When somebody mentions “Maldives”, the image above of a tropical paradise often springs to mind. Andy Revkin wrote a story recently about the Maldives on his NYT Dot Earth blog that provoked quite an email exchange that I was privy to today. Here are some highlights. First the article:
Maldives Seeks Carbon Neutrality by 2020
By Andrew C. Revkin March 16, 2009, 8:39 am
No spot in the Maldives is more than six feet above sea level. (Click here for a narrated slide show describing this reporter’s first visit to the Maldives, in 1980.)
The Maldives, a strand of coral atolls south of India, is just about the most tenuous country on Earth. No patch of land in the island chain, where the population has risen from 200,000 to 400,000 in the last 25 years, is more than six feet or so above sea level. Even modest projections for a rise in sea level from global warming would increase flooding from storm surges. A higher rise could render hundreds of islands uninhabitable.
That’s why the country has paid particularly close attention, since the early days of discussion of the issue, to scientists who warn of a growing human influence on climate and sea levels. On Sunday, the new president of the island nation, Mohamed Nasheed, prodded the world to get serious about cutting emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by pledging, in a short piece in England’s Observer newspaper, to make the Maldives the first carbon-neutral country within a decade:
Many politicians’ response to the looming catastrophe, however, beggars belief. Playing a reckless game of chicken with Mother Nature, they prefer to deny, squabble and procrastinate rather than heed the words of those who know best…. Spearheaded by a switch from oil to 100% renewable energy production within a decade, the Maldives will no longer be a net contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
The announcement was made in the Maldives, but synchronized with the London premiere of ” The Age of Stupid,” a new film on global warming and oil that is a mix of documentary, dramatization and animation. (I haven’t seen it yet, but the description reminds me of the work of Randy Olson, particularly his mock documentary ” Sizzle.”) Officials in the Maldives made the decision after soliciting a report on how to cut fossil fuel use and otherwise trim the country’s climate footprint from Chris Goodall and Mark Lynas, British environmentalists and authors of books on energy and climate.
The proposal recommended a mix of wind turbines, rooftop photovoltaic panels and a backup power plant that burns coconut husks (coconut is a substantial export), among other steps. The estimated cost: about $1.1 billion over 10 years. But the new energy options could pay off in the long run by greatly reducing the country’s reliance on imported oil, the report concluded.
The early concern about global warming by officials in the Maldives was visible as far back as 1988, as shown in this vignette from my first (and long out of print) book on climate, “Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast”:
Perhaps the most straightforward projections of what a greenhouse future will bring in coming decades are those related to rising seas. A foot-and-a-half rise doesn’t sound like much – unless you live in a place that just barely pokes above the ocean. I learned this when I went to Toronto in 1988 to report on the First International Conference on the Changing Atmosphere. Most of the discussions centered on devising strategies to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from automobiles, power plants, and the burning of tropical forests. Among those in attendance was Hussein Manikfan, who holds the title Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Permanent Representative to the United Nations from the republic of Maldives.
At first it seemed odd to find a representative from the Maldives at the meeting. The country, a sprinkling of 1,190 coral islets in the Indian Ocean southwest of Sri Lanka, has no tropical forests, hardly any automobiles, and little industry beyond the canning of bonito. I spoke for a while with Manikfan. Why was he in Toronto? “To find out how much longer my country will exist,” was his simple reply.
Manikfan is worried because few of the islands have any point that is more than six feet above sea level. Even now, many of the atolls are awash during strong storms. The fear is that Manikfan’s nation – with a tradition of independence dating back thousands of years and its own language and alphabet – might have to be abandoned altogether, as if it were a slowly sinking ship.
Now for the geographically challenged, the map:
Dr. Don Easterbrook responded today to Andy Revkin with this email, cc:d to me
Andy,
I just read your article on sea level alarm in the Maldives. You may not be aware of a study there by Nils-Axel Morner, a Swedish sea level expert (former president of the INQUA Commission of Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution). Attached is photographic evidence by Morner that sea level in the Maldives is not rising relative to the coasts but has indeed fallen! Global sea level has been rising at a rate of about a foot per century but the Maldives are either rising or subject to a local sea level anomaly related to ocean currents and evaporation rates. Thus, the ‘poster child’ of Gore’s sea level alarm is invalid.
Don
The photographs he attached are interesting to say the least, click for larger images:
And soon others were jumping in. Tom Harris quoted a study from Nils-Axel Mörner and provided a plot from Nils-Axel Mörner’s study of sea level using C14 isotope dating.
