By P Gosselin on 4. October 2025
Germany’s Klimanachrichten here publishes an article titled “The Disappearing Islands (That Don’t Want to Disappear)” summarizes findings suggesting that the widespread assumption about low-lying islands inevitably sinking due to rising sea levels is too simplistic and detached from reality.
Earlier, the media often tried to scoff at and discredit findings from inconvenient sea level experts, like Axel Mörner:
Undeniable science: Mörner et all, 2011
But today, climate alarmist media are forced to concede things are not as dire as they once believed.
74 of 101 islands are growing
The Klimanachrichten article references a ZDF documentary by journalist Johannes Hano, which notes that locals in Tuvalu aren’t fearful of climate change. A 2018 study (Paul Kench, University of Auckland) found that 74 out of 101 of Tuvalu’s islands have remained stable or have actually grown in size, despite an approximate 15 cm rise in sea level over recent decades. This is attributed to coral-derived sediments being washed onto the islands by currents and storms, increasing their area.
Maldives stable – even building airports
In the Maldives, similar conclusions are drawn. Citing a New York Times story from mid-2024. Research suggests that, generally, the islands haven’t shrunk but in some cases have grown, even as sea levels have risen.
It turns out that the Maldives government is actively expanding airports (e.g., Velana International Airport, Hanimaadhoo International Airport), which suggests doesn’t reflect an expectation of imminent demise. Yet (unsurprisingly) the country continues to demand funding from Western nations, blaming them for their potential “downfall.”
Reality shows that the simple equation of “rising sea levels = island disappearance” is naive oversimplification. Scientists suggest that some islands will shrink, others will grow, and many will remain stable.
In conclusion: The article challenges the “Science Is Settled” argument, emphasizing that science is a continuously evolving process of correction as the system complexities (long-known by skeptics) become increasingly apparent.
Who knew that corals grow, especially when fed their favorite food?
Especially the coral underneath the runways. 🙂 Don’t make things _too_ simple!
Yes. It was Darwins ‘other’ theory too.
One thing ‘catastrophic’ about CC is how the media has ruined its’ credibility. You can’t trust anything but sports scores in the media anymore. Some say it has always been this way but I differ.
I agree. Faux News is utter nonsense. Best to tune it out.
The problem with tuning it out is that alarmists use false or selective data to convince ignorant politicians that there is an imminent crisis and demand that laws be passed to save us from ourselves. When those laws get passed, we end up losing freedoms and/or paying taxes to support things that don’t need to be done and could even exacerbate the situation. The only thing that I can see to prevent that from happening is to have more credible facts to demonstrate that the claims are wrong.
Been said already:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
(and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an
endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. H. L. Mencken
The definition of a lie, is not everything the Democrat party disagrees with
Fox news is trash.
Yet the best amongst all big MSM outlets as they “only ” lie 90% of the time.
10% ahead in terms of truthtelling.
There is a reason why it’s the only news channel that has not suffered massive losses,
but you neither have the integrity nor the brains to understand why.
And this trend is going on in all your western countries.
Enjoy your climate fear.
The only thing that bothers me about Fox News is that the women journalists/commentators wear far too much make up. 🙂
It was those women who urged Sony at the start of the HDTV era to implement filtes for their faces into the software of their HD TV cams,
as HDTV has made all the pimples and signs of aging visible.
Yet their level of make up is at 11.
Buy a collection of essays by HL Menken. I don’t think it’s great writing but he’s a must read for historical perspective (grouchy, repetitive, political).
Cheap shot to use the word “Hoax” in the article title. The simplistic view is incorrect but the article doesn’t expose any hoax. Intelligent people understand that science is not settled, and just because some people are not intelligent enough to understand that doesn’t make it a hoax.
Aside from the poor title, the article is interesting.
No, hoax is exactly the appropriate word to use. We have heard the lies about sea level rise for at least 20 years and the people pushing the nonsense knew what they were saying were lies. As soon as the Argo robots started showing sea temperature wasn’t increasing, any robots showing cooling were discarded and treated as outliers. It is the same with sea level. The data has always been fraudulently manipulated to accord with their false narratives. Hoax is exactly correct!
Hoax is correct!
…. said the people in Manhattan, who’ll paddling to work in 2100.
“who’ll paddling to work in 2100.”
