THE TRUTH ABOUT TUVALU?

A New Zealand climate scientist and a Pacific Island writer give assurances Tuvalu is not sinking .

by Vincent Gray

SNOW JOB ON TUVALU?

Everybody knows about Tuvalu, It is becoming inundated by the rising sea level because of global warming. The New Zealand Government has recognised the plight of the embattled inhabitants by offering special deals for immigration. So have the Australians. It forms a regular topic at meetings of the Pacific Forum and beyond, and there cannot possibly be any disagreement on the matter .

A couple of years' ago I was interviewed by the Dunedin-based Natural History Unit as part of documentary for the National Geographic Channel. I had over an hour to give my views on greenhouse warming, which I expected would appear in an internationally distributed documentary. They sent me a copy of the final doco "to enjoy". I found that it was all about how Tuvalu is faced with imminent disaster, with a "moaning Minnie" lady persistently bemoaning the loss of her homeland from a comfortable flat in Brisbane. My contribution had been almost eliminated .

But Tuvalu reminds me of a comic song I used to sing of Gracie Fields called "He's dead but he won't lie down". Tuvalu persistently refuses to subside .

A tide gauge to measure sea level has been in existence at Tuvalu since 1977, run by the University of Hawaii It showed a negligible increase of only 0.07 mm per year over two decades It fell three millimeters between 1995 and 1999. The complete record can still be seen on John Daly's website: http://www.john-daly.com>www.john-daly.com Obviously this could not be tolerated, so the gauge was closed in 1999 and a new, more modern tide gauge was set up by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's National Tidal Center by Flinders University at Adelaide. But Tuvalu refuses to submit to political pressure. The sea level has actually fallen since then Tuvalu cannot be allowed to get away with it. So Greenpeace employed Dr John Hunter. a climatologist of the University of Tasmania, who obligingly "adjusted" the Tuvalu readings upwards to comply with changes in ENSO and those found for the island of Hawaii and, miraculously, he found a sea level rise of "around" 1.2 mm a year which, also miraculously, agrees with the IPCC global figure .

Since all this seems biased, or politically influenced, Dr John Church of the CSIRO at Hobart, Tasmania, a lead author of the IPCC Chapter on "Sea Level", plus his colleague Dr Neil White, have sought to reverse actual measured trends by "combining records from tide gauges from all over the world with satellite altimeter data to assess regional variation". Unsurprisingly, and equally miraculously, they reach the same conclusion as Greenpeace and the IPCC. All this has to be imposed on poor little Tuvalu to "prove" global warming.and speed emigration .

The IPCC Chapter on Sea Level is one of the more dishonest. It practices two important deceptions. First, it completely fails to mention the fact that many tide gauges are situated close to cities where the land is subsiding because of erection of heavy buildings, or removal of ground water, oil and minerals. It so happens that the island of Hawaii is one of the more heavily populated Pacific islands where the sea level is "rising" because the land is "falling" Another reason for upwards bias is Port Adelaide, Australia, where they decided to increase the water level in the harbour to allow for larger ships, They dredged and built a bar on the harbour. Unsurprisingly, the level rose on the tide-gauge. Corrections for these upwards biases in tide-gauge measurements have never been permitted to be discussed by the IPCC .

The other deception of the IPCC Sea Level Chapter is in statistics. The sea level averages are so inaccurate that they have to supply only one standard deviation as a measure of inaccuracy, instead of the otherwise universal use of two standard deviations. One standard deviation gives only a one in three chance that the measurement lies outside the limits. Two standard deviations puts it up to one in twenty. If you use the proper figures you find that the accuracy sometimes permits a less than one in twenty chance of a sea level fall. That must never be allowed This whole melancholy story is told in an article in "Science" 2006 Volume 312, pages 734 to 736, It seems that the Greenpeace organisation is now occupying the role of the late Trofim Lysenko in their ability to reverse the findings of scientific research .

Will God protect Tuvalu from death and destruction as climate change brings rising sea levels or is action also needed?

A Tuvalu activist and artist from Tuvalu now living ovwerseas tells this blog:

"From what I'm aware, a lot of homeland Tuvaluans DO believe that God will take care of their needs. However, in my opinion, I believe action still needs to be taken to get the word out. Life is a balancing act - there needs to be faith but also action. I take the middle-path approach and say that, although faith is good, action is still needed. Again, in my opinion, God helps those who help themselves."

RE: On a recent National Geographic documentary about Tuvalu, some people were quoted saying that because of God's pact with Noah in the Bible, they also felt that God will protect Tuvalu and that there is nothing to be alarmed about....

Funafuti - ''Ellice's Island'' - Tuvalu history

Funafuti was named ''Ellice's Island'' and named because of the name
of Edward Ellice, a British politician and merchant, by Captain Arent
de Peyster in the early 1800s who sighted the islands in 1819 sailing
on the ship RebeccaMr. Ellice in Britain owned the cargo of the ship.
The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands, of what is now
Tuvalu, after the map work of English hydrographer Alexander George
Findlay (1812–1876).

