Should NZ #LetIoaneStay ? Posts on the world’s ‘first climate refugee’

Ioane Teitiota lives with his family in New Zealand, he works in New Zealand, his children were born in New Zealand--but he does not have residence in New Zealand.  The Government wanted him to return to Kiribati, with his deadline to leave being today; in response, Ioane’s lawyer filed a claim to have him recognised as a so-called climate refugee, even though there is zero evidence of man-made climate change affecting his island.

There is no moral reason to reject him just because his lawyer is a chancer. Yet neither is there any reason to take his claim for climate refugee status in any way seriously, on which I’ve posted several times before . . .

• Reminder: “Climate scientists have expressed surprise at findings that many low-lying Pacific islands are growing, not sinking.
      “Islands in Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia are among those which have grown, largely due to coral debris, land reclamation and sediment.
      The findings, published in the magazine New Scientist, were gathered by comparing changes to 27 Pacific islands over the last 20 to 60 years using historical aerial photos and satellite images.”
  Pacific islands growing, not sinking – ABC NEWS (2010)
• “Still waiting for Godot, the climate refugee
  Remember how Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth said there were lots of these global warming refugees already? That …
      The citizens of these Pacific nations have all had to evacuate to New Zealand.
  In fact:
     Kiribati man Ioane Teitiota has just lost his appeal to the New Zealand Supreme Court, to be recognised
        as the world’s first climate refugee.
  “Don't panic - we're all still doomed, scientists insist” [updated] – NOT PC, 2015
• World’s first “climate refugee” refused entry to NZ – NOT PC (2013)
• “…the most important fact was discovered by none other than Charles Darwin. He realized that coral atolls essentially “float” on the surface of the sea. When the sea rises, the atoll rises with it. They are not solid, like a rock island. They are a pile of sand and rubble. There is always material added and material being lost. Atolls exist in a delicate balance between new sand and coral rubble being added from the reef, and atoll sand and rubble being eroded by wind and wave back into the sea or into the lagoon. As sea level rises, the balance tips in favour of sand and rubble being added to the atoll. The result is that the atoll rises with the sea level.”
  John Campbell versus Charles Darwin – NOT PC, 2014
• “Not to mention reports of the imminent extinction of the polar bears, of Himalayan glaciers and of coral reefs—and Tuvalu’s ten-thousand climate refugees.  You can’t mention them, because they’re not there. . . These are just a few of the many “first casualties” of global warming that weren’t.”
  The “first casualty” was truth – NOT PC, 2011
• The reported `plight' of the Tuvaluans is not about sea level rise at all - it's about over-population.
  What 'everybody knows' about Tuvalu – NOT PC, 2006
• But this is a population surviving on small, very low-lying coral atolls with little ability to store fresh water. A rapidly increasing population (more than five times bigger than five decades ago) is entirely dependent for its drinking water on what comes from the sky. And neither rainfall nor storage capacity is increasing.  As with its near-neighbour Kiribati, the real problem is really so many people, so little rain.
  Not drowning, just waving – NOT PC, 2013
• “Fears of millions of "climate refugees" crossing national borders are not supported by evidence on the ground, says [senior researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development] Cecilia Tacoli” in this BBC opinion piece: Climate migration fears 'misplaced'.”
  Warmists with redder faces – NOT PC, 2009
• “The mean world sea level has been rising at around 3mm per year for at least the last century, and the latest figures confirm that this rate has continued in recent decades. The rise has been constant for at least a century. No acceleration, no increase; no increase, nobody to blame. Which means Tuvalu, Kiribati, Vanuatu, the Maldives, and Uncle Tom Cobley and all should look to other means to rescue themselves from their penury instead of coming to the world’s conclaves with a begging bowl in one hand and a gun at the world’s producers with the other.
      “Because there’s no doubt at all that there’s been no rising sea levels due to global warming: since the rise has been constant and has accompanied periods of both cooling and warming, it’s simply not possible to draw that sort of conclusion.
      And there’s no doubt either that sea levels themselves around Tuvalu [and Kiribati] haven’t been rising at all (as data gathered by the National Tidal Facility of Adelaide demonstrates)….
  Tuvalu [and Kiribati]: not drowning, just waving – NOT PC, 2009

But the fact remain that all those islands do have problems with sea water. So what’s going on?

• “Did anyone watch Al Bore's academy-award-winning-Nobel-peace-prize-demeaning-Al-Bore-aggrandising work of science fiction on Sky Movies last night?
      Did anyone notice if the line about global warming having already made hundreds of thousands of climate refugees from low-lying Pacific islands come flooding into New Zealand was included?  (You'd think that might have been excised for an audience that knows better, wouldn't you?)”
  Climate refugees still inconveniently invisible. – NOT PC, 2008
• “Second of all, and despite further "predictions" by the United Nations IPCC that the likes of impoverished Bangladesh will lose 17 percent of its land by 2050 because of rising sea levels due to global warming, leaving 20 million Bangladeshis to become "environmental refugees" -- and NASA's scaremonger-in-chief James Hansen to "predict" that the entire country will be under water by the end of the century -- the Banagladeshi landmass just resolutely refuses to play ball.
  ”After studying 32 years of satellite images, scientists from the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services say Bangladesh's landmass has been increasing by 20 square kilometres annually. That's an extra 2000 square kilometres or so of land on which "environmental refugees" can continue to make themselves at home. [Story here.]”
  Wake up warmists – NOT PC, 2008
• “Perhaps those endorsing measures to throttle industrial civilisation on the basis only of the unreliable weather forecasts of the IPCC might use this hiatus to reconsider the headlong rush into poverty and food riots for which they are already responsible.  Perhaps they'll resile from talking up dramatic sea-level rises on the bask of their horrifying models -- from strangling the use of coastal land and all their talk about the millions of "climate refugees" from low-lying islands (of which the world is still waiting to see the first such refugee).”
  "Global warming may 'stop', scientists predict" – TELEGRAPH – NOT PC, 2008
• “…part of a movement that feels they have a right to lie and they have a right to frighten people, because they have a higher calling; their higher calling is to save the environment."
  Just a clown. Still no climate refugees. – NOT PC, 2007