WUWT commenter Cal65 from Hawaii burns away all of the irrelevancy of posturing and pronouncements and gets to the core truth of what the Durban climate deal is really all about. He writes:
The UN plan will shift wealth from the first world’s poor to the third world’s rich without making any difference in climate control.
Don’t believe that? All one has to do is look at the whiny grifters known as the Maldives, who are building airports like crazy to handle the increased tourist trade…
11 new airports to be constructed in Maldives
The Government is working to construct 11 new regional airports in 11 regions and work is under way to complete them as soon as possible, said Minister of Communication and Civil Aviation Mahmoud Razi. Razi who is among the newest three cabinet ministers appointed by President Mohamed Nasheed in June said so answering questions in the People’s Majlis Razi said regional airports will be constructed in Shaviyani, Noonu, Raa, Baa, Lhaviyani, Alifu Dhaalu, Dhaalu, Gaafu Alifu, Gaafu Dhaalu and Gnaviyani atolls.
…while at the same time wailing “please save us” [from rising sea levels].
With the cry “mic check!” a large crowd of activists took over the COP17 international climate negotiations taking place in Durban, South Africa. “Listen to the people, not the polluters,” they cried, before repeating a plea from the delegation of the small island nation of the Maldives: “Please save us.” The occupiers were also addressed by Greenpeace International president Kumi Naidoo. After sitting down and refusing to move, the occupiers were escorted out by security.
…
The real issue is spelled out clearly by weak minded regurgative reporter Laura Flanders of The Nation without so much as a thought given to what is really going on.
That’s not acceptable to the people of the Maldives. And they’re not the only ones. “Climate change is a matter of justice,” Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu of the global Council of Elders declared on the eve of the Durban meeting.
“The richest countries caused the problem, but it is the world’s poorest who are already suffering from its effects. In Durban, the international community must commit to righting that wrong.”
It’s not justice, its called a “shakedown”.
Recall that the Maldives is the same country that pulled this sort of stupid publicity stunt before Copenhagen COP15:
Let’s tally up the FAIL on these boneheads.
From TV New Zealand:
An Auckland University researcher has offered new hope to the myriad small island nations in the Pacific which have loudly complained their low-lying atolls will drown as global warming boosts sea levels.
Geographer Associate Professor Paul Kench has measured 27 islands where local sea levels have risen 120mm – an average of 2mm a year – over the past 60 years, and found that just four had diminished in size.
Working with Arthur Webb at the Fiji-based South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, Kench used historical aerial photographs and high-resolution satellite images to study changes in the land area of the islands.
They found that the remaining 23 had either stayed the same or grown bigger, according to the research published in a scientific journal, Global and Planetary Change.
“It has been thought that as the sea level goes up, islands will sit there and drown,” Prof Kench told the New Scientist. “But they won’t.
“The sea level will go up and the island will start responding.
2. The Maldives can’t take a joke (Delingpole’s satire omitting Maldives from new map with higher sea levels causes the government to respond)
3. Willis explains how Floating Islands work, and he should know, he spent a lot of time working on one. He also explains why CO2 isn’t an issue. He writes:
Does increased CO2 cause increased sea level rise?
Short answer, data to date says no. There has been no acceleration the rate of sea level rise. Sea level has been rising for centuries. But the rate of the rise has not changed a whole lot. Both tidal stations and satellites show no increase in the historic rate of sea level rise, in either the short or long term. Fig. 1 shows the most recent satellite data.
Figure 1. Change of sea level over time. Radar data from the TOPEX satellite. The light blue line is sea level with monthly anomalies removed. The interval between data points is usually ten days. The gray line is the 1993-2004 linear trend projected to the end of the timeline. Gaussian average using a 71-point filter. Photo taken at Taunovo Bay Resort, Fiji.