"The ground zero of climate change" = Tuvalu, ''8 small islands''

How on Earth did we get this way?

Polar Cities — the Ultimate in Long-Term Real Estate Speculation?

December 5, 3011 A.D.

Zachary Shahan wrote for PLANETSAVE.COM in 2011
http://planetsave.com/2011/12/05/polar-cities-the-ultimate-in-long-term-real-estate-speculation



We’ve got two extremes when it comes to climate change predictions: we’ve got the most extreme climate science predictions based on worst-case scenarios, some of which have the world becoming completely unlivable, and we’ve got many of the world’s politicians thinking or acting like we’ve got all the time in the world to cut our emissions.

I was recently contacted by Danny Bloom, who is putting his heart and mind into the “Polar Cities” project, basically arguing that due to our sloth in acting to prevent catastrophic global warming and climate change today, we could be headed for a world where that is barely livable, where humans can mostly just live close to the poles. To highlight the urgency of the issue we’re facing, just as a thought experiment, it seems, Bloom contends that it would be wise of us who are not fooled by the fossil fuel lobby to start looking at real estate in such regions… today! Of course, this is a little ridiculous, but it does serve a purpose….

“Polar cities? Well, on one level, my project is just a wake up call, an alarm bell, shouting from the rooftops that we must do all we can now to avert climate disasters in the future,” Bloom writes. “On another level, purely architectural and philosophical, let me put it gently this way: Polar cities are envisioned as safe refuge communities where
climate refugees can live if — and only if — worst comes to worst.”

While this is all a bit of fantasy thinking, I do think that we are putting off action for too long to not run into massive droughts, floods, and other natural disasters.. which will lead to massive famine and death. And what I like about what Bloom is pushing .....is that I think it can help to wake some people up to the scale of the issue facing us. I hope it can. And, I think Bloom is looking at it this way himself, more or less.

“Of course, I hope it never comes to that. We must work our tails off now — now! — with as many geoengineering and technology ideas as we can to save our planet. It can be done, and I am optimistic that it will be done. We will not go gently into that good night of climate chaos that the doomsayers like to speak of. I am not a doomsayer. I am a Bloomsayer.”

Bloom is clearly having a bit of fun with this. And trying to wake people up using a mixture of extremism and humor. Regarding the quote above, while I don’t think we should be fiddling with geoengineering, I do think the important thing is that we act now to address this issue. And that should be our #1 focus when it comes to this topic.

But Bloom is clearly working on his Polar Cities project with vigor, and I think that’s still infinitely more useful than what the fossil fuel industry, numerous banks, and numerous politicians (ahem, the whole Republican leadership) are doing.

More from Bloom:

I’ve lived in Asia since 1991, and began working on the polar cities alarm bell project in 2006, James Lovelock is my teacher. He’s 93. I’m 63. You who are 43 and 23, please listen: we need your help. Check out my Polar City site here and remember that it is just a what-if project and not something I ever want to see happen. Imagine: I am the head of a global project that I hope never becomes reality. I want to fail. I want you, dear reader, to succeed, to survive and flourish and persevere.”


The polar cities website may be the best site on the internet for long-term real estate speculators — really long term speculators! Humor helps here. In fact, I’ve put together a map of where I think the best polar real estate lies.


Sometimes I like to think of myself as “James Lovelock’s Accidental Student” because while I am an optimist, and I think everything will work out fine, eventually, one way or the other, it was Dr Lovelock in Britain who first woke me up with his calls for deep thinking about our future on a warming Earth. Before that, I was, like most people, asleep at the wheel of my own SUV. Now I am fully awake, alert, concerned. I hope you are, too, and I hope you plan to do something about it.


Dr. Lovelock has seen the polar cities images that Taiwanese artist Deng Cheng-hong has designed for the future. Lovelock told me in an email two years ago that these polar city ideas might even be useful later on.


Okay, look, I admit it: I am an affable, avuncular, slightly loopy eccentric, but certainly not a dangerous end of the world survivalist at all. Polar cities are just something to think about. Again, I repeat, a wake up call so that we never have to live in such God-forsaken places.


I know that there is a huge team of climate activists and engineering experts the world over, all working in our own ways to raise the alarm about global warming and climate change. I’ve had my say here. Would love to hear your comments as well.

Danny Bloom, a 1971 Tufts graduate who now lives in Taiwan, can be reached at danbloom AT gmail, if you’re interested in chatting more about this.

Now, luckily, is not the time to think about migrating to the Arctic. However, now is the time to put in some real effort to preserve the world full of life’s basic necessities that we have today. Please, help to spread the word and do your part! And, if you want, have a little fun dreaming about polar cities.

po lun tai ding ning

http://www.whatsonshenzhen.com/news_images/2ab4db51edf685faff78823d_Charmian_Chen_3.jpg

Oh, the Places We Will Go -- Polar Cities, Here We Come!

