[extropy-chat] global warming eats island

[spike]

Check this:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,238634,00.html


An inhabited island has been wiped off the face of the Earth due to global
warming, Britain's The Independent site reported on Sunday.

The remote Lohachara Island was part of the Sundarbans Island Chain near the
Bay of Bengal in India. Rising sea levels have swallowed the island whole,
according to the report. It was once home to 10,000 people.

Lohachara's disappearance wasn't easy to discover. Satellites monitored it
until it finally disappeared.

Two-thirds of a neighboring island, Ghoramara, has also been claimed by
water.

The disappearance of Lohachara Island comes eight years after uninhabited
islands in the Pacific were overtaken. As a result of their going under, the
people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been
evacuated.

Researchers at Calcutta's Jadavpur University studying the phenomenon for
six years say there are now about a dozen "vanishing islands" in the region.


{End quote}

This article puzzled me for a number of reasons.  If it was once home to
10,000 people, there must be a lot of land very close to the surface.  Since
the ocean level has not changed much in historic times, then there must have
been 10 kilopersons living half a meter above sea level?  Where did they get
their fresh water?  Why couldn't they dig from shallow water and build up
the high points?  Does the island reappear at low tide?  If so, in what
sense can FoxNews claim that the island has disappeared?  If the island has
entirely disappeared now, wouldn't it have been swamped by a good proxidean
spring tide a looong time ago, decades or perhaps centuries ago?  (I haven't
done the calcs on this.)  If so, the soil would have been too salty to grow
anything, right?  If no one lived there for a long time, why is it referred
to as an inhabited island?  If satellites monitored it until it disappeared,
is it still visible now, a few cm below the surface at a really high tide?
Could this island be sinking?  If so, what has that to do with global
warming?  

This whole story sounds fishy.

Thoughts?

spike