Civilizations come and go. Some go because they didn't know how to cope with changes to the environment (which will be our mode). Get used to it.
Stunning photographs and videos. The graphic of the remote island on the globe is a haunting assertion of the grit of the ancients who arrived in their canoes! from such distant shores. But their grit was not enough to tide the vicissitudes of time. Have we, with all our advancements, really learnt how to stem that tide.
1
Somebody let Gov. Brown read this. Rio Sacramento can discharge up to 489K cubic feet of fresh water into the sea surrounding Easter Island, per second. Meanwhile the state irrigation system is in shambles.
The island risks losing its cultural heritage. Uh, no, it lost its cultural heritage centuries ago.
Having just returned from Easter Island, there's evidence everywhere of erosion to the rugged, rocky terrain. As a photographer, I also wonder about the damage caused by hordes of tourists to this magical place. Tourism fuels the economy, but at what cost to history and archaeology and the environment? It was a privilege to be in the presence of the majestic Moai. I hope they'll continue to stand for thousands of years.
http://www.grahamfrench.com/easter-island.php
Graham
1
The images and animation for this article are amazing. The birds eye view brings it home how these sculptures sit within their environment and the sea. Very powerful.
who cares?
it doesn't affect my small bubble of a universe.
and they'll probably make it a Disney ride anyway.
i'd write more but i have get in my giant SUV to drive to the store 2 blocks away for a case of bottled water.
Gee, so the point of this article is what? That we should never have used fossil fuels -- which allowed us to modernize and live much better lives -- so a bunch of dumb statues won't be hurt by the nasty ocean? Even if that happens (which I doubt) but even if it does -- what are supposed to think -- that somehow this silly little statues put in place by a people who foolishly destroyed their own civilization -- are more important than the comfortable lives we are able to lead thanks to fossil fuels?
1
Why are you drawing absurd conclusions from an article that doesn't mention any of them ... ?
If you read carefully, you'll see that the point of this article is that Easter Island contains a cultural heritage that is unique and highly valuable, and that rising oceans are threatening its survival, whereas it has been proven that in the course of this century, sea levels are expected to rise by as much as 6 feet.
APART from that, any well-informed reader knows two things:
1. preservering cultural heritage sites is crucial, because it allows us to study what happened to ancient civilizations and as such to better understand our present and the options we can choose from in the future.
2. what is happening with Easter Island is happening all over the world, not only to cultural heritage sites but also to land that people need in order to cultivate crops and survive - including the US. So this is merely an ILLUSTRATION of a global phenomenon. EACH cultural heritage site is worth saving, because it's unique, but this is not an isolated event at all.
3. as I already told you below (I'm still waiting for your arguments on this issue ...), there's absolutely no reason to believe that switching to clean energy means giving up our "comfortable lives".
4. fossil fuel isn't "evil" in itself, as what is causing climate change isn't the use of it, but the MASSIVE use of it.
But those 4 basic facts aren't mentioned in this article, so not "the point of this article" either ...
Anna Luisa
1) preserving cultural heritage is important, but not eptyj hurting our current way of life. And certainly a bunch of rocks on a remote island aren't.
2) That's simply not true. Our agricultural production has increased massively over time.
3) Over time, as fossil fuels are a finite resource, we will switch to other forms of energy. Given a gradual switch -- including to nuclear -- should not affect daily lives. But an abrupt switch now before all the tech is worked out and developed would be problematic.
4) I contend we have little evidence of the globe warming significantly. The data set is simply too full of holes for anyone to make any conclusions from it. It is mostly manufactured by climate scientists through estimates and extrapolations, not rigorous data gathering. And by the way, the US has the most extensive network of temp data collection stations, the most rigorous methodology and shows mostly normal variation in annual temps since 1895 -- most of the warming that has occurred is due to milder winters in cold regions and lower max temps in many areas during the rest of the year. The places where it has warmed are primarily highly urbanized.
Re correlations: You must not understand stats. I'm not comparing graphs. I'm calculating correlation coefficients using NOAA for the US since 1895. Very low correlation coefficients looking at widely dispersed parts of the US -- except those that contain high growth urban areas.
I have to say Ralphie, it is getting monotonous pointing out your cherry-picked stats…but come on: The US is not the whole globe—its only about 6 percent of the global land mass. It is impossible for any analysis to be correct on global climate change. And the old “urban heat island effect” actually has a cooling bias on SSTs about half the time due to the asphalt radiating IR at night. Urban areas are less than 0.5% of the land anyhow.
1
The US, once a powerful leader in the world, is pretending to the point of washing government websites of information, and often even the term, regarding climate change. I can see it in my own back yard in the mountains of North Carolina. Topographic maps of the area historically show little change in the years that they were created to recently. In just the last 10 yrs, rain storms reaching almost hurricane force, along with tornadoes (yup, tornadoes in the mountains) have sent deluges turning the creek into a raging rive that carved away more that 8 ft of bank and now threaten the roots of the old growth trees that line it. When one tree fell and blocked a portion of the creek, my research found that federal monies/agencies that once helped preserve natural waterways (and a bountiful fishing one at that) have been eliminated. You could bet your bottom dollar that if climate change effects encroached on Trump's golf courses, or the homes of some of the millionaires who pretend to work in the hallowed halls of Congress, there would be a major outcry and tax money allotted to research and responses to preserve their properties. I mourn the plight of people who for millenniums had ancestors inhabiting places on this magnificent earth that may, in less than a century, no longer have homes, and will have the totems of their history washed away. I also mourn that even my granddaughters will not have the lush, verdant banks of the creek behind my house to enjoy.
What an amazing report. Beautiful but so tragic.
"Centuries ago, Easter Island’s civilization collapsed, but the statues left behind here are a reminder of how powerful it must have been. "
Right. Must have been. But not wise enough to see the folly in dedicating so much of their wealth to so empty a work, and so failed to avoid societal collapse. (A commenter just here asks the same question of ongoing development in Florida.)
