Its fate may be much more prosaic and local: severe over-population, profound pollution and a World War II legacy.

Experts even believe that if the threatening El Nino event occurs in the next six months, the sea level around Tuvalu will actually fall a by a dramatic 30 centimetres (12 inches), as it did during the last big El Nino.

"The historical record shows no visual evidence of any acceleration in sea level trends," Australias National Tidal Facility (NTF) said in a statement on Tuvalu this week.

Contrast that hard science with the emotional statement of Tuvalu Prime Minister Koloa Talake at last months Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Australia. He announced there that Tuvalu, its neighbour Kiribati and the Maldives were planning legal action against Western nations who they say are creating the global warming that is raising the Pacific's level.

"Flooding is already coming right into the middle of the islands, destroying food crops and trees which were there when I was born 60 years ago. These things are gone, somebody has taken them and global warming is the culprit," Talake said.

NTF, which has a network of tide gauges across the Pacific, says that is absolutely not so -- the Pacific shows no signs, anywhere, of rising.

NTF deputy head Bill Mitchell told AFP that the absolute contrast between politics and science was developing into a crisis. His organisation was holding urgent talks with the Tuvalu government tosort out the problem.

Their tidal gauge has been on the capital atoll of Funafuti since 1993.

"As at February 2002, based on short term sea level rise analyses ... for the nearly nine years of data return show a rate plus 0.9 millimetres (0.03 of an inch) per year," they say.

Mitchell says arguments can be made over the time length and type of scale but he was confident the data showed Tuvalu was no more sinking than Australia was.

So why are the politicians so adamant: "We are not quite sure what is going on there," Mitchell said.

For the record, NTF, part of Flinders University of South Australia, is funded to carry out the Pacific study by the Australian government, and Canberra is unpopular with the Pacific for its rejection of the Kyoto Protocols on global warming.

But like Kiribati -- which Tuvalu was once joined with as the Gilbert and Ellice Islands under British rule until 1978 -- evidence points to the locals creating their own nightmares.

Funafuti is an atoll of 30 islets but with a total land area of just 254 hectares (627 acres) -- thats about two thirds the size of either New Yorks Central Park or Londons Hyde Park. Much of Funafutis land is taken up with a runway but the atoll is still home to 4,000 people.

Mitchell said sea water was encroaching into vegetable growing pits but not due to a rise in sea level.

"It could be something as simple as chopping down coconut trees, it could affect the hydrology of the atoll," he said.

The population density, and its associated pollution, might also threaten to destroy the atoll.

Mitchell points to Funafuti's infamous "borrow pits" -- large holes filled with trash and polluted water.

During the war the Japanese reached Tarawa in the then Gilberts. To turn them back the Americans secretly used Funafuti as a forward base and constructed an airfield by simply digging out a third of the main islet of Fongafale.

It's been known for years that Funafutis water-table has suffered because of the pits and while Tuvalu used to appeal to the Americans to fix the pits, nothing has been done.

Mitchell believes the real problem could be with the land degradation which Tuvalus politicians blame on global warming.

"Its not sea level rise, it cannot be," he said.

"It must be some other land use change that is going on."

He admits this is likely to be a unpopular view in the Pacific, now more used to blaming Australia than themselves.

Tuvalus potential fellow litigant, Kiribati, claims its capital, Tarawa, is sinking.

But when one visiting journalist pointed to the severe pollution, over-population and manmade changes to the islets, Kiribati President Teburoro Tito had the reporter declared an "undesirable immigrant".

NTF is also arguing against the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which has warned of sea level rise.

Says NTF: "...over a major part of the world ocean ... the indication is that, over recorded history, sea level rise has occurred, but at a rate which falls significantly short of the IPCC world assessment."

SPACE.WIRE