From Aaron Oakley
It would seem that Nakibae Teuatabo has been a little hasty to blame
Kiribati’s woes on global warming
(12 February, p 44).
He claims that he noticed the effects of global warming in the 1970s. Yet
there was a slight cooling trend in the global climate between 1940 and 1975.
(Does anyone remember the global cooling scare of the 1970s?)
Teuatabo also says his ancestral graves have had to be moved to avoid
flooding, apparently due to climate change. According to the 1995 report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the monitoring station closest to
Kiribati—in Sydney, Australia—shows a tiny rise in sea level of only
7.85 centimetres (3.14 inches) in the last 100 years—and almost all of
that took place before 1950. Thus, the rise in sea level claimed to have flooded
their burial grounds has been about a centimetre.
aoakley@receptor.pharm.uwa.edu.au
