Latest UN Climate Scare Campaign: “THE OCEAN IS OVERFLOWING”
By Craig Kelly
“The ocean is overflowing,” Guterres said.
“This is a crazy situation: Rising seas are a crisis entirely of humanity’s making. A crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no lifeboat to take us back to safety.”
Rising sea levels are a “worldwide catastrophe” which uniquely threatens Pacific Islands, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned.
‘The ocean is overflowing’: UN Chief issues SOS on risk of rising sea levels
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the world to “massively increase” finance and support for vulnerable countries.
Rising sea levels are a “worldwide catastrophe” which uniquely threatens Pacific Islands, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned.
The UN chief raised the alarm at a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum – the most important political gathering in the region – in Nukuʻalofa, the capital of Tonga on Tuesday. He also released two UN reports which detail disastrous changes to the ocean caused by climate change.
“The ocean is overflowing,” Guterres said. “This is a crazy situation: Rising seas are a crisis entirely of humanity’s making. A crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no lifeboat to take us back to safety.”
He issued a “global SOS – Save Our Seas – on rising sea levels” calling on world leaders to take definitive action at COP29 later this year.
‘Transforming a lifelong friend into a growing threat’
The first report of the two UN reports, compiled by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), highlights how sea level rise is putting Pacific Islands in peril.
As our world has warmed, oceans have absorbed around 90 per cent of global heating caused by humans.
“Human activities have weakened the capacity of the ocean to sustain and protect us and – through sea level rise – are transforming a lifelong friend into a growing threat,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo in a statement.
“Already we are seeing more coastal flooding, shoreline retreat, saltwater contamination of freshwater supplies and displacement of communities.”
Despite accounting for just 0.02 per cent of global emissions, Pacific Islands are especially vulnerable. On average, they lie just one or two metres above sea level.
Sea-surface temperatures in the southwest Pacific have risen three times faster than the global average, the report says. Marine heatwaves in the region have almost doubled in frequency since 1980 and are lasting longer and becoming more intense.
Rising seas also amplify the frequency and severity of storm surges and coastal flooding. The southwest Pacific has seen 34 of these mostly storm or flood-related “hydrometeorological hazard events” in the last year, according to the WMO, causing over 200 deaths and impacting more than 25 million people across the region.
Sea level rise is no longer a ‘distant threat’
In 2021, the IPCC said that sea levels were rising at a rate unprecedented in at least the last 3,000 years due to human-induced global warming. But since then new research on climate ‘tipping points’ and melting ice sheets has scientists concerned that the rise could be much bigger and occur faster than previously thought.
The second report warns that rising sea levels are “no longer distant threats” – particularly for Pacific Islands. They are already affecting the lives and livelihoods of coastal communities and low-lying island nations around the world today as ice on land melts and seawater expands from global warming.
Guterres warned that sea level rise has the “unparalleled power to cause havoc to coastal cities and ravage coastal economies”.
The Pacific Islands are “uniquely exposed” as 90 per cent of people live within 5 kilometres of the coast and half of all infrastructure is within 500 metres of the sea, he added.
The global average sea level has already risen more than 10cm since 1993 and the rate at which it is rising has doubled since the 1990s.
“Without drastic cuts in emissions, the Pacific Islands can expect at least 15 centimetres of additional sea level rise by mid-century and more than 30 days per year of coastal flooding in some places.”
A 2C temperature rise could lead to the loss of almost all of the Greenland ice sheet and much of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Future generations would then see an “unstoppable” sea level rise of 20 metres over a period of millennia. On our current trajectory, 3C of warming, that rise would happen much more rapidly over centuries instead.
“That spells disaster: wide-ranging and brutal impacts, coming far thicker and faster than we can adapt to them – destroying entire coastal communities,” said Guterres.
More finance and support is needed for vulnerable nations
One of the key issues expected to be on the agenda at COP29 in Azerbaijan later this year is an increase in finance for countries vulnerable to climate change. A previous commitment for wealthy countries to mobilise $100 billion (€89.6bn) a year is due to expire.
