Kiribati man loses his appeal for ‘climate refugee’ status in New Zealand
Submitted by Eric Worrall
While predictions of millions of climate refugees have been rather wide of the mark, like most climate model predictions, it is wrong to state there are no climate refugees.
In fact, there has been one climate refugee. And, he just lost his appeal.
Ioane Teitiota, 37, lost his Court of Appeal case against a tribunal decision refusing him refugee status in New Zealand.
The tribunal described Mr. Teitiota’s case as “fundamentally misconceived”.
Mr. Teitiota is likely to be deported back to Kiribati, despite his claim that throughout the case, there has been ‘passive persecution’ from the inability of the Kiribati government to protect the right to life of Mr Teitiota and his children.” (presumably from the dangers of climate change and sea level rise). [They have not] ruled out appealing the decision to New Zealand’s Supreme Court.
If that fails, he says, they may consider taking the case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva.
Mr Teitiota has been living in New Zealand with his wife and New Zealand-born children since 2007.
Full story: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-12/an-kiribati-man-loses-climate-change-refugee-appeal/5447170
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We’ve heard about the claims that sea level rise is “inundating” Kiribati. A cursory check of the tide gauge there shows the data since 1974:
The Tide Gauge Data plot for Christmas Island, part of Kiribati, magnified:
![1371_high[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/1371_high1.png?quality=75)
Source: University of Hawii http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/1371.php
The most recent data is about the same as in 1975 ~7100mm – essentially no change. There is a very slight positive trend in the data, about 0.36mm/yr but that is likely an artifact of endpoints. Given the ENSO related variability (see the big spike in 1998, the year of the super El Niño and another in 2010, also an El Niño year) that slight trend could change with the next set of measurements.
Thanks Eric. You have very interesting info, and keep at it.
As Willis, Chris De Freitas and others keep explaining, it is a population problem, not something that can be called AGW or CC.
Too many people, too little land above sea level.
Question:
Why does sea level rise in an El Nino year? Isn’t the ocean giving up a lot of heat to the atmosphere, especially around that region, so should it not fall (a tiny bit) ? Is it a wind direction thing ?
Champagne wishes and Caviar dreams.
Ha ha
It’s strange, you’d think that the NZ govt. and justice system, having given carte blanche to their weather service to misreport weather data to inflate evidence of global warming would be ready accept the “refugees” they have created.
Perhaps the tribunal is telling Mr. Teitiota that the claim Kiribati is threatened is “fundamentally misconceived”. Otherwise his claim seems to make sense.
Coastal tidal stations data are affected by sea level changes, land rise and fall, and the sea level changes may be affected, presumably for months on end, by wind direction and force. Thus if a strong east wind blows, water levels will tend to rise on coasts to the west, and fall to the east. There could be also effects from air pressure fluctuations, though I would not be certain how permanent these could be to make a noticeable effect on the data.
Willis Eschenbach has posited – on a thread now closed to further comment (April 23), that you could take a lake – where water level would normally be calm, use this as a reference point for GPS height determination, and thus have a fixed height from which all other satellite height data could be calibrated. This in turn should enable all tide gauges to be corrected for land rising or falling.
However, earlier in the same thread he produced a graph showing 95% confidence intervals as a function of length of observations.
This raises two questions:
1. Can it be certain that the height of the initial reference point is not changing. Suppose that the reference point is at a lake in Switzerland. As I understand it, the north African plate is moving north and colliding with the Euro-Asian plate. If so, the Alps must be raised due to the compression from the two colliding plates. I suppose a site in Central Australia or Mid West USA might be exempt from this problem?
2. The debasement of the GPS system was only switched off during the First Gulf War to enable the Allied military forces to use commercial GPS. That being the case, precision GPS has only been available for about 25 years. The confidence levels given by Willis for 25 years observations appeared to be about plus or minus 2 mm. The graph above does not appear to have any significant trend, but the data vary from about 6920 mm to 7450 mm, a range of 530 mm during the near 40 year period. With a range this size, what would one need to be assured that there was a significant trend – the 2 mm posited by Willis, or something rather larger?
From my loving wife, when she saw my post “Quick, send him a wind turbine…”
🙂
The judgement summary included:
” The appellant raised an argument that the international community itself was tantamount to the “persecutor” for the purposes of the Refugee Convention. This completely reverses the traditional refugee paradigm. Traditionally a refugee is fleeing his own government or a non-state actor from whom the government is unwilling or unable to protect him. Thus the claimant is seeking refuge within the very countries that are allegedly “persecuting” him.”
Leave to appeal was dismissed.
“If that fails, he says, they may consider taking the case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva.”
I recall an old saying by Samuel Johnson about “the last refuge of a scoundrel”.
The United Nations have evidently assumed that role.
philincalifornia says:
Why does sea level rise in an El Nino year? Isn’t the ocean giving up a lot of heat to the atmosphere, especially around that region, so should it not fall (a tiny bit) ? Is it a wind direction thing ?
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Good question. NOAA animations show increased zonal winds ( NS, SN direction) towards the equator during El Nino events, as well as a ridge of higher sea level across most of the equatorial Pacific. Kiribati is almost on the equator near the international data line.Pretty much bang in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
What is interesting is the large, sudden drop just after. Each time there seems to be a steady build up then sudden drop. A massive drop of 0.5m after 1998 El Nino.
And a steady downward trend since 2003. No one’s going to be drowning any time soon due to rising sea levels “as the world warms”.
Apparently. if mean sea level is rising. it’s all piling up mid ocean somewhere, where satellites measure it and not on the coast where it affect people. Cool.
It is just so absurd to talk about the “threat” of sea level rise in the language of millimeters. As Bob Tisdale has shown in his writings, sea levels in the Pacific basin vary by as much as a half-meter (500 mms) between El Nino events.
