Beam me to Planet Gore !
ping
You are doing a great job fighting it out in the trenches!!!
The Maldives are neither the "south sea islands" nor are they in the Pacific Ocean.
That doesn't mean the Pacific-derived data isn't relevant, but it really behooves any secondary or even primary authors to get their geography correct.
Furthermore it is certainly legitimate for the government of the Maldives to be concerned about sea level rise since the majority of the inhabited atolls are only a few feet above mean sea level, and even a few inches of mean rise equates to catastrophic inundation in rare storm or tsunami events.
Of course reactionary politics, as we are seeing in the US, always exacerbates fear as a means of political extortion, and that is what this article is meant to expose. It's just that the critical journalism and technical relay should have been pressed in a more rigorous manner.
Maldives’ president all wet on sea level
***********************************EXCERPT INTRO***********************************
National Post ^ | Oct 20, 2009 | Nils-Axel Mörner
Posted on Thu 22 Oct 2009 09:00:38 PM PST by Titus-Maximus
Open Letter
October 20, 2009
To: President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives
From: Nils-Axel Mörner, Stockholm, Sweden
Mr. President,
You have recently held an undersea Cabinet meeting to raise awareness of the idea that global sea level is rising and hence threatens to drown the Maldives. This proposition is not founded in observational facts and true scientific judgments.
Therefore, I am most surprised at your action and must protest its intended message.
In 2001, when our research group found overwhelming evidence that sea level was by no means in a rising mode in the Maldives, but had remained quite stable for the last 30 years, I thought it would not be respectful to the fine people of the Maldives if I were to return home and present our results in international fora. Therefore, I announced this happy news during an interview for your local TV station. However, your predecessor as president censored and stopped the broadcast.
Past time...
