Friday 11 December 2009

Tuvalu: not drowning, just waving

Since Tuvalu “stopped” the CopenHagen Hug-In yesterday to call for even greater impositions on the world’s producers  – sparking cheers from ignorant young “climate activists” in the room—saying in essence that sea levels are rising at an increasing rate, that industrial production is causing the increase, and therefore without a complete shut-down of the world’s economies low-lying Tuvalu itself will soon be buried under sixty centimetres of water, and the world’s producers are responsible, and should be made to pay.

Sounds like a money grab to me.

And sounds like all those “climate activists” should start getting their “science” from somewhere other than an Al Gore movie.

Because that fact is that Tuvalu’s very real problems have nothing to do with global warming.

Let’s start with seal level. The mean world sea level has been rising at around 3mm per year for at least the last century, and the latest figures confirm that this rate has continued in recent decades. The rise has been constant for at least a century. No acceleration, no increase; no increase, nobody to blame. Which means Tuvalu, Kiribati, Vanuatu, the Maldives, and Uncle Tom Cobley and all should look to other means to rescue themselves from their penury instead of coming to the world’s conclaves with a begging bowl in one hand and a gun at the world’s producers with the other.

Because there’s no doubt at all that there’s been no rising sea levels due to global warming: since the rise has been constant and has accompanied periods of both cooling and warming, it’s simply not possible to draw that sort of conclusion.

And there’s no doubt either that sea levels themselves around Tuvalu itself haven’t been rising at all (as data gathered by the National Tidal Facility of Adelaide demonstrates).

But the fact remain that all those islands do have problems with sea water. So what’s going on?

Well, despite what everyone knows or think they know about Tuvalu, as the late John Daly pointed out a few years back,

_quote The reported `plight' of the Tuvaluans is not about sea level rise at all - it's about over-population. With such a high population density, the fresh water table on the atolls is subject to rapid depletion, especially in dry years. In addition, the development which would follow from such a high density will bring the inevitable coastal erosion, a problem which the Tuvalu government falsely blames on climate change and sea level rise. Tide gauge data from all around the South Pacific shows the same pattern as the one at Funafuti - no sea level rise. It is, and always was, a bogus claim, with few in the outside world bothering to check the accuracy of the claim.”

Now, you might object that John Daly wrote those words back in 2001, and that things have changed since then – and you’d be right.  One thing has changed. What’s changed is that the outside world has started to realise this is all a load of horse manure. Indeed, when a British High Court did bothered to check the accuracy of the claim, as found in the very Al Gore film that those dimwit “climate activists” got their climate learning from, it discovered that the film was “littered with nine inconvenient untruths,”* including the one Tuvaluans thought would be their meal ticket.

Too bad that the world is now on to them. They were told by the CopenHagen group gropers to go take a hike.

* * * * *

* Regarding the Goracle’s film, be a good time for you to check out the nine "errors" found by the British court, the "thirty-five" inconvenient truths found by Christopher Monckton, or the 120 one-sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative, or wrong assertions that Marlo Lewis points out in his 'Skeptics Guide to An Inconvenient Truth.

* * Just to counter the notion that non-New Zealand readers might hold, as a result of Al Gore’s lies, that New Zealand has been inundated by thousands of “climate refugees” fleeing Tuvalu, the raw figures are these (from the 'Pacific Profiles: 2006'  report of the NZ Statistics Department):

In 2006, Tuvaluan were the seventh largest Pacific ethnic group in New Zealand, making up 2,625 or 1 percent of New Zealand's Pacific population.

  • The Tuvaluan population increased by 34 percent (660) between 2001 and 2006 [largely through births].
  • Tuvaluans born in New Zealand account for 37 percent (954) of the total Tuvaluan population.

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