Let the sea rise and the statues fall. It will take time. If we don't all take this process as one more signal to get right with climate change, rising seas, garbage gyres in the oceans, and much more, too bad for us. At the rate we are going, by the time the statues are gone, so will we.
THE STONE STATUES of Easter Island are emblematic of the treasures of ancient culture bequeathed to us that are at risk for being eradicated due to rising sea levels. Will someone fund moving them inland?
1
I'm a little surprised that Easter Island's history and the reason for its culture's demise still baffles people. If you're interested in understanding a plausible answer to this "mystery" just pick up Jared Diamond's book "Collapse". I think you'll find some well substantiated theories...and it's a good read besides!
[I am reposting the comments that I submitted several hours ago and that, for some reason, have not been published]
"I especially enjoyed the article as I have returned from Rapa Nui just six weeks ago. The visit was the fulfillment of a dream that I had ever since reading Thor Heyerdahl's "Aku Aku" some 60 years go. While generally agreeing with the athor's comments in the current NYT article, some concepts did not coincide with what I learned from the local inhabitants while I was there."
Easter Island and everywhere else, we are vulnerable to a wide range of ever-more-obvious consequences of heating up our planet. For the history, I recommend Elizabeth Kolbert's Sixth Extinction, which provides a range of case studies about how things are changing.
Ultimate, we are likely to get over 200 feet of sea level rise: the question is, how soon. Time doesn't stop at 2100. Here's an excellent short video about that: "The Last Time the Globe Warmed" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldLBoErAhz4 It's packed with data, so please don't be put off by the rapid delivery.
2
Also Jared Diamond's book, 'Collapse' in which Easter Island is a key example.
People have to realize that the wealthy, the oil sheiks and executives,even our elected representatives. can always relocate. Those that have profited in the creation of this impending disaster, and continue to lie about it for the sake of those profits, will not be the ones who will suffer. Many of them have already provided themselves with well furnished and stocked sanctuaries from the coming storms.
A secondary horror perpetrated by ISIS was the destruction of civilization's monuments of the past, such as in Palmyra. Hindu religious fanatics destroyed a giant state of the Buddha. The world looked at them with horror. Why shouldn't we look with equal horror upon the Koch brothers and their ilk in the Republican Party lying about the climate change that is likely to kill more people and destroy more of our cultural past than religious fanatics could ever dream of?
3
Even more reprehensible than the Republican's climate change denial, is the Democrats acknowledgement of it - but they then go on, as Obama did, to preside over the huge expansion of domestic fossil fuel extraction. In liberal venues they decry climate change - in conservative venues the Dems brag about speeding up climate change:
"Here's Obama speaking in Cushing, Oklahoma, last year, in a speech that historians will quote many generations hence. It is to energy what Mitt Romney's secretly taped talk about the 47 percent was to inequality. Except that Obama was out in public, boasting for all the world to hear:
"Over the last three years, I've directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We're opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We've quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We've added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth, and then some. . . . In fact, the problem . . . is that we're actually producing so much oil and gas . . . that we don't have enough pipeline capacity to transport all of it where it needs to go."
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obama-and-climate-change-the-...
1
Thank you for this story.
2
Whether it is because of human activity or something else, it is sad that climate change is damaging monuments built by civilizations thousands of years ago. However we have shown in the past that human ingenuity can stop or retard such damage. Hopefully we will do so again.
1
What a fascinating and disturbing article. But even if rising ocean levels was unrelated to human activities, humans would still want to get the ancient artifacts out of harms way. We have the technology to do this. We need the will and the philanthropy to make it happen for both our ancestors' and our descendants' sake.
What an article! While the subject matter is somber, what an outstanding presentation -- keep up the great work.
2
Not that this is the correct solution, but move the statues to a higher elevation.
Excellent material, presented with great artistry. Kudos to Messrs. Casey and Haner. Would that they had a happier tale to tell.
This is the kind of coverage that differentiates The New York Times from Faux in its cohorts, and ilk.
Thank you, NY Times!
I am sure our dear president will have Superman Jared take care of the rising seas. Jared has sooo many skills. He is still trying to discover some of them, and I am sure punching down the rising sea level is one of them.
2
You try to read the "Opinion" column titles on the right side of the front page, and you get nausea from the drone shot that won't stop pulling out backward (it does not help that it's slightly out of focus).
When did unstoppable moving graphics become ok? Is this Giphy? Do I pay to be made dizzy? Where's the stop button? Why is it run by default, not run as an option? It's not cool, it's amateur.
6
It’s called Rapa Nui not Easter Island, and the big red rock in Australia is not called Ayers or Red Rock it should be called by its real name Uluru.
The story of Easter Island is of a group of people on an island of limited resources assuming the resources were infinite, and abusing their local ecology to the point that it broke and they starved and died.
The irony that their monuments are in danger from a group of people on an planet of limited resources assuming the resources are infinite and abusing our local ecology to the point where it is starting to break.... it is tragic.
1
During the interesting read I kept waiting for a mention of measurements. How much has the sea risen in the past 40 years? How close is the sea water to the statues vs a decade ago?
This piece rings as a combination ad for tourism to a 'sinking' island and a tribute to those who cry themselves to sleep each night worried about the theory of man made climate change.
2
It's a NYT piece.
That means that, just like in any other high-quality newspaper, no claims about scientific evidence are made without including links to those studies.
The same goes here.
All you had to do to learn about those explicitly mentioned measurements was to click on the link provided in this article ... :
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/science/global-warming-antarctica-ice...
As to man made climate change: apparently you're treating the scientific evidence proving it in exactly the same way you read newspapers, namely reading so fast that you keep ignoring what you actually read ... ?
1
To mike (sic): I worry about it. I am a geologist and though retired, my professional obligation to take in the evidence and deal pragmatically with the conclusions from them is still quite on my mind.
