Maldives - Not Threatened by Rising Sea Level, Yet Deluged by Enviro-Corruption

10/23/2009

Maldives - Not Threatened by Rising Sea Level, Yet Deluged by Enviro-Corruption

I remember, in the 1970s and 1980s concern for the Third World was all the rage. The West felt guilty of causing backwardness on the world's "periphery". However, the main "remedies," socialism and foreign aid, have proved counterproductive and lost credibility. The international statists mutated into environmentalists, losing interest in the Third World. Indeed, they are now aggressively promoting policies that will cause the arrest of economic growth and development and thus bring about widespread poverty and death in the Third World. "So what. Our green planet is more important."

In the meantime, governments in the Third World have found ways to milk money taking advantage of the going environmentalist fads.

Consider the observations by Professor Niels-Axel Mörner, a leading world authority on sea levels and coastal erosion who headed the Department of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University.

The Maldives like other low-lying areas have been condemned by IPCC to become flooded in 50-100 years. The INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution (the international organisation that hosts the true world specialists on sea level changes) have studied the actual sea level changes in the Maldives and hope to be able to extend the studies to other parts of SE Asia. Our findings reveal that there is no reality behind the scenario of a recent future flooding. The sea level has not been rising in the Maldives in the last centuries and at around 1970 it even experienced a significant lowering. The models of IPCC are simply over-ruled by the theory and observation by sea level specialists within INQUA. We should all be happy about this, one would assume. This is not the case, however. The government of the Maldives has put much prestige in the fear of a future flooding, accusing the west of having caused this situation and demanding them to pay for it. Without a flooding scenario, they now fear that international aid might be cancelled. In this situation, our scientific studies in the Maldives are regarded as anti-governmental and we are now working under very complicated conditions. For the people of the Maldives it is a great relief not to live under a constant threat that all will be gone in one or two generations. For science it is necessary to be able to go on recording the true story and not having to rely on absurd models not anchored in field observations. For a poor country like the Maldives they should always be entitled to become assisted by countries in the west. Furthermore, a coastal country like the Maldives is always threatened by coastal events (storms, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc) that may have disastrous effects on a short-term scale.
(Emphasis added, G.T.)

Also, make sure to read his Open Letter to President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, in which he responds to the Maldivian government's undersea Cabinet meeting which was spectacularly held to raise awareness of the idea that global sea level is rising and hence threatens to drown the Maldives.


For a broader context, consult my post on Epistemic Consequences of Totalitarian Democracy.