Told ya so. In I Feel a FAIL Coming On – Will Tuvalu Survive ‘Super moon’? Andi Cockroft pointed out that there was the usual media disaster hype, and the reality of what perigee moons actually do to affect tides, which isn’t much.
A “super-moon” will be a novelty for New Zealanders on Sunday, but for the 12,000 people of Tuvalu it is a foreboding practice for a future where rising seas make their homeland uninhabitable.
On Monday and Tuesday super-moon king tides will leave much of the capital atoll of Funafuti virtually below sea-level.
Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/6858916/Super-moon-bad-news-for-Tuvalu
But the sea level/supermoon tide reality reported today sure didn’t match the hype earlier this week. In fact, it was a total predictive failure.
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10804057
FAIL with a cherry on it. .3 meter lower than tides in the spring that they weren’t hyping.
For why Tuvalu won’t succumb to sea level rise, read this: Floating Islands
And their own government doesn’t even believe the sea level alarm, because they are building new airports and resorts: Tuvalu and many other South Pacific Islands are not sinking, claims they are due to global warming driven sea level rise are opportunistic.
Follow the money. h/t to WUWT commenter “inversesquare“.
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Propaganda at it’s finest:)….
So long as not too many people run to one side of the island, they should be fine.
“No one was swept away but sea-water flooded the compost pits in which people have been growing their root crops for centuries.”
So… if they have been growing in these flood-prone pits for centuries, where’s the problem? F’gawds sake, kiwi journos – THINK!
What will it take??? What will it take to convince the unbelievers, the skeptics, the deniers?
Well, actually, anything. But they’ve got exactly NOTHING.
they don,t tell you that a lot of these islands are sinking naturally
How come no one is pointing out that the moon goes through perigee, and gets this close once every orbit?
Dennis Cox,
Someone pointed it out, but I can’t remember where. The difference is that perigee this month coincided with a full moon.
Funny. No secret gasses involved, no covert emails out of context, just simple physics. Known planet masses, known tidal effects…. very clean mechanics with no obscure feedbacks, and they can’t get it right.
If the alarmists can’t even get something relatively as simple as some gravitational forces, please, someone, explain to me why the alarmists should be believed when they talk about a complex chaotic system with both positive and negative feedbacks, involving physics AND chemistry??
….. Or have we passed the tipping point, and global warming is warping the laws of physics now?
“No one was swept away but sea-water flooded the compost pits…”
I know that in some places an incoming tide can be perilous, but that’s not the rule by any stretch. In researching it a tad, I ran across this story which is really alarming I suppose, but more in an “ashamed to be human” sort of way.
The fifth picture is amazing!
Such incompetent photoshopping.
“It’s a damn wall. Level doesn’t work that way!”
Be scared not.
Yes, But the fact that it’s reflecting more light doesn’t have anything to do with the moon’s gravitational pull on the Earth at perigee. In fact, during a full moon the Earth is between the sun, and the Moon. And the highest tides happen when the moon is at perigee and on the same side of the Earth as the sun. In other words, the highest tides of the year always happen on the darkest nights.
@Dennis Yes, But the fact that it’s reflecting more light doesn’t have anything to do with the moon’s gravitational pull on the Earth at perigee.
Exactly, plus all the rest of what you penned. Full moon, bfd.
Yesterday I/my super catastrophe model made the easiest prediction in the world, Now do I get some of that global warming grant money?
DaveG says:
May 5, 2012 at 6:21 pm
As I breathlessly write this Tuvalu and surrounding Atoll isles only have only 6 hrs left before the evil super moon destroys all in it’s deadly gravity grip. I won’t sleep tonight worrying about the Tuvaluanees. Where will they store the $billions in global warming guilt money from the western taxpayers with the Banks and island banksters underwater!
/ Sarc off
Seriously tomorrow will dawn the ocean will be the same depth as yesterday and the sun will shine as usual on the doom, gloom and the users on Tuvalu and the egg on their face warmers!
Mike Jowsey,
if our Kiwi journos, or any others for that matter, stopped to think about it they’d realize that there was nothing sensational in it so they would have to go and invent something else to sell their fish’n’chip wrappers with!
The worst part about it is, no matter what we do or say here there will always be a big group of extremely gullible people who also won’t take the time to think about it or ask the right questions. That is human nature and that is what we are dealing with. Going by the hits on this site those people are more and more in the minority. If only we could convince the politicians that it is the case!
Cheers
Coops
It is no bfd for tides, but if you live in the country, away from city lights, the last few nights have been spectacularly bright. Eerie if one has never experienced it. GK
I have to say that since I’ve moved to the Southern Hemisphere (and I love it here) that the local media is particularly prone to Greenish Warmism. When the rest of the world has watched Carbon Trading fail miserably, the Labor Gov in Australia is just about to implement a carbon tax.
