A little tiny delated backdown from extreme climate hype begins
In 2018, a study of aerial photos of 700 Pacific Islands showed that 89% were the same size or growing. This rather destroyed the idea that sea levels were swallowing small nations. The New York Times said nothing. Indeed, the only Pacific things shrinking were deserted sand drifts. No islands bigger than 10 hectares were getting smaller. Measured in square kilometers that’s “0.1”. Despite the media headlines and delegations from Kiribati and Tuvulu begging for money to hold back the tide, no islands with people living on them were shrinking. None, not one island in the Pacific big enough to matter, was disappearing. The largest 630 islands in the Pacific had not being touched by climate change for decades.
In 2023 another study of 1,100 islands came to the same conclusion. To find that many islands they included things as small as one thousandth of a square kilometer — we’re talking about spits of sand 10 meters square. (There are whales larger than that.) The Kench team studied islands in the Indian Ocean too. In one case, they sliced, diced and drilled through one poor island in the Maldives and discovered it had a history like tossed salad. The ocean had churned and turned every part of it.
Now, six years later, the New York Times is catching up on one small part — the Maldives, they admit, are not vanishing like they were supposed to. But the Times are still not saying that the original study came out in 2018, and that hundreds of media stories on sea levels were wrong, out of date and pointless, and all the claims of damage by Pacific Islanders were not just grossly exaggerated but utterly baseless. They’re not saying that all the anxiety that ideological scientists and sloppy journalists have whipped up has probably harmed the very islanders they pretended to care about. They’re not admitting that this must have been obvious to many of the islanders who lived there, surely, but who were happy to milk the fake crisis for all it was worth.
The Vanishing Islands That Failed to Vanish
By Raymond Zhong
Then, not very long ago, researchers began sifting through aerial images and found something startling. They looked at a couple dozen islands first, then several hundred, and by now close to 1,000. They found that over the past few decades, the islands’ edges had wobbled this way and that, eroding here, building there. By and large, though, their area hadn’t shrunk. In some cases, it was the opposite: They grew. The seas rose, and the islands expanded with them.
Scientists have come to understand some but not all of the reasons for this….
And it’s always bad news, even when islands are stable:
Only later did scientists discover a key piece of their more recent history: Swings in sea level, they realized, had drowned and exposed the islands several times through the ages. Which didn’t bode particularly well for them today, now that global warming was causing the oceans’ rise to speed up.
The Times is pretending that the “surprise” here just means that the ocean giveth as much as it taketh away. It’s a bit of subsidence and a bit of churn. The seas, they say, nonsensically are still rising. (Of course). In the world of socialist propaganda, past wild swings in sea level don’t mean that the climate has always changed, and modern swings might be natural too. It just means ominously bad stuff, which… segue into a mention of man-made climate change.
They’re still not asking the sea level experts any hard questions, like, why didn’t you tell us this before, since we’ve had satellites since 1979? Didn’t you notice?
They’re not wondering if the UN knew this years ago and did nothing to inform the world.
The Times doesn’t question the sacred cow of rising sea levels — are the estimates of annual sea level rise really accurate? I mean, if no islands are disappearing, could those satellite estimates be wrong? Why do 1,000 tide gauges show seas are rising only 1mm a year, whereas the satellites say it’s 3mm a year? Is that because the satellite data was calibrated to a falling tide gauge in Hong Kong? Is it true that the raw satellite data showed very little rise in the 1990s, and that a lot of the rise is due to man-made adjustments?
And of course the biggy, the baddest question of all, if the islands are not sinking, the seas are not rising much, so is climate change all bollocks?
REFERENCE
Duvat, V. K. E. (2018). A global assessment of atoll island planform changes over the past decades. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, e557. doi:10.1002/wcc.557
Kench, P.S., Liang, C., Ford, M.R. et al. (2023) Reef islands have continually adjusted to environmental change over the past two millennia. Nat Commun 14, 508 doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36171-2
What’s the angle here?
It won’t be an admission that they deliberately deceived or lied.
Check the timing.