I suggest you (or you-all) take up the same preoccupation, say on Sundays at least, and as a layperson. We all need it if we are to move, politically, towards our self-preservation. If that may be held as a greater good for all. I do. Do you?
Gee, a small volcanic island in the middle of the ocean suffers from erosion. Unbelievable!
It would have been interesting to know the relative sea level on the island when the statues were placed for some context. I know - where's the drama in that.
1
This is the most irritating web design in the history of web design, and I've been doing web design for nearly 20 years.
Or, to paraphrase Jurassic Park: "Your designers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should"
Really, really terrible. The content is unreadable because of the distractions. I find it hard to believe that a professional designer would agree to this.
3
There is a cruel irony in this. Just look at Easter Island. The land is useless. Why? Because when these monuments were built, the island inhabitants chopped down all the trees - every last one of them - to use as rollers for transporting the stone. Without the root system of the trees, the soil just washed away.
The monuments memorialize the destruction of the island. Now nature pays back.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
5
I especially enjoyed the article as I have returned from Papa Nui just six weeks ago. The visit was the fulfilment of a dream that I had ever since reading Thor Heyerdahl's "Aku Aku" some 60 years ago, While generally agreeing with author's comments of the current NYT article, some concepts did not agree with what I learned from the local inhabitants while I was there.
Although a disturbing story, this is exceptional reporting. Love the visuals.
1
Not sad at all. Historic monuments and artifacts have been enveloped by the sea for thousands and thousands of years.
The archeological evidence of how humans got to Australia has been buried under the Indian Ocean for miienia. Ditto for the Bering Straight and the Americas
They have been uncovering artifacts off the coast of Cairo and in the Mediterranean for 100's of years.
The only thing that makes us 'sad' about Easter Island (and many of global warmings effects is that we are around to see it. Other than that someone may have discovered these statues under water, thousands of years from now while deep sea diving, and called it a miracle.
I am not belittling Global Warming. But much of peoples despair around it is that we are cognizant of patterns that have been happening forever (Species struggling to adapt or disappearing, artifacts and or land masses being covered. ice melting, etc.) It may be happening faster but it's nothing new.
Our "self importance" as to being "living witnesses" to it needs to be checked at some level. The anxiety isn't helping. Of course we should try to live sustainably. But the struggle of nature and the ephemeralness of everything are nothing to rail against. It's futile.
6
I am belittling global warming since we have been in a global cooling phase since 1998 which all the raw data will clearly point out if anyone in the NOAA community would be willing to read it before they strip the data in their climate models. Proof? Normally they should be evacuating Florida due to the climate models suggesting the state will be under water in less than 100 years. But the climate scientists of the banks supporting all those new high rises are free to tell it like it is. The water maybe, maybe will rise 7 inches in the next 100 years not 20 feet like the fools with zero honor are projecting.
"we are cognizant of patterns that have been happening forever (Species struggling to adapt or disappearing, artifacts and or land masses being covered. ice melting, etc.) It may be happening faster but it's nothing new."
As science has proven, this time it's happening exceptionally fast. In the earth's entire history, the number of species that disappearing today is only comparable to what is called a "Great Extinction". And there were only five of those before, whereas today, we entered the Sixth Great Extinction.
The last one happened 250 million years ago. If you know that Homo Sapiens exists for less than half a million years, you'll understand why yes, this is new for us. And nothing guarantees that when a Great Extinction destroys 90% of the living species on earth, we won't be part of it too, now that another one started.
But there's more. We also know that this time, the Great Extinction is caused by unprecedentedly rapid global temperature changes - so rapid that species don't have the time to adapt and simply disappear.
And it has also been proven WHAT is causing it: massive human CO2 emissions. And THAT is TOTALLY new, you see?
So no, this isn't the "struggle of nature and ephemeralness of everything". It's the human species (especially the West) destroying what already exists for 250 million years, and risking to destroy its own species simultaneously.
William P, perhaps it has escaped your notice that in Miami neighborhoods the recently accelerating rise in mean sea level is causing regular flooding, rendering movement around the streets impossible except with elevated walkways or by getting your feet wet.
As to the banks and high rises I can't explain it either. In the residential neighborhoods more regularly (and deeply) subject to flooding it also seems there is an ostrich-like avoidance of the reality. Then again were I a homeowner there I too might try to cover my panic by the strongest denial my conscious and unconscious mind could put up.
Incredible piece with amazing photos, exceptional multimedia presentation. Really great work by the journalist, photographer, Times - congrats and thanks!
2
Terrible multimedia presentation! Endless looping and zooming is not cool, especially when it restarts every time you scroll to read. Little bits of text that come at you like a Powerpoint presentation are gimmicks. Maps that start needlessly tiny then get big are gimmicks. The photography is dramatic, but suffers from really poor tonal editing, all the image look much better after an S curve application in Photoshop. Stop being amazed and use your head.
5
I agree with CK. Too clever by half.
Easter Island is a place where people have literally eaten themselves out of their habitat, in the process destroying their environment by cutting down the trees and killing off the animals. The article does not mention the brutal warfare.
It should be a warning call for what will happen if the population explosion we see in Africa and parts of Asia keeps going on.
11
@Kai Certainly population increase is an issue...but that is worldwide. Don't blame it on Africa and Asia. The US, once a leader in eco-responsibility, is as culpable. Check out this map of the US showing light pollution, a visual depiction of our own population and energy use.
https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=3&lat=4792958&lon=-1101...
Hard to focus on the travails of this place when one must wrestle with right click/pause, loop=off the every time you touch to scroll the page to read it. It should be the reverse, you should click to instigate the movement, not to stop it, and it should loop a limited number of times.
One thing noticeable in that annoying process is that good still images with sharp maps and traditionally-spaced type look better and work better than this teenybopper graphic-novel concept with constant zooming and moving.