Harris wrote:
While Andrew does not personally say that sea level rise will swamp the Maldives soon, he implies he agrees with the scenario by including nothing at all to counter the validity of the Maldivian announcement. I suggest Andrew read about Morner’s work and get an expansion of the below misleading piece published right away. You can download (for the next 7 days) one of Dr. Morner’s most recent papers on the topic at http://tinyurl.com/dhz6gk . Note the below graph from that report, especially.
Note also the Feb 2009 report of the SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK at Lund U (a large, respected and very old school in Sweden) at http://www.sasnet.lu.se/maldives09.html, in which they conclude, “In June 2004, Prof. Mörner published his research results in an article titled ”The Maldives Project: a future free from sea-level flooding” in the Contemporary South Asia magazine. However, the Maldivian government did not react positively to these findings since they went against the official policy, even though the facts presented seem to be beyond dispute and are confirmed in private by individual Maldivian researchers.” I have submitted a letter to the editor to the NYT on this and I’ll let people know if it is published.
Andy Revkin responded with:
Has anyone on this list assessed this Indian Ocean / Pacific sea level study — http://bit.ly/IndianOceanSeaLevel — which seems to challenge Morner’s analysis?
To which Nils-Axel Mörner replied:
The paper by Church et al. represent desk-work at the computers. Tide gauges have to be treated with care. There are pitfalls both withrespect to stability (compaction, etc) and cyclic patterns (disqualifying regressionline approaches).Our Mildives story is based on multiple criteria: off-shore, on-shore, lagoonal, back-shore, swamp environment.Ditailed morphology (in different environmental settings) is combined with stratigraphy and biological index + numerous C14-dates.Also, our team of researchers is very strong.
Have you heard of the Australian study on 12 Pacific islands, some of them mentioned by Church? They used much more reliable equipment than the others. They claimed an upward trend but this was done by the dishonest use of a linear regression which made use of the temporary depression on all the records caused by the 1988 hurricane. If you look at the actual records in their report (attached) and ignore this temporary event you will find that there was no change for the last sixteen years. The website of the Australian Bureau of meteorology has individual and summarizing reports on this project at
The Geology speaks for itself!As Morner points out, Church,, White, and Hunter applied a number of regional ‘corrections’ to the basic tide gauge record and calculated averages of a large region to arrive at their conclusion that sea level was rising in the Maldives. This is akin to putting one foot in a bed of hot coals and the other in a bucket of ice, averaging the temperature, and concluding that you should be quite comfortable! Putting aside the arguments around tide gauge levels, the geologic evidence appears to be indisputable and indicates conclusively that the sea levels at the sites shown in Morners paper cannot be submerging. You’re a smart guy–look at the geologic evidence in the two attached photos and judge for yourself.Figure 1 shows a post-1970 wave-cut notch eroded into the pre-1970 shore platform. You cannot do that with a submerging coastline. (The platform should be under water if the island is submerging, not being eroded at a lower level). This is a classic example of an emergent shoreline, the kind you can see in any geologic textbook.Figure 2 shows the present high tide line, the 1970 shoreline, and a pre-1970 shoreline. If the island has been submerging since 1970, as contended by Church,, White, and Hunter, the present high tide line should be above the 1970 shoreline, not below it!Any regional analysis of average sea level changes cannot trump the geologic evidence at the two sites shown. The geologic evidence is site specific, just like each foot in the coals and ice bucket. The average is meaningless.
So it boils down to this: Who would you rather believe? People doing studies on-site and gathering photographic evidence that shows clear geologic actions of lowered sea levels on the islands, or somebody sitting in an office analyzing and doing regressions on tide gauge data when they’ve never even done and checking on the quality control of the gauges themselves? Here’s one from Tasmania from this CSIRO report:
I’m sure that old algae covered dock is stable enough to use for “calibration”. Surely no possibility of shifting, or sinking there.
Here’s a somewhat better tide gauge placement of a gauge in the Adriatic sea.
The description reads:
The tide gauge Luka Koper is located in northern part of Adriatic in Koper bay at the industrial pier grounded to the bottom with piles.
Here’s one in Alaska:
Here’s another, at Cape Ferguson in Australia, from BOM:
IMHO The idea that a dock (or piling) is a long term stable measurement platform is simply ludicrous. Piles sink, structures decay, boats whack them, pounding wave action loosens their grip. One feature missing from all these old style tide gauges is any way to reference the long term level of the gauge itself. In the era of GPS we can start doing this, but in the years past, how much is from simple sinking of the pilings over time? When you are looking for millimeters per year, such things become significant.
