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Of the combined land mass, much of it sits about 2 meters above sea level and is expected to be submerged by 2030. New Scientists reports that the effects of climate change has caused devastating droughts, the loss of coconut trees, drinking water shortages due to the flow of saltwater into drinking wells.

The small island nation of Kiribati is made up of 33 small atolls, none of which is more than 6.5 feet above the South Pacific, and it is only a matter of time before the entire country is submerged by the rising sea.

“For Kiribati, the tipping point has already occurred,” Schneider said. “As far as they’re concerned, it’s tipped, but they have no economic clout in the world.”

“For those who believe climate change is about some distant future, I invite them to Kiribati. Climate change is not about tomorrow. It is lapping at our feet – quite literally in Kiribati and elsewhere,” said United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon in a speech last week

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China’s massive ‘pollution cloud’ can be seen from space



On the ground floor, its a curtain of smog so ubiquitous that highways were forced to close and outdoor school activities cancelled. One of the most disruptive instances took place on the morning of January 10 2012 when the Beijing airport was forced to cancel 43 flights and delay an additional 80 more due to bad visibility. To blame was a stretch of fog and haze that was so massive and gritty NASA satellite photos show it completely blanketing Beijing along with a large swatch of the surrounding region. http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/thinking-tech/chinas-massive-8216pollu
tion-cloud-can-be-seen-from-space/9886?tag=content;siu-container

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Seems storms and tides, with winds coming from opposite directions, is the cause for the flooding, NOT 'rising sea levels'.

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In what could be the world's first climate-induced migration of modern times, Anote Tong, the Kiribati president, said he was in talks with Fiji's military government to buy up to 5,000 acres of freehold land on which his countrymen could be housed.
Some of Kiribati's 32 pancake-flat coral atolls, which straddle the equator over 1,350,000 square miles of ocean, are already disappearing beneath the waves. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/kirib
ati/9127576/Entire-nation-of-Kiribati-to-be-relocated-over-rising-sea-level-threat.html a personal perspective and video:

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Boobu Tioram, a resident of the Pacific island of Kirabati, took time out from reinforcing a seawall in front of his newly built house to speak with UNDP about what climate change has meant to his way of life.

I have moved three times, every three years I have moved, he said, standing on the beach a few metres from his home. Tioram gestured toward a point about 20 metres into the sea, and explained that his first house once stood on a spot now covered in swelling ocean waves. Each time he has moved farther inland, and each time the sea has followed.

Im not sure how long Ill be [in this house], Tioram continued. That depends on how strong my seawall here can withstand high tide waves.

UNDP believes that it is the developing world that stands to lose the most, and which is already losing out, as the effects of climate change edge toward the catastrophic. As climate negotiations open in Copenhagen, worlds away from this tiny Pacific nation consisting of 33 low lying atolls, it is important to keep in mind that for the people of Kirabati, and other poor island and coastal nations, funds for adaptation and not only prevention must top the international to-do list.

Carbon trading will be of no special consequence to us, so there has got to be some very special provisions for the victims, said Kirabati President Anote Tong. Not the potential victims, but the victims, because we are the victims, so there has to be some very deep soul searching.

Kirabati is no more than four metres high at its highest point, and 100 percent of the population lives within one kilometre of the coast, making this nation one of the most vulnerable to the effects of global warming. Its future is uncertain, including the question of whether it even has a future anymore.

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And yes, sinking of the sea bed is partly to blame, but I don't think it would be happening this fast if that was all that was to blame; bear in mind they've lived there for generations, and only now are having to move so frequently...if that means anything to you (which no doubt it doesn't).

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The last volcanic activity in the Line Islands occurred around 37 million years ago in the centre of the group. Since then, sinking of the sea bed, changing sea levels and the forces of erosion have acted on these seamounts so that now only 11 emerge, at best, a few meters above sea level. http://www.oceandots.com/pacific/line/

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Ocean levels have been increasing ever so slightly -- at the rate of 0.1 inch every year, due to climate change and melting glaciers. Since 1880, ocean levels have risen nearly 8 inches.

Many low-lying regions around the world have cause for concern. Islands belonging to Maldives in the Indian Ocean, and Papua New Guinea in the Pacific have lost land or have been completely submerged. http://www.youngzine.com/article/kiribati-modern-day-atlantis

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Silly me, wasting my time like this...as I said, the deniers will still be denying when it's impossible to deny. The mere fact that ocean levels are rising globally must be because of volcanic activity, too, I suppose [/snark]By the way, it's not just happening there, and a few islands HAVE already disappeared...if you want a couple that have actually completely disappeared:

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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.

As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.

Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.

It has been officially recorded in a six-year study of the Sunderbans by researchers at Calcutta's Jadavpur University. So remote is the island that the researchers first learned of its submergence, and that of an uninhabited neighbouring island, Suparibhanga, when they saw they had vanished from satellite pictures.

Two-thirds of nearby populated island Ghoramara has also been permanently inundated. Dr Sugata Hazra, director of the university's School of Oceanographic Studies, says "it is only a matter of some years" before it is swallowed up too. Dr Hazra says there are now a dozen "vanishing islands" in India's part of the delta. The area's 400 tigers are also in danger.

Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years' time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction.

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.

As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.

Eight years ago the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.

It has been officially recorded in a six-year study of the Sunderbans by researchers at Calcutta's Jadavpur University. So remote is the island that the researchers first learned of its submergence, and that of an uninhabited neighbouring island, Suparibhanga, when they saw they had vanished from satellite pictures.

Two-thirds of nearby populated island Ghoramara has also been permanently inundated. Dr Sugata Hazra, director of the university's School of Oceanographic Studies, says "it is only a matter of some years" before it is swallowed up too. Dr Hazra says there are now a dozen "vanishing islands" in India's part of the delta. The area's 400 tigers are also in danger.

Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years' time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction.

Refugees from the vanished Lohachara island and the disappearing Ghoramara island have fled to Sagar, but this island has already lost 7,500 acres of land to the sea. In all, a dozen islands, home to 70,000 people, are in danger of being submerged by the rising seas. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/disappearing-w
orld-global-warming-claims-tropical-island-429764.html

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Those obvsiously aren't enough islands vanishing to worry about. Awful lot of volcanic-related stuff going on out there, apparently...