Flood of misinformation likelier to drown Maldives
ABC Radio's Peter Cave reports the IPCC claim the island nation is in imminent danger of climate-induced flooding
MOHAMED Nasheed (the new Maldives President) has named battling the effects of rising sea levels as a key priority. He's hatched an audacious plan to buy his people a new homeland and one of the destinations he's considering is Australia.
Andrew Hewitt, executive director of Oxfam Australia: What will be needed is international action and co-ordinated action to respond to the consequences of climate change. And that will mean the richer countries who have been responsible for the climate change crisis coming to grips with the reality that people will be on the move.
And people who will be on the move now will need to find a refuge somewhere, and that may mean something along the lines that the new President of the Maldives is talking about, or it may mean some other mechanism.
But is the Maldives really about to be flooded because of climate change? Not according to a project conducted by Nils-Axel Morner, former head of the department of paleogeophysics and geodynamics at Stockholm University:
THE Maldives have a unique position in sea-level research. In the past decade they have attracted special attention because, in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenario, the Maldives would be condemned to become flooded in the next 50 to 100 years.
Our research data does not lend support to any such flooding scenario, however. On the contrary, we find no signs of any ongoing sea-level rise. Our results comes from visits to numerous islands ... and includes coring, levelling, sampling and carbon dating.
Present sea level was reached about 4500BC. In the past 4000 years, sea level oscillated around the present. In the past decade, there are no signs of any rise in sea level. Hence, we are able to free the islands from the condemnation to become flooded in the 21st century.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation suggests another reason the Maldives may be under threat:
CORAL mining is an important activity in the Maldives having long-lasting impacts on reefs. Coral is virtually the only building material available in the country and coral mining is widespread. The demand for coral has increased at an enormous rate during the past decade owing to increased development in the country. Recent studies had led to concerns over the sustainability of the reefs subject to coral mining activities.
The physical impact of coral mining depends on the type of reefs in question. Island house reefs act as physical barriers, protecting the coral islands against wave action by dissipating most of the energy in the incoming waves before they reach the beach.
Mining corals from the reef flats effectively removes this physical barrier and leaves the islands prone to increased wave action, swells, storm surges and, consequently, erosion.
Jill Singer, in The Herald Sun, has nothing but vitriol for our Kiwi cousins:
NEW Zealanders have voted for change - a leap from Left to Right - with all the enthusiasm and reasoning power of a doped slug. As the rest of the world struggles with the excesses of capitalism and free-market worship, our dearly beloved neighbours suddenly think a former investment banker can make them ruch, as well as thuck.
Think of the dazzling US election, then think of its antithesis and you have the Kiwis' "defining moment". This wasn't about desperately needed change, as in the US, but change for change's sake. New Zealanders just got bored. Instead of doing the sensible thing about it, like reading a good book or moving to Australia (which 11 per cent of Kiwis have already done) they decided to turn out in their tens and vote for a new government. Outgoing PM Helen Clark warns that NZ could "go up in flames in a bonfire ignited by the right wing of politics". Her concern is justified.
The global financial crisis is yet to swamp NZ, but a hard rain is surely coming. When it does, New Zealanders will be demanding more, rather than less, government intervention in their vulnerable economy.
Rachel Morris, writing in The Guardian, is less jaundiced:
IT pains me to say that NZ may have the most placid politics on earth. You might say New Zealanders care less about politics than Americans do, but that wouldn't really be true. They actually tend to be better informed and more engaged than most Americans, dutifully so.
The real difference is that they rarely, if ever, get angry or excited or inspired by politics, and this actually turns out to be pretty good for governance. NZ politics may be a snooze but, generally speaking, the country runs like a charm.