Gee, and I thought weather station measurement issues were bad. Scientists really do need to get out more. Perhaps the next IPCC conference can be in the Maldives instead of Bali. I volunteer to run beach tours to show water level notches. – Anthony
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One interesting aspect is of coral atolls is that coral only grows underwater.
If sea levels are steadily rising and have been for the entire holocene (as conventional wisdom states) there shouldn’t be any coral atolls anywhere in the world above water.
The fact there are many hundreds of coral atolls above sea level is rather compelling evidence that sea levels must have been higher than at present in fairly recent times and sea levels then fell significantly.
I don’t have an answer to this puzzle, but maybe someone else could shed light on it.
“One feature missing from all these old style tide gauges is any way to reference the gauge itself.”
On U.S. tide gauges the gauge is referenced to the tide staff ( the graduated staff in the photos, especially evident in the Anchorage gauge) and then the staff is referenced to a series of bench marks on the shore through standard surveying procedures. This detects any settling of the structure on which the gauge and staff are mounted. Uniform local subsidence will not be detected of course.
I greatly enjoy your blog. Keep up the good work.
Seems to me the picture shows they’ve got the solution whatever happens – houses on stilts.
Funny that the guy who’s scientific methods are being criticized is the one who relies on site visits and documented geological markers whereas the scientists who get a free pass rely on iffy tide gauges and stats off-site. So nobody questions your methods if your conclusion reflects what reviewers expect to see. Just as well they aren’t designing aircraft or bridges.
My understanding is that many, if not all, volcanic islands sink into the sea as they move away from the hotspot that created them. The Hawaiian Islands are an example of this.
Roger Carr (23:44:18) said :
A two-edged sword, hotrod. “Were it not for the internet and the video” those who prosper from AGW alarmism may never have got the oxygen necessary to have even got their balloon off the ground…
Roger may have identified the underlying problem with AGW acolytes; they’re using oxygen to try to get their balloon off the ground.
And I’m sure that Roger doesn’t mean “oxygen” in the sense of combustion to raise a hot-air balloon, since that would mean the dreaded CO2. I THINK THEY JUST GOT THE WRONG GAS.
I was going to suggest Helium, but that is usually produced as a by-product of oil & gas production (and ALWAYS produced using the same techniques, e.g in the Four Corners region).
So I guess we’re left with H2, ideally produced from rain-water collected in hollowed-out gourds by folks in loin-cloths and recycled tire sandals, and broken down by electrolysis powered by windmills made with conductive vines. Alternately, bicycle generators. KEEP PEDALLING! [a very fit human can sustain about 125W for maybe an hour. ]
Voila, the Hindenburg. NO SMOKING, you guys, not even if it’s Medical Grade.
Hell with the tree, I’d like to know the name of the scientist or tourist or Male’ boy who maliciously cut a new erosion mark on that rock platform. Now that is down low!
Or Queen’s pool! Who took the cork outa her pool! Find the malicious little runt! Maybe they need a juvenile fail down there!
jail, I meant jail
Now where are my cheater glasses?
Michael Spencer (03:46:37) :
This site is troubling, to say the least. I’ve been drinking the Al Gore Kool-Aid ever since it hit the grocery store shelves. Mighty tasty!
Then, along comes this crazy dude with all his charts and photos ‘n stuff.
What’s a liberal to do?
Keep reading, I suppose, but thanks a lot for adding just a little more confusion to an already confusing world…
Welcome to the Dark Side, heh-heh-heh. Seriously, though, there are plenty of liberal types here who used to believe the AGW nonsense, until we started looking into it. You will find that the more you learn, the more skeptical you will become, which can put you in a rather difficult and uncomfortable position with “fellow” liberal types/Democrats. Do not expect any sympathy or understanding from them – you will be viewed as a kook and a traitor, and someone who “doesn’t care about the earth”.
You might want to check out Lucy Skywalker’s site for some good basic info, and her Primer. She also started out as an AGW believer.
Off topic, but re WEATHER STATIONS: this new interactive map from BOM here in Australia, showing the Australian Reference Climate Station network:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/reference.shtml
Click on the dots to see pictures of the actual stations.
Got to admit we do it well..
LK
On an islet next to the airport at Male, they have built an entire city six feet above sea level. The only problem is that no one wants to live there.
Here is an article from January 2008:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB119999940930681887.html
“On paper, it’s a tropical paradise. Capable of housing as many as 150,000 of the nation’s 369,000 residents, Hulhumalé has a mosque, a school, a small office building and several hundred apartments. Planners even imported cows — the only ones in the Maldives — to make fertilizer.