And where have the photo editors gone? IApparently use of a tone levels control for the dynamic range is a lost art, in these over-contrasty unrealistic Instagramic images. The beautiful shot of the huge cliffs with the monoliths lower right corner for scale, of Ahu Tongariki has all of it's dark tones smashed, and a very obvious heavy handed dodge of the seastack offshore ruining what is a potentially spectacular scene. More's the pity. At least it sits still.
7
The experience reading via iPad with retina screen was perfect. I didn't see any crushed shadow detail.
2
I'm not relying on perception (although yes the whole tone range appears crushed to the trained eye). I can measure the RGB values in Photoshop on my Mac image editing station, or my PC image editing station and confirm the whole tone range is crushed or shall we say linear, it's obvious to a trained eye. The whites are also muted, resulting in less dynamic range than easily available with minimal effort. A great image therefore becomes poor. The boutique device you are using is a side issue (and it's glossy screen, while high res, is a another problem).
3
Although I applaud the Times for regularly keeping us updated on "climate change news", as certain comments below once again show, I'm afraid that that's not enough AT ALL to make people understand what's happening.
As long as those ignoring what science does and what the scientific results on this issue are, are a small minority, I can understand that one of the world's leading high-quality newspapers limits itself to reporting "the news".
But because of Fox News (and Breitbart's) Fake News, today that minority became more than a third of this planet's most polluting nation - and even worse, because of the political illiteracy of many belonging to the other two thirds, it's precisely the party that constantly lies about this issue, that now controls all levels of government.
That means that putting articles like these into context is more urgent and important than ever.
Fundamental questions are systematically ignored in pieces that only report what's new, questions such as:
- what is climate change?
- how is the current climate change different from all previous ones?
- what is science?
- how to know the difference, as a citizen, between real and "fake" science?
- why is it impossible to deny the truth of the current and extremely alarmist climate science studies?
- what exactly is at stake, overall (beyond loosing absolutely precious cultural heritage sites)? Why is the entire human food chain threatened, for instance?
- what is the Paris Climate Agreement?
Etc.
2
Rapa Nui, like Barbuda, is in the cross-hairs of the rising sea levels. Those of us who live by the coasts (especially those in Florida) should be feeling these people's pain.
Unfortunately, low-level islands in the middle of the sea have few recourses.
1
This article is eco-nonsense. The sea level at Easter Island is barely increasing. The data, according to NOAA:
"The mean sea level trend is 0.33 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 1.26 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from 1970 to 2010 which is equivalent to a change of 0.11 feet in 100 years."
Stop with the "climate change" propaganda.
2
Here's the link to the NOAA article you're quoting from:
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.shtml...
As you could have noticed yourself, this article does NOT discuss current sea level rising, nor predictions for the next 8 decades, whereas THAT is the topic of this NYT article, remember?
You can only refute scientific studies using studies that discuss the SAME topic.
Simply quoting a study that discusses something else is precisely what is done by what we in the meanwhile have called "fake news" ...
1
And here's the link that this very same NYT article refers to when reporting that global sea levels are expected to rise by 6 feet by the end of this century:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/science/global-warming-antarctica-ice...
If you think that there is evidence that could refute those studies, could you please provide a link to that kind of evidence?
And if you didn't even think about verifying what this article writes (as your quote seems to suggest), why do you reject as propaganda what amazes you, without having no evidence at all to rationally reject this information, all while having inside this article already lots of references that prove that what the Times is writing here, has been scientifically proven?
When it comes to science, you cannot possibly just blindly believe what media that you agree with when it comes to POLITICS write, and blindly reject what media that politically defend a different position write.
Science is science, and politics is politics, remember?
1
This is a visually appealing article, but there isn’t an ounce of science in it. Did anyone notice there’s no mention of any actual measurement of the change in the sea level?
I was curious so I searched Google for “Easter Island sea level measurement” and easily found a graph titled “PSMSL Annual Mean Sea Level for '1462'” here: http://www.ioc-sealevelmonitoring.org/ssc/stationdetails.php?id=SSC-east
It shows that in the last 40 years since 1978, the sea level at Easter Island has lowered about 100 mm - about 4 inches. So, none of the erosion and other changes cited by this article can be associated with it’s headline “Easter Island is critically vulnerable to rising ocean levels.”
This kind of completely deceptive, anti-science article is why we who have a love of science are deeply skeptical of the anthropomorphic climate change movement.
3
Ah but the climate deniers will say that it is all a hoax and that the land is sinking, not the sea levels rising.
1
Yep.
They even come up with bogus links in order to "prove" their idea ... just see the comment made by Son of Liberty above, for instance ... ;-)
Whats left out here is Easter is a volcanic high island formed above a hotspot. Like the Hawaiian islands of the Hawaiian-Emperor chain, Easter sinks and erodes from wave action as it moves off of its hotspot/ridge, but that is a slow process of mm per year. For example, compare the islands of Hawaii-Maui-Oahu-Kauai. Hawaii-Emperor islands to the W of Kauai are under water except for some fringing reefs staying at sea level. Everything north of Midway is pretty much underwater as a seamount.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian%E2%80%93Emperor_seamount_chain
On the other hand, a changing climate causing a rise in sea level of up to six feet in a century would be geologically sudden and exacerbate erosion and inundation.
1
Easter Island is a metaphor for the entire planet - it is believed the island was deforested by the original inhabitants rendering it largely unsuitable to support the large number of people living there. Now humans are doing the same thing to the entire planet. We are our own worst enemy. I find it incredible that we want to travel to other planets when we cannot even live in harmony with the one we have.
2
As we read about it on the internet via computers and fret. Internet and Computers which require massive amounts of energy and contribute to the problem of global warming.
'm sure Easter Islanders saw it coming - but they just had to have that last bit of firewood. Ahh the comfort.
Lemmings, all of us.
A beautiful article but poor science and missed opportunity to highlight the real climate change warning of Easter island.
