On the NPR (US public radio) website, Brian Reed writes condescendingly about the benighted residents of Kiribati.

Even in a place as vulnerable as Kiribati, there are skeptics.

“I’m not easily taken by global scientists prophesizing the future,” says Teburoro Tito, the country’s former president and now a member of Parliament.

“Saying we’re going to be under the water, that I don’t believe,” Tito says. “Because people belong to God, and God is not so silly to allow people to perish just like that.”

Tito is not alone in his views. Of the more than 90,000 people counted in Kiribati’s last census, a mere 23 said they did not belong to a church. According to the most recent census, some 55 percent of citizens are Roman Catholic, 36 percent are Protestant and 3 percent are Mormon.

As a result, many are torn between what they hear from scientists and what they read in the Bible.

Silly deniers! If only they’d listen to reason! Then they’d realise their whole country is going to be submerged.

Except that the faith-filled folk of Kiribati are the ones whose views are closer to reality.

This graph shows changes in sea level at Kiribati over the last twenty years:

No Trend in Sea Level Rise at Kiribati

This graph shows what the rise would look like if the alarmists’ claims were true:

Predicted Rise in Kiribati Sea Level

Now a study by scientists in New Zealand and Fiji has found that not only are sea levels in Kiribati and Tuvalu not showing any dangerous long term rising trend, but the islands themselves are growing.

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.”

There is a collision between faith and science. But it is the warmists’ faith, not the faith of Kiribati Christians, which distorts the facts and makes for bad policy.

Via Global Warming Science.