The Maldives in the Indian Ocean have long been used by global warming alarmists to drive home the dangers of rising sea levels should polar ice sheets keep melting because of man-made global warming.
Male, Maldives. Photo by: Shahee Ilyas, the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version
In 2012 former President of the Maldive Islands Mohamed Nasheed said: “If carbon emissions continue at the rate they are climbing today, my country will be underwater in seven years.”
With such a prediction and recalling how the latest UN IPCC report boosted its estimate of sea level rise, and taking into account that CO2 emissions show no signs of abating, you would think the Maldives would be the last place developers would build anything. The Maldives are barely more than a meter above sea level on average.
But according to veteran Die Welt journalist Ulli Kulke at his Die Welt blog here in a piece titled Tourist industry does not believe in the downfall of the Maldives, this is not at all the case. Kulke writes:
30 additional new luxury class hotel complexes are planned for the next 6 to 10 years, never mind the countless smaller homes. Tourism is currently increasing 20% annually.”
Whatever is really behind all the rising sea level scare stories, huge commercial investors are obviously dismissing them. If anything, these scare stories are providing lots of publicity for the islands’ tourism industry. Already more than 1 million tourists are flocking to the islands every year and, Kulke writes, Nasheed says the islands can handle many more.
Kulke writes, “Environmental protection in the Maldives is practically non-existent.”
Moreover he suggests that the climate change issue is being used by Nasheed to generate lots of cash:
At the big climate conferences – and supposedly also in Warsaw in two weeks – Nasheed meets regularly to milk cash compensation from climate-sinning countries on behalf of his country and other island nations (on which environmental protection plays a subordinate role). Almost the entire supply of energy on the island for the millions of tourists flowing in, by the way, is produced by diesel generators, this while Nasheed continues to press for foreign countries to switch over to renewable energies.”
Grotesque!
Make money while the Sun shines – nothing wrong with this.
A fool and his money are easily parted – the fool remains the fool.
If someone wants to pay to preserve the Dodo, why not take the money? What is there to lose?
Mike, the problem is that it’s the tax payers of the developed nations that are “paying to save the Dodo”, and most of us don’t want to.
It’s not real money anyway, it is fiat money. We borrow from banks who buy government bonds which are tied to debts which can never be repaid.
Below are Lat/Long coordinates taken from Google Earth
4.184153, 73.522168
. . . that will place your center of view about halfway between the airport (right side) and a small island with diesel storage tanks. These tanks are mentioned thusly “The fuel storages on islands close to the airport also did not undergo any damage as a consequent of the tsunami.” From page 9 in this report:
https://ochanet.unocha.org/p/Documents/Report_REA_Maldives_FINAL_KOBE_180105.pdf
This pdf report, a UN document, has a scant 11 pages and one photo assessing the damage from the Indian Ocean earthquake generated tsunami of 26 Dec 2004.
Additional events such as the tsunami are much more likely (I just made that up) than serious sea level rise during the economic life of a modern luxury class hotel. As a developer I would anchor the building deeply and make the lower one or two stories park-like (a covered mini-golf course) or a lighted but open gambling space. These should have high ceilings and if in 50 years there is a need, simply add to or raise the floor level. If the developers and their architects haven’t already thought about such things they deserve to have the water and debris of a tsunami smash into their buildings.
This is a lot like when Al Gore bought a place on the California seacoast. He doesn’t believe in this crap either.
How many of them are owned by Al Gore?
Nice way to make a bundle; drive the price of real estate down with a phony scare.
[…] Developers Dismiss Sea Level Rise Claims – Plan To Build 30 New Luxury Hotels In The Maldives – … […]
[…] the sea rising, they’re developing fancy new hotels and the government is happy to oblige. https://notrickszone.com/2013/11/03/developers-dismiss-sea-level-rise-claims-plan-to-30-new-luxury-ho… What? It was a money grab? Who would have thunk […]
You forgot the Maldives is building and planning to build 5 new underwater airports. 😉
http://www.sun.mv/english/4224
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/09/19/maldives-to-build-five-more-underwater-airports/
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