They are setting up a narrative such that they’ll next be able to claim that the White House Resident’s deindustrialisation policies saved the planet from “climate change”.
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This is a fog pumping article, not a narrative shift. The seas here are “still rising”. The crisis is still on.
They are just trying to protect the audience from the red-pill moment when someone tells them about how satellites show 700 Pacific Islands are not sinking. That’s a light-bulb moment they don’t want. It makes them look like a propaganda sheet and seem very incompetent. This way, their duped readers will say Oh I heard something about that. And if they paid attention, it’s the churn of nature that is making up for all the man-made harm.
The 2018 study contained nothing they could use as an excuse, but the 2023 study was wrapped in story of how one island in the maldives was churned and turned. The lead researcher was also tamer, able to be interviewed. It still took them 8 months… They sent the team to the Maldives for two whole weeks to take a gallery of photos so they could package this as a human interest story and distract anyone reading it.
There’s a point where hiding something starts to cost more than pumping out the fog does.
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I often wonder how these so called journalists and editors console themselves with their lies and false reporting. Do they ever ask themselves if they have been conned and in turn they are conning their readers? Do they feel guilty or are they proud of their pathetic efforts to “Save the World”? maybe they should treat themselves to an evening with George Carlin.
https://youtu.be/7W33HRc1A6c
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Australia is sinking.
Under debt, created by our so called governments.
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The only thing they care about, or are proud of is the number on ‘clicks’ they get. How they get them is not important.
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NYT, the cutting edge of journalism.
I certainly hope no one in their news room is allowed to run with scissors.
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but… wordle
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Who cares?
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Maybe they equally distributed the population over the islands.
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Zhong – “now that global warming was causing the oceans’ rise to speed up”
In the computer simulations yes. In the real world no.
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According to Carmel Sepuloni, opposition Labour deputy who has a degree in Education, the storm off Gisborne on Tuesday was all our fault –
‘Climate Change is real and the seas are rising…’
Rain, drought, heat, ex-cyclones, southerly snows, earthquakes, landslides, floods – same as it ever was. Education? Maybe try geology.
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It’s great.
The more high profile “warmers” that make such obvious emotional utterances the better.
When they are so easily “put down” a lot more bystanders can see the truth , finally.
https://joannenova.com.au/2024/06/friday-63/#comment-2777312
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Thanks again Jo for having the guts to always respect the data.
But as I’ve said before even their ABC has been reluctantly admitting the truth over the last year or so.
Andrew Bolt was the first to really hound their ABC about their Coral island SLs BS and fraud until they had to throw in the towel.
The New York times writers are clueless as are so many of the Democrats supporters.
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>Why do 1,000 tide gauges show seas are rising only 1mm a year, whereas the satellites say it’s 3mm a year?
Because the satellite era began at a time when tide guage data was below the historical mean trend.
Obviously if you then begin a relatively short-term linear trend during a period exhibiting less rise than the historical long-term the resulting shorter trend will be steeper.
If the satellite era had begun a decade or so earlier the satellite trend would more closely conform to the tide guages.
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So, at best, satellites measuring sea levels are possibly 550km ( low earth orbit) above the earths surface. They look sideways at the oceans which have waves and in continual motion, yet claim accuracy down to single or sub mm measurements. That’s never made sense to me.
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Would NASA ever tell a lie???
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They appear to claim accuracy of 2.9cm. https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/jpl/major-ocean-observing-satellite-starts-providing-science-data/
That certainly does not appear to support the way the sea level is reported.
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Jo >Why do 1,000 tide gauges show seas are rising only 1mm a year, whereas the satellites say it’s 3mm a year?
Me >Because the satellite era began at a time when tide guage data was below the historical mean trend.
Worth mentioning firstly that tide guage data is relative and satellite data is absolute so tide guage and satellite series are disparate datasets.
Evenso, they can be superimposed (but not concatenated). Any sea level time series that concatenates tide guage and satellite data is bogus.
