Six years later, New York Times mentions that the Maldives is not sinking
clintel.org | 7/1/24 | Jo Nova

In 2018, a study of aerial photos of 700 Pacific Islands showed that 89% were the same size or growing. This rather destroyed the idea that sea levels were swallowing small nations. The New York Times said nothing. Indeed, the only Pacific things shrinking were deserted sand drifts. No islands bigger than 10 hectares were getting smaller. Measured in square kilometers that’s “0.1”. Despite the media headlines and delegations from Kiribati and Tuvulu 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 had not being touched by climate change for decades.

In 2023 another study of 1,100 islands came to the same conclusion. To find that many islands they included things as small as one thousandth of a square kilometer — we’re talking about spits of sand 10 meters square. (There are whales larger than that.)  The Kench team studied islands in the Indian Ocean too. In one case, they sliced, diced and drilled through one poor island in the Maldives and discovered it had a history like tossed salad. The ocean had churned and turned every part of it.

Now, six years later, the New York Times is catching up on one small part  — the Maldives, they admit, are not vanishing like they were supposed to. But 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still not saying that the original study came out in 2018, and that hundreds of media stories on sea levels were wrong, out of date and pointless, and all the claims of damage by Pacific Islanders were not just grossly exaggerated but utterly baseless.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 must have been obvious to many of the islanders who lived there, surely, but who were happy to milk the fake crisis for all it was worth.

Since 1988:

30 Years Ago Officials Predicted The Maldives Would Be Swallowed By The Sea. It Didn’t Happen.
dailycaller.com | 9/21/2018 | Michael Bastasch

Environmental officials warned 30 years ago the Maldives could be completely covered by water due to global warming-induced sea level rise.

That didn’t happen. The Indian Ocean did not swallow the Maldives island chain as predicted by government officials in the 1980s.

In September 1988, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported a “gradual rise in average sea level is threatening to completely cover this Indian Ocean nation of 1196 small islands within the next 30 years,” based on predictions made by government officials.

Then-Environmental Affairs Director Hussein Shihab told AFP “an estimated rise of 20 to 30 centimetres in the next 20 to 40 years could be ‘catastrophic’ for most of the islands, which were no more than a metre above sea level.”

The article went on to suggest the Maldives, along with its 200,000 inhabitants, could “end” sooner than expected if drinking water supplies dry up by 1992 “as predicted.” Today, more than 417,000 people live in the Maldives.

“Call Noah and have him build another Ark,” Daniel Turner, executive director of the pro-energy group Power the Future, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Bring out the Coast Guard. Send all the boogie boards and floaties you can find for the Maldives is going down,” Turner said sarcastically.

Back to the well in 2021:

(Note the final sentence)

Maldives minister: Failure to limit warming a death sentence
The Associated Press | October 20, 2021 | Krishan Francis and Aniruddha Ghosal

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — A failure to limit global warming could mean a “death sentence” for small island nations like the Maldives, including the end of their livelihoods and cultures, the country’s environment minister said Wednesday.

A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said earlier this year that the world is likely to exceed the 1.5 C increase in the 2030s, earlier than expected.

“The difference between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees, for us, really is a death sentence,” Aminath Shauna, the Maldives’ minister for environment, climate change and technology, said in an online interview.

She said rich nations need to fulfil their Paris promise to spend $100 billion annually to help poorer nations cope with the impact of climate change and switch to cleaner energy.

So far, the Green Climate Fund established by the agreement has approved only one adaptation project in the Maldives, and even that took three years, she said. With climate change impacting the islands rapidly, by the time funds are approved, the situation on the ground has already changed, she said.

Shauna added that countries should also be given more time to repay. Because climate change didn’t happen in 10 years, the developed world and financial systems shouldn’t expect that the money should be repaid in a short time, she said.

“We really need to unlock the financial system,” she said.

Don’t worry, Madiviants: we have a floating pier to send you.