An inconvenient truth: Pacific islands growing rather than shrinking

In 2006 Australia's most prominent science blogger, sclenceblogs.com's resident computer programmer Tim Lambert, incorrectly insisted Tuvaluan's were fleeing their Pacific island nation to escape rising seas. Lambert was wrong then, but refused to admit it, and he's still wrong:

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.

When challenged about his bogus Tuvaluans-fleeing-rising-seas nonsense Lambert ran and hid rather than attempt to defend his stance. This is nothing new for Lambert, who circumvents corrections by refusing to acknowledge his errors.

Whereas Lambert the academic has been caught out many times over many years, it's Lambert who demands disciplinary action against fellow academics supposedly guilty of misconduct – see here and here. Such is the alternative reality of global warming true believers who will go to extreme lengths – even lying – to make their case.

So it is that Pure Poison's Tobias Ziegler bags Andrew Bolt's column on Pacific islands growing rather than shrinking:

Bolt expanded his post into a newspaper column for today. Same approach – little focus on the facts, no acknowledgment of caveats about the research, lots of bagging “that grotesque green horde of hysterics, dreamers, carpetbaggers and moral grandstanders that has whipped up such baseless fears for a decade”.

Ziegler is wrong, of course: the fact presented by the research is that the vast majority of studied islands are growing – any caveats presented are nothing more than conjecture meant to discredit the unexpected results.