Up until about the end of 2004, there was little change in the rate of sea level rise. Since then the rise has slowed down. The average (dark blue line) does not stray far from the trend (black line) up until 1994. Since then, it is well below the projected trend (gray line). We were supposed to be seeing some kind of big acceleration in the sea level rise caused by increased CO2. Instead, we are seeing a decrease in the rate of sea level rise. So the first claim, that increasing CO2 will cause increased rates of sea level rise, is not supported by the evidence.
Note that I am not saying anything about the future. The rate of sea level rise might go up again. What we can say, however, is that there is no hint of acceleration in the record, only deceleration. The claim of CO2 induced sea level rise is false to date.
4. The sea level is actually dropping now:
Source: http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2011_rel3/sl_ns_global.png
Of course that is the highly adjusted Colorado SL data. Let’s look at others.
Here’s a composite of measures, note the Envisat in yellow, nearly flat then falling:
Source: http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/images/news/indic/msl/MSL_Serie_ALL_Global_IB_RWT_GIA_Adjust.png
5. Lorne Gunter: Global warming is the least of Tuvalu’s worries
Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of INQUA, the International Commission on Sea Level Change, has studied real-world sea levels for nearly 40 years. Rather than relying mostly on computer models, as most climate scientists do, Dr. Morner has concentrated on using satellites, photographs and detailed measurement records to determine whether the oceans are rising, falling or remaining pretty much the same.
“The sea is not rising,” he has told anyone who will listen. ”It hasn’t risen in 50 years.” What’s more, if it rises in the 21st Century, it will be by ”not more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm.” That’s pretty much the same prediction as that derived by the other real-world measurers, Houston and Dean.
…
Two American experts on coastal construction and sea-level — James Houston, director emeritus of engineering research and development for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Robert Dean, professor emeritus of civil and coastal engineering at the University of Florida — examined decades worth of data from all the tidal monitors around the U.S. and determined earlier this year that “worldwide-temperature increase has not produced acceleration of global sea level over the past 100 years.” indeed, the rate at which oceans have been rising has “possibly decelerated for at least the last 80 years.”
6. If sea level is such a big problem, why is the Maldives government allowing new development?
“Only 6 luxurious beachfront private residences will be built at both the sunrise and sunset sides of this magical island, Soneva Fushi Resort.”
…
The Republic of Maldives in the Indian Ocean, home to some of the world’s finest white sand beaches and exceptional marine life, has to date never allowed ownership of private real estate to foreigners. Soneva Fushi by Six Senses will be among the very first to offer this privilege.
Source: http://www.ilre.com/maldives-luxury-real-estate.html
And this just isn’t an isolated event, it’s part of the official policy for tourism:
The Ministry of Tourism embarked on an ambitious expansion of the tourism industry with 37 new islands opened for bidding in the period 2004-2006. The first round of developments was announced in 2004, with 11 islands being opened for bidding.
All this while they were simultaneously squalling about “inundation” by the sea.
7. And again, if sea level rise were really a problem, why would the Maldives government allow this?
11 new airports to be constructed in Maldives
The Government is working to construct 11 new regional airports in 11 regions and work is under way to complete them as soon as possible, said Minister of Communication and Civil Aviation Mahmoud Razi. Razi who is among the newest three cabinet ministers appointed by President Mohamed Nasheed in June said so answering questions in the People’s Majlis Razi said regional airports will be constructed in Shaviyani, Noonu, Raa, Baa, Lhaviyani, Alifu Dhaalu, Dhaalu, Gaafu Alifu, Gaafu Dhaalu and Gnaviyani atolls.
Oh, wait, I know… to serve the government approved “ambitious expansion of the tourism industry” in #6
8. So why all the government sanctioned pronouncements about sea level/CO2 ??
Follow the money at the Copenhagen and Cancun climate talks
The accord promised $30bn (£19bn) in aid for the poorest nations hit by global warming they had not caused. Within two weeks of Copenhagen, the Maldives foreign minister, Ahmed Shaheed, wrote to the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, expressing eagerness to back it.
