Connecting The Tuvalu Dots -- February 22, 2018

Tuvalu, Tuvalu, Tuvala -- oh, Tuvalu -- now we know.

Tuvalu is the greenies' poster child for AGW - Rising Seas! hyperbole.

How did Tuvalu manage this? I always tell our granddaughters when they don't understand something, google it or follow the money. In this case, it's follow the money.

By claiming to be at risk of going underwater due to anthropogenic global warming, Tuvalu goes to the front of the UN AGW money line. This "nation" is the fourth smallest nation in the world and yet it has more leverage than most countries when it comes to global warming; and, along with the Clintons, may be among the best grifters in the world.

This nation is rich. And it has no land, to speak of, for its 9,000 inhabitants. Their main occupations: fishing and agriculture to feed themselves. The government of Tuvalu depends on a handful of external sources for its operational budget. How do they do it?  Let's go down the list:

• the Tuvalu Trust Fund: funded by Australia and New Zealand
• the Falekaupule Trust Fund: funded by the Asian Development Bank
• UN financial support
• US government: The US government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999 the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9 million, with the value increasing in the following years (wiki)
• funding from the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty and related agreements (US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of $90 million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions) (wiki)
• commemorative and bullion coins (minted in Australia)
• internet royalties (this is incredible -- the agency that administers domain names just happened to give Tuvalu its own domain: ".tv." I can't make this up. Tuvalu earns over $2 million by leasing the rights to its designated higher-level internet domain name: “.tv”. To media companies in the U.S. and elsewhere, the appeal of having websites with the “.tv” suffix for your television properties is obvious. The domain is managed by Verizon subsidiary dotTV, of which Tuvalu owns 20%
• stamps: the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau issues stamps and first day covers for stamp collectors around the world; the Bureau issued its first stamps in 1976, the same year Tuvalu gained its independence and the first year the country minted bullion coins (the coins are minted in Australia; Tuval simply collects the royalties) 

I have some "unique" Tuvalu coins. I knew the Australian-minted Star Trek one-ounce silver coins would be in high demand, and they are. I bought mine at an average price of $27. They are now no longer available from "primary sources." One can find them at significantly higher prices at "second sources" like eBay and Amazon. Although if you wait awhile, they will trend back toward $27. I have found that, generally, these "unique" coins actually lose value as interest wanes (there are exceptions).

Because these are minted in Australian (and marketed as "Australian coins") they sell; my hunch is that if they were marketed as "Tuvalu" coins they would not sell. I assume serious collectors avoid these; speculators buy them and flip them. I could be wrong. Just an opinion.

Anyway, at least for me, the dots between the UN, the greenies, and Tuvalu have now been connected.

Primary suppliers: out of stock --

Secondary sources have them in large amounts:

From a post just a few days ago:

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Island Rising!

Updates

February 10, 2018: from JoanneNova --

Original Post 

The poster-child island for "anthropogenic global warming sea rising" or AGWSR for short -- is growing. I can't make this stuff up. From phys.org: 

The Pacific nation of Tuvalu—long seen as a prime candidate to disappear as climate change forces up sea levels—is actually growing in size, new research shows.

Has the UN sent Tuvalu that $50 billion -- mostly from US taxpayers -- to save themselves from rising seas yet?