There is no meaningful controversy over what happened - Pulitzer prize winning scientist Jared Diamond explained it in his best seller Collapse How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
https://www.ted.com/talks/jared_diamond_on_why_societies_collapse
Polynesians from eastern pacific arrived AD 1100 on deep sea fishing canoes and applied the same tree cutting practices they used successfully on more tropical islands. The impact on more southerly and temperate climate of Rapa Nui was catastrophic - trees took longer to grow back, soil washed away, Without trees they could not escape or fish offshore and by AD 1860 the population dwindled from 15,000 to a few hundred miserable souls living off bait crustaceans when they were carted off as slave labour in Chile. Ancestor worship of the 15 tribes with "big man" leaders each vying for the biggest statue accelerated the depletion.
It is THE classic tale of ignorance and arrogance leading to environmental collapse and this article totally missed it.
6
My father, Trap, was intrigued with Easter Island, read all of Thor Heyerdahl's books; Together we even visited Lake Titicaca in Bolivia to see the reed boats in 1989. In 2000, he and I took a trip to Easter Island (Ilsa Pascua), accompanied by a professor from the University of Santiago de Chile, where we spent 2 weeks learning about the Moai. One intriguing fact was that the moai faced in--rather than out--they were not to intimidate invaders, but instead other chieftains. Its an island of wonder. Anakena beach is a marvelous place and my 72 year old dad body surfed! Even in 2000, despite the airstrip, 2 miles long to accommodate the US space shuttle, there were no hotels--none. There were a few restaurants that only had one item on the menu: tuna. We stayed with a wonderful family and were introduced to real Polynesian dancing and music at a huge festival.
So I was quite literally shocked to see this in today's paper; it weighs on me heavily. But many thanks to Nicholas and Josh for bringing this problem to life. I have spent my past 15 years working on climate change solutions and this left me feeling deflated-- yet we must not turn our eyes away, but instead renew our individual commitments to GHG reduction in order to avoid the worst impact of climate change.
1
Paul,
Please permit me to use your post as a proxy for all who have responded here with surprise, shock, and dismay at the 'news' that Easter Island is threatened by rising sea level.
What really gets to me are the signs in this article and, even more, in the tone and substance of posts about it here, from which I see how under-educated and mis-education so many of us are on these points and on science in particular. I write as a retired geologist, and with some pride in the continuing and vigorous outreach by the Geological Society of America to inform the public of these issues.
But it must ever be uphill work. I would hope that anyone actually visiting Easter Island or planning to will have read up on the background, both the tragedy of the statue-makers' society, and the current unfolding climatologic drama.
Then again, perhaps not.
We are in an interglacial period which has been accelerated by the burning of fossil fuel. Whether there will be an overshoot of global warning during this interglacial period is unknown and will depend, in part, on feedback mechanisms which temper climate change as well as human behavior. The oceans were going to rise regardless of mankind and the main impact of mankind is the speed of global warming and ocean rising.
You seem to ignore what "interglacial" means.
Interglacial periods are hundreds of thousands of years that happen WITHIN an ice age, and where the planet slowly becomes a little bit warmer. "Slowly" means less than one degree in tens of thousands of years.
Today, and for 120 million years already, we're in the planet's sixth Ice Age. That means that temperatures are low, from the point of view of global climate history, and that sea levels aren't about to rise dramatically for millions of years to come.
We're also in an interglacial, so temperatures are a bit warmer now, for thousands of years already, then let's say a million years ago.
Since 2 centuries, however, the planet is warming at a speed NEVER seen before, during the earth's 6 billion years of existence.
Moreover, hundreds of thousands of scientific studies show that this is too fast for most species to be able to adapt, which is why today, we're already in the Sixth "Great Extinction", with millions of species becoming extinct every year, whereas outside of Great Extinction periods, MUCH less species disappear each year.
If we do nothing, science has proven, we'll have a more than 2 degree increase in global temperature by the end of this century, which destroys so many terrestrial and marine ecosystems that it might even be the end of most species at the basis of human food chains.
And that's why things are SO bad that we urgently HAVE to act, you see?
2
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old and we only have accurate temperature measures for about a century. Prior to that, we have increasingly uncertain geochemical proxies for temperature. So we don't really know whether temperature ever changed as fast as today, but we do think that rapid, i.e., happening in less than a century, climate excursions are possible without our input. Or...with it.
https://history.aip.org/climate/rapid.htm
@ Khal Spencer
You're right of course, I incorrectly wrote that the earth is 6 billion years old, whereas it's 4.5 billion years old.
That being said, we clearly have the scientific tools allowing us to have a solid notion of how temperatures evolved during those many years, and all of those results indicate that temperature changes never happened this fast.
Here's an overview of the last 11,000 years (= since the beginning of our interglacial):
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/videos/earths-temperature-history-...
And here's a NASA article showing that it has been PROVEN that today temperatures are changing unprecedentedly fast, AND that it's 95% certain that we humans caused it:
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
Although a small minority of humans develop great analytical and creative powers, most humans, including most well-educated, wealthy humans (people like Donald Trump) never develop such powers.
And most of the wealthy people who are in power could care less if the rest of us survive or not because from their limited perspective, there will always be plenty of poor people to exploit, and the wealthy will always have enough money (their limited minds believe) to avoid what is facing the rest of us.
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jay david -- are you one of the small minority who develop great analytical and creative power? Like the writers at the Times who creative these wonderful fictional stories?
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@ Ralphie
If you believe to have developed "great analytical and creative powers", then why do you claim that these scientific reports aren't science but "fiction", all while failing to come up with ANY argument to support that hypothesis ... ?
I hope you understand that by merely DECLARING these scientific studies "fiction", your comment is rather corroborating what Jay David wrote ... ?
1
As an American whose family descends from the last generations of Easter Islanders I would like to thank the NYT for taking the time to highlight what is happening on the island, especially in relation to climate change.
Please continue to do this kind of in-depth journalism in all corners of the world. I very much enjoy my subscription.
