The 44th Pacific Island Forum, Majuro, September 3-5. 2013

Commentary by Nils-Axel Mörner, Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Stockholm, Sweden, morner@pog.nu

The 44th Pacific Island Forum was held in Majuro, the Marshall Islands, on September 3-5. Before the meeting, the European Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard declared that the Pacific region could count on Europe’s help (obviously with money), if the Pacific helped EU in their efforts to bring about “an ambitious future climate regime to be finalized in 2015”. In other words: we pay if you deliver what we need.

And, indeed, not even in Europe is easy to convince people that temperature is rising when it has been stable for 15 years, and that sea level is rapidly rising when it has been stable or only moderately rising. Hence, the Europe Commission need support and they are willing to pay for it.

The Forum Communiqué describes the outcome of the meeting on 9 pages. Very little, if anything is said about climate change, temperature and sea level. Subject like fishery, trading, education, gender, regional assistance, security and radioactive contaminations are discussed. These non-climatic issues were probably important in the regional context.

Added to the notes of the meeting is a “Declaration for Climate Leadership” (2 pages) written in a very different style and devoted to the well-known IPCC dialectics. The declaration is said to be “a platform for an upward spiral of action to urgently reduce and phase down greenhouse gas pollution”.   Obviously, we here have what the commissioner needed in order to continue the European economical assistance (as stated before the meeting).

In conclusion, the meeting contributed absolutely nothing (zero) to the scientific discussion on climate, sea level and global changes. All the talk in the Resolution about “consensus”, “escalating greenhouse gas”, “carbon dioxide threshold and new danger”, “4oC or more” temperature rise and the necessity of “urgent actions” to be taken, is nothing but a repetition of old disinformation that doesn’t become better just because it is repeated. We can happily turn our backs to it; the same old politicised stuff.

Later (PINA, PACNEWS, Sept. 10) at a “Post-Forum Dialogue”, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, stated that the Obama administration will sign onto the Majuro declaration. The reason she gave for this is quite remarkable, however.

“Climate change is going to have wide ranging impacts all over our globe and that’s something that we are already seeing, particularly here as I flew into the airport and saw the sandbags from the last time the water inundated the runway (in Majuro).”

The fact is that the Majuro tide gauge has recorded stable sea level conditions over the last 20 years. The inundation the secretary talked about was just an extreme storm event, which all coastal sites occasionally may experience. It has absolutely nothing to do with any sea level rise or climate change.


The Majuro tide gauge record indicating no rising trend in sea level over the last 20 years

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Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).