RISING SEA LEVELS, CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE CARTERET ISLANDS

The Carteret Islands, also known as Kilinailau Atoll are a low lying group of islands north east of Bougainville Island. The sea is slowly invading them as they sit perched on the encircling reef, just a few feet above the surrounding sea, and the global warming Industry has used the plight of the people there as an example of the ill effects of climate change.

Kilinailau Atoll from space

Leaving aside the inconvenient truth that global temperatures have not risen for the last 11 years and show no signs of doing so; or that more and more experts are questioning what has become an article of faith for millions of people worldwide, no reputable scientist questions the fact that the climate is changing. It always has and it always will, as the dynamics of the planet evolve and alter over time. What some scientists do question is the unproven assertion that human activity over the last hundred years is responsible for a massive and rapidly accelerating rise in temperature, causing everything from rising sea levels to catastrophic weather events.

One of the islands doomed to disappear

There is no question that the Carterets are being flooded by ever increasing erosion from the invading sea, or that this will continue until they disappear, and that rest of the world, including Australia is morally obliged ensure that the Carteret Islanders are relocated in a new homeland. Some have already left for Bougainville, and the rest will follow once the painfully slow task of confirming ownership of new communal land is completed.

Beaches like this one are shrinking

Attermpts to portray the islander's plight as an illustration of the fate awaiting us all unless we heed apocalyptic warnings on rising sea levels continue unabated and should be shown up and resisted.

A walk on the beach now requires wading

But despite all this, the sea is not rising at the Carterets any more than it is rising on nearby Bougainville or, for that matter on Bondi Beach as a visit to either will demonstrate. Tide levels worldwide are much as has been predicted and continue to show no appreciable increase overall, nor are they expected to do so: published tide tables for anywhere on the planet will confirm that this is so.

The inconvenient truth is that he sea is not rising: Kilinailau Atoll is sinking, and will almost certainly continue to do so because it is on the wrong side of the junction between two opposing tectonic plates on the sea bottom.

The fault line from space.(click on globe to view full size)

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The Carteret's fate has nothing to do with surface weather or global temperatures, rising or otherwise. The under sea fault alongside this island group follows the Ring of Fire which runs from New Zealand through PNG and The Phillipines up to Japan and then over to Alaska and down the Americas to Antartica with active volcanoes at irregular intervals along its entire length.
The fault is visible evidence of the result of vertical movements both up and down in the earth's crust. The huge slow-moving plates collide along it in tectonically induced conflict producing constant instability and this is what is drowning the Carterets. The earth under them is sinking and taking them with it.

Palm trees, drowned and uprooted

Telling this to the true believers is a waste of breath and no more effective than attempting to convince millions of Americans that the earth and everything on and under it was not created in seven days some six thousand years ago, but we should continue to tell it like it is, not as the Global Warming/Climate Change promoters would have us believe it is.

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