Example below shows a satellite series imposed on a tide guage series that begins 1900:
Acceleration in the Global Mean Sea Level Rise: 2005–2015
Shuang Yi, Kosuke Heki, An Qian (2017)
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL076129
They show the linear trend for 1900-1993 (tide guage) 1.1 mm/yr and 1993-2015 (satellite and tide guage) 3 mm/yr. These are the trends that Jo references but both of the latter trends are bogus:
Figure 1
Records of (a) GMSL and (b) global mean surface temperature from 1900 to 2015. In Figure 1a, the blue curve is from tide gauges (Church & White, 2011) and the green curve is from satellite altimetry (refer to supporting information). Trends in three different time periods are annotated,…
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/c12e7ff9-e5bb-42bc-a4b0-2f2f53ba8d29/grl56692-fig-0001-m.jpg
If you look at the tide guage data beginning at about 1925 there’s monotonic rise to about 1985 then it dips markedly. This is what I mean by “below the historical mean trend”.
If you then project that 60 yr monotonic rise out to 2015 the 2015 datapoint is still on the 60 yr trend line.
The satellite data however, begins in the post 1985 dip at 1993 and exhibits a relatively sharp rise. Yi et al also begin a new tide guage linear trend at 1993.
Both of these linear trends beginning 1993 either satellite or tide guage are not representative of longer term sea level rise.
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A couple of articles displaying interactive sea level purporting to reveal an “acceleration” in sea level rise:
Explainer: How climate change is accelerating sea level rise
https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-climate-change-is-accelerating-sea-level-rise/
Global sea level rise began accelerating ‘30 years earlier’ than previously thought
https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-sea-level-rise-began-accelerating-30-years-earlier-than-previously-thought/
Problem for both of course is the other “acceleration” in the first half of the century.
The website Tides & Currents has Variation of 50-Year Relative Sea Level Trends:
Variation of 50-Year Relative Sea Level Trends
8518750 The Battery, New York
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?plot=50yr&id=8518750
Variation of 50-Year Relative Sea Level Trends
680-140 Sydney, Fort Denison 1 & 2, Australia
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=680-140
At the bottom of the Fort Dennison page there’s a table of long running tide guages from all over the world.
All of those belie any abnormality in current sea level rise.
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Closest long running HQ tide guage (up to about 1995) to Maldives in the table previous is Mumbai:
500-041 Mumbai/Bombay, India
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?plot=50yr&id=500-041
After graph loads click – Variation Of 50-Year RSL Trends
Might take a while.
The 50 yr trend centred on 1935 was 1.61 mm/yr
The 50 yr trend centred on 1975 was 0.08 mm/yr
The 50 yr trend centred on 1985 was 0.74 mm/yr
Overall trend since the 1870s is 0.97 mm/yr. The quality breaks down after 1995.
Next closest is Fremantle:
680-471 Fremantle, Australia
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?plot=50yr&id=680-471
The 50 yr trend centred on 1940 was 2.43 mm/yr
The 50 yr trend centred on 1970 was 0.56 mm/yr
The 50 yr trend centred on 1995 was 1.93 mm/yr
For both Mumbai and Fremantle the fastest rate of sea level rise was back in the late 1930s.
I don’t think Maldives would be much different.
In other words, any worrysome sea level rise in the Maldives took place over 80 years ago.
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I don’t reference Church et al, I reference Beenstock. He looked at one thousand tide gauges globally, and noted that some were subsiding and some were rising, and instead of trying to adjust it all, he just averaged it all and came up with 1mm a year, which fitted with Nils Axel Morner’s detailed and exacting analysis of scandinavian beaches. Nils found the one beach that was in the middle of the turning plates and the rise was 1.25mm a year.
Nils was at climate conference in about 2003 and one of the IPCC fan club told him they adjusted the satellites to fit the sinking beach of Hong Kong. Obviously, the satellites matched the tide gauges before the adjustment, and afterwards they “matched the ideology”.
” According to Peltier (1998), the zero isobase, which is the reference point for calculating the global isostatic adjustment, passed through Hong Kong, where a single tide gauge gives a sea level rise of 2.3 mm/year relative to the isobase. This is exactly the same as the apparent trend in sea-level rise over the decade 1992-2003 in Fig. 7 . However, this single tide gauge record is an outlier: it is contradicted by the four other records existing in Hong Kong, and obviously represents a site-specific subsidence, a fact well known to local geologists.”
