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Maldives Government Holds Undersea Cabinet Meeting
Hugh Pickens writes "The president of the Maldives and 11 ministers, decked out in scuba gear, held a cabinet meeting 4m underwater to highlight the threat of global warming to the low-lying Indian Ocean nation. While officials said the event itself was light-hearted, the idea is to focus on the plight of the Maldives, where rising sea levels threaten to make the nation uninhabitable by the end of the century. President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet spent half an hour on the sea bed, communicating with white boards and hand signals and signed a document calling for global cuts in carbon emissions. The Maldives has already begun to divert a portion of the country's billion-dollar annual tourist revenue to buy a new homeland as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees. Emerging out of the water, a dripping President Nasheed removed his mask to answer questions from reporters and photographers crowded around on the shore. 'We are trying to send a message to the world about what is happening and what would happen to the Maldives if climate change isn't checked,' he said, bobbing around in the water with his team of ministers. 'If the Maldives is not saved, today we do not feel there is much chance for the rest of the world.'"
yeah right they are going to buy a new homeland. that money shall land in the pockets of politicians and the islanders will shake their fists at westerners and make bombs, because brave president whatever his name was, tried to show us.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
No amount of CO2 cutbacks is going to stop climate change and the sea levels rising, even if CO2 emissions dropped to zero tomorrow. The relevant time constants are from hundreds to thousands of years.
This pretty much highlights how it's all primarily a media circus and political game. The science is lost entirely in the noise.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I think other countries should try it, but without the aqualungs.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
LOL i wish i could mod you funny. I say we give them some of Israel
You're giving anonymous cowards a bad name. Please stfu.
I have an idea. Let's do the same in Australia. The way our politicians carry on booing, jeering, calling each other names and such is disgraceful. (Actually I'm resisting the urge to suggest a 1 hour meeting under water WITHOUT the scuba gear). I guess it's similar the world over. No wonder we're in the economic, social and environmental crapper.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
As evidence mounts that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming isn't the disaster the chicken littles have been preaching for the last 2 decades, the more dramatic, outlandish, and shrill the commentary will become. Expect to see more of these stunts from both countries and entities expecting to receive a big pay day from the industrialized nations, while the evidence points to a theory that needs serious revising and models that aren't very accurate at the most basic of predictions.
To date a lot of the proxy data used to bolster the claim that the observed warming trend was "unprecedented" turns out to be extremely poorly put together. The recent Briffa revelations are so bad and Briffa so resistant to releasing his data (which is contrary to scientific methodology) that one has to wonder if there was deliberate fraud. In climate research this has happened before. The original, discredited Mann hockey stick was another example where a researcher refused to release both data and methodology, and when forced to told the world that data was lost (until it was found by accident on his FTP server). Both examples are indications that peer review in some fields is nothing more than a cliquish acceptance of a forgone conclusion.
Perhaps this stunt will bring attention to the matter that current understanding of AGW is poor at best and that current climate models are woafully inadequate (and perhaps a tad overly dramatic). More research is needed and more importantly the people conducting that research need to strictly adhere to scientific method if we are to have a clear view of the mechanisms that shape our climate and what the human population effect on it.
Final Thought : Having researchers act like a group of 14 year old girls that decide who is "in" and who is "out" isn't science - it's dogma. It does little to advance the course of science - but it makes great reading. Better drama than day time TV.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
While one can feel sorry for the citizens of the Maldives, the simple fact is that it isn't very good long term planning to build permanent domiciles in a place which is 1.5 meters above what the water surface is at the moment. In many places that might leave you with your house submerged after a heavy rainfall. It's not an uncommon mistake, places from London through New Orleans and the Netherlands have been flooded and put partially under water from time to time.
In that light I'm not sure it's appropriate to regard it as lost revenue, but rather a limited time opportunity which can and has been exploited. If the long term viability of the investment beyond the short term opportunity was desired, then steps should be taken to protect the investment, as has been done elsewhere, but simply hoping for stable long term water levels does not constitute protecting your investment. Not there, nor anywhere else.
I'm listening, many of the readers on /. are listening, many people around the world are listening. It was clever stunt that got a lot of international attention and it's a good step in the right direction. We can only hope that's it's not a loosing battle. For my part, I support any legislation aimed at CO2 reduction; hopefully after hearing about the Maldives more people will do the same.
People need to be less cynical, even at the expense of a "funny" mod.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
They already have a land where they worship a wall, hump anything if they can make a dollar, rape the lands and people of Palestein and shoot bombs at them without any concern whether they are terrorists or civilians.
Why would they move ?
A rather discredited expert. Anyone want to take his course on dowsing?
The site (ClimateChangeFacts) reads like any other number of "skeptic" sites. Lots of speculation backed by bogus claims and zero peer reviewed research to back up their claims.
I want a model, skeptics. I want a scientifically valid atmospheric dynamics model that shows that increasing the amount of CO2 does not impact global climate and yet still explains our observational data. Go ahead. I'll wait.
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Yes!! And me must have government agencies to monitor, control, and regulate all these new taxes and programs. Massive bureaucracies to make sure that every scum sucking citizen pays theirs burden to the eco-Gods. We must have commissions to make sure that minorities and the poor are not adversely effected, i.e. the middle class can have another tax to help out the rest. Over weight people breath heavily, that's too much CO2 so they will either have to hold their breath or get knifed (no shooting, burning things is bad remember). And we must do this because we want to save the future and all the money will go "for the children".
While one can feel sorry for the citizens of the Maldives, the simple fact is that it isn't very good long term planning to build permanent domiciles in a place which is 1.5 meters above what the water surface is at the moment. In many places that might leave you with your house submerged after a heavy rainfall.
They've been living there quite happily for roughly 2000 years; I'd call that doing okay in the long term. Rainfall isn't really a problem, because, see, these are islands, and rain sort of goes down into the ocean. There's no hurricane season, so that's not much of an issue to my knowledge. The occasional tsunami is devastating, but the trade-off is easy access to shipping, a forgiving climate, and lots of seafood, which to many is worth the risk.
In that light I'm not sure it's appropriate to regard it as lost revenue, but rather a limited time opportunity which can and has been exploited.
Can't disagree with you there, except inasmuch as saying it "has been" exploited. Oceans are rising at about 3 mm/year, so while there's cause for concern and planning, I don't think they need to evacuate just yet. As noted in the summary, they're quite wisely diversifying their investment by trying to buy an emergency backup homeland.