The Cancun shakedown has started

Today's Telegraph includes this from Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent. What struck me first was the way a 'study of climate change impacts in the Caribbean' which 'warned that sea levels could rise by up to 6.5ft (2m) by the end of the 21st Century if global warming continues.' is translated into the dire warning that '

According to...  Oxford University research this would mean that 260,000 people are displaced from the islands, one million would be at risk of flooding and billions of dollars would be lost every year from the tourism industry alone.'

The key words are 'could' and 'if'. Yes if A happens then B may result, but what are the odds that A will happen? What if instead of A equalling 6.5ft it equalled 3 foot or one foot or two inches?


So I read on and found the money-shot:

'As well as cuts in emissions to stop global warming, the small island states are calling for a ‘global insurance fund’ to be set up that would help vulnerable nations cope with the effects of climate change.
Poor nations at risk of sea level rise would pay an annual premium, but a large chunk of the money would come from climate change aid provided by rich nations. Like a normal insurance fund, the money would be invested privately so that there are hundreds of billions of pounds available in the event of a crisis.

 ...

Asad Rehman, Friends of the Earth’s International Climate Campaigner, said rich countries have a responsibility to protect the poor from the impacts of climate change.
“As they have done the most to cause climate change, rich countries, including the UK, must also provide more money for developing countries to adapt to the impacts – including sea-level rise – which will have a devastating impact on communities worldwide,” he said.

'

It's all about the money again. 

Of course the real problem here is that the assumptions are wrong; sea levels are not rising. You can read more in this interview with Dr. Nils-Axel Morner in which he points out that many examples, here are two:

'So there we are. Then we went to the Maldives. I traced a drop in sea level in the 1970s, and the fishermen told me, “Yes, you are correct, because we remember”—things in their sailing routes have changed, things in
their harbor have changed. I worked in the lagoon, I drilled in the sea, I drilled in lakes, I looked at the shore morphology—so many different environments. Always the same thing: In about 1970, the sea fell about 20 cm, for reasons involving probably evaporation or something. Not a change in volume or something like that—it was a rapid thing. The new level, which has been stable, has not changed in the last 35 years. You can trace it so very, very carefully. No rise at all is the answer there'

'Another famous place is the Tuvalu Islands, which are supposed to soon disappear because they’ve put out too much carbon dioxide. There we have a tide gauge record, a variograph record, from 1978, so it’s 30 years. And again, if you look there, absolutely no trend, no rise. So, from where do they get this rise in the Tuvalu Islands? We know in the Tuvalu Islands that there was a Japanese pineapple industry which extracted too much fresh water from the inland, and those islands have very little fresh water available from precipitation, rain. So, if you take out too much, you destroy the water magazine, and you bring seawater into
the magazine, which is not nice. So they took out too much freshwater and in came salt water. And of course the local people were upset. But then it was much easier to say, “No, no! It’s the global sea level rising! It has nothing to do with our extraction of freshwater.” So there you have it. This is a local industry which doesn’t pay.'

So why do the IPCC and others say that sea levels are rising? Dr Morner does not mince his words:

'where do they [the IPCC] get it from? They get it from their inspiration, their hopes, their computer models, but not from observation, which is terrible.
...

If you go around the globe, you find no rise anywhere. But they need the rise, because if there is no rise, there is no death threat. They say there is nothing good to come from a sea-level rise, only problems, coastal problems. If you have a temperature rise, if it’s a problem in one area, it’s beneficial in another area.
But sea level is the real “bad guy,” and therefore they have talked very much about it. But the real thing is, that it doesn’t exist in observational data, only in computer modelling....'

I have blogged about The Maldives 'sinking' before but here is a new claim from Dr Morner:

'When I came to the Maldives, to our enormous surprise, one morning we were on an island, and I said, “This is something strange, the storm level has gone down; it has not gone up, it has gone down.” And then I started to check the level all around, and I asked the others in the group, “Do you see anything here on the beach?” And after a while they found it too. And as we had investigated, and we were sure, I said we cannot leave the Maldives and go home and say the sea level is not rising, it’s not respectful to the people. I have to say it to
Maldive television.
So we made a very nice program for Maldive television, but it was forbidden by the government (!) because they thought that they would lose money. They accuse the West for putting out carbon dioxide, and therefore we have to pay for our damage and the flooding. So they wanted the flooding scenario to go on. This tree [see photo], which I showed in the documentary, is interesting. This is a prison island, and when people left the island, from the ‘50s, it was a marker for them, when they saw this tree alone out there, they said, “Ah, freedom!” ... I knew that this tree was in that terrible position already in the 1950s. So the slightest rise, and it would have been gone. I used it in my writings and for television. You know what happened? There came an Australian sealevel team, which was for the IPCC and against me. Then the students pulled down the tree by hand! They destroyed the evidence. What kind of people are those? And we came to launch this film “Doomsday Called Off,” right after that, and the tree was still green. And I heard from the locals that they
had seen the people who had pulled it down. So I put it up again, by hand, and made my TV program....'

But it's not just the Maldives and De Morner, here's a Spectator article that is of interest:

'The President of the Maldives can sell his snorkel: he’ll be waving not drowning. The New Scientist carries a fascinating article, examining the research of Paul Kench of the University of Auckland and Arthur Webb of the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission. Using aerial photographs and high-resolution satellite images, Kench and Webb have found that 23 out of 27 low-lying Pacific islands, deemed to be vulnerable to rising sea levels, have grown by up to 10 percent in 40 years. Local sea levels have risen by 120 millimetres over the period.'

However lets return to The Maldives, that island paradise that claims it is sinking  due to global warming. The Age reported in 2007 that:

'Maldives is seeking international investors to help build ten regional airports as part of a plan to develop nearly three dozen resort islands, a minister said on Wednesday.

"We plan to build 10 domestic airports packaged with tourist resorts, to make it economically feasible to investors. The tenders will go out later this year," said Maldivian tourism minister, Mahmood Shaugee.

The government plans to develop the 35 resort islands over the next two years. The exotic South Asian holiday location attracts over 600,000 visitors each year, mostly Europeans.'