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I really dislike the layout and design of this... so hard to just read. The photos and story are great, but this push to make everybody happy at the same time on any devise is resulting in really confused works. I get it, you need more money from Millennials with tablets. But please don't lose mine along the way.
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This article shamefully conflates coastal erosion with rising sea levels Advocacy is not journalism; journalism is not advocacy.
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You're confounding scientific evidence and personal opinion.
And when it comes to knowing what causes rising sea levels (and as a consequence, MORE coastal erosion), fact is that personal opinion is worthless, only scientific proof is valid information, in other words information that every person who wants to adopt rational, responsible behavior can then use to base his or her decisions on.
So if you'd have one or the other scientific study showing that the additional coastal erosion on small islands today is NOT caused by rising sea levels, could you please send us a link?
Thanking you in advance, and looking forward to reading you.
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According to sea level data from NOAA:
"The mean sea level trend is 0.33 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 1.26 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from 1970 to 2010 which is equivalent to a change of 0.11 feet in 100 years."
This article is propaganda, not based on data and facts. A sea level rise of .11 feet over the course of 100 years is barely measurable.
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I worry about climate change, but I know that Earth has changed many times over the ages. We cannot keep things as they have been, no matter how hard we try. It will not be a tragedy if the Easter Island giants are submerged. It will be just another of the changes that have occurred in the course of time.
I live in the Columbia River Gorge, a beautiful place that was changed dramatically by the series of catastrophic Missoula Floods that occurred in Washington and Oregon at the end of the last ice age, when the Earth warmed and melted the giant ice damn restraining the lake waters in what we now call Montana. You can see the dramatic effects throughout this land.
The giants of Easter Island will be under water, saved, perhaps, from the flood of tourists that now plague that stark place, as they plague so many such places. No cause for regrets or tears. Just another change.
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It sounds like the reasons for deforestation of Easter Island are complex, but my understanding is that the people ignored "tree-huggers" and cut down all the trees without a thought to what to do after the trees were all gone, and with the trees, the birds ... The race for the first egg of the season involved not only swimming but also climbing rocky cliffs to find bird nests, the only place they could find after the trees were gone.
And the statues were raised in a failed effort to ask the Gods to save them from their own reckless misuse of God's gifts.
Today we have the same reckless exploitation of resources focused on short-term gain, and the same disregard for prudent conservationists who would protect and conserve them for long-term survival.
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Iceland was deforested by settlers who needed the wood for building and fueling their shelters. Mistakes are made for survival’s sake.
so everyone stop driving their car right now. Turn off your thermostats. Move out of your 3000 sq foot houses and live in tents. Eat only locally grown food that you walk to the store to pick up. Wear a solar panel around your neck so you can listen to your iphone. Then walk to your local gas stations and picket. EVIL SELLERS OF FOSSIL FUELS.
That sure makes a lot more sense for everyone to do that than maybe, ah, build a dike to protect these artifacts in case the sea really does rise enough to threaten Easter Island. Maybe before we throw away our cars and move into tents maybe we should wait and see if the Climate alarmist scientist community finally gets one right (sea level world rising by 5 to 6 feet, whoa).
(Part 2)
Finally, most climate scientists aren't working on "the climate", you know. A climate is a result of many different factors, and each of them are studied on a daily basis by many different disciplines.
A friend of mine, for instance, is a computer engineer. His job is to translate codes sent to him by NASA satellites into plain English. There's NO way to falsify these codes in such a way that it would either support or refute the idea of climate change, as he's working on a very detailed and way too small level.
And that goes for most scientific studies here. So it's only when you take those hundreds of thousands of studies together (made by as many scientists all over the world, from all walks of life and religious, social, political and racial background), that THEY (= those studies) show that something very bad is going on. So it's not scientists who are "alarmists", it's those RESULTS, you see?
And of course it's not because you sell fossil fuels that you're an "evil person". This isn't about being a good or evil person, it's about objective scientific results.
That being said, Rex Tillerson, former Exxon Mobile CEO and until yesterday Trump's Sec. of State, has for decades invested millions in order to try to debunk all the scientific evidence out there proving that the way the climate is changing today is unprecedentedly fast and dangerous for humankind. Result? He failed. So today, he openly admits that climate change is real and that we HAVE to act ...
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You seem to be ill-informed.
What is causing climate change is not what you or I do in particular, as individuals, but what we in the West collectively do, in terms of how energy consumption is structured.
And as has been proven decades ago already, adopting, as a society, different energy sources doesn't mean giving up your car, for instance ... . Or do you really believe that humans who are able to walk on the moon and make nuclear bombs that can blow up the entire planet, would somehow not be able to build cars using clean energy ... ?
In fact, it's precisely thanks to innovative technology that changing our way of life does NOT mean giving up all the comfort that makes living today so much easier and better than centuries ago. Better home isolation, solar panels on official buildings, light bulbs using only 10% of the electricity they needed even two decades ago ... THOSE are the things that will happen, rather than giving up basic stuff, you see?
By the way, 3 centuries ago Europe was already living in stone houses, remember, whereas it didn't use fossil fuels yet, so your "tent" idea may be a bit outdated ... ;-)
(Part 2 below)
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Anna Luisa -- I'm not ill informed on the topic. In fact I bet you don't know anyone who has done as much actual analysis of the climate data as I have.
For example -- wouldn't you expect in a warming climate that over time (say 120 years) the annual temps for areas within a given country would be moving all the in the same direction -- i.e. -- pick at random 10 geographically disperse areas -- and you would expect to find that the avg correlation of their annual temps would be positively correlated on average -- and at a significant level.
I've done that research...unfortunately...you find only very low levels of correlation. Particularly when looking at the correlations between two areas that are geographically more distant. Of course, there is one exception -- if you correlate areas where there has been much population growth and urbanization you find that the avg correlations are both positive and significant -- on average almost twice as great as those for less urban areas in the US. Does that surprise you?