Christopher Monckton writes:
At the Moscow global warming meeting in 2005, in answer to my criticisms about this “correction,” one of the persons in the British IPCC delegation said, “We had to adjust the record, otherwise there would not be any trend.”
https://joannenova.com.au/2012/12/are-sea-levels-rising-nils-axel-morner-documents-a-decided-lack-of-rising-seas/
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My impression is that the pseudo-scientific ritual of estimating the oceanic geoid using satellite sea-level doppler data is only connected to reality by reference to a select few reference tide gauges to give the desired time rate asymptote- with the selection periodically changing to meet the prophetic needs of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Priesthood of Climate Change).
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Richard,
I don’t buy that one.
There should be an equation as a first assumption that
change in ocean level = Y.change in global temperature
That is, the water acts like a thermometer.
Have you ever tried to find the coefficient Y in the IPCC or other literature?
They know there are exceptions to the IPCC story,but they dare not discuss them and say that the value of Y is zero (or whatever). Geoff S
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Geoff >Have you ever tried to find the coefficient Y in the IPCC or other literature? [ocean level = Y.change in global temperature]
Haven’t looked purposefully but I’ve certainly not seen one or even discussion of what you suggest anywhere.
Interesting relation.
They do, however, contort the data in very creative ways to find an “acceleration”. Any acceleration. Anywhere.
Those 2 Carbon Brief articles upthread at #8.2.1 are evidence of that.
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Geoff >Should be an equation…ocean level = Y.change in global temperature
Best way to look at that is the Yi et al Figure 1 at #8.2. Here it is again:
Figure 1
Records of (a) GMSL and (b) global mean surface temperature from 1900 to 2015. …
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/c12e7ff9-e5bb-42bc-a4b0-2f2f53ba8d29/grl56692-fig-0001-m.jpg
The relation you ask for simply does not exist between (a) and (b) i.e. substituted in the relation with Does Not Equal sign:
(a) ≠ Y.change in (b)
Not happening. The 1940s hike in (b) and the “hiatus” in (b) preclude it for starters.
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Is anthropogenic sea level fingerprint already detectable in the Pacific Ocean?
Palanisamy, Meyssignac, Cazenave, and Delcroix (2015)
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/8/084024
But they are hoping it will emerge any day now.
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In Figure 1 of the paper previous there are vast areas of the Eastern Pacific with negative trends up to -4 mm/yr:
Figure 1. (a) Observed altimetry based sea level spatial trend pattern and (b) IPO contributed sea level spatial trend pattern (uniform global mean has been removed) in the Pacific Ocean over 1993–2013. Stippling indicates regions of non-significant trend (p-value > 0.05).
https://content.cld.iop.org/journals/1748-9326/10/8/084024/revision1/erl518509f1_lr.jpg
But you hear about sea level fall in the news.
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So will we still have to put up with the dopey Guterres holding up his pants on the shore of some island because of their fraudulent SL claims?
Let’s hope their UN idiot stops performing this crazy stunt or will the MSM loonies still beg him for another photo opportunity?
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“so is climate change all bollocks?”
The man-made variety yes: the ancient, natural, ebb-and-flow of cold/warm down/up dry/wet has left its mark upon the land – and seas – for all to see [insert favourite parable about ‘blindness’ here]. It all started a long, long time ago and, no, it’s not Original Sin™️.
* opening header ‘delated’ maybe delayed or demented or debauched?
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Yes, delated amused me. I ascribed a version of delayed to it, but earlier resisted commenting about it. 😉
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Belated?
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Typo- first paragraph , last sentence “ were had”?
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The Pacific Islanders will, for financial reasons, refute the news. This is bad news for them as the finance for rising sea levels is about to disappear. Good news for Australian tax payers as there’s now no reason to send them hundreds of millions of our hard earned $$ every year.