“According to the master plan, there will also be an arts center, a luxury hotel and marina, a leafy civic district and a big hospital to complement the Maldives’ famous beachside bungalows and fancy resorts. The Muslim nation’s plans even include an alcohol-free entertainment zone with a “Rard Rock Café.”
“But now Maldives officials are facing an uneasy truth: Just because you build it doesn’t mean that people will come. Much of the island remains an empty expanse of gravel lots and wan palm trees despite government efforts to relocate several thousand people here from Malé, the island capital just a couple of miles away.”
This is a great article! I have wondered for a long time about the Maldives and the rising ocean levels ever since I read Thor Hyerdal’s book “The Malidive Mystery.” That would surely be the first country to go “glub glub” if sea level is on the upswing. The evidence that sea level is actually diminishing is amazing.
So all this means that my plan for getting therapy to cure my scepticism on the Maldives is canceled!
In case it sinks down we could accomodate all Maldives inhabitans in our backyard. That is non sense, just the preach of an escathological ,milleniarist , ¨end of the world¨ illuminated by Gaia prophet, a fool follower of a new pantheistic religion, who, like others clerics of invented cults, seek only to profit themselves, and they are succesful because in every society there are always naive, candid people, and also of the less candid kind, who profit after the one who profits, and who convince, their newly acquired selfindulging leader, of the truth of his insane theories, with a positive feedback which inflates his monumental ego through the well known phenomena of the “green house effect”
Anthony and fellow posters,
I’m a disabled veteran witha long career in EOD in the Navy. As part of my post service rehabilitation, I’ve been going back to school. I thoroughly enjoyed oceanography, but know their just isn’t enough time nor job opportunites for me in that field of study.
I’m taking a course in geology which starts in just 2 weeks. One of the course books is a bright red book on global warming and the IPCC. I’m shuddering as I enjoy basic science, but have no idea how I’m going to survive this as a skeptic. The environment at this college is one of open advocacy, no questions asked and worse, not to be asked or challenged. I find it amazing that students are expected to act as adults, but in fact are treated as if they are children….ugghhhh.
I know this is OT, but there is an awful lot of geology used, particularly in the referenced pieces inthe above article.
Two subjects.
Dr. Morner’s work was slagged by some people posting a year ago on Warwick Hughes’s site. Is there any foundation for doubting any of Morner’s writings about sea levels on the Maldives?
Regarding “thermal expansion” of the oceans, I googled something like “sea water density” and at one site found where I cold fill in salt content and temperature and density correction. I’ll list a few data points for 3% salt content, which I believe to be a good ballpark estimate:
°C delta density
0 -0.133
2 -0.033
4 -0.001
6 -0.033
8 -0.125
10 -0.274
12 -0.477
14 -1.032
Ian M (06:58:24) : Your comment is awaiting moderation
Two subjects.
Dr. Morner’s work was slagged by some people posting a year ago on Warwick Hughes’s site. Is there any foundation for doubting any of Morner’s writings about sea levels on the Maldives?
Regarding “thermal expansion” of the oceans, I googled something like “sea water density” and at one site found where I cold fill in salt content and temperature and density correction. I’ll list a few data points for 3% salt content, which I believe to be a good ballpark estimate:
°C delta density
0 -0.133
2 -0.033
4 -0.001
6 -0.033
8 -0.125
10 -0.274
12 -0.477
14 -1.032
The anti-dock chiding at the end of the article seems unsupported by the photos. It looks like there are docks next to the gauges but the gauge is not greatly dependent upon the dock. Most of the tide gauge photos show what looks like a vertical steel column. It looks like the gauge is a rigid vertical structure which is probably well anchored at its base, with various types of bracing to reduce horizontal stress.
REPLY: My point is that pilings in general aren’t stable platforms, steel or wood. They could either sink or rise. Wave action might eventually work wood pilings loose causing them to wobble a bit in the holes. – Anthony
My posting went out before I was finished. Damned Enter key!
Two subjects.
Dr. Morner’s work was slagged by some people posting a year ago on Warwick Hughes’s site. Is there any foundation for doubting any of Morner’s writings about sea levels on the Maldives?
Regarding “thermal expansion” of the oceans, I googled something like “sea water density” and at one site found where I could fill in salt content and temperature and density correction. I’ll list a few data points for 3% salt content, which I believe to be a good ballpark estimate:
°C delta density
0 -0.133
2 -0.033
4 -0.001
6 -0.033
8 -0.125
10 -0.274
12 -0.477
14 -1.032
For density kg/cu m, add 1000 to the above numbers.