And -- here's another thing -- you may have missed it but my original comment was about using technology to solve the problem rather than everyone wearing hair shirts etc. If the climate warms and if there are negative consequences, we'll use technology to solve the issues that arise. After all, if we can put a man on the moon....
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"Archaeologists hotly debate whether it was resource depletion, disease, civil war, or perhaps rats..."
I take issue with this statement. Archaeologists don't really debate which of these variables were manifest in the collapse Eastern Island's civilization. They debate the sequence and significance of each event. The "or" conjunction is deeply inappropriate. We're debating the initial mechanism that triggered a negative feedback cycle, not the cycle itself.
Personally, I think the explanation eventually boils down to environmental degradation of one variety or another. The construction of the moai probably contributed significantly in the local devastation. I find therefore the destruction of the statues at the hands global environmental degradation oddly appropriate.
By all means, save the statues. However, there is an important, if ironic, lesson for human civilization in the effort.
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Though bear in mind Andy, the Maoi obviously came from a non-tech era so sounds like you're being quite myopic on "branding" them with the same greed as the big corporate entities and how they've pilfered millions of acres (and our air!) for a corporate greed level that fuels an artificially inflated earnings/stock market, etc. Moreover, corporate execs down the lowest levels aren't even living off the land... like the Maoi...so who's kidding who with your statement on the "irony" of being "appropriate"...to others your last few statements reak of vindictiveness.
Easter Island is on my bucket list, albeit kind of low. That said, while the island may be in the cross hairs, the loss there, while significant, pales in comparison to what will happen in the inhabited parts of the world. It's a bit like using the plight of the polar bears as motivation for doing something. We will not react sufficiently, that seems clear.
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I like your comparison to the polar bear. This is why Easter Island is significant for a lot of climate scientists perhaps. It is a sort of canary in the coal mine like polar bears. A front line of environmental cues and victims that may help us adjust before it is too late.
Easter Island is pretty clearly not an especially low-lying island. As such, I doubt it is "critically vulnerable to rising ocean levels." I suspect that it's much more vulnerable to tourism and immigration (from mainland Chile).
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No place like it in the world. A vast archaeological site. Its short history may well summarize the fate of humanity. Rapa Nui, te pito o te henua, the navel of the world...
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Terrific article. Fabulous use of photos, etc.
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I am reminded of the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem Ozymandias, whose last lines are:
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
5
Does anyone really believe this is the first time that the sea has conquered that island or that the Maoi represent the first human culture to inhabit that piece of land? Climate change, including periodic ice ages, have come and gone many times during the presence of mankind on Earth. We can't stop it, we can only record what's going on as it is happening. Leave those statues in their natural habitate. Don't build protective walls around them, and do NOT move them. If we truly care about these ancient remnants of a bygone civilization, we will let them take their natural course.
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Fortunately, we've long left the era where humans were limited to what they personally "believe", when it comes to understanding nature and being able to predict what will happen next.
That's how we were able to walk on the moon, build weapons that can blow up the entire planet many times, and can extract fossil fuel and solar energy and then use it to drive our cars with etc.
It's also how we KNOW (= has been scientifically proven, rather than having to stick to what we believe or don't immediately believe) that:
1. today the planet is in its 6th Ice Age
2. within all Ice Ages, there are "interglacial periods", and we're in one for thousands of years already
3. during interglacials, temperatures slowly rise a little bit, but the Ice Caps remained covered in big layers of permanent ice - and "slowly" means one degree in tens of thousands of years
4. since 2 centuries, global temperatures increased already more than 1 degree, and IF we don't stop putting gasses in the atmosphere that warm it up, by the end of this century we'll have reached a 3 degree increase
5. that's too fast for most species to be able to adapt, reason why since a couple of decades already we entered the sixth "Great Extinction" period
6. human civilization only exists since a couple of thousands of years, and civilization as we know it only two centuries
7. if we do nothing, it's the very basis of our food chains that will be extinct by next century, which is a HUGE and totally unprecedented problem.
I visited Rapa Nui (aka Isla de Pascua, aka Easter Island) three years ago with my family. On spectacular drives and hikes across this windswept island, the moai and ahu dramatically overpower any visitors. Exploring unrestored and restored sites, my children and I marveled at the sense of isolation and tragic beauty even in the 21st century. The islanders, isolated and then exploited for generations, are fiercely proud, educated, and gracious hosts. The entire experience can rightly be considered "the" trip of a lifetime.
The shrill nature of this article exploits the islands' moai and history for political gain. The island has almost no beaches, with Anakena being the most prominent and in excellent shape. For the most part, solid rock cliffs ring the island as the island was formed by multiple volcanoes. Even the main "harbor" (not very protected as surfers even use the break there) is formed by solid rock. Yes, Rapa Nui will erode, as all islands exposed to the continuous wind and waves of the Southern Pacific will. To claim that climate change is imminently threatening the island's heritage is false. The one beach with major erosion is similar to any beach backed by loose rock/sand cliffs that have been destabilized by the loss of plant root protection (i.e. like any West Coast cliff erosion). In fact, the islanders are trying to stabilize this area with new plantings. Any cliff will erode and destabilize over time under Mother Nature's natural assault.
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Of course unspoken here but strongly implied throughout is the Times favorite dishonest narrative, that humans are causing all these bad things to happen.
1
When our own NASA has proven that it IS humans that are causing this, why do you prefer to imagine that it would be a false - let alone "dishonest" narrative ... ?
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
There once was a 1-mile thick icecap in my front yard, which completely melted after the last Ice Age. What human activity caused this catastrophic warming event ? The hottest period in Earth's history also occurred millions of years before the Industrial Revolution. Humans possess a lot of hubris and ego to jump to the conclusion that we are the sole root cause of global warming. We have but a speck of data that stretches over eons of time.
We need a story about the Pacific Northwest. About Rock-Away Beach. About the homes that fell in the ocean. A place where our own back yard in the US tells the story.
