Shakedown artists of Maldives and Tuvalu just trying to cash in. They think, 'Al Gore got rich off this scam, why not me?'

12/8/10, "Cancun's Climate Crock," American Thinker, Brian Sussman

"And the submersion of Tuvalu and Maldives? Their surrounding waters show no measurable signs of rising. The problem is the islands of Maldives are relatively flat coral atolls. Since tourism was first introduced to the nation in 1972,

• ninety plush resorts have been built, with locally mined coral being the primary aggregate for construction.

Digging up coral on small islands to build large hotels and conference centers is as stupid as sucking the air out of a lifeboat to breathe. The mining has severely compromised the atolls,

• creating the impression that the islands are sinking.

Likewise, Tuvalu's problem is not climate change. Tuvalu's mess is that the country was never meant for modern habitation. There is no fresh water available -- only what can be cached from rain. Much of the population on the main island uses a lagoon for its bathing and toilet facilities. The tiny nation ships its garbage to landfills in Fiji and New Zealand.

• Tuvalu is a tropical island mess being
  
• run by slick politicians
  
• using global warming for a shakedown operation.
  

In a 2007 speech at the United Nations, the Deputy Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Tavau Teii, said that major greenhouse polluters should compensate Tuvalu for the impacts of climate change. "We are seeking new funding arrangements to protect us from the impacts of climate change ...

• we believe that the major greenhouse polluters should pay for the impacts they are causing.""...

• The global whiners can continue to make all the wild pronouncements they wish, but the fact is that they're losing the debate."
• ####

6/11/10, "Editorial: Pacific Islands not sinking from global warming," New study debunks Al Gore's hysterical fairy tale. Washington Times

"Of all the apocalyptic imagery summoned by global warming's proponents, the most compelling has been

• the threat of coastal devastation from rising sea levels. In his best-selling work "Earth in the Balance," Al Gore argued that the selfishness of Western industrialization would obliterate small, impoverished countries.

"Although the sea level has risen and fallen through different geological periods, never has the change been anywhere near as rapid as that now expected as a consequence of global warming," he wrote. "... [I]sland nations like the Maldives and Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides), will be devastated if the projections made by scientists turn out to be accurate."

• Mr. Gore solemnly predicted that millions of poor inhabitants would be forced to flee their homelands in a desperate bid for survival - unless we adopt his political agenda. It just isn't so.

In a forthcoming issue of the journal Global and Planetary Change, researchers from the University of Auckland in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission in Fiji documented changes in 27 vulnerable, low-lying reef islands in the Central Pacific.

• Using aerial photographs taken as early as 1944, the areas were carefully mapped and compared with modern satellite images.

It turns out that the islands did, in fact, change over time, but they are hardly sinking. Overall, 20 grew or remained stable. The island of Funamanu, for example, expanded from 7.4 acres to 9.5 acres in size - a 28 percent growth. Only seven islands shrunk, with the biggest percentage change occurring on Tengasu, which dropped from a tiny 1.7 acres to 1.5 acres - a diminishment of 9,670 square feet, the size of Mr. Gore's Tennessee mansion.

According to various studies, sea levels appear to have risen about 8 inches since the year 1860, but these Pacific islands continue to prosper nonetheless. This new study attributed size differences over time to the effect of ocean swells pounding and eroding windward shorelines. On leeward sides protected from the swells, coastlines grew.

• In other words, nature struck a near-perfect balance, wholly unaffected by the purported evils of America's internal-combustion engines.

This research was not conducted by scientists who disputed climate change, but even they noted the suspicious absence of verification for a key alarmist claim.

• "The lack of monitoring seems a gross oversight given the international concern over small island stability and pressing concerns of island communities to manage island landscapes," the report stated.

So the islands aren't sinking, the Hockey Stick has been thoroughly debunked, the Himalayas still have snow and the polar bears are alive and well. As just about every tenet in the Church of Global Warming has been debunked,

• it's time for the movement's high priest, Mr. Gore, to offer a refund to those from his flock who bought his work of fiction."

6/3/10: "New Zealand research shows Pacific Islands not shrinking," from New Zealand television. From 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. " Mentions

• Tuvalu had increased due to a typhoon in 1972..

11/2/2009, from the NY Times: "Last month, the cabinet of Maldives donned scuba gear and held an underwater meeting to highlight the threat of global warming to that nation, the world’s lowest." (last item in article)

• (The NY Times exists today via a bailout from a Lebanese-Mexican billionaire. In other words, it was not otherwise 'sustainable.' ****)
  

7/12/10, "Majorities say the darndest things," Wall St. Journal, Taranto,

• 'Green about the gills'

"An editorial in yesterday's New York Times (registration) offers an unwitting clue as to why environmentalism has lost its power to persuade:

• "Perhaps now we can put the manufactured controversy known as Climategate behind us and turn to the task of actually doing something about global warming,"

the Times begins its utterly predictable screed, which goes on to assert that revelations of scientific misconduct are "trivial" and "diversionary" and global warming

• is the unquestionable truth.

Environmentalists' appeal to authority is no longer effective except with those, like the Times's editors,

• who have an ideological stake in accepting it. For the rest of us, it only further diminishes their credibility."...

"Perhaps it relied on the GHG Emissions Credit Trading report (yours for a mere $397), which predicts a $4.5 trillion carbon market by 2020.

• No less chagrined must be Gordon Brown, who sees the carbon market as key to the global response to climate change,
  

• and to the economic fortunes of the City of London.
  

As Brown told WWF in 2007, the government wanted binding limits on developed country emissions in a post-2012 climate agreement,

• because London was the world's carbon trading capital,
  

and "only hard caps can create the framework necessary for a global carbon market to flourish".

• Thus he made it clear that the health of the carbon market took a rather
  

• higher priority than the health of the climate system."...

from UK Guardian, 1/25/10, "Don't let the carbon market die," by Oliver Tickell.

• Reference: from Asia Times "Climate Change's Secret Weapon," by Khadija Sharife, 2/26/10, (Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)

.

Al Gore photo top with Obama logo via Washington Times, June 2010

.