I hate to say it but I think we’re a bit behind the times down here!
The good news for Tuvalu and other low elevation islands is that by analyzing the two-way transit time of pulsed laser beams aimed at retroreflectors placed on the surface of the moon by NASA, astronomers have determined that the moon is steadily receding from the earth by about 4 centimeters per year. Although the effect on the tides is miniscule in our lifetimes, the effect is cumulative.
The bad news is that it will take over 20,000 years from the present day until the moon has receded sufficiently to lower the tides by an amount sufficient to have an impact on inhabited low elevation islands.
A good analogy to the steady increase in the moon’s average orbital radius would be a clock that gains 3 milliseconds per year. After 20,000 years, without any adjustments, the clock will have gained 60 seconds.
The big question is who or what will be around 20,000 years in the future to benefit from this?
Hopefully it doesn’t tip over. Do we have an army base there? :/
DJ says:
May 6, 2012 at 8:15 pm
“Funny. No secret gasses involved, no covert emails out of context, just simple physics. Known planet masses, known tidal effects…. very clean mechanics with no obscure feedbacks, and they can’t get it right.”
DJ:
I don’t know if they have any physists or other hard science types left in the NZ govt research organizations. The rush has been to “community based”, social science, environmental science and other such leftists posing as real scientists. They are mostly activists and hard core leftists just as are they in the UK Met, USA NASA, NOAA, USGS, Etc. San.
Today I’m feeling like a bear of very little brain…but doesn’t the moon hit perigee at some point of every month? Surely the only thing this time was that it almost coincided with Full-moon giving us a spectacular show.
‘king tides will get you every time.
Talk about stuff and nonsense. All the Bay area radio and TV “news” stories said the moon would be 15% bigger and 30% brighter.
I don’t know about you, but when someone tells me that it means “than last night” or “than tomorrow night.
Even the Volvo ocean Race boats now zipping through the Bahamas on their way to Miami, got into the mega hype, saying that the moon was so bright that they didn’t need the strobe lights to illuminate the sails (so they can trim them for optimum performance). Like they didn’t notice the damn moon was just as bright the night before, and will be just as bright tonight; just not quite round.
These idiots don’t seem to know anything about orbital mechanics, and just how very slightly elliptical, the moon and earth orbits actually are.
2.9 metres! HAH! High tide today at 06:40 gmt was 7.4 metres.
“inversesquare says:
May 6, 2012 at 7:12 pm
Propaganda at it’s finest:)….”
Yeah. That pretty much sums it up.
The NZ Herald has lost the plot when it comes to the amount of utter drivel it passes off as Climate Change stories. You’d think the MSM would give it up re Tuvalu and sea levels rises because its NOT a major real issue only in AGW/CC Fantasyland!
Having said that. I suppose you can’t expect anything better from the NZ Herald. Since its part of the Fairfax Media which have investments in Earth Hour organisation!
“”””” nnis Cox says:
May 6, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Yes, But the fact that it’s reflecting more light doesn’t have anything to do with the moon’s gravitational pull on the Earth at perigee. In fact, during a full moon the Earth is between the sun, and the Moon. And the highest tides happen when the moon is at perigee and on the same side of the Earth as the sun. In other words, the highest tides of the year always happen on the darkest nights. “””””
No way Jose, the new moon and full moon tides are the same on average. There are two tidaal bulges; one on each side of the earth, and it diesn’t matter which side the sun and moon are on, given that you have a certain sun distance and a certain moon distance for the two cases of full moon and new moon.
Time to re-examine why there are tides at all Dennis.
George E. Smith says:
May 6, 2012 at 10:48 pm
“No way Jose, the new moon and full moon tides are the same on average. There are two tidaal bulges; one on each side of the earth, and it diesn’t matter which side the sun and moon are on, given that you have a certain sun distance and a certain moon distance for the two cases of full moon and new moon.”
Not well thought out, neither was Dennis’ comment. The Earth has a natural oceanic bulge centred on the equator, The Moon and Sun tidal bulges are superimposed on this, but at different angles to the plane of the equator. The two tidal bulges aren’t exactly symmetrical, they’re highest in the direction of the Moon & Sun, most pronounced for the much larger Moon bulge. This is because the Moon doesn’t rotate around the centre of the Earth, both rotate around their common centre of gravity, which is some distance away from Earth’s centre, and the mass of water offsets the monthly wobble the Earth experiences. When the Moon is closer, its bulge is higher, and at full Moon it’s aligned with the Sun’s tidal bulge. This is the time of spring tides, and the Moon’s perigee magnifies the effect when it coincides with a spring tide, the “Supermoon”.