Thanks anyway.
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As are the homes and beaches being washed away on Cape Cod and the Islands over the past few weeks.
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https://kcts9.org/programs/in-close/hope-floats-in-washaway-beach
Washaway Beach, Wash
Stunning photography of a very special place. Protecting the moai would not be easy, as the sea is rough with no beaches except for Anakena. Jared Diamond's argument about collapse due to deforestation is no longer accepted by archaeologists; there are a complex of factors that contributed to the "collapse," thanks to the excellent archaeology that's been done on the island for the last 15-20 years. The sad irony is that Rapa Nui's problems in the past were partly human-induced, and now the moai and island are threatened by the modern human-induced factor of global climate change, making islands all over the world like Rapa Nui, deeply vulnerable. For the people who inhabit these islands, their livelihoods, cultural, and natural resources face imminent threat.
2
The soaring claims of this article and the artistry of the photography mask the stunning lack of scientific evidence to back the authors claims that the sea levels around Easter Island have risen dramatically in a very short period time. The seemingly most damming evidence; the loss of this supposedly once vast sandy beach seems to be based solely on the claims of this mayor who seems to be recalling a day swimming there. The reality of sandy beaches is that they are know to appear and dissappear overnight. The ocean moves vast amounts of sand very rapidly. A well known example of this is El Arco near Los Cabos Mexico. Some years this natural stone arch sits hundreds of feet inland on a sandy beach, then, without warning and seemingly without a pattern, the seas wash away the sand and it becomes inaccessible and surrounded by water. All seashores all over the world are constantly being eroded.
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Uh ... in real life, the "soaring claims of this article" are, like always when it comes to NYT articles about science, backed up by a link to another NYT article, which contains all the references proving that indeed sea levels are rising dramatically in a very short period of time.
All you had to do to inform yourself before commenting on this article, was to click on the link ...
Mr. Wilson, the beautiful beaches along the northern California coast come and go too, seasonally. They are gradually more going than coming back though. It is a new trend.
So with Easter Island, one fears.
At this point, for Easter Island, the damage is inexorable and the choice is grim but simple: move the monuments inland (and lose their historical context) or lose the monuments altogether.
Humans have received one wake-up call after another about climate change and rising seas, but we fail to act to prevent future catastrophe.
And the sea always wins.
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No amount of beach and or rock replenishment nor sea walls will hold back the ocean. I wish municipalities and coastal home owners would be reminded of this truth rather than throwing millions of our tax dollars into the sea.
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This is so sad. I’ve been in everywhere mentioned in this article, as a college student. I made friends with a local kid with a motorcycle and he took me around the island for 5 days. One day he took me to a field by the ocean. There was a hole in the field, about the size of a manhole. We climbed in. There was a cave full of bones that at the time I assumed were from animals. My friend didn’t speak English and my Spanish is terrible, so I didn’t know how to ask. There was a huge opening in side of the cave. It was like a picture window looking out on the ocean. We were standing on a pile of bones looking at the dark blue sea.
13
It would be nice if we were given one critical fact: what is the rate of sea level rise at Easter Island, and is that rate accelerating?
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James that's irrelevant, isn't it. What we want from our climate writers at the Times are heart rending stories of tragedy -- of the evils that the modern world has projected onto the poor innocent citizens of simpler civilizations through our addiction to fossil fuels.
4
An inconvenient truth not to mention this one piece of data. The author seems to have no idea that Rapa Nui is battered by nearly constant wind and waves from the vast Southern Pacific ocean. Erosion and variations in beaches are a natural result of such forces.
3
Where is the data? I would argue there have been no measureable sea level changes on Easter Island, since the same Hanga Roa harbor facilities have been used for over a century and the Anakena beach (known as the islanders' original landing site) is not eroded.
5
Those monuments on that island will be around a lot longer than we will.
The key question really is, if the waters are rising as fast as the computer models can be calculated with skewed data, why are million dollar properties still being built and sold in the worlds largest global warmin flood plain: Florida?
Isn't that somewhat baffeling? Doesn't the one remaining brain cell of humanity question that issue? Of course not, because it's so pumped up with the valum of grant and hush money that it is no longer able to think! One rule of society is clearly important here: Don't follow what they say, follow what they do.
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I would vote you twice-if I could!
3
This is preciously why someone like Trump got elected, this is why a certain segment of the population lost interest in liberal news media. While global warming is a serious scientific issue, a bunch of rocks on some forsaken island shouldn't be front page US news and it's a terrible example to garner attention for the crisis at hand.
2
On the contrary, sir, this is a perfect example of culture and heredity being affected by global warming and sea level rise. This NYT series has featured Jakarta, the Maldives, and many other vulnerable places with their myriad threats from salt ocean penetration.
4
Scurry, absolutely incorrect. The seas have been rising since the last ice age and there has been no acceleration in that rise. Do you propose that we alter the tilt of the earth? Do you propose we alter the output of the sun???
@ mmmmmm
Science has proven you wrong ... :
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html
And no, this time the acceleration in sea level rising is not due to the wobbling of the earth's axes (THAT causes the alternation between a glacial period and interglacial, within an Ice Age, and we're currently at the beginning of such an interglacial), it's due to proven human CO2 output:
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
Excellent article, only at The Times we can find it!
Was there a long time ago!
Congratulations,
Tereza Lobo
3
Thank you, Gas Oil Petroleum and Greed Over Profit.
Time to double down on solar, wind and and alternative energy research and development instead of destructive, greedy, war-inducing fossil fuel pollution.
Pillaging and plundering is not a sustainable life model.
GOP Death Panels come in a hundred different forms; raping the earth and the atmosphere for personal profit is one of them.
D to go forward; R for Reverse...over the cliff of dirty greed.
16
Remember the Morlocks (H.G. Wells)? They (the deniers) come to mind every time I learn more about the results of changing climate -- and every time I read a new article on the suspension of EPA regulations. Morlocks.
1