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Except the other reason we send them our hard earned tax dollars (with no accountability or audit trail) like $600 million for PNG to play rugby (a bizarre amount of money for a Third World banana republic football team) is so they’ll befriend us rather than the Chicomms. But they’ll play both sides.
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Its small beer and audited, let us keep in good with our neighbours.
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There was an actual “scientific” study done on the islands in the pacific (back in the 60’s)? , the study looked at causes of inundation etc and found that the islands with the biggest problems were caused by coral dredging on the side of the island that fronts the wind and usual storms . Dynamite fishing was also cited as a factor .
During WW2 coral was dredged to make airstrips and allow for ships to get closer to drop off supplies etc , without the reefs absorbing the impact of waves especially during storms this in turn led to inundation .
Unfortunately I can no longer find a link to the study .
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There was also a study that showed one of the islands “under threat” was drawing far too much fresh water from under the island. Basically the island’s population was too high.
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There have been lots of studies done on the Pacific islands. I have links to articles and discussions in 2023, 2021, 2019, 2018 and 2016.
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Some of those temporary WW2 airstrips were also made from soil transported from Queensland, however I can’t find a reference for that.
Here is a list of Pacific Theatre airstrips of WW2.
https://www.ozatwar.com/airfields.htm
You will find that a lot of the islands mentioned will claim inundation due to supposed sea level rise, but it’s just a break up of temporary WW2 airstrips. The locals have long since forgotten there were once airstrips there and built or farmed on the land thinking it was natural land, but now nature is taking over and removing the landfill from these airstrips.
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The new reason will be to keep the Chinese at bay.
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To answer your last question “ .. is climate change bollocks”. Surely that’s a rhetorical question?
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The satellite specs show that their measurement accuracy cannot achieve measurements at the millimetre level. Added to that, they whizz by at around 3300 metres up from the surface. How they could be expected to provide measurements with millimetre accuracy just doesn’t make sense.
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Sorry, the correct orbit height is 1336 kms for Sentinel-6.
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Thanks for that – so 1 part in 1 336 000 000 measured. Stanley would be envious to make such an accurate measurement!
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The Sentinel-6 measurement accuracy is quoted as “combined standard uncertainty is 3.6cm for LR-ALT-NRT products and 3.35cm for HR-ALT-NRT products”.
NRT: Near Real Time
ALT: Altimetry
LR: Low Resolution
HR: High Resolution
A comment was attached to this info, advising that standard uncertainty should be notated as +/-.
Its predecessor, Jason 3, had an accuracy of 3.8cm. No accuracy data for Jason 1 or Jason 2.
See discussion WUWT, 31 March 2022.
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3300 metres up? Try 600 000 metres then you are claiming mm accuracy with a measurement so 1 part in 600 000 000 – sounds compleatly legit. Once you understand how NASA can tell the worlds biggest lie and pull off multibillion dollar hoaxes the CC clown show.
P.S. due to the oblateness of the earth the orbit of a satellite can vary 30 Km in height that is 30 000 000 times the supposed sensitivity of a millimetre measurement.
A common argument is ” So you know more than scientists?” to which I enthusiastically agree- the wise man knows when a foolish corrupted scientist is spraying bluff- it is EASY to point out that WHICH CAN NOT BE KNOWN.
P.S.S. Do you think our political leaders who are talking down “Nookulaar” energy were ever taught about the hydrogen nuclear fusion reactor that drives our climate?
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I am sure that no scientist ever thought of this before you mentioned it.
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The Klimate Alarmists might have thought of it, but perhaps they felt it was too complex to try to explain to the vulgar masses?
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But Sixty Minutes says the Maldives is drowning!
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Then they went and built another 2-3 airports…
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See my post at Number 26. 60 minutes are just a load of Alarmists. Just like all of the ‘Gases for the Masses’ alleged News.
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There’s another view. When you have volcanic islands being formed overnight, no one is surprised. But they can vanish quite quickly, in a hundred years. There are lots of these vanishing islands, some well documnted North of Papua. Others leave a ring of coral which has been measured at 3.5Km tall/deep because in the atom bomb tests in Bimini, the US engineers drilled to the bottom. Coral all the way. Coral can only live just under the ocean surface and as the mountain sinks, the ring keeps growing up and therefore down. Charles Darwin drew this conclusion on his voyage. It’s obvious.
