4,000 Indonesian islands may disappear due to global warming

Antara 27 Nov 10;

Makassar (ANTARA News) - Around 4,000 islands in Indonesia may disappear when the sea surface rises due to global warming, a government official said.

"Global climate change could cause the sea level to rise high enough submerge 4,000 islands in Indonesia," William Suhandar, deputy to the head of the Presidential Work Unit for Development Management and Supervision (UKP4), said here Saturday.

As many as 4,000 of Indonesia`s 17,500 islands might disappear if the sea level rose by two meters, he said.

"This will be unavoidable if global warming continues causing the sea level to keep rising as happened thousands of years ago when ice bergs melted," he said.

The earth`s surface temperature had risen 0.7 degrees Celsius over the last 100 years, he said, adding that this was tangible and reasonable evidence of climate change.
Moreover, the period 1995-2010 had been recorded as the hottest in the last 150 years since 1850, he said.

"There has been an unusual shift in rainfall patterns so that it is now difficult to distinguish the seasons, to differentiate the rainy from the dry season," he said.

Extreme weather and temperatures which occur every year could lead to or trigger natural disasters, he said.

He aid there were two major causes of climate change. One was mismanaged land utilization, deforestation and carbon emission from fossil fuels that exacerbate the green house effect in the atmosphere leading to rising global temperature.

The increasing global temperature could cause the sea level to rise and this posed a threat to around 4,000 islands in Indonesia, he said.

Mitigation of and adaptation to climate change could be advantageous to minimize the effect of global warming and climate change, he said.(*)