Hoo boy, government bureaucratic idiocy at its finest. Not only is the original claim bogus, the attempts to disappear it are hilariously inept. Apparently, they’ve never heard of Google Cache at the UN. Rather than simply say “we were wrong”, they’ve now brought even more distrust onto the UN.
Back on April 11th, Gavin Atkins of Asian Correspondent asked this simple question:
What happened to the climate refugees?
It is a valid question, and he backs it up with census numbers. Here’s the first part of his story:
==============================================================
In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010. These people, it was said, would flee a range of disasters including sea level rise, increases in the numbers and severity of hurricanes, and disruption to food production.
The UNEP even provided a handy map. The map shows us the places most at risk including the very sensitive low lying islands of the Pacific and Caribbean.
It so happens that just a few of these islands and other places most at risk have since had censuses, so it should be possible for us now to get some idea of the devastating impact climate change is having on their populations. Let’s have a look at the evidence:
Nassau, The Bahamas – The 2010 national statistics recorded that the population growth increased to 353,658 persons in The Bahamas. The population change figure increased by 50,047 persons during the last 10 years.
The island-nation of Saint Lucia recorded an overall household population increase of 5 percent from May 2001 to May 2010 based on estimates derived from a complete enumeration of the population of Saint Lucia during the conduct of the recently completed 2010 Population and Housing Census.
Population 2002, 81755
Population 2010, 88311
The latest Solomon Islands population has surpassed half a million – that’s according to the latest census results.
It’s been a decade since the last census report, and in that time the population has leaped 100,000.
=========================================================
After Asian Correspondent posted the story on April 11th, it was picked up by news outlets around the world such as Investor News, American Spectator and was cited in the Australian newspaper. It was also a report on Fox News.
Since that story appeared, the “handy map” he cites in his original story, which has this URL:
http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/fifty-million-climate-refugees-by-2010
…seems to be gone down the memory hole. This is what you get now, note my yellow highlight:
Only one small problem there UN people, a little annoyance called Google cache, which has that page archived here.
It pulls up this page that had been removed, with the 50 million refugees title, but the map is missing. Click to enlarge.
Fear not dear readers, because as astoundingly smart as those UN people think they are, they forgot one very important yet tiny detail. The map links to a hi-resolution version of the “climate refugee map” and if you delete the page above and the map it contains, you also have to delete the hi-res image it links to.
http://maps.grida.no/library/files/storage/11kap9climat.png
Ooops.
I’m always happy to help the UN in times of “need”, sooooo I’ve recovered it and saved it here on WUWT, because that image link is likely to go down the memory hole on Monday.
Here’s the map at web resolution as it would have appeared in the disappeared web page above.
And here it is in full sized hi-resolution glory, suitable for printing, slides, or coffee mugs…wherever it might be appropriate to show the folly of these boneheads. Click the link for the hi-res image:
11kap9climat.png 3012 x 1699 pixels PNG (577K)
And there you have it folks, another bogus climate claim rubbished by reality, followed by an inept cover up attempt.
Thanks to the reality of census numbers, followed by the UN’s handling of this, we can now safely say that the claim is “climate refugees” is total fantasy. Be sure to leave comments on any website that makes this claim, and link to this and the Asian Correspondent website.
Kudos to Gavin Atkins for asking this simple question after 6 years of this fantasy being used to push an agenda
UPDATE: A couple of commenters asked for the source of the predictions. Happy to oblige. This is what the UNEP web page originally said and the author cited:
| Sources | Norman Myers, ‘Environmental refugees, An emergent security issue’, 13. Economic forum, Prague, OSCE, May 2005 ; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005 ; Liser, 2007. |
| Link to web-site | http://www.agassessment.org/ |
| Cartographer/
Designer |
Emmanuelle Bournay |
| Appears in | IAASTD – International assessment of agricultural science and technology for development |
| Published | 2008 |
UPDATE2: The goal posts are already being moved, now it is 2020 instead of 2010, see below.
And here’s the source of this new goal post, an announcement at the AAAS meeting in February:
Which a compliant media has bloviated all over the net, as if this new bogosity is somehow better than the old one. The professor who made that new 10 years hence claim, UCLA’s Cristina Tirado, has a public web page at UCLA here.