Oh dear, another clanger !
Nostra-dumb-ass would be proud. !
Isn’t the UN headquaters in Manhatton?
7 inches of SLR is going to be enough to flood Manhattan?
Or are you just being delusional again.
No delusion at all when factoring in the expected collapse of the ice sheets in Greenland and Western Antarctica.
ROFLMAO..
Every prediction of Greenland and Western Antarctic ice collapse has been idiotically WRONG. !!
You have to be seriously gullible and totally delusional to believe such nonsense.
At some point, global temperatures will rise high enough for the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to undergo significant melt.
The exact timing is uncertain, but based on current global warming trends, large scale ice loss seems likely sooner or later.
You may be laughing and mocking now, but your bloodline won’t be next century.
Perhaps it’s worth considering whether you want to continue your bloodline in light of that… Would you want them to live in that kind of world?
“At some point, global temperatures will rise high enough…”
So funny.. do you use a crystal ball, a ouija board or tarot cards ??
There has been no warming in the 45 years of UAH data except for El Nino events
Antarctic temperatures are decreasing…
Antarctic temperature change isn’t uniform.
The attached map shows clear warming in West Antarctica, which is the primary region of concern.
Whole of Antarctic is cooling.
And seriously, using GISS junk…. you are joking aren’t you.
You really need to educate yourself and get back to reality instead of mindless mantra.
Good News (If You Like Freezing)! Antarctica Sees More Snowfall, Record Low Temps!
New Study: Antarctic Ice Sheet Surface Mass Balance Has Been Increasing Due To Recent Mass Gain
Antarctic Elephant Seal Breeding Site Affirms There Was Far Less Sea Ice During Medieval, Roman Periods
New Study: 2000 Km Of Antarctic Ice-Covered Coastline Has Grown Slightly Over Past 85 Years!
NoTricksZone is just another denier blog that misrepresents peer reviewed studies.
After spikes in 1930 and 2010, Greenland is no warmer than it was around 1900
This contrasts with the official temperature record for Greenland from 1930 onward, which shows clear warming (see attached map).
Source: https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/
See also: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01855-6
Graph I put up IS the official recorded temperature.
Your map is farcical fabrication based on massive data manipulation.
EVERY temperature record from around the Arctic shows 1930’s warmer than around 2000, even Hadcrut.
HadCRUT4 is an outdated version of the HadCRUT dataset that underestimates Arctic warming due to limited data coverage. The newer HadCRUT5 version provides a more accurate representation of the Arctic climate by integrating new data.
Also, be sure to read the study I linked documenting the retreat of Greenland’s peripheral glaciers. This is an independent line of evidence highlighting that recent Arctic warming is significantly more severe than the warming observed during the recovery from the Little Ice Age and the early 20th century warming period.
“Would you want them to live in that kind of world?”
No-one sane would want to live in the world envisaged by the green anti-CO2 agenda.
Famine, no reliable heating or cooling or refrigeration..
No transport no travel… trapped in authoritarian 15 minute suburbs ruled by leftist thugs.
This is what your agenda will leave for your children… if they are unlucky enough for you to have any.
I suggest you read every article hear for the past few years and the comments. You then might begin to understand why being skeptical of a climate emergency is an intelligent perspective.
If WUWT is where you go for insight, that might explain your confusion between ‘hear’ and ‘here.’
Oh, wow- you’re a witty chap. You’ll get major points for that here. 🙂
Eclang, if WUWT is where you go to criticize others, you might first explain your use of the meaningless phrase “likely sooner or later“, as in this posting of yours dated October 6, 2025 10:52 pm:
“sooner or later”, huh? . . . that really pins things down, doesn’t it? And can’t it be seen as being redundant to “The exact timing is uncertain”.
/sarc
The largest iceberg to calve a23a still hasn’t melted in 40 years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A23a
Yet Eclang thinks that entire areas of ice sheets are going to melt in 75 years … ROFL
The timeframe for ice sheets to melt is thousands of years 🙂
From your link:
“As of January 2025, its area was about 3,500 square kilometres (1,400 sq mi), which made it the largest iceberg in the world.[1][2][3] As of March 2025, it had run aground off South Georgia island.[4] By July 2025, it had started drifting again. It later passed to the East and North of South Georgia, and in September 2025 it was observed to be breaking up in warmer waters.”
