Maldives and Other Islands Not Sinking

The New York Times finally got it right. They recently posted an article entitled “A Surprising Climate Find,” which explains how island nations like the Maldives and Tuvalu are not, in fact, In danger of sinking under the seas due to climate change.

This is true: atolls, in particular, are known to grow with rising water levels: this has been known for years if not decades.

Ironically, the NYT promoted the falsehood about islands sinking as recently as April this year with a story titled, “Why Time is Running Out Across the Maldives Lovely Little Islands.” ⁽¹⁾

The truth is the facts about atolls growth and demise are not newly discovered

The author of the Times article, Raymond Zhong, claimed the fact that the islands are not sinking has only been discovered ‘of late.’

The truth is the facts about atolls growth and demise are not newly discovered. Scientists have known for decades, if not more than a hundred years, that atoll islands uniquely change with changing sea levels.

A study published in 2018 found that 89 percent of islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans increased in area or were more stable, and only 11 percent showed any sign of contracting. (1)

Jo Nova notes, “A little tiny delated backdown from extreme climate hype begins.” ⁽²⁾

Despite the media headlines and delegations from Tuvalu and Kiribati begging for money to hold back the tide, no islands with people living on them were shrinking. None, not one island in the Pacific big enough to matter, was disappearing. The largest 630 islands in the Pacific were not being touched by climate change for decades.

In 2023 another study of 1,100 islands came to the same conclusion. ⁽³⁾

The findings blow holes in the poster scare run by alarmists

The Times are still not saying that the original study came out in 2018, and that hundreds of media stories on sea levels were wrong, out of date and pointless, and all the claims of damage by the Pacific islanders were not just grossly exaggerated but utterly baseless. They’re not saying that all the anxiety that ideological scientists and sloppy journalists have whipped up has probably harmed the very islanders they pretended to care about. They’re not admitting that this time this must have been obvious to many of the islanders who lived there, but who were happy to milk the fake crisis for all it was worth. (2)

When you look at this in more detail, an amount of land equivalent to the Isle of Wright has been added to the shorelines of 13,000 islands around the world in just the last 20 years. ⁽⁴⁾

This fascinating fact of a 370 square kilometer increase has recently been discovered by a group of Chinese scientists analyzing both surface and satellite records. ⁽⁴⁾

The findings blow holes in the poster scare run by alarmists suggesting that rising sea levels caused by humans using hydrocarbons will condemn many islands to disappear shortly beneath rising sea levels.

Most of the poster islands used for climate scares such as Tuvalu and the Maldives have increased in size of late

A comprehensive re-examination of data on 30 Pacific and Indian Ocean atolls with 709 islands found that none of them had lost any land, Furthermore, scientists added, there are data that indicate 47 reef islands expanded in size or remained stable over the last 50 years, despite experiencing a rate of sea level rise that exceeds the global average. ⁽⁴⁾

The Maldives, a poster scare for rising sea levels, is one of a number of areas that have seen recent increases in land mass. Other areas include the Indonesian Archipelago islands along the Indochinese Peninsula coast, and islands in the Red and Mediterranean Seas.

The Chinese findings are important in helping destroy the claim that many low lying islands will simply disappear beneath the waves in the near future due to human induced climate change.

They show how shoreline changes are a persistent and ongoing process that is subject to many natural and human influences. Most of the poster islands used for climate scares such as Tuvalu and the Maldives have increased in size of late, and are hardly suitable to whip up fear of a claimed climate emergency.⁽⁴⁾

References

1. Linnea Lueken, “New York Times finally admits island nations not being submerged,” principia-scientific.org, July 5, 2024
2. Jo Nova,” Six years later New York Times mentions that Maldives is not sinking,” joannenova.com.au, June 29, 2024
3. P.S. Tench et al., “Reef Islands have continually adjusted to environmental change over the past two millennia,” Nat. Communications. 14, 508, 2023
4. Chris Morrison, “Climate alarmists said would soon disappear due to rising sea,” principia-scientific.org, April 10, 2024