I’ve sent her this message tonight:
Dear Professor Tirado,
It appears that the original claim made by the UN of 50 million climate refugees by 2010 has been proven totally false by a simple census count. UNEP has already removed the claim from their website. See this story: http://wp.me/p7y4l-9T0
At AAAS in Feburary, you made a nearly identical claim, but simply 10 years into the future. On what basis did you make this claim, and in light of the failed prediction and removal by UNEP of the old claim, are you prepared to retract the new 2020 refugee claim you made here: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jnW80NlFZ259UCgMAHSd3ekHutiQ?docId=CNG.aa651167cd0af745b3cb395cf1d402e3.c41
Millions of readers await your response at WUWT. Thank you for your consideration.
Anthony Watts
UPDATE3: Reader Andrew30 provides the linkage of this farce to the main body of the UN, not just the UNEP as some have complained.
General Assembly, 8 July 2008
GA/10725
Sixty-second General Assembly
Informal Meeting on Climate Change and Most Vulnerable Countries (AM)
Statements
SRGJAN KERIM, President of the General Assembly, opened the discussion by saying that 11 of the last 12 years had ranked among the 12 warmest since the keeping of global temperature records had begun in 1850. Two points were significant: that climate change was inherently a sustainable-development challenge; and that more efforts than ever before must be exerted to enable poor countries to prepare for impacts because it had been estimated that there would be between 50 million and 200 million environmental migrants by 2010.
Panel Discussion
The Assembly then held a panel discussion moderated by author and journalist Eugene Linden. The panellists were Reid Basher, Senior Coordinator at the Secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction; Ian Noble, Senior Climate Change Specialist at the World Bank; and Veerle Vandeweerd, Director of the Environment and Energy Group at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Source: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2008/ga10725.doc.htm
UPDATE4: In comments, there’s a suggestion that I’m laying claim to “first discovery”. I’m not, nor did I. This path of discovery that I learned today from various bits and pieces in email and posts is helpful.
Gavin Atkins was the first to call attention to the expired UN claim, he also highlighted the Google cache issue saying “However, if you are quick, you may yet be able to download a copy via google cache here.” …which I followed and was able to find and recover the high-res map myself and made my own screen caps. I found out Monday morning that Gatkins got the cache issue from Aaron Worthing here, who got it from his commenter “Carlos” – so it is Carlos who actually deserves credit for first noticing it (the 404 error).
Worthing was upset that I didn’t mention him but did mention Atkins. I’m writing this to correct that unintentional oversight.
I didn’t notice the small link on Atkins post to Worthing’s post (much further down than the Google cache link) because I was already on my way down the rabbit hole from the UNEP link Atkins provided high up in his post, paying attention to Atkins admonition: “However, if you are quick…” to follow the link. I know from experience that sometimes Google cache can last for days, sometimes minutes. When I followed it, the map was already gone as you can see in my own screencaps above.
Today I also found out that apparently I was getting Tweets from Atkins and Worthing last Fri/Sat that I should take notice of the issue…but those got left in the bit bucket because I never follow/read Tweets. I only use Twitter as an announcement service for WUWT. So if anyone expects to reach me via Twitter, please note that it is a lost cause.
I’m always happy to point out who gets credit when I know about it, and now that I know about it, here’s the credit chain: Gavin Atkins was the one to raise the issue, Aaron Worthing was the first to blog about the 404 error here, and his commenter “Carlos” was the first to notice the 404 error. I hope that clears up any misunderstandings.
The most important thing is that the UN issue is well known now and that many many people worked independently to make it happen. – Anthony
Best course of action to fix the problem:
Frank K. says: April 16, 2011 at 5:21 am
I know this goes without saying, but while we’re cutting back funding for our domestic climate “products,” can we PLEASE defund the UN? PLEASE?!!