Yes, it had to move FAR north to start breaking up..
What does that tell you. !
And here we go, talking about our kids again, another loathsome troll. The timing is uncertain, how do trolls figure uncertainty in the timing when they are so certain on all the other “settled” points. You hoist your own petard, like the others, so reliable.
Some aspects of climate science are understood very well. Other aspects (ice sheet collapse timing) are uncertain.
Expected by which mental patients?
Oh, so you don’t mean “2100”, but 21,000… or 210,000?
Curious . . . how does one credibly “factor in” something that is expected, but has not yet happened and thus cannot not provide any credible data???
Your fantasy, we’ll stay out of it.
Please dude.For the love of god.
Get a brain and read the instruction manual.
I know you western guys are the most brainwashed people in history – especially in the USA.
But just take a look at the NY coast during the last 40 years.
Your highpriest James Hansen has predicted that lower Manhattan will be under water in 2018.
But absolutely nothing has changed.
If Hansen were right by only 10% with his prediction there would already already be serious trouble in NY,Miami and everywhere else in the world.
Beach resorts would have closed down in huge numbers as their beaches are no more.
Many islands would have drowned and you would be crying like a little child during UN’s ” Drowned Islands Month ” – which does not exist because of only one reason.
No sea level rise.
Just the same 1.7 mm as 200 years ago.
If you’d had a bit of integrity and brains and the observational skills of a 3 year old you’d have stared to ask the basic question :
Why is the promised sea level rise not happening?
The next step would be to scale the non existing sea level rise that happened since Hansens prediction 37 years ago.
Until 2100 we have twice the time.
2 times 0 sea level rise = nothing will happen in NY by 2100.
If Hansen had started to lay a single brick per day at Manhattans coast line since 1988 at the most vulnerable places Manhattan would be safe from any sea level rise till 2500.
“Your highpriest James Hansen has predicted that lower Manhattan will be under water in 2018.”
He did not, he was asked what would happen in 40 years (2028) if CO2 doubled and described a situation where the West side highway would be flooded!
Since 1988 the sea level at the Battery has increased by about 200mm, with less than the postulated ‘doubling’ of CO2.
The West Side highway is regularly flooded, July this year, Jan 2024, etc.
That’s the walkway down at the waterside
West Side Highway is much higher than that.
Really! https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20170505/midtown/flood-watch-penn-station-flooding/
You do realize the photo that you posted is a total FAKE, don’t you?
Just look at the near-perfect focus of the “walkway” guard rails and their vertical posts compared to the out-of-focus water underneath and beyond such.
Also, there is loss of focus of the water between the guard rails and the buildings and trees on the far horizon, which are in perfect focus . . . that is an impossibility in a single, real photo.
And don’t go arguing that that loss of focus in caused by slow shutter speed and moving water, because the shutter setting was obviously fast enough to capture minute details of the water waves in the foreground and the splashed-into-the-air water droplets appearing nearer to the guard rails.
Finally, the shadowing on the water waves toward the guard rails would indicate that sunlight is coming from the direction of the far horizon toward the photographer whereas the shadowing on the guard rails and their support pillars and that on the tubular structure up in the air clearly indicates sunlight coming from behind the photographer.
It was a photo from a newspaper article covering the flooding in NYC, perhaps the publisher had the photo touched up?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12959787/new-york-city-floods-west-highway-storm-gerri.html
There’s a good chance that the West side will be flooded again in the next couple of days during a Nor’easter, rather like Hansen described, accompanied by 60mph winds!
Maybe that’s why on “billionaires row”- those super wealthy are seeking to have their condos on ever taller buildings. Their condos will become islands when Manhattan goes under water. 🙂
Except those that are building mansions on the beach.
Mr. Eclang: Your screen name suggests an out-of-tune bell, good choice. Above you tell us faux news lies, which news source did you decide to believe re: 2100 Manhattan?
Hoax: A humorous or malicious deception.
Scam: A dishonest scheme to gain money
Piltdown Man, Big Foot Yeti & Sasquatch, crop circles, the Loch Ness monster, Jackalopes, are hoaxes.
“The Climate Crisis” is a scam.
As someone mentioned elsewhere on WUWT: there are Knaves and Dupes in
the climate crisis issue.
