Letters | 10 December 2011

All at sea

Sir: The Spectator’s cover article last week was entitled ‘The Sea Level Scam’. You can rest assured that no such scam exists. Most claims of the author, Nils-Axel Mörner, have never been published in peer-reviewed articles so cannot be independently verified. However, he published on his research in the Maldives in the journal Global Planetary Change in 2004. His findings about a possible sea-level fall in the region and the geological coral record, and his interpretation of satellite measurements of sea-level change have all been subsequently refuted.

He is correct to point out that there is widespread geographic variability in patterns of sea-level rise. But his central claim, that the Maldives are not under threat from future sea-level rise, is both misleading and dangerous. In the late 1990s Dr Mörner published a prediction of 10cm global sea‑level rise for the year 2100. About half of this rise has already occurred.