Can’t we just stop paying for this stupidity? Jimbo identified the source of the problem:
Jimbo says: April 16, 2011 at 4:00 am
[…]
“This is the result of excessive climate change research funding”
Actually, as hilarious as that map is, it doesn’t predict anything specific. It just shows areas that “will be exposed to more worser xxxx” in what appear to be random crayola marks filled in. The map itself can’t be used to say whether or not refugees should have come from various places. The places they picked for hurricane exposure are both meaningless and impossible to prove wrong. Certainly in the span of time since this map was made, someone from Florida moved to CA or Arizona because they didn’t like hurricanes, but this has nothing to do with anything man has done other than move ourselves into hurricane exposure zones without proper building codes. The map itself is ironically not what the UN should be ashamed of. They should be ashamed of trying to hide the map, it makes them look like idiots. I realize that’s like a pigeon dropping on an elephant pile, but the principle is still there.
I followed that link someone posted to the Randi.org message board where apparently this original issue came out. There’s some very ripe low-hanging fruit over there. There’s a guy who considers this a “conservative” blog of “agw deniers” while trying to point to the original paper and say that “this wasn’t an AGW prediction.” and “it came true.”
What’s interesting to me, is the original paper has no citations whatsoever for their numbers of 25 million refugees. Can anyone prove me wrong on that point? I see no references whatsoever in the original paper to any sort of census/study/body-count indicating 25 million existing climate refugees in 1995.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a62f87f3970c-pi
Draw a best -fit line through the minimum points on the attached graph and extrapolate it into the future. Each global cooling period gets colder and colder. It gives one the jitters really. So, we may have a billion climaye change refugees in the future but not because of warming, but freezing.
‘I would not be surprised if 50 million climate refugees by 2010 is a gross underestimate.’~ montag
Did you miss 2010? We’re in 2011. And the simple fact that pro-AGW blogs are noting this and complaining about, is substatiation enough that the UN and / or google have been working overtime to CYA.
Mark Twain said “some of the worst things in my life never happened”. He also said “if you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything”.
The global warming crowd could learn a lot from reading Mark Twain.
On the day of the Japanese earthquake/tsunami, both the main TV news channels in the UK (BBC and ITV) gave us the line, “The tsunami is expected to hit low-lying Pacific islands which have already been affected by climate change”.
It would appear that the mainstream media have moved on from showing us dubious evidence of the so-called effects of climate change and now clearly believe that including near-subliminal propaganda messages in their narrative is OK whenever the opportunity presents itself.
To my knowledge, most climate refugees tend to move not out of, but into small tropic islands. I’m considering becoming a climate refugee myself as this year we still had some snow in April – something I hadn’t seen in more than twenty years.
/nosarc, really. 🙂
Re: Is it power, money, or both? Don’t know. But it is interesting that deposed (and disposed) leaders who held such power had bank accounts outside their homeland.
John K. Sutherland says:
April 16, 2011 at 6:44 am
“Strange that they missed the Mississippi delta off that map, considering what happened to New Orleans from a sea level surge during Katrina.”
No sea surge in N.O., just poorly maintained levees holding back canals. It was fresh water that inundated the city. Not that anyone in the UN actually cared about N.O.
More UN and other scaremoner involvement spreading thi scare story:
Back in 1989 the UNEP made another 10-year forecast of climate refugees:
GRIM FORECAST
http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=SJ&s_site=mercurynews&p_multi=SJ&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB7304FF9A84273&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM
A senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of “eco-refugees,” threatening political chaos, said Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program. He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect…
For those saying that UNEP was not responsible here is the UNITED NATIONS itself referring to UNEP’s 50 million figure.
Bomber_the_Cat says:
April 16, 2011 at 6:40 am
bagtoter says:
April 16, 2011 at 4:50 am
“Great work…however, please don’t use “disappeared” and “rubbished” as verbs…makes this old man cringe…”
Bagoter, ‘Disappear’ is a verb. What you mean is, ‘it is an intransitive verb’ (i.e. it cannot take an object). Thus the headline ‘The UN “disappears” 50 million climate refugees..’ is wrong and has an uneducated ring to it, even for Americans.
===================================================
Sorry to disagree, but colloquialisms and idiomatic slang has been used to convey thoughts for quite some time and isn’t unique to “Americans”, though we put it to good use. Shakespeare was probably the best at using this form of communication. But many writers throughout history has used this. “Disappeared” itself is a loose reference to the Orwellian nature of this story, and I find it quite apt.
