Tuvalu – the Pacific island group often cited by climate alarmists as the nation most immediately at risk from rising sea levels caused by ‘global warming’ – is not sinking after all.

In fact it’s getting bigger, scientists now admit.

A University of Auckland study examined changes in the geography of Tuvalu’s nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, using aerial photographs and satellite imagery. It found eight of the atolls and almost three-quarters of the islands grew during the study period, lifting Tuvalu’s total land area by 2.9 percent, even though sea levels in the country rose at twice the global average. Co-author Paul Kench said the research, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, challenged the assumption that low-lying island nations would be swamped as the sea rose. “We tend to think of Pacific atolls as static landforms that will simply be inundated as sea levels rise, but there is growing evidence these islands are geologically dynamic and are constantly changing,” he said. “The study findings may seem counter-intuitive, given that (the) sea level has been rising in the region over the past half century, but the dominant mode of change over that time on Tuvalu has been expansion, not erosion.”

If only they’d done their study a bit earlier they could have saved a lot of alarmists a lot of worry.

As recently as last year, anxious wonks produced a paper for the World Bank arguing that the situation in Tuvalu (pop. 11,000) and nearby Kiribati (pop.107,000) was so dire that Australia and New Zealand should open their doors to the fleeing refugees.

According to the paper:

“The worsening impacts of climate change have provided a new moral imperative for providing open access.”

In 2007, Grist went so far as to cite Tuvalu of one of climate change’s most “tragic” victims.

‘Climate Change in Tuvalu’ even has its own Wikipedia page. It records possibly Tuvalu’s greatest moment of glory on the international stage when it seized the opportunity at the 2009 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to grandstand about its terrible plight.

In December 2009 the islands stalled talks at United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emission, their chief negotiator stated “Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.”[57] When the conference failed to reach a binding, meaningful agreement, Tuvalu’s representative Ian Fry said, “It looks like we are being offered 30 pieces of silver to betray our people and our future… Our future is not for sale. I regret to inform you that Tuvalu cannot accept this document.”[58] Fry’s speech to the conference was a highly impassioned plea for countries around the world to address the issues of man-made global warming resulting in climate change. The five-minute speech addressed the dangers of rising sea levels to Tuvalu and the world. In his speech Fry claimed man-made global warming to be currently “the greatest threat to humanity”, and ended with an emotional “the fate of my country rests in your hands”.[59]

Tuvalu’s plight also formed part of the basis for arguably the most hysterical fake news claim in the history of climate alarmism: the UN’s prediction that by the end of 2010, climate change would have created “50 million environmental refugees”.

The UN has since removed the claim from most of its websites. Happily, it can still be glimpsed in the Guardian archives:

Rising sea levels, desertification and shrinking freshwater supplies will create up to 50 million environmental refugees by the end of the decade, experts warn today. Janos Bogardi, director of the Institute for Environment and Human Security at the United Nations University in Bonn, said creeping environmental deterioration already displaced up to 10 million people a year, and the situation would get worse. “There are well-founded fears that the number of people fleeing untenable environmental conditions may grow exponentially as the world experiences the effects of climate change,” Dr Bogardi said. “This new category of refugee needs to find a place in international agreements. We need to better anticipate support requirements, similar to those of people fleeing other unviable situations.”

In reality, the total number of environmental refugees fleeing climate change so far around the world is close to zero.

But that hasn’t stopped a few chancers from trying it on…

Seventeen people from the Pacific – including 11 from Tuvalu and five from Kiribati – have already made refugee claims in New Zealand, citing climate change as part of their basis of claim. None have been successful (four have yet to be determined and 13 have been rejected) because the refugees convention does not recognise climate change as grounds for protection.

To climate skeptics, the fact that Tuvalu is not drowning will come as no surprise whatsoever.

Their favorite sea levels expert – Nils-Axel Mörner – has written numerous papers on the subject.

In 2012, he wrote: