Maldives Sea Levels Are Not Rising!

The Maldives is Not Under Threat of Being Submerged by Rising Sea Levels

Published in Nuclear Street, October 28, 2009

- By Michael R. Fox Ph.D., -

Underwater Cabinet Meeting in the Maldives is a PR Stunt?

The global warming lobby keeps shooting itself in the foot. This is not limited to the scientific frauds of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but extends into other significant agencies. One of the major areas of climate misrepresentation is that involving global sea levels.

Talk of Rising Sea Levels Are Scaremongering PR Tactics

Sea levels were portrayed in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” as rising twenty feet in the coming years. Meredith Viera of NBC, not to be outdone, threw out the estimated future sea level rise at 200 feet. Global warming’s unscientific fiction writers must always embellish their stories with rich imaginations.

New Zealand Climate Change Expert Dr. Vincent Gray

Dr. Vincent Gray is a climate expert living in New Zealand and one of the most prolific reviewers of all of the significant documents produced by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). From his intimate knowledge he has found that both the IPCC and its documents are hopelessly flawed scientifically, including the chapters devoted to sea level rises. He recently reported this about the sea level situation in the South Pacific:

“As I keep pointing out Flinders University in Adelaide had the task in 1991 of settling it once and for all by installing state-of-the-art tide-gauge equipment on 12 Pacific islands. The results have been a disaster for the global warmers” (shown in table below)… There was no overall change in sea levels at any of the islands after the sixteen years. The reaction was what might be expected. They have been studiously ignored. The results have never been published in a “peer reviewed” journal. They are only available on the Australian Bureau of Meteorology website in a series of Monthly Reports that are “Untitled”.

The 16 years of sea level data in the South Sea Islands are shown in the chart below. Please notice that the South Pacific sea levels have changed little since the monitoring stations were installed.

More recently, on October 17, 2009, Mohammed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, staged an underwater meeting with his cabinet.

President Mohammed Nasheed’s frightening message was dutifully carried by the media to the four corners of the world. The message was that rising sea levels are a direct threat to his nation and are being caused by rising global temperatures causing icecaps to melt which in turn causes the sea levels to rise.

There are a number of flaws in the president’s argument, but apparently they haven’t reached his desk. He also should read the table below and the referenced sea level report above.

As has happened so often in the past, this alarming message from the President of the Maldives does not provide a shred of underlying evidence to support his dire situation. This message was intended to portray to the world the Maldives Islands are threatened by rising sea levels. For example, the good Maldives president does not mention the findings a dozen new sea level monitoring stations which have recorded seal levels in the south Pacific for more than 10 years. In addition to the recent excellent data from new sea level monitoring stations in the South Pacific, there is significantly more pertinent sea level data. President Nasheed, of all people, should know about sea level research of that part of the planet, performed by a number of people including one of the foremost sea level experts in the world. He is the Swedish scientist Nils-Axel Morner.

“When I was president for an international commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, we spent much effort on the question of present-to-future sea level changes. After intensive field studies, deliberation within the commission and discussions at five international meetings, we agreed on a “best estimate” for possible sea level changes by the year 2100. Our figure was +10 cm ±10 cm. This figure was later revised at +5 cm ±15cm. Such changes would imply small to negligible effects.

Such a small rise would pose no threat for the Maldives. Rather, it would be a natural return to the conditions existing from 1790 to 1970; i.e. to the position before the sea level fall in the 1970s.

President Nasheed of the Maldives

So, Mr. President, when you ignore available observational facts, refuse a normal democratic dialogue, and continue to menace your people with the imaginary threat of a disastrous flooding already in progress, I think you are doing a serious mistake.

Let us, for Heaven’s sake, lift the terrible psychological burden that you and your predecessor have placed upon the shoulders of all people in the Maldives, who are now living with the imagined threat that flooding will soon drive them from their homes, a wholly false notion that is nothing but an armchair fiction artificially constructed by mere computer modelling constantly proven wrong by meticulous real-world observations.

Your cabinet meeting under the water is nothing but a misdirected gimmick or PR stunt. Al Gore is a master in such cheap techniques. But such misconduct is dishonest, unproductive and certainly most un-scientific.”

Instead of discredited documentaries, journalistic fictions, and underwater PR stunts driving these global warming debates, let’s not forget to ask for the actual climate evidence (which has been cooling now for several years).