The Maldives are also a phenomenon. It should strike anyone that it is odd that the island are close to exactly at sea level. What’s the chance of that? After all the world’s oceans have risen 150 metres after the last ice age. Even half of Bangladesh (population 250 million) is within 1 1/2feet, 0.5 metres of sea level. How is that possible? Off a continental shelf, the average sea depth is 3.5km! And you still get places/islands/coral atolls within a metre or two? Otherwise there is nothing.
The fact is that the islands are there because they follow sea level, often growing coral and then sand, made from the same coral, on the top. Dumped by ocean activity, storms. Often a product of the coral chomping Crown of Thorns Star fish which Malcolm Turnbull’s now personal gift $444million was going to stop.
Humans are very new to most islands, keep digging holes, pumping fresh water from the coral and causing subsidence. If there is a threat to the thousands of now inhabited islands, it is human habitation. Not rising oceans.
And in the case of the Maldives, they have finished constructing 7 new airports for tourists. So what do the Maldives people believe? It’s pretty obvious.
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And for those who think the Maldives exist by luck, consider the diving. “The Maldives offer a wide range of extraordinary Diving sites. The Ocean that surrounds the archipelago can reach a depth of 4000 meters.” And the Maldives have an elevation of 1.5 metres. What’s the chance of that?
I never thought of Charles Darwin as a genius. But he changed the world by being incredibly inquisitive and always asked the question, why is that? Often the answers were just in front of everyone. But he used rational science, logic based on fact, not religion, even though he was very troubled by his conclusions and feared the reaction of the Church.
The question Charles Darwin would ask himself of the Maldives is why are all the sandy islands there in the first place, just 1.5 metres out of the water? And a thousand of them. After all, they could as easily be 1.5 metres under the water and just shoals. Answer that question and you would understand why sea level rise is not a problem.
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” even though he was very troubled by his conclusions and feared the reaction of the Church.”
It is likely he feared his wife even more, she was a religious zealot.
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I find the sea level debate hysterical . Measuring sea levels by the millimeter is like global temperature averages rising by fractions of a degree . When sea levels rise they have an increased surface area and this will change the rate along with the expansion (and contraction) due to temperature . Other factors including geologic changes and absorbed gasses too . As Jo says “Bollocks” .
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It’s a little like the 51 US Security experts who signed a statement that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian Disinformation. It achieved its purpose. Biden was elected. Now they are completely unapologetic. Fraud? Of course. But they are retired so they don’t care.
The same with the Maldives. It is one of many narratives to scare people into agreeing to blow up working power stations, rip into National parks and force countries to give up making steel, as Britain has done. (they can only melt it now). What a triumph for the UN and China and their Media allies.
Did they lie? Of course. Now they can admit it. The damage is done, the objective achieved. And the world is now controlled by Carbon Taxes and crippling power shortages and the UN and China and WEF are triumphant.
And the media are happy. Who cares that it was all lie. Like poor George Pell. A victim of the ABC and their harpies. The High Court found 7 to 0 that there was no case to answer, no evidence at all. Does he get even a posthumous apology? Of course not. Assange is their hero.
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I don’t understand how this is even an issue. I learnt in high school Geography almost 50 years ago about islands rising with sea level changes.
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I really enjoyed the ease and dexterity with which Tucker Carlson sliced and diced the Australian Press contingent who dared to launch impertinent and less than honest “gotcha” questions at Clive Palmer funded Freedom Conference. And Marjory Taylor Green similarly decapitated Sarah Ferguson
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“Climate Change” is causing coastal land to sink at the same time as sea levels are rising.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/12/coastal-land-is-sinking-doubling-the-potential-damage-of-rising-seas.html#:
https://www.realestate.com.au/news/bill-and-melinda-gates-buy-6685-million-oceanfront-home-in-california/
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Will these sinking nations have to hand back the money they got?
Didn’t think so.