Guterres called on world leaders to “step up” to drastically slash global emissions, “massively boost climate adaptation investments”, and increase support for vulnerable countries.
He said limiting global warming to 1.5C was the only hope for preventing the irreversible collapse of ice sheets as well as the catastrophes that accompany them.
“That means cutting global emissions by 43 per cent compared to 2019 levels by 2030, and 60 per cent by 2035.”
Finance and support for vulnerable nations could also reinforce adaptation measures such as early warning systems for the hazards they face. Despite being a lifeline, Saulo said they are available to just a third of Small Island Developing States globally.
“The world must look to the Pacific and listen to science,” Guterres said. “If we save the Pacific, we also save ourselves.”
“Meanwhile back in real world the Pacific Island of Tuvual is growing in size”
Is the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu growing, and not sinking, as Craig Kelly says?
Coalition backbench MP Craig Kelly says that the pacific island nation of Tuvalu is growing, rather than shrinking.
The claim
Liberal MP and climate sceptic Craig Kelly made headlines in November when he was caught on tape mocking “lefties” for exaggerating the effects of climate change.
Speaking at a local party event, audio of which was leaked to the Guardian, Mr Kelly set out to debunk several justifications for climate change action, including the argument that Tuvalu, the Pacific island nation, was slipping beneath the sea.
“The science tells us that Tuvalu, which I often hear about, is actually growing not sinking,” he told colleagues.
Is Tuvalu growing? RMIT ABC Fact Check investigates.
The verdict
Mr Kelly’s claim checks out.
In the four decades to 2014, Tuvalu’s total land area grew by 73 hectares, or 2.9 per cent.
The expert behind this research told Fact Check the nation’s islands were continually adjusting, and that the new land was habitable.
But that’s not to say Pacific nations are not at risk from rising seas.
One expert told Fact Check that among the Solomon Islands, for example, reef and volcanic islands had disappeared or been eroded, in some cases displacing indigenous communities.
Smaller islands in Tuvalu, though uninhabited, have also shrunk.
The research cited by Mr Kelly suggests certain islands — specifically, larger atolls and reef platforms — can adapt to the current pace of sea level rise.
However, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sets out four scenarios for future rises, three of them more severe than what Tuvalu has so far faced.
Why is Tuvalu important?
Halfway between Australia and Hawaii lies the tiny Pacific nation of Tuvalu.
A map showing the location of Tuvalu.
It’s a place often cited in discussions about climate change and rising seas, given its 101 low-lying islands.
Indeed, Mr Kelly wrote about this link in a lengthy Facebook post in February 2018:
“A tenet of faith for Climate Alarmism devotees and anti-coal zealots is the belief that Pacific Islands such as Tuvalu are sinking beneath the seas.”
The Australian Government has itself announced initiatives worth $300 million to help its Pacific neighbours, among them Tuvalu, to combat the effects of climate change.
The source of the claim
Contacted by Fact Check, Mr Kelly stood by his recorded words and said the claim was based on research from the University of Auckland.
This peer-reviewed study used satellite imagery to measure Tuvalu’s changing land area over four decades.
Between 1971 and 2014, it showed, the country grew by more than 73 hectares, or 2.9 per cent.
Each period of the study experienced net increases in land area, including the most recent decade.
Of Tuvalu’s individual islands, 73 had increased in land area while 28 had decreased. Just one had eroded entirely.
Tuvalu’s population is spread across nine of its largest islands, with about 50 per cent of its people living on Fogafale, in the Funafuti atoll.
These larger islands generally experienced the greatest increases in land size, while Tuvalu’s smaller, uninhabited islands fared the worst.
The majority of islands studied have grown since 1971.
Why is Tuvalu growing?
The study looked at Tuvalu’s two island types, atolls and reef platforms.
