A friend of mine worked on Tuvalu in the 80s and married a Tuvuluan, whose family then joined her in Australia. Even at that time, none of the land was more than about 3 metres above sea-level. I think the resident population is about 10,000, with most of their income coming from relatives working overseas. Pacific islands have been coming and going for millenia, humans and their ancestors have been migrating since time immemorial in response to changing conditions, I don't think that global climate policy should be determined by possible loss of habitat for 10,000 Tuvuluans, however nice they are.

I think Queen Victoria had more compassion than some of you. Some of you self rightious mealie mouthed grumps are shuffling around for evidence fabricating some story that the Islanders are just tattle tailing.

Even after the mutiny of the Bounty, and the population on Pitcairn Island were stranded there nearly starving and thirsting to death, did the English authorities under Queen Victoria treat them like criminals?

No!

Queen Victoria moved them compassionately to Norfolk Island: a larger more sustainable Island with water and food.

It is interesting that Canada NZ and Australia are taking an interest in this. Again, this is more evidence that my other thread that discusses the need of a Pacific Economic Union between Canada, Australia and New Zealand is in the best interest of us all.

10,000 people of this Island may seem too much for Australia. You assume they all want to come here. Some may prefer to go to Canada or NZ. There has to be a positive solution and a gradual evacuation plan between Pacific countries.

The Island is sinking and they are crying for help. So, then, brain surgeons, what is the responsible and civilised thing to do?

Some curious inconsistenciesby the author. The latest IPCC "report" is nothing more than a 30 page brochure which will hardly weigh 2 kg or whatever. The real report won't be out for 6 months.

Also if the highest point on the island is 3.7m then it is 3.7m above median tide height, not median high tide. And if a 3.4 metre tide came in then it is only likely to be less than 2m above the mid-tide mark. And that would still leave about 1.7m spare, not just "socks and sandles" from the highest point.

Ergo, the man has a penchant for not letting facts get in the way of a good story.

Moreover, if sea levels do rise significantly, it will be none other than the IPCC that has driven the nails in their national coffin. That is because the IPCC refuses to grant any credits for the volume of CO2 that is absorbed by territorial oceans. Tuvalu has 1.3 million Km2 of exclusive territorial waters which absorb 5.54 tonnes of carbon or 20t CO2/km2 each year. So all up this tiny nation is absorbing 26 million tonnes of CO2 that someone else has emitted.

So the IPCC is deliberately excluding Tuvalu from the carbon credits market that would, at $40/tonne of carbon, earn them $288 million a year. And with that sort of money they could dredge the mine tailings out of the Fly river in PNG and raise the whole 2600ha of the country by an extra metre and have oodles of change left over.

Look at the numbers. 2600 hectares x 10,000 m3 = 26 million m3 @ $50/m3 = $1.3 billion or only 4.5 years worth of carbon credits.

But are the sea levels at Tuvalu and Kiribati rising?

Prof John Connell, head of Geosciences at the University of Sydney, who has monitored this for decades, is on record in 2006 saying the sea around Tuvalu has not risen.

He said in 2006 that the actual evidence of environmental changes in many Pacific Islands is scant, there is no common pattern to environmental change across a wider region, and sea level rise cannot be the culprit in such diverse and scattered places.

More information at www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=847

Good points Cafog and Bigmal.

I also seem to recall a story about certain scientists shifting the sea level measuring gear because it wasn't showing the amount of increase they wanted.

One must suspect that Tuvaluan sea level rise is right up there with the Samoan teenagers sex stories that Margaret Meade was so keen to publish, so keen to bask in the limelight over, but so reluctant to admit that she had been taken in, hook, line and sinker.