Oululainen says:
April 16, 2011 at 12:35 am
“Oulu is marked as an area that is vulnerable to ice and permafrost melting. I can assure you, there is no permafrost here, nor can permafrost be found for several hundred kilometers to the north.”
See??? AGW already made your permafrost disappear! That’s how strong it is! Thinking about it, i have no permafrost here in Braunschweig, Germany, and i’m sure there must have been permafrost about 15,000 years ago or so… Oh no! We’re lost!
😉
I thought that these idiots at the UN had learned to only make predictions that had an out turn date when they’ll be dead!
Didn’t they learn from Paul Ehrlich?
This is the same thing that Paul Ehrlich has been doing for decades: being incredibly and demonstrably wrong about future predictions of global apocalypse. But somehow he never gets called to task for it, rather he is a well regarded academic.
Where is Julian Simon when you need him?
Curiousgeorge says:
April 15, 2011 at 7:37 pm
“I read Gavins blog and one of the replies is from Nick Nuttall who denies the UN ever said any such thing. Who ya’ gonna believe, Nickie or your lying eyes?
#
…] happened to the climate refugees? What happened to the climate refugees? […]
#
Nick Nuttall
Dear Gavin, I read with interest your bog not least as Spokesperson for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).”
Jimbo says:
April 16, 2011 at 8:46 am
“For those saying that UNEP was not responsible here is the UNITED NATIONS itself referring to UNEP’s 50 million figure.
“……people who are likely to be displaced because of environmental disasters. UNEP said that figure is expected to grow to about 50 million by the end of 2010.”
UN News Centre”
So they’ve been caught doing a Winston Smith AND denying they did it. Gets better by the minute. Can we name the unit for ineptitude “One UNEP” now? 😉
I wonder what the rationale is behind UNEP GRIDA’s reasons for hindering internet archive to archive their webpages since 2009. They are living on other peoples tax money so they should be like an open book, especially since they want other organizations and countries to be transparent.
This has inspired me to invent a game called “Spin the Climate”. At least six players. The first player picks up an “Empirical Evidence card”. Reads it and then has to “spin” the contents into a “Global Warming Story”. The four players to the left (called “The Team”; the members designated “JH” “P” “K1” “K2” ) award wind turbine points, up to 500 per story. If you get less than 1000 points in your turn you have to pick up a “climate spin consequence card” and perform the consequence, such as stand up to your neck in a barrel of water if it is a “rising sea level card” or stick your head in the freezer for a “loss of arctic ice card” You don’t need or want to know what a “release of methane from melting permafrost card” has you doing.When you get 10,000 wind turbine points you exchange them for a conventional power station point. The first player to have enough power stations to provide sufficient power for the country they live in wins. The player with the fewest points gets them converted back into turbines and gets to live out their life in the dark.
I am sure it’s in here somewhere but I am too tired to read through all 141 comments, I stopped after fifty.
It looks like the usual problem & solution, failed prediction, in timescale predicted. Therefore simply use the same number & double the timescale! That way they can go back to the old secondhand car salesman routine, we must act now or it’ll be too late!! Scary story, scary story!
Can you I suggest that you all read the original article quoted in support of the map.
http://www.osce.org/eea/14851
If Myers had written “If global warming kicks in…” rather than “When…” there is little in the paper that even the most sceptical Watts supporter could disagree with. What it does is expose a real problem – due to population increase and land degradation people are being forced to move home. What the climate change lobby has done here, as so often elsewhere, is misuse the facts to divert funds from solving the real problem to feather their own comfortable nests.
Refugeegate
“they’ve now brought even more distrust onto the UN”
MORE distrust? Is that even possible?
The problem with making predictions is that they will soon be tested.
BBC – 12 December 2007
The quality of UN forecast is breathtaking.
Having such experts and specialists, mankind doesn’t need floods and hurricanes and droughts anymore. It’s already bad enough.
How to uncover such stupidity and primitive manipulation?
The MSM won’t do their job.
Great work, thanks.