Though both are formed from coral reefs, atolls are ring-shaped formations of islets or islands surrounding a lagoon, whereas reef platform islands are solid, single structures.
Their expansion, the study suggests, is the result of sediment, corals and other debris being washed ashore by storms and waves.
Coastal geomorphologist Paul Kench, who led the research team, told Fact Check that Tuvalu’s islands had “always been changeable” and that they “adjust their position on the reef surface” as waves, currents and sea levels change.
“This is a continual adjustment process,” he added.
Example of island change and dynamics in Tuvalu between 1971 and 2014
Notably, Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga criticised the research, claiming it had not considered the habitability of the new land area.
But Professor Kench told Fact Check this was not the case:
“These islands are essentially deposits of gravel and sand,” he said.
“The accreted material is no different to the older material.”
His previous research demonstrated similar growth in the atoll islands of Kiribati.
Future sea level rises
In his statements, Craig Kelly cited the link between climate change and rising seas.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2013 modelled four scenarios for future sea level rises, which vary according to projected carbon emissions.
Under the IPCC’s most conservative scenario, the last two decades of this century would see oceans rise by 4.0mm per year (within a range of 2.0mm to 6.8mm).
The most severe scenario puts the rise at 11.2mm per year (within a range of 7.5mm to 15.7mm).
University of NSW Professor John Church, who is an IPCC lead contributor on rising seas, told Fact Check that sea levels did not rise uniformly but varied depending on factors such as ocean currents, surface winds and water temperature.
“There is a tendency for sea level rise to be less than the global average near regions of mass loss,” Professor Church said, explaining that rises were greater in places further from melting glaciers and ice sheets.
Professor Kench’s study reported that the seas around Tuvalu rose by about 3.9mm per year between 1971 and 2014 — roughly twice the global average over the same period.
The rate closely matches the IPCC’s most conservative scenario, the study reported, before adding that it was “unclear whether islands will continue to maintain their size” if the higher sea-level projections came to pass.
What about other Pacific islands?
In his speech, Mr Kelly went on to say “sinking Pacific islands” were getting bigger.
Simon Albert, an expert in marine ecology and climate change at the University of Queensland, told Fact Check that the threat to low-lying Pacific islands was not the possibility of sinking but of erosion.
He said that although Tuvalu’s experience was largely true of the Pacific, the Solomon Islands offered a bleaker window into the future. There, sea levels had risen much faster than the global average.
Between 1994 and 2014, according to Dr Albert’s research, the Solomons experienced sea level rises averaging 7-10mm per year.
Meanwhile, between 1993 and 2018, the global average was 3.2mm per year.
While Tuvalu recorded a total rise of 15cm over four decades, the Solomons managed that in just two.
Dr Albert said that in parts of the Solomons, rising seas had combined with wave exposure to cause “dramatic coastal erosion leading to recession of coastlines and in some cases the loss of entire islands”.
His research has shown that some of the Solomons’ uninhabited reef islands, similar in structure to those in Tuvalu, had completely disappeared due to erosion.
The country’s volcanic islands, generally larger and steeper than atoll or reef islands, had also experienced coastal erosion. As a result, local indigenous communities — some of which had inhabited the islands for over 100 years — had been destroyed or displaced.
(Supplied: Albert, Leon, Grinham, Church, Gibbes and Woodroffe)
In the Tuvalu study, referring to the Pacific more generally, Professor Kench noted:
“Commonly, the densest populations are located in the economic and political centres, situated on smaller and less stable islands, which represent less than 1 per cent of the land available in the archipelagos.”
And the tide guage at Port Villa, Vanuatu shows that current maximum sea levels are lower than they were 30 years ago.
Resources:
https://x.com/CraigKellyPHON/status/1829028628405072213
https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/08/27/the-ocean-is-overflowing-un-chief-issues-sos-on-risk-of-rising-sea-levels
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-19/fact-check-is-the-island-nation-tuvalu-growing/10627318
http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO70059/IDO70059SLI.pdf