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I dont know JC2. Did they actually receive any money in the first place? Was it all just theatre? At best, they might have got Payment in Kind.
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A lot of the tourists are there for the swimming and diving. They make their living from being at sea level. So does Venice.
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Venice is sinking into the swamp. The sea level is not rising. Fact check. YES.
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Venice made two major mistakes. First was to allow dredging of the existing gaps in the barrier islands, and also to open up new deeper channels in these islands to allow larger ships to come into the nearby container port.
The second major mistake was to permit large water withdrawals from underground. I believe this process was stopped when they realised that it was causing some areas in Venice to sink.
The combination of opening up the barrier channels, causing more flooding at peak tides, and sinking due to fresh water removals caused most of their problems. Nothing to do with SLR.
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IIRC a lot of the buildings are based on wooden pile stabilised areas. The wood might be getting a bit sus too?
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Another thing affecting Venice is when there is a low pressure gradient over the Northern Adriatic it pushes up the sea levels also a southerly wind will shove water northwards thus raising the levels in St Marks Square which they tout as sea level rise.
I was there in 2008 and the water level was more than a meter below the pavement in the square.
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What? UNPOSSIBLE! Why, just a couple of months ago some random YouTuber went to the Marshall Islands and stood in the ocean and said the entire archipelago was going to be sunken beneath the waves within his lifetime. It was in a video, so it must be true!
Or something.
But yeah, I got a good chuckle out of it when he said that.
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At least when Trump was asked during The Debate how he was going to stop the seas from rising and the ever increasing frequency and severity of storms etc he didn’t even attempt to answer the question! Now that’s a positive.
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Tripadvisor here. Hello. The place is not under water.
https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/SmartDeals-g293953-Maldives-Hotel-Deals.html
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That ought to be worth a headline somewhere that
“The New York Times admits to being behind the times”
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I rushed to post a comment to the NYT article, and managed to get this off before the 24-hour window closed.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/26/climate/maldives-islands-climate-change.html#permid=134219476
The Times has gotten pretty picky about comments lately, and most of mine don’t make it through the many layers of censorship. Two previous versions, both of which were mild and factual, didn’t make it.
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Jo, have you come across the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis by Javier Vinós? Yet another climate thinker who is a scientist in another field (neurobiology in this case).
The tropics are cooler and the poles warmer than they would be in the absence of the atmosphere. So the atmosphere (and wind-driven sea surface) conveys thermal energy from the equator to the poles. But the poles do not get continually warmer so, since energy is neither created nor destroyed, it must depart from the poles. It is radiated away into space – mainly in winter, when polar regions receive no sunlight yet remain well above absolute zero temperature. This energy is a significant fraction of the solar energy that reaches the earth at lower latitudes, and is responsible for all weather – but the IPCC does not treat vertical energy flux in the atmosphere correctly, let alone horizontal.
Anything that provides more heating at lower latitudes than higher will cause the atmosphere and oceans to shift energy to the poles, from which it is radiated away. The strongest differential is the increasing obliquity of the earth’s surface to solar radiation at higher latitudes. Another is the greenhouse effect due to water vapour (however strong that is!), since the tropical atmosphere is damp and the polar atmosphere is dry. But anything that affects the flow of energy across latitudes is liable to cause climate change. That can include plate tectonics opening and closing ocean channels on a timescale of tens of millions of years; several factors that change the earth’s orbit slightly on a timescale of tens of thousands of years; solar cycles; and changes in oceanic flows. Vinós uses these to argue that energy flow across latitudes explains pre-industrial climate changes.
https://judithcurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Vinos-CPPF2022.pdf
This might be a gamechanger.
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And there is a negative feedback mechanism in action when Arctic sea ice melts. Ice surface temperatures are colder than the open sea surface. The ‘warmer’ water will radiate considerably more, following the 4th power of the absolute temperature ratios.
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[…] From JoNova […]
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Maldives Arrests Climate Change Minister for Performing ‘Black Magic’ on President
https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2024/06/28/maldives-arrests-climate-change-minister-for-performing-black-magic-on-president/
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