The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu once comprised 11 islands. It is now down to nine flecks of land totaling less than 10 square miles, which, like their lost siblings before them, risk gradually being eaten away by the rising tides of the world’s warming oceans. For decades, Tuvalu’s leaders have warned about the effects of the world’s emissions on this tiny place. “It’s a matter of disappearing from the surface of this earth,” Kausea Natano, the prime minister, said in September on the sidelines of the United Nations General…