The dishonesty of using Tuvalu as proof of man made global warming

I have a stalker commenter from the UK who is, unfortunately for him but amusingly for me and my readers, a true Climate Disciple.

Anonymous commenters here earn the name fudgie. This particular commenter is such an ignoramus that we call him Fudgie.

Anyhow, his latest offering is that Tuvalu is actually affected by global warming.

Seriously, f---y, are you not able to answer that numerical question? It should be quite easy. And do do that search for 'tuvalu global warming' - I expect that you've got what you think you know about it from immature bloggers like yourself so reading some actual science would be good for you.

He thinks its funny to use a swear word to refer to me and then calls me an immature blogger. He also thinks that because there are 116,000 items returned by a Google search for 'tuvalu global warming' that it somehow qualifies as scientific research.

When a Climate Disciple uses Tuvalu as proof of global warming you know that they're completely ignorant of the science and accept uncritically everything that is spewed forth from Big Green.

So I thought I'd provide the real story of Tuvalu. Here's the start of the Wikipedia entry:

Tuvalu (IPA: [t:u:'valu]), formerly known as the Ellice Islands, is a Polynesian island nation located in the Pacific Ocean midway between Hawaii and Australia. Its nearest neighbours are Kiribati, Samoa and Fiji. Comprising four reef islands and five true atolls with a gross land area of just 26 square kilometers (10 sq mi) it is the third-least populated independent country in the world, with only Vatican City and Nauru having fewer inhabitants. It is also the second-smallest member by population of the United Nations. In terms of physical land size, Tuvalu is the fourth smallest country in the world, larger only than the Vatican City—0.44 km²; Monaco—1.95 km² and Nauru—21 km².

And want to know what it looks like? Here you go:



Now, you can clearly see that the place is at risk from a sea level rise. In fact, if a boatload of tourists pitched up and pissed into the bay then the place would probably go under.

The key to understanding Tuvalu is that it's an atoll. So what's an atoll?

An atoll (is an island of coral that encircles a lagoon partially or completely.

Check out the Wikipedia link, as there's an animation that describes how atolls are created. It is also the reason why they are unstable and tend to sink; their foundation is not solid in the same way that a mountain may be.

Here's climate scientist Willie Soon's take on the Tuvalu sea level:

There are three estimates of sea level changes for Tuvalu. The first is a satellite record showing that the sea level has actually fallen four inches around Tuvalu since 1993 when the hundred-million dollar international TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite project record began. Second comes from the modern instruments recording tide gauge data since 1978. There the record for Tuvalu shows ups and downs of many inches over periods of years. For example, the strong El Nino of 1997-98 caused the sea level surrounding Tuvalu to drop just over one foot. The El Nino Southern Oscillation is a natural - as opposed to man-made -future of the Pacific Ocean, as areas of the Pacific periodically warm then cool every few years, causing significant sea level rises and falls every few years in step with the co-oscillations of the ocean and atmosphere. The overall trend discerned from the tide gauge data, according to Wolfgang Scherer, Director of Australia's National Tidal Facility, remains flat. "One definitive statement we can make," states Scherer, "is that there is no indication based on observations that sea level rise is accelerating." Finally, there is the new estimate by scientists at the Centre Nationale d¹Etudes Spatiales who also find that between 1955 and 1996 the sea level surrounding Tuvalu dropped four inches.

The fact is that not only has Tuvalu suffered a sum total of no rise in sea level but it may well have fallen a few inches in the last half century.

So you might conclude that Tuvalu is free from man made influences.

Au contraire, mon ami. It really does have some man made issues. And what might they be?

Basically, the local inhabitants have been excavating sand from the coastline for use as a building material. The result has been that it looks as though the sea level is rising and inundating the place. This was even admitted by Elisala Pita from Tuvalu's Ministry of Natural Resources.

Tuvalu is, in fact, representative of the impact that land use changes are having on micro-climates all over the world. The 'melting' of the snow atop Mt Kilimanjaro is a classic example.

The sooner the scientific world can get back to studying the real impact of land use change instead of trying to pin everything on CO2 so that they can get their research money the better off we'll all be.

In the meantime, though, Tuvalu will keep on keeping on, completely unaffected by all that CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere.

UPDATE: Andrew Bolt has a piece on Melbourne's Age newspaper (Australia's version of The Guardian) using such drivel as the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea as proof of rising sea levels.

(Nothing Follows)