Comment by mike_hearn
1 year ago
That's not inexplicable. There's not much interest in it because a lot of things founders believe about climate are false and believing false things is a quick way to lose money. Tuvalu is a good example of this phenomenon. If you'd invested in a startup planning to make money by protecting Tuvalu from global warming, you would have lost all your money because Tuvalu is growing, not shrinking.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02954-1
Results highlight a net increase in land area in Tuvalu of 73.5 ha (2.9%), despite sea-level rise, and land area increase in eight of nine atolls. Island change has lacked uniformity with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. Results challenge perceptions of island loss, showing islands are dynamic features that will persist as sites for habitation over the next century
You didn't get unlucky with your choice of Tuvalu, a lot of common beliefs about the impact of climate change are like that. There's little discussion of this phenomenon, because it's taboo to criticize climate related narratives. Only argumentative gits like me are willing to do it. But the smart money knows this and quietly stays away.
BTW this isn't specific to climate. I've known and talked to a few VCs over the years, and what I learned is that if there's an important and valuable area they're all collectively ignoring it's usually because they know things that other people don't. For instance, you may have noticed that Silicon Valley VCs usually avoid biotech startups, despite biotech being seen at one time as a high tech industry with potential similar to computing. That's because such startups often come out of academia, and VCs were aware of the replication crisis/fraud problems in biology earlier than most.
The study you reference is from 5 years ago, perhaps the impacts cited here[1] are less “incorrect”.
My anecdotal evidence of VC’s level of knowledge is very consistent with people at large. That is, flawed.
[1] https://zenodo.org/records/8069320
Kench et al is a historical study of satellite imagery. Unless they made a counting error there's no way for a new study to invalidate it.
But let's take a look. That document starts by admitting that it's motivated reasoning:
"this report is written in support of the objectives of the Rising Nations Initiative (RNI), enabled by the UN Global Center for Climate Mobility"
and it goes downhill from there. They're providing ammo for their clients, not attempting to neutrally answer questions. As a consequence they never mention the fact that Tuvalu is growing. They very carefully avoid the topic of whether the country is getting bigger or smaller despite that this is the entire problem the report is predicated upon, indeed they don't even seem to cite Kench et al, let alone try a refutation. Instead they rely heavily on presenting a few isolated data points followed by model predictions (of the type that were already proven wrong) and give you a good hard inferential shove in the direction they want you to go in.
This isn't scientific but it is what the UN Center for Climate Mobility needs in order to advance their own mission of maximizing immigration. It's clever in a way: when someone calls them on it, they just say "oh! well we never said Tuvalu was sinking, that's all in your head, don't blame us we're just scientists it must be journalist's fault".
Which is the problem I'm highlighting. There's lots of misleading material out there. You could read this report and very easily conclude Tuvalu sinking beneath the waves is a great problem to devote your life to. Investing in solutions to non-existing problems can sometimes work temporarily, but it won't give you a new Google or Apple.
Apples and oranges. The 2018 study shows increasing landmass at the coast lines in middle to large non-sand islands during the raising water levels.
The newer 2023 study merely shows the rising sea levels, as also shown in the first study. It concentrates on the risks of more salt water intrusion, so they'd need to invest in closed sewing systems or salt water filtering systems.