30 billion? Heck, that’s 10 times more than the gross domestic product of the whole country! They’ll say anything to get their hands on that.
| Maldives GDP (PPP) | 2010 estimate | |
| – | Total | $2.734 billion[7] |
| – | Per capita | $8,541[7] |
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maldives
==========================================
So since the Maldives is fond of making grand pronouncements about how climate change is going to hurt them/kill them make them climate refugees or other such silliness, let me make a pronouncement of my own based on the available data shown above.
Anything coming out of the mouths of Maldives officials related to climate, CO2, or sea level is pure bullshit.
The only purpose of it is to continue to paint Maldives as a victim, so they’ll get some of that climate cash promised by the fools that attend these climate conferences. Meanwhile, they continue to expand their travel industry, build new resorts, build new airports, and promote tourism while laughing all the way to the bank.
Thinking people should cross the Maldives off their vacation possibilities list. I have, I refuse to go there, even if offered a free trip, because these grifters are playing victims at the expense of taxpayers everywhere.
The Maldives shakedown is only slightly more sophisticated than a Nigerian email scam.
I hate to say this BUT the AGW crowd have been and are doing a much, much better job of selling their warming product however crazy then WE are of forcing our elected representatives to represent OUR point of view. The results more than speak for themselves. WE are losing this battle. Sure we can claim more are believe us these days but that’s an illusion. NOT a single one of our west nation representatives EVER represent OUR point of view at these climate conferences and willing to stand on OUR principles we know and understand here – NOT one of our western representatives would dare kill kill climate change. Billions of climategate emails can prove junk science but it doesn’t affect a single decision of western delegate votes. NOT ONE.
The hard, cold facts are: Without China and India standing up for the entire west – this latest global warming conference would have robbed the entire west of BILLION OF DOLLARS for generations yet to come.
We didn’t get a stalemate because of anything the entire west DID – we got this stalemate directly because INDIA AND CHINA stood up FOR us. We, the entire west, vote FOR climate reparation ever single time.
OUR, the west, only representatives in those conferences ARE China and India! How insane is that?
I enjoyed the first part of the video but they didn’t sing the part about having “diamonds on the soles of their shoes”.
“The sea level will go up and the island will start responding.”
Talk about rediscovering the wheel! Have any of these guys read Charles Darwin “The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs” – any of his 19th century editions?? (All vary as new data came back to the Mother Country.) Kench has simply rediscovered Darwin’s basic thesis of reef growth and atoll origins.
One item Darwin did not know about was guyots. These are the product of what you get when the sea rises too quickly and/or the reef fails to respond quickly enough.
Of course, the term “coral reef” is something of a misnomer. In many reefs corals are in the minority. Coralline Algae, encrusting foraminifera and other calcaerous-secreting organisms are major contributors to the mass and, like the corals themselves, grow upward to the surface and the sun.
Funny how CO2 is evil, except when it comes out of aircraft carrying tourists to the poor sinking Maldives.
Sinking under the weight of their own hypocrisy…
@Albertalad
It doesn’t matter what these representatives vote for if they have no legal authority. The US congress will never ratify any of this idiocy (no idea about Canada).
This human tragicomedy gets more depressing with every turn,
The whole conference is a publicity stunt to shakedown the West.
What a mess. It’s time the West walked away from this.
It was fairly clear that the Durban talks would produce something that they could call a success. After all, the UN bureaucrats running the show are no different to their counterparts at the EU. Their sole raison d’etre is to produce new laws, whether we need new laws, whether we want new laws, or whether we can afford new laws, they’ll carry on churning them out. It’s a Darwinian urge to promote the species. If they ever stopped, the rest of the population might realise how much better off we had become without them and the bureaucrats would be heading for extinction.
TheGoodLocust says:
December 11, 2011 at 10:30 am
It doesn’t matter what these representatives vote for if they have no legal authority. The US congress will never ratify any of this idiocy (no idea about Canada).