If we take a 500m column of water (upper level of ocean) at 0° and heat it to 8°C (a huge jump), I calculate that the depth of the column would increase by…..wait for it…..4 millimeters. If the temperature went from 4° to 8°, the height would actually .
If my calculations are correct (and please correct me if I am wrong), talk of “thermal expansion” doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.
Ian
Hi… As Earth continues under a climate lowstand phase, as long as it lasts, sea levels won’t flood the continental area over the current 7% of area flooded. In a comparison between sea levels through geological timescale and concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide I observed that the increases of the atmospheric CO2 concentration go on a par with the cycles of transgressions and regressions, but always after increases of the tropospheric temperature, which made me speculate on sea levels as the unavoidable cause of risings of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. The latter is true given that other scientists have found the connection between oceans temperature and release of CO2 from the oceans to the atmosphere. Through a phase of transgression, i.e. when a maximum area of continents is flooded, the concentration of CO2 increases; while through a phase of regression, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere decreases. Other scientists have found that the oceans heat up precisely during transgression phases and cools down during regression phases. Well, we are just now in the lowstand of a regression phase. Anyway, the cycles of transgressions have been diminishing through geological eras, so the possibility on catastrophic floods of continental areas, islands, etc. is almost zero. The last assertion obeys to the fact that oceans are now covering more extensive Earth’s surface than they were 1500 million years ago, which let us go back to revise old theories, like that one on an expanding Earth, for example.
I am having trouble getting my posting through correctly! In my item regarding sea water density, the final word in the penultimate sentence should end in the word “decrease”. I tried to put the word in “carret” marks (arrowheads) and the word disappeared in transmission.
Ian
Oops! A small correction on “Earth’s surface than they were 1500 million years ago…”. It should have say: “Earth’s surface than they were 150 million years ago…”
Here’s an interesting fact about the Maldives. The corals that make up the atoll reefs and islands rise from a submarine ridge that is nearly 400m (1300ft) below sea level.
Corals must live in brightly lit waters that are fully penetrated by the sun’s rays which effectively restricts the most luxuriant coral reef growth to depths rarely exceeding 37m (120ft).
At some stage then the sea level in which the Maldives began to grow must have been almost 1200 ft lower than it is today, yet the islands have continued to grow and survive whilst the sea level rose.
I notice that, on the page headed “The Maldives 2,” the lower photo’s caption concludes with “… (4) older +60 cm sea level.” But I see no person wearing #4 T-shirt.
=========
Rikard Gothäll (01:10:04) wrote:
“A link for those who want to know more about Mörners side activities:
http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2008/03/lind_morner_still_mucking_arou.php “
A quote from the article linked to (by a member of a skeptics group) stated:
“Future plans include magnetometry mapping. Mörner is quoted as believing that this technique will allow the pair to map individual ancient footprints in the subsoil, because in his opinion, magnetometry maps “compressed earth”.”
“Individual footprints” sounds pretty wacky, because it’s hard to see how a single one could compress the earth noticeably. I wonder if perhaps Mörner was actually looking for footpaths. It stands to reason that the earth beneath them would be compressed. I suspect that looking for compressed-earth footpaths with ground penetrating radar is a standard practice in archaeology.
Bruce Cobb:
Welcome to the Dark Side, heh-heh-heh. Seriously, though, there are plenty of liberal types here who used to believe the AGW nonsense, until we started looking into it.
Those would be the Classical Liberals such as myself, who base their thinking on post-Enlightenment values: taking all evidence into account, or as much as possible, particularly in a truely scientific way, as a matter of personal responsibility if not actual “self”, as opposed to simply falling prey to groupthink memes or what are essentially only low-brow advertising campaigns designed to influence people on sub-rational bases for purposes other than understanding things and then forming the best possibly policies with a view to the well-being of all people.
I’ve gotten burned enough in the past by Faux Liberals – who have usurped the term “liberal” for themselves while attempting to falsely convey the idea that the term still means what the “liberal” in “Classical Liberal” means – that once I define who they are and recognize the tell tale indicators of how they operate [anecdote, big lie, fear, on authority, begging the question, not checking the thermometers, etc.] I don’t believe a thing they say without a lot of further proof.
Amazingly often, what they claim as true even turns out to be the direct opposite of the truth – which to me indicates that they have some very severe problem with Reality, which then leads them to the opposite of what Reality says/is. Not to mention the “control for the sake of control or personal aggrandizement” types, whose control or narcissistic need trumps Reality in nearly every instance. I know some of these various kinds personally, and long term.