World Island Info

Going off to be alone on Sanda, Scotland.  Said incoming island caretaker Charles McVey, “I wanted to do something totally different and can’t wait for the isolation. People say I’ll go crazy and told me not to watch The Shining.”

Scientists report that

Greenland’s glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly Earth’s oceans will rise over the next century.

This appears to increase the danger that low-lying coastal and coral islands around the world will be destroyed over the course of this century.

A dispute has broken out over a tiny double island—an island in a body of water on another island—in Loch Lomond, Scotland.

“This American Life” offers the story of a boat excursion gone awry in “In the Shadow of the City” (Episode 307, Feb. 3, 2006).  Three Russian immigrants end up marooned on islands in Jamaica Bay, including Ruffle Bar. They do agree at least not to eat each other. (The story also hints at some of the reasons Russian male life expectancy has plummeted in recent decades.)

A newspaper offers this Zen statement about a small Michigan island used for an annual party:

“The island was created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which dumped clean dredged materials onto the site from 1937 through the mid-1960s. The island is actually about 137 acres, but all but 4 acres are submerged.”

One rarely hears anything about Anticosti, the large island in Quebec, but here’s a tidbit courtesy of deer hunters.

Mother Jones reports on the possible fate of low-lying islands in the face of sea-level rise:

Today, roughly 1 million people live on coral islands worldwide, and many more millions live on low-lying real estate vulnerable to the rising waves. At risk are not just people, but unique human cultures, born and bred in watery isolation. Faced with inundation, some of these people are beginning to envision the wholesale abandonment of their nations.

“Paradise can be yours for as little as $225,000,” says a recent article from Money. (The Web version omits the pictures from the printed article, alas.)

Actually, islands can be had for far less than that, if you are willing to settle for cool climates or a freshwater island.

When it comes to Okinotorishima, “Tokyo claims the parts above sea are islands, Beijing prefers to think of them as mere rocks.” Whose definition prevails could determine whether Japan has exclusive rights over thousands of square miles of the Pacific Ocean.