Special to Climate Depot
By Dennis Ambler
AT COP 27 this year there are great demands for “reparations” for “Climate Change Damage” purportedly caused by the Industrial Revolution and the use of carbon-based fuels by Western nations since.
We have become used to theatrical events staged by activist advisers to Small Island States, such as the “underwater cabinet meeting “ by the Maldives in 2009. Since then they have expanded tourism and built new airports. Last year in Glasgow at COP 26, the President of Palau was crying crocodile tears and still couldn’t make sea level rise.
This was his address at COP26:
‘We the islands, that are devastated most, demand that your commitments of one hundred billion [dollars] annually be increased to meet the four trillion dollars the World Bank reports is needed.
We see the scorching sun is giving us intolerable heat, the warming sea is invading us, the strong winds are blowing us every which way. Our resources are disappearing before our eyes, and our future is being robbed from us. Frankly speaking, there is no dignity to a slow and painful death: you might as well bomb our islands, instead of making us suffer, only to witness our slow and fateful demise.
Leaders of the G20, we are drowning, and our only hope is the life-ring you are holding. You must act now. We must act together.”
If you want to watch the impact of climate change on Palau, you can do so from the luxury of the Palau Royal Resort, with its own private beach, where you can enjoy the scorching sun the tropical breezes, and the warm seas.
Having quoted the World Bank, he should have delved a little deeper:
“Palau’s climate is hot and humid (average relative humidity is 82%) with mean daily air temperature at around 28°C. There is little seasonal variability in its temperature. The difference between its hottest and its coldest months is 0.8°C approximately. The wet season extends from May to October, and the driest season is from February to April, with June and August having the largest rainfall. Rainfall can vary between years as a result of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). El Niño years are drier and La Niña years are on average wetter.
The annual mean temperature has increased by approximately 0.5°C since the 1950s. The warming of sea-surface temperature around Palau has grown more rapidly since the 1980s. However, the natural variability of sea-surface temperature at a regional level ensures there is difficulty in measuring long-term trends. Annual and seasonal rainfall trends measured over the period 1950-2009 are not statistically significant. The driest year on record for most of Micronesia happened in 1998, following the major El Niño of 1997.”
This year at COP 27, Palau is again being used as a poster child for “drowning Pacific Islands” with a Bloomberg propaganda piece entitled “Living Next Door to Rising Seas: Portraits From Palau” 17th November 2022:
“As world leaders gather for COP27, few will hear the stories of Palauans coping with surging storms, flooding homes and dying coral reefs that threaten their millennia-old civilization.
While climate catastrophes like the flooding of Pakistan rivet the world’s attention and are top of mind at COP27, often unseen are the daily climate calamities experienced on isolated islands like Palau, an archipelago encircled by a vast coral reef system that lies 4,700 miles southwest of Hawaii and is home to 18,000 people.”
Under an aerial photo, they state: “Average sea levels in Palau rose 0.095 inches (2.42mm) each year between 1969 and 2016. “(This shows a wide area of open ocean but gives the impression of islands being inundated).
The Bloomberg figures state that sea level has risen every year for 47 years, which totals just under 114 mm, or 4.5 inches, not actually far out of line with the oft quoted 200 mm per century for global sea level. They give no source for this figure. The Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level shows considerable variation from a 1971 starting point, coinciding with El Nino events and in 2018, sea level at Palau was just 24 mm higher than 1971. The records come from Malakal, one of the islands and show considerable fluctuations, not a monotonically annually increasing rise.
El Nino events have a major impact.
The Bloomberg reporter uses personal anecdotes from several residents, of increasing doom, clearly written specifically for COP 27. He presumably has never seen the Pacific Sector Private Development Initiative, PSDI, dated Nov 2021, the same time that the Palau President was claiming his people were drowning, at COP26. (A technical assistance program undertaken in partnership with the Asian Development Bank, the Government of Australia, and the Government of New Zealand)
“The Republic of Palau is a global leader in sustainable tourism, offering visitors a pristine natural environment, and well-developed tourism infrastructure. Palau’s world-class diving and the famous Rock Islands and Jellyfish Lake are at the core of its tourist offering, but the country is also home to lush inland nature reserves and a range of accommodation and restaurants.”
World-class diving and snorkeling—Palau’s bio-diverse waters offer 700 species of coral and 1,300 species of fish, sunken wrecks from World War II, the World Heritage-listed Rock Islands Southern Lagoon, and the opportunity to swim amongst millions of harmless jellyfish at Jellyfish Lake.
Hiking, swimming, and bird-watching—Visitors can hike or catch the monorail to swim in clear natural pools created by beautiful waterfalls, visit unique nature reserves with diverse bird life, or walk through the millennia-old Badrulchau Stone Monoliths, dubbed the “Easter Island of Micronesia.”
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), has monitored Pacific Island sea level since the early 1990’s and produces annual reports for a range of countries. They also have a record for Malakal, Palau, which shows an increase of 1.79 mm per year from 1969-2010.
In their Pacific reports, BOM say:
“The most striking oceanic and climatic fluctuations in the equatorial region are not the seasonal, but interannual changes associated with El Niño. These affect virtually every aspect of the system, including sea level, winds, precipitation, and air and water temperature.”
Palau is 996 kilometres or 616 miles from Papua New Guinea, PNG. This BOM chart from October 2022, for sea level rise at PNG, shows no sign of rapidly advancing sea levels:
These are tropical islands and experience tropical weather and politicians should not be taken in by the rhetoric coming from those seeking massive amounts of free money from the West, advised by activist NGO’s such as Greenpeace, who have put them on this path, together with the false credence given by the MSM to flawed “attribution studies” based on computer models.