——————
Well, somebody gave your US delegate to VOTE on behalf of the United States. Thereby allowing a climate deal to pass in Durban – whether or not it passes in the US is another matter. The fact is – the US vote allowed Durban to pass. The exact same for Canada occurred.
Our guy, Peter Kent, was all mouth about how Canada was going to drop OUT of Kyoto – and he voted to pass Durban same as the US. At least your guys weren’t all mouth BEFORE getting to Durban – ours was. He was a big shot until the EU, the Brits, and the third world stated kicking his butt around like a little girl and he folded like a drunk on the sidewalk. I’m flat out disgusted and furious – now this charade goes on and on and on for the foreseeable future. WE lacked the courage to kill this insanity when we had China and India backing us up and covering for us IF we had chosen to stand up and take it like a man.
http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/durban_nov_2011/decisions/application/pdf/cop17_gcf.pdf
Green Climate Fund report of the Transitional Committee
Draft decision -/CP.17
2. Selection of Board members
11. The members of the Board and their alternates will be selected by their respective constituency or regional group within a constituency. Members of the Board will have the necessary experience and skills, notably in the areas of climate change and development finance, with due consideration given to gender balance.
Why not give due condsideration to ethnicity and religious balance? It would from the Durban conference that the UN rates gender more important than race or religion. This would would appear to fit the definition of a sexists. Are we to understand that the UN supports sexism?
Bloke down the pub says:
December 11, 2011 at 10:41 am
“Their sole raison d’etre is to produce new laws, whether we need new laws, whether we want new laws, or whether we can afford new laws, they’ll carry on churning them out. It’s a Darwinian urge to promote the species. If they ever stopped, the rest of the population might realise how much better off we had become without them and the bureaucrats would be heading for extinction.”
Half of the Germans now want out of the EU, I read today in a poll. Tipping point! While our media vilifies Cameron for saying njet to the latest fiscal union concepts, our population seems to envy the Brits. So, the Eurocrats might become a threatened species faster than they can say “Kyoto protocol”.
albertalad says:
December 11, 2011 at 10:02 am
“NOT a single one of our west nation representatives EVER represent OUR point of view at these climate conferences and willing to stand on OUR principles we know and understand here – NOT one….”
So we all have to ask ourselves “what’s in it for them? Sure I realize that a few “Goreacles” would stand to make a mint, a few others would also line the green nest from producing and supplying so called sustainable products, but even they must realize that sooner or later a seriously pissed off western populace is going wonder why a bunch of them are standing in food queues, while their previously “poor brothers” are whooping it up with all the green (tax) money. I find it difficult to believe that the people steering this are that stupid. If the real intention is to devolve power to the UN, to limit sovereignty, again what’s in it for the present players? I find myself somewhat stumped, and to extend this line of thinking, one almost always strays into the ridiculed and “out of bounds” territory of conspiracy.
Unlike most posters here, I have personally visited many of the low-lying Micronesian Outer Islands (formerly called the Caroline Islands) that extend along the 800-nautical mile open ocean arc from Yap to Chuuk, These islands are made entirely of sand derived from the surrounding coral reefs, and they typically have a maximum elevation of 2-3 meters.
Yes, the Outer Islanders observe that sea-levels are rising, and yes the islands are markedly eroding in consequence. No, there is no question of any financial scam … there is in fact zero tourism of any kind in the Outer Islands … the Outer Island economies are not even based on money, but rather upon a more nuanced system of social obligations.
The surrounding coral reefs are alive-and-growing, and eroding to make new sand, and so the crux question is: Can the world’s atoll reefs grow as fast as the sea level rises?
This is where key biological issues like the effect of ocean acidification of coral growth intersect with key climatological issues like the thermal expansion of the oceans (in the near term) the stability of the Greenland ice sheet (in the intermediate term) and Antarctic ice sheets (in the long term).