Mr. Teitiota may have cause for concern. I would not want my family exposed to a Pacific storm in a hut perched a few feet above sea level. So why did he move there? New Zealand’s finding that this is a case “fundamentally misconceived” is right on.
“Apparently. if mean sea level is rising. it’s all piling up mid ocean somewhere, where satellites measure it and not on the coast where it affect people.”
It’s all in the deep ocean, far from sensing apparatus. The same special magic place where the hidden heat is being kept.
Look at the case of Tivula, they were crying and wailing at Coperhagen, their island was sinking under rising sea level rises. All our fault. They approached the Aust and NZ government demanding they take them not as refugees but automatic citizens and train them for jobs. Economic refugees, They eventually sort compensation from the UNCCF but the criteria was too complicated for them to apply. Oh yes? i wonder why?
We have plenty of room for him here in northern Canada, however I believe he would be more than willing to return to his “submerged” island by about November.
Bill Parsons says:
May 12, 2014 at 9:44 pm
Mr. Teitiota may have cause for concern. I would not want my family exposed to a Pacific storm in a hut perched a few feet above sea level. So why did he move there? New Zealand’s finding that this is a case “fundamentally misconceived” is right on.
No, he didn’t move there, he was born there, he moved to New Zealand, overstayed his visa, married, had children here, and does not want to go back
Quite frankly, I agree with him, but to try to use AGW as an excuse is, as the Appeal Court ruled, he wants to move to the countries he cites as the cause of his distress.
A lot of the Pacific atolls are over populated, they have killed all the parrot fish, the reefs are slowly being killed, not by AGW, but by neglect. They are like a tall hedge on your property, if it is not kept pruned on a regular basis, it becomes straggly, and starts to die back
Willis has written extensively on this, along with him, I have lived in the Solomons, Rarotonga, and Samoa. I have found nothing in what Willis writes that runs counter to reality.
All the handwaving, the screams of desperation will not stop reality. All of the Atolls are over populated, and unfortunately modern life has caused this. It is not so long ago that child mortality on most of the atolls approached 90%, so families had lots of children, for a short time, then the children died, and only the fittest survived.
#9 Hospital in Honiara, when I was there in 2009/2010, had an infant mortality rate of 80%, the adult mortality rate was not a lot higher for the native population. Mainly because of distance, it might take 3 – 5 days to get to hospital, after waiting 3 – 5 days to wonder if hospital was necessary
I’m sorry for Mr. Teitiota, but if he had done what the majority of people from the Pacific Islands do in New Zealand and register, apply for citizenship, he would not be in the position he is.
We have plenty of room for him here in northern Canada, however I believe he would be more than willing to return to his “submerged” island by about November. Brrrrrr
All of the peaks on the Kiribati chart match up with the peaks of the MEI. You can also see the influence of the La Ninas on the lows, although the size of the Nina does not always correspond to the depth of the drop in sea level. Looks like other mitigating influences moderate the Ninas. There is also a distinct pattern in the Kiribati graph, which looks like it may have entered into a new phase around 2005 from the preceding 30 years.
Why is Kiribati linked to Christmas Island? Christmas Island is in the Indian Ocean near Indonesia and Kiribati is in the Nth Pacific Ocean near Hawaii
Filtering out the spiles, the effect of El Nino is several years of lower sea level. Ignoring those events there has been a general downward trend since early 1980’s
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=940
If there’s another strong El Nino now they will hbe having to drag thier boats hundreds of yards across bear, exposed coral to go fishing. It’s worse than we thought.
Ok Ignore my comment above. I just found that the main Island of Kiribati is also called Christmas Island.
Cargo! We went through all the steps to receive cargo. We faithfully observed the process. As it had been demonstrated to us.
We built the airfield. We built the control tower. We stared at the skies. We constructed magic boxes, and ceremonially spoke to them with directions to our islands. We made headsets out of coconut halves. We waved paddles made from palm fronds.
The cargo failed to arrive. Ergo, we will now demand to emigrate to countries whose sky gods do deliver them cargo. Cargo!
Looks like there has been almost no change in almost 40 years. Certainly not the doomsday predictions that all fuss has been made about. We have seen predictions of 9-90 metres from the alarmists for 2100, The reality is closer to 2mm per year or 180mm rise by 2100, not the 9,000 to 90,000 mm predicted by the alarmists. Couple of zeroes added for good measure perhaps? Given we are about to enter a cooling period, the real rise could easily be just 90mm(if that), meaning the doomsayers are out by a factor of 100-1,000. To be out by a factor of 1,000 when an error factor of 2 is probably acceptable is not just gross incompetence, it is deliberate misrepresentation. Given the stakes involved with the misrepresentation, the punishments meted out should rightfully reflect the degree of distortion ie the punishment should be 100-1,000 times worse than what is normally handed out for scientific fraud.Perhaps those charged with meting out the punishment can add a couple of zeroes themselves.
Yes I made the same mistake, Steve, the difference is, ‘the’ Christmas Island was occupied by the British in the late 40s and 50s (I knew an RAF officer who had been posted there) and they conducted nuclear tests there. Well I didn’t think they had any indigenous islanders there, we live and learn. He must have had a lousy prosecuting lawyer.
“Ergo, we will now demand to emigrate to countries whose sky gods do deliver them cargo. Cargo!”
Cargo and coconuts !
Just Google that island most of the occupants have been encouraged to emigrate from the Gilbert island and is now considered over populated. There are more cars there now than people in 1958. Just Google ‘Christmas Island and British nuclear tests’ The Americans conducted tests too there for a short while in 1962. It is certainly not sinking.