resident of Jibantala colony on the Sagar island, had his home on the Lohachara . He still goes back to the place where their house once stood. ”A huge landmass is coming up, covering Lohachara and Bedford,” he says.   Geoffrey Lean – a tilter by nature as well as by name – has been wanting for inspiration of late. Perhaps he could examine Lohachara’s revival, which marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists didn’t come true.   UPDATE. For no apparent reason, the Independent only a few hours ago republished Lean’s absurd 2006 piece.   UPDATE II. From the Times of India piece referenced by Ray: 2007. Kodak Theatre, Hollywood. The list of Oscar presenters includes Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lopez.   Instead of the usual million-dollar goodies, each of them receive a small glass model called the Lohachara sculpture after an island which “in December, 2006, became the first inhabited island to be lost to rising sea levels caused by global warming”.   A little more than two years later, Lohachara island is emerging again.   And the website for the holy Lohachara sculpture has vanished.

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