The Knaves know it’s a scam, but their livelyhood depends on it .
The Dupes don’t know they are being scammed and have been brainwashed to the point that it has become part of their identity.
Knaves deserve all the ridicule & resistance we can muster.
I try to be patient and not be too hard on the Dupes. [key word is “try”] Lol
And a hoax, they are not mutually exclusive terms, they mesh together quite well.
From Webster’s Dictionary…..
Hoax (noun) Something accepted or established by fraudulent means or fabrication.
Hoax (transitive verb) To trick into believing or accepting something false and often preposterous.
If you examine the evidence yourself, I think you will find the term appropriate.
I have seen the expression “global warming has been over exaggerated to the point of falsehood” as perhaps a better means of expressing what is happening rather than outright dismissal as a hoax.
“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters, cannot be trusted with important matters”
– Albert Einstein
“Intelligent people understand that science is not settled,”
True. But who claimed it was and for what motives?
Politics, power, money and “The Cause”. (With some egos thrown in.)
Trillions have been spent. Where did the money go? Did any of those in charge of the projects “To Go Green” not get payed? How many politicians have run on the meme (with the MSM’s willing assistance)?
“Hoax” is a good word to describe what has been done to the public in Western democracies.
If intelligent people understood that the climate science is not settled, why have so many nations gone crazy and broke pushing “clean energy”? Do you mean to say that nations haven’t been run by intelligent people? Why aren’t those intelligent people speaking up- when idiots like Al Gore and others say the science is settled?
Massachusetts loves to promote the idea that it has the best education – especially at the university level- in the world, yet it’s probably the craziest when it comes to “the climate emergency”. Also crazy about protecting illegal aliens- though that term will not be seen in the MSM in the state. Instead these illegals are called merely migrants.
It is a hoax, in every sense of the word.
The only ways these islands would have flooded would have been from a tsunami or a storm surge. And such are temporary.
Has that happened?
If such temporary events had happened, they’d be headlines news proclaiming “proof”.
Sea-level has been very slowing rising, but not so fast as it out rises coral growth or many of the CAGW/”Climate Change Existential Threat” proponents have stopped buying beach front properties.
(Just ask Obama.)
I forget if it was Tuvalu or the Maldives, but Nils Axel Morner published a photo he had taken a few decades earlier of a scraggly old tree growing on a small island. He showed a contemporary photo of the exact same tree from the exact same position demonstrating absolutely no sea level rise at all during that period! Inflamed leftist “environmentalists” searched and located Nils tree and tore it out of the ground! It was an ancient tree, but they couldn’t let it stand because it was a symbol of their corrupt dishonesty.
It was the Maldives. A group of Australian student activists removed the tree. Nils replaced the tree in its hole for a photo, which appeared in a 2007 interview with Gregory Murphy, 21st Century Science and Technology. Nils made a film “Doomsday Called Off” that included the story of the tree as a SLR marker.
For anyone interested in watching “Doomsday Called Off”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8B-gsqPZ9k. I’d never seen it before, very informative.
Clearly shows that CAGW is not about climate, not about CO2, not about science it is purely politics and by that I mean a transfer of money from developed nations to developing nations. It is that simple. What part of no do they not understand?
Agreed. Maurice Strong stated that explicitly to be the purpose of AGW policy. Specifically, “to facilitate north-south financial transfers.” It’s always been about money. Environmental protection was merely the claimed excuse.
Strong, an avowed socialist, said at his opening speech at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit: “What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group’s conclusion is ‘no’. The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?.”
Here’s a LINK to the source of that Maurice Strong quote:
WEST Magazine 1990
The Wizard of Baca Grande
A story of how a boy from Oak Lake Manitoba set out to change the world.
And there’s this (No Link)
“Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.”
Maurice Strong quoted in the September 1. 1997 edition of National review magazine.
Many don’t realise that Strong was also involved in the Montreal Protocol, the ban of CFCs. Along with Bert Bolin, he was mainly responsible for setting up the forerunner of today’s IPCC. For the first conference in Rio, he deliberately loaded the conference with green activists.
The UNFCC and the UN COP are major money movers for UN wealth transfer plan. How much of the donor funds goes to administrative overhead?
Slightly OT, but just how if sea level measured, or, more to the point, what standard determines “feet above sea level?
