Question of the Day: If Tuvalu is being swallowed by rising tides, why is oceanfront real estate so expensive?

Eero Iloniemi is the managing editor of Nykypäivä, a Finnish newspaper. He went to the U.N.’s Cancun global warming shindig and asked a very inconvenient question.

arizona-desert
And if you believe the Tuvaloons, we have some oceanfront land in Arizona we'd like to sell you
Iloniemi’s reports the results of his inconvenient query:

The prime minister of Tuvalu, Apisai Ielemia, said rich Westerners were allowing his nation to perish. He showed a group of journalists, me among them, a video of floods that threaten to wash his tiny Pacific island nation to the sea…
‘Mr Prime Minister. In view of the impending deluge, how much have land prices fallen on Tuvalu?‘ I stammered.

For some reason my question completely silenced the room packed with environmental press. After what I will charitably call an inquisitive stare, the prime minister gave his longwinded answer full of long-term projections of rising ocean levels. To be fair, he concluded with a simple declaration: ‘Land prices have not been affected.’

This baffles me. The Tuvaluans have experienced the very floods Ielemia had just shown us. If the ocean is encroaching the island, surely it would make sense to sell all your land, at any price, while you still have some. This should cause a dramatic drop in land value as the market gets flooded (no pun intended)…

The story gets even more baffling when one looks at the Maldives. Remember, this is the tiny nation in the middle of the Indian Ocean where the government held an underwater cabinet meeting in November 2009 to emphasise the imminent peril of climate change-induced rises in the ocean levels. But in the Maldives, too, land prices are holding.

This does bring up the question we asked several months ago:

If Al Gore really expects sea levels to rise, why did he buy an oceanfront estate in California?

H/T: Andrew Bolt

This post was last modified on July 21, 2021

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  • So what if earth is going through changes every day, decade and century. The sun goes through phases of hot and hotter. Each phase of the sun causes a different climate on the earth which is also changing internally by techtonic plates, active volcanoes and weather patterns. The use of the phrase :Global Warming" plus attaching it to thought of "human caused" to make an idea of "man made global warming" (MMGW) is an error. We have watched how the data of MMGW was manipulated to suit an agenda to coerce the public to give up more taxes to aide in "saving of the earth". How can we say that Global Cooling is caused by man? We cannot say that either. An example of global cooling not caused by man was the years 500 to 600 AD. A volcano in south Asia went super explosive and caused an 18 year mini ice age that destroied vegetation, animals and people. This was not caused by any government, people or idology, nor could it have been stopped.
    There are those around the world speaking the LIE that "humans caused global warming". These same people are using that LIE to cause politcal-economic change that add wealth to thier own pockets.These are using the LIE with "Cap & Trade" to line the pockets for personnal pleasure. How else could Al Gore afford a 450$ meassauge? But lets continue with the earth. It is an active planet with an active star. These two go through cycles of hot and cold. The sun has explosions on it that affect the earrth's climate in multiple year cycles. The sun then gets less hot and in turn the earth gets less heat. All of this is in cycles. The earth is presently in the getting warmer cycle. These cycles have been learned about in scientific communities. The politcal communities have learned from scientific communities but are using the data to maniplulate the policeies of the population of the earth. These are also corrupting the data for personal gain, political gain, global dominace. So we have corruption for; personal gain, political gain, global dominace. None of these will solve the problem of global warming or polar ice cap melt. The polar ice will melt because the sun is in a cycle that sends the earth more heat. Global laws, rules and regulations will not change the heat coming from the sun. Cap and Trade will not keep the oceans from rising. Tunnel and Direct could keep the oceans from rising. Let me explain Tunnel & Direct. There are places all around the earth that the land is lower than the level of the ocean. Death vally USA, Dead Sea Middle east, one in North Africa, many more. The people of the earth that believe the polar ice caps will melt and flood places like Florida, India and Holland should get together and cause the drilling of Tunnels from the Ocean to those low land areas around the earth. As the sun heats the earth and melts the polar ice caps , the tunnels would be opened up to direct the water to the low land areas and maintain the oceans at the correct level. That Global heating problem could be solved, not just traded to increase the wealth of a few. This is a real tangable plan to fix, and avert a reaginal disaster. (Florida, India and Holland, The prime minister of Tuvalu, Apisai Ielemia,) Drill a tunnel with a large tool, divert water from the ocean to a low inland area, this stops places from becoming underwater. A REAL fix, not just money changing hands. All that said yet there is another problem. A volcano in South Asia, Indonesia, called child of Krakatoa is presently about half the height of the one that exploded in 1883. The data of that 1883 explosion: 130 foot idal wave. 36,000 dead, hundreds of villages destroied, dropped global temperatures one or two degrees C., heard and seen clouds around the earth. These clouds spread dust all over the earth, and were regestered in the ice at the polar ice caps. Speaking of regestering clouds in the ice at the polar ice caps, the clouds that spread dust from the same 1883 volcano explosion but in the years between 500-600 AD is the one that gave the earth 18 years of a mini ice age. So, if the governments of the world force Cap and Trade, Social engieering/redistribution of wealth on to the people of the world, it will not stop the oceans from rising nor will it stop the Volcano "Child of Krakatoa" from exploding and causing a possible mini ice age. Yet, if idea of the "Tunnel and Direct" was applied as stated previously, at least the oceans would not flood those low land areas. The true problem of the volcano over shadows the both the' LIE - Cap and Trade', and "Sun cycle Induced Global warming". So there needs to be more thought put into the volcano than the other two. Some ideas of what can be done about an active volcano; learn from the Greenland town that stopped a lava fow from wasting thier town; determine a way to remove the verticle cone shape from the volcano (machinery?) ; from the ocean side, drill down to the lava to releave pressure and allow the lava to ooze out similar to the volcano on Hawai; dig trenches to allow the lava to flow to the sea (after the cone is broken down); if the volcano goes dormant - a long line of explosives could be set on one side of the cone and detonated to make a channel for when the erruptions start again - lava would then flow out to the sea and not pressrue-explode errupt. . All of these thoughts are experimental and would need much concideration. The problem is clear; a volvcano threatens the billions on the earth with possible extingtion, anything else is raarranging the deck chairs on the Titanic or in Tuvalu, Apisai Ielemia, where ever the hell that is.