By Denial Oberbyte


Toward the end of the exhibition “Beyond Climate Change: The Future of Polar Cities,” which is on now at the American Museum of Natural History and will likely stay up for a while, if visitor traffic dictates, a visitor is confronted with a chance to help make ''polar cities'' in the far north (and far south, too -- think Tasmania and New Zealand) livable. Time frame? 2100 to 2200. Prepare for a wild adventure, the show seems to be saying.

Using an interactive screen the size and shape of a Ping-Pong table, you can play God and direct the future in places like Alasaka, Canada and Russia when global warming's impact events have made the Lower 48 unlivable. Ask James
Lovelock in Britain. He knows what the museum show is all about. In a way, he helped curate it.

The first task is to site your polar city, design it and then start building it, all on the interactive screen.
All of made me feel like a delightfully naughty 7-year-old boy.

"Wow, polar city life will be exciting, yet scary at the same time," I exclaimed, eliciting sage chuckles from the museum staff members nearby. After all, we’ve been preparing for this scenario over the past 2500 years on Earth.

The idea of the polar cities museum show seemed wildly and gloomily appropriate when I first heard about it. We think of museums as being for old dead things, and polar cities seem just too doomsdayish to think about. But the museum has
made the exhibit fun to walk through, and it's thought provoking at the same time.

The idea of the exhibition is to look forward 50 or 100 years, said Sarah Michaels, the curator of the show. “We’re at a crossroads,” she said. “We have to decide what to do when the shit hits the fan. Where is the vision?”

In this case, the vision is solely Dr. Michaels, she admitted, arrived at by picking the brains of climate experts. Lest you get too excited, it does not yet represent the official agenda of the CIA or any other agency.

The world sorely needs some kind of polar city blueprint going forward, if indeed we are to go forward and survive the coming Long Emergency in a world made by hand, and though one can quibble with many details, this one is as good as any. One can fantasize that this show could have the same long-range impact on shaping public expectations about climate chaos as magazine articles and television shows did in the 1950s. In that case, I hope it travels to the other countries that are now preparing thei own climate agendas, like Japan, like Russia, like China.

Those who think that global warming is a leftwing conspiracy shored up by Al Gore and that any efforts to deal with it, and humankind's future, is ridiculously expensive, wasteful, dangerous and unscientific — a group that includes a lot of scientists I know — might want to stop reading right here. The exhibition plays shamelessly to those of us are not afraid to face reality and what climate chaos might do to our planet -- and our descendants 100 to 200 years down the road.

“Somebody will do these things,” Dr. Michaels said. “Maybe not the U.S.”

The times being what they are, there is an iPhone app to go with the show. Point your phone at one of several special stations and extra information is downloaded into your hand; you can collect it and e-mail it. And the exhibits faithfully refer to climate prophets like Lovelock and Hansen, not to mention Lynas and Bloom. The uplift the show gives to a weary sci-fi boy like me
is beyond words.


Sooner or later — in the year 2080, it says here — humans will be forced to migrate north to polar cities in search
of food, fuel and energy sources. “It won't be a pretty picture,” the show notes in travel-brochure language.

We find ourselves in the Polar City Red, for example, where there's a war going on between residents, mostly scientists
and government officials, and scavangers or marauders living in the tundra regions away from the climate refuges.

Getting there is also going to be interesting. By then, Dr. Michaels figures, we will have had enough of the violence that climate chaos will provoke and we will yearn for peaceful lives in polar cities.

Around the corner from Polar City Red, a scale model of Polar City Blue explains to visitors the various alternatives they
will have in the 100 or so polar cities envisioned in the far north by 2080 -- or sooner.

There is a psychological test you can take to see if you can tolerate the level of detail, stress and loneliness needed to survive life in a polar city some 100 years from now.

A full-scale model of the U.S.-administered Polar City Red dominates the scene. Built along side a mountain outside
Fairbanks, Alaska, it looks like some prehistoric creature with an overdeveloped head browsing the ground.

Some climate scientists think that polar cities could serve as lifeboats for humanity and in the words of Lovelock as "breeding
stations for future generations on Earth."

The cost? Accoring to CIA estimates, “trillions of dollars.” Only trillions?


Not everybody agrees that such a scheme would work, nor that we even have the need to do it. But like it or not,
polar cities, here we come. This eye-opening musem shows paves the way.

The journey has still only begun.

Step “Star Trek” style into the hologram at the end of the exhibit and you are beamed effortless into a real polar city,
to experience first hand what life might be like in one.

“That’s where we can go, where we must go, if we are to survive as a species,” Dr. Michaels said, “and the focus.”

The show, “Beyond Climate Change: The Future of Polar Cities", is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. at the American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, in Manhattan. Information: (212) 769-5100 or amnh.org.

Climate denialists and global warming skeptics are welcome, too.
--
Bonus VIRTUAL GRADUATION SPEECH TO CLASS OF 2080 AD...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-wnrm2jE-E