Prof. Nils-Axel Mörner on rising sea levels in the Maldives

Professor Mörner recently retired from university life (his department at the University of Stockholm has since been closed). The politics of global warming just might have been involved. Here is an abstract from a recent paper Professor Mörner presented. I reproduce it without permission:

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.

I believe that this demonstrates clearer than anything that global warming has become a political hot potato. Imagine, the government of the Maldives wants to perpetuate an unproven hypothesis in the face of good science in order to extract aid from the West!

Back in carbonate sedimentation 101 at Southampton University in 1964/5 I can remember being taught how atolls keep pace with a subsiding seafloor or a rising sea level (different phenomena, by the way!) by constantly growing upward and outward.


Here's a good photo from wikipedia that demonstrates the theory of the classroom. My point in showing this is that the Maldives will continue to keep pace with whatever sea level change occurs for as long as the resort developers don't mess them around too much! It's not global warming they have to fear at all.

Thanks to David Kingsbury for putting me on to this!