I found this https://geodesy.noaa.gov/datums/newdatums/ and this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level .
Is Mount Everest shrinking? When was the last time they (officially) changed it’s height above sea level?
Now, if I lived on one of those “threatened” islands, I wouldn’t care about it as long as I didn’t step out my bed in the morning into ocean. (As they imply could happen because of “sea level rise”.)
How can you challenge the argument that never existed?
Perhaps you misworded your reply?
Perhaps:
“How can you challenge an argument they refuse to acknowledge exists?” 😎
This isn’t rocket science, it’s simple geology. I just used AI to recall something I learned in a first year engineering geology course in 1966–that Coral growth builds such islands, storms smashes the coral and shrinks them until the coral can rebuild. But coral growth and the sand that it traps is what builds such islands.
So, how fast can the coral grow?–
“Rapid Coral Growth Rates
How fast is sea level rise forecast by alarmists to rise?–it’s measured in mm per year, at least an order of magnitude slower. Sea level rise is a non issue for coral-built islands.
I then asked what is the optimum temperature range for coral growth–24 to 29ºC. So I asked what is the summer ocean temperature in the Great Barrier Reef area?–29C.
We don’t have to be ignorant if we’re curious and have even the smallest amount of personal initiative.
“Scientists suggest that some islands will shrink, others will grow, and many will remain stable.”
Yes, but if you throw out the “bad” data, average the rest, and throw in some Bristlecone Pines, it looks really scary.
I thought Washington/Teraina Island would have disappeared by now.
Several comments refer to the Climate Change industry as a hoax or a scam depending on your desire for accuracy of description.
Not one, not even the Climate Alarmist members who comment from time to time, refer to it as scientific. They are wise not to get into that debate, it is not one they could ever win.
It is a remarkable state of affairs, when so called responsible authorities compete to describe small variations in sea level change as significant and attempt to convey some sort of crisis is upon us.
The range of sea level change is somewhere between 100mm and 200 mm per century. The variation is not always upward. Parts of the world are seeing (apparent) sea levels fall. Those are areas that are rebounding from glacier ice compression following the last ice age recession, or are subject to ground heave caused principally by tectonic and volcanic activity.
It is worth remembering sea level change is measured in one or two millimetres/year why the anxiety? Tectonic plates are shifting whole continents at the rate of ~ 15 millimetres/year. Maybe we should be looking at that?
Maybe we can get the alarmists interested in policies needed to change tectonic plate activity rather than climate change? Clearly they like a challenge….
Subsidence, a word these climatards need to learn the meaning of.
“locals in Tuvalu aren’t fearful of climate change” – but some are not above alarmism such as photographing people under water wearing scuba diving masks.
Their game is demanding money from large countries.
(The Maldives is not poor, much vacation spending, has become favoured by Russian tourists who are shunned elsewhere.)
Atolls come and go, sloshing of the southern Pacific-Indian Ocean is one cause (driven by wind and currents). Storms damage atolls, as covered in TIGHAR’s book ‘One Last Good Flight’ about Amelia Earhart’ demise.
(TIGHAR’s conclusion is that when not finding destination of Howland Island she and navigator turned south as they knew there were islands that way, and crash landed on a reef of Gardner Island – eventually storms washed their airplane into deep water.)
The likelihood of a once-in-100 years storm surge occurring….increases every year….not due to CC as climageddonists will claim when it happens, but due to the passage of another year in a running average…an honest statistician might point out…
From the above article:
“A 2018 study (Paul Kench, University of Auckland) found that 74 out of 101 of Tuvalu’s islands have remained stable or have actually grown in size, despite an approximate 15 cm rise in sea level over recent decades.”
Well, if we use the decades of available NOAA satellite-altimetry derivation of sea level rise from 1993 to 2025 (see attached graph), the average linear rate is 3.2 mm/year, or 3.2 cm/decade.
1995 to 2025 is only 3 decades, so that would then equate to 3 * 3.2 = about 10 cm rise.
Thus, it appears that 2018 study by Kench significantly overstated the actual rise in sea-level, which for all intents and purposes is proceeding at a lower, linear rate.
Nevertheless, this does not overrule the above article’s conclusion that Pacific Ocean islands are not disappearing due to rising sea levels.