“The waves are slowly seeping over the islands of the Pacific nation, which is at the frontline of the climate change-induced rise in sea levels striking low-lying nations all over the world,” reports The Guardian. But is global warming really at fault?
Check out the Australian BOM SeaFrame results here: pp 6 and 9 are clear that sea level is not rising. Overall, Kiribati sea level is lower than when monitoring started in in 1992.
http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO60024/IDO60024.2010.pdf
Much of the claims of rising sea level go back to the recovery after the 1997/8 El Nino. They take the trend from there when in fact, long term sea level has fallen.
Some sea level changes are due to local construction events:
“After the completion of the Nippon Causeway (Tarawa’s longest causeway) in the mid-1980s, the island almost nearly disappeared. “After they built the causeway, it dissolved. It just started getting smaller and smaller,” says Rurutaake Etuati, a 38-year old driver living on Tarawa.
The theory is that the construction of the causeway disrupted the rate of water flow and sand deposition patterns between the ocean and the lagoon during the changing high and low tides. As a result, sand was taken from Bikeman and deposited somewhere else within the lagoon. Thus, its disappearance was not the result of sea-level rise.”
The islanders think AGW a good thing…very profitable. Kind of a mid-pacific ATSIC gravytrain.
Since when has mass media ever let facts stand in the way of a ‘good’ agenda? I submit that historically it is the good, honest nothing-but-the-facts journalism that is rare. What we are seeing in the world of climate reporting is actually the norm.