It is not clear (to me) that the present skeptical culture of WUWT is capable of analyzing these issues in any serious sense — but I would be very happy to be proven wrong!
Given that climate is the continuation of the oceans with other means, and the fact that Jason2 shows the same drop that Envisat shows (this was new to me), I think it’s fair to say that the oceans are telling us something now, and it’s not “we’re still warming”…
As you should know the Maldives is really 1100 islands, 200 hundred of which are inhabited. I think their plan is to raise money from tourism which they can use to purchase land elsewhere, a necessity since their long term prospects are not too good. The average height above sea level is only slightly more than a meter, and the projected sea level rise is 60 cm. This is not a comfortable prospect and prudent planning supports all efforts to control this rise, and as a Plan B, find other land on higher ground to move to.
I think your correspondent errs by failing to take a long term view of the situation in the Maldives. Small yearly increases can be catastrophic over the long term.
Three years to prove the AGW theory is a fallacy, yes it can be done!
DirkH, you want to know the irony? Cameron didn’t veto a damn thing. There was never a treaty under discussion, the “summit” (in reality a European Council meeting) was purely to decide what temporary measures would be taken and when an IGC would be set to begin negotiations for a new treaty. Cameron’s claim to have used a veto is bunk: they’re going ahead with their plans, all he’s doing is posing.
Cameron is Macbeth’s poor player in the flesh. All sound and fury, his veto is but a tale… and if you know the passage I’m alluding to you probably know what I think of the man by now.
@albertalad says:
December 11, 2011 at 10:45 am
“Well, somebody gave your US delegate to VOTE on behalf of the United States. Thereby allowing a climate deal to pass in Durban – whether or not it passes in the US is another matter. The fact is – the US vote allowed Durban to pass. The exact same for Canada occurred. ”
And again, why do I care if such an agreement has no legal authority in the US? Their vote is as meaningful as those taken at the Model UN of your local high school.
Whilst puffing up this scam balloon, they are also sowing the seeds of the next terrorist movement, with their unrelenting talk of the West’s “Climate Debt.”
When the “debt” isn’t repaid (or much more likely disappears into various tinpot dictators’ Swiss bank accounts) and the life of the third world poor continues to be without hope (not to mention without jobs, education, health provision, clean water or affordable energy), the next bunch of young men thirsting for a climate debt martyrdom operation will spring up.
Hugh Pepper:
If the islands were rock – perhaps. As they are effectively alive, it depends on the rate of growth of the island vs the rate of sea level rise. Seems to me they are safe enough, going by the present data.
albertalad says:
December 11, 2011 at 10:02 am
The blame for the idiocy you describe rests squarely on the shoulders of President Obama. For those of us who can vote in the US, that is a powerful reason to vote against Obama. Without a cheerleader for CAGW as president, the popularity of CAGW in the US would track the numbers of people who listen to NPR daily.
A physicist says:
December 11, 2011 at 11:19 am
It is not clear (to me) that the present skeptical culture of WUWT is capable of analyzing these issues in any serious sense — but I would be very happy to be proven wrong!
The answer to your question was given 10-20 thousand years ago, when we entered the current interglcial and sea levels rose 300 feet at a rate significantly faster than at present.
Science has a long history of sceptics uncovering the facts, when the status quo sought to suppress the truth. The one great truth in science is that in an infinite universe there are an infinite number of discoveries still waiting to be made.
The envisat etc link seems not to work: http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/images/news/indic/msl/MSL_Serie_ALL_Global_IB_RWT_GIA_Adjust.png
A physicist says:
December 11, 2011 at 11:19 am
You should read the essay that begins this post. There has been no sea level rise that can be attributed to human activity. The Maldives might sink but if God does it that is His business.
Since you are a regular visitor to the Maldives, what have you done to persuade them to stop investing in the islands and to move elsewhere? Given your beliefs, that would be the morally right thing to do.