For all that they endlessly bleat about “following the science”, it is increasingly clear that the climate lobby are either lying or completely ignorant about some basic facts of science.
Not least about global sea levels and the supposed fates of islands and coastal communities.
Yes, sea levels are rising. They have been for the past 18,000 years or so. The rise may have accelerated slightly in recent decades, but there is little evidence that this is anything but a fluctuation, let alone a mortal threat.
Certainly, it “stands to reason” that, if sea levels rise, low-lying lands are going to be inundated. Certainly, that has happened: I can’t drive from my home in Tasmania to Sydney, let alone Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, any more. But that isn’t the whole story, especially when it comes to atoll nations that are the poster children of climate alarmism.
We’ve known since Charles Darwin’s time that atolls rise and and fall in tandem with sea levels. That process hasn’t suddenly stopped in the 21st century.
An analysis of more than 600 coral reef islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans showed that some remained stable (40 per cent) or increased in area (40 per cent). Only 20 per cent decreased in area yet it is widely promoted in green activist circles that coral islands, atolls and reefs are disappearing with sea level rise. Some islands grew as much as 5.6 hectares in a decade. Tuvalu’s main atoll, Funafuti, comprising 33 islands around the rim of a lagoon, gained 32 hectares during the last 115 years.
Over the period from 14,700 to 6,000 years ago during the 130-metre post-glacial sea level rise, coral reefs kept up with sea level rise. The coral sand atoll islands were actually produced by the destruction of reef material during the two-metre sea level fall over the last 4,000 years which led to the emergence and death of coral.
None of these scientific facts have done anything to silence the yammering ninnies of climate alarmism.
Time magazine on June 2019 had a cover article entitled ‘Our sinking planet’ featuring a photograph of UN chief António Guterres thigh-deep in water at Tuvalu. He claimed that Tuvalu was one of the world’s countries most vulnerable to global warming and that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming resulting in polar ice cap melting, sea water expansion, sea level rise and inundation of Pacific island nations.
Every single aspect of this narrative is scientifically wrong.
Worse than the bad science is the rank hypocrisy.
Guterres flew to Tuvalu in a carbon dioxide emitting jet made out of aluminium, a metal that requires huge emissions of carbon dioxide during mining, transport, processing, smelting and refining.
Remember the millions of “climate refugees” we were dolefully warned about? We’ve had a tidal wave of “refugees” all right — but “refugees” from the Middle East and North Africa, chasing cash and welfare, not island communities fleeing rising seas.
It was predicted in 1988 that some of the 1,196 islands of the Maldives would be under water by 2018 and that drinking water would run out for the 200,000 inhabitants. Thirty years have been and gone since this dire prediction. The Maldives is thriving, has potable water, the population has doubled and there has been a building boom of waterside tourist facilities.
A global scale analysis of 221 islands in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans reveals ‘a predominantly stable or accretionary trend in an area of atoll islands worldwide’ throughout the 21st century […]
This is in accord with a 2019 global scale analysis of 709 islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans that revealed 89 per cent were either stable or growing in size and only a few small islands had slightly decreased in size.
Spectator Australia
So, why the endless hysteria? Two reasons: ignorance, and greed.
The likes of Swedish “Teenage Doom-Troll” Greta Thunberg, New Zealand’s India Logan-Riley, or Samoa’s Brianna Fruen might be able to plead ignorance. After all, they’ve grown up being brow-beaten all their lives by lefty teachers with fake “science”.
The UN and leaders of Pacific Nations must surely know better. If they’re ignorant at all, it’s only because they’re wilfully blinded by greed, as they demand trillions in “climate compensation” from Western nations who’ve got rich by hard work and thrift, rather than shouting “gibsmedat!” at endless climate junkets.
Please share this article so that others can discover The BFD