    • The bottom line is - they don't know for sure what caused all the warming and cooling cycles in the past (the major ones that last hundreds of thousands or millions of years, not the dozen or so due to a volcano). But now they can say for sure that whatever it was, which we do not know, is not doing it now? And then they tell us that's science? Is it just me, or does that not pass the smell test for anyone else?

      Otherwise, you didn't mention the cycles in the changes of the earth's rotation, specifically the axis of rotation. That is something that we are barey even starting to know about, much less understand the ultimate effects of such changes. There may very well be other astronomic cycles involving the sun too, that we do not yet know.

      Much of the second half of the above post is so out-there-theoretical that there's not much of a point even mentioning it. I can not imagine that the total volume of Death Valley, the Dead Sea valley, and any place else below sea level would amount to even 1% of the volume of water in the polar ice cap. And monkeying around with volcanoes would be pure guesswork, and very expensive guesswork at that. It would not be without a potential downside, and potentially a rather large downside at that. Maybe we can get Christo to put up a huge curtain to act as a sunscreen between Venus and Earth?

  • So does this mean the cost for that beachfront property in Wyoming the global warming peddler tried selling me is also going up?

    And is Tuvalu one of those islands the Georgian congressman thought would tip over from too many inhabitants?

    • That was Guam. Luckily Guam has a master plan in effect, that requires citizens to not overload any one side of the island. This is strictly enforced, until a ballast system can be installed on (under) the island.

  • Tuvalu is a 10 square mile island overpopulated with 12,000 people (the population has doubled since 1986). It has no resources and most of its income is derived from 1) foreign aid, 2) the sale of stamps and 3) remittances from Tuvaluans working elsewhere. It appears that the island government is shaking down the First World for more foreign aid in an attempt to shore up its feeble economy; stopping the rising of the seas is a secondary consideration.