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Hard data reveals the opposite reality of the catastrophic picture painted by politicians. There is no need to panic that Tuvalu will disappear beneath the sea due to anthropogenic climate change.

It was one of the signature moments at the 2021 Climate Change Summit in Glasgow (COP26). Tuvalu Foreign Minister Simon Kofe delivered a speech online, calling for urgent action on climate change while standing in the ocean in Funafuti, Tuvalu. Funafuti is the capital of Tuvalu.

Photographs of the scene appeared in newspapers, television and social media around the world, and were widely seen as proof of the imminent climate crisis.

The scene was designed to highlight how rising sea levels, caused by rising carbon-dioxide levels, are already causing the island states of the Pacific to disappear into the sea.

At the 2022 Climate Summit, held recently in Egypt, the Foreign Minister again gave a speech by videolink, this time from the seashore, where he announced that, in light of the imminent disappearance of Tuvalu, the island state would recreate itself in the metaverse, in an attempt to “preserve” the Pacific-island nation before rising sea levels engulf it completely.

Mr Kofe said:

“As our land disappears, we have no choice but to become the world’s first digital nation. Our land, our ocean, our culture are the most precious assets of our people — and to keep them safe from harm, no matter what happens in the physical world, we’ll move them to the cloud.”

One media report said:

“Tuvalu is under extreme threat from global warming, with scientists predicting it will become uninhabitable within the next 100 years.

“High tides cause severe flooding at the start of every year, and residents fear it is only getting worse. Last year, Kofe addressed the COP26 while standing thigh-deep in water in order to stress the dire importance of climate action.”

How accurate are these claims of imminent environmental catastrophe?

For many years, the Australian government, in cooperation with governments of the island states of the southwest Pacific, has been measuring sea levels across the region.

The reason is obvious: these are small islands in a vast ocean, and are subject to the risk of rising sea levels (from whatever cause), as well as cyclones and droughts, which pose risks to the lives and health of the island people.

The research began long before the claims of climate catastrophe took hold.

There are 13 stations where tide gauge data and height are measured, every month, from the Marshall Islands in the north to Tonga in the south, and Manus Island (Papua New Guinea) in the west to the Cook Islands in the east.

The data is publicly available through the Geosciences Australia website.

One of the islands for which data is available is Tuvalu. Even better, the data was recorded in the harbour of Funafuti, capital of Tuvalu, where the Foreign Minister gave his speeches.

Measurements are taken of two key variables: the actual tide gauge data, and the absolute height of a reference point on the island which is based on satellite measurements of the height of the island from the centre of the earth. This height reference is important to tell us if the island is rising — from volcanic activity underneath it, for example — or falling, due to the col­lapse of the earth below the island.

This data is recorded, and charted on the Geosciences website. The data for Tuvalu is most revealing.

Contrary to the Foreign Minister’s repeated claims, it shows that the sea level around Tuvalu is actually falling. The tide gauge shows a more or less steady fall in the sea level of about 1.5 millimetres per year, over the period 2003-18, the last year for which the data has been published.

Equally interesting, it shows that the absolute height of the island’s land surface, relative to the centre of the earth, has also been falling, by about two centimetres over the same period.

This is most interesting. If the island had been rising out of the sea, we would expect that the sea level would appear to be falling.

Conversely, if the land is actually subsiding, we would expect the sea level to be rising.

But the measured sea level, recorded by Geosciences Australia, shows that sea levels are falling. This means that the absolute sea-level fall at Tuvalu is about twice that shown by the tide gauge.

Most of the other recording stations around the Pacific Ocean show similar results. Yet media reports repeat the alarming claims of rising sea levels overwhelming the Pacific islands.

As Mark Twain is alleged to have said: “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story!”