IT’S A CLIMATE CHANGE MIRACLE

“Kiribati will soon be engulfed by water, and its people have nowhere to go,” Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg predicted in 2013.

Kiribati: now you see it, and now you … see even more of it

“Kiribati will soon be engulfed by water, and its people have nowhere to go,” Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg predicted in 2013.

“The Paris climate deal may be too little, too late for the islanders of Kiribati,” Time magazine worried in 2015.

“Climate change is threatening the livelihoods of the people of tiny Kiribati, and even the island nation’s existence,” the New York Times  wept in 2016. “The government is making plans for the island’s demise.”

They may wish to put those plans on hold, because Kiribati is now bigger than ever:

Low-lying Pacific islands regarded as "poster child" examples of the threat from rising sea levels are expanding not sinking, a new study has revealed.

Scientists have been surprised by the findings, which show that some islands have grown by almost one-third over the past 60 years.

Among the island chains to have increased in land area are Tuvalu and neighbouring Kiribati, both of which attracted attention at last year's Copenhagen climate summit …

Professor Paul Kench, of Auckland University, who co-authored the study with Dr Arthur Webb, a Fiji-based expert on coastal processes, said the study challenged the view that the islands were sinking as a result of global warming.

"Eighty per cent of the islands we've looked at have either remained about the same or, in fact, got larger.

"Some have got dramatically larger," he said.

"We've now got evidence the physical foundations of these islands will still be there in 100 years," he told New Scientist magazine.

So, no more bogus climate refugees, then.

UPDATE/CORRECTION. The UK Telegraph piece, which oddly ran again yesterday, is in fact seven years old. My apologies.