ROLF PAYET EMBARASSES HIS PRESIDENT

Rolph PayetNo one knows the precise reason why President Michel appointed Mr Rolf Payet as his advisor. It is said it was a reward for zealously and openly campaigning for Mr Michel from the vantage point of his office as the Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Environment during the presidential election contest in 2006.  Unlike his colleague, Joel Morgan, there was no ministerial reward. The next best thing he got was a post specially created for him as presidential advisor on the Environment.

But the President may have got more than he bargained for with Rolf Payet. Last week, Payet was interviewed by the BBC World Service radio at Bush House in London, and gave the world a glimpse of his ability or confused mind, if not fanciful thinking. Asked point blank by the BBC presenter right from the beginning of the interview – What evidence do you have of the rise in sea level (in the Indian Ocean)? Payet replied that he has seen it with his own eyes, at least 15 metres of coastline erosion he said. Realising that he could not embarrass his guest on air, the BBC presenter decided not to push the issue further.

Payet, has perhaps never lay in a bathtub filled with water, for he would have noticed that as the water rises it does not rise to his toes first before reaching his head. It rises all around his body at the same time, a phenomenon recorded by Archimedes over 2000 years ago. If the sea level had really risen, as Mr Payet seems to suggest, the evidence would have been all around Mahe, not just on one part. The runway at Pointe Larue and the commercial port would have been the first to suffer the effect, both constructed when Al Gore was still a cub reporter covering the Vietnam War, and the world was being warned by the then environmentalists of the imminent big freeze and the sea level actually dropping.

Payet did not stop there in his unscientific and fanciful thinking. Jumping “du coq a l’âne” as the French would say, Payet confused his global warming effect with his tsunami effect and his tidal wave when the reporter asked what measures he would recommend the Seychelles should adopt. He claimed, in a rather disturbing and unscientific response, that since the tidal wave that reached Seychelles from the Indonesian tsunami did not affect the areas where there were mangroves, it would help to create mangrove swamps in vulnerable places. Yes, it is not an exaggeration. He actually said that.

 Payet went further. Since  80% of our people live on the sea level coastal plain and, according to him,  it is difficult to build houses on the mountainside (obviously he has never been to Switzerland) it would help if we copied our forbears and build our houses on stilts (or taso as we say in Creole). Imagine all those Seychellois families grateful to Mr Payet’s perspicacity, sitting on their veranda watching their cars or chickens or dogs happily wallowing in sea water in a world where the sea level has risen twenty feet as Al Gore has predicted?

Clearly, Payet’s unscientific understanding of the effect of sea level rise is synonymous with that of the effect of a high tide or flash flood or tidal wave. The latter, it is to be noted, comes every so often in a hundred years or so.  The previous occasion Seychelles experienced a tsunami tidal wave was in 1883 when the volcano on Krakatau Island in Indonesia erupted. Evidently, tsunamis are not an everyday occurrence nor does it have anything to do with climate change or global warming.

There is no scientific evidence that the properties of mangroves stopped the tidal wave of the December 2004 tsunami from reaching it. It is more reasonable to assume that mangroves grow in areas where the effect of the normal rise and fall of sea level when tides change is least pronounced because of the topography of the coastline. Like Al Gore, Rolf Payet is mixing his cause and effect.

This is not the first time that Rolf Payet has made an ass of himself commenting on environmental issues, although this is the first time he did it to a worldwide audience. Ten years ago, Payet tried to give a scientific explanation on SBC as to how a catalytic converter works, when SEPEC was about to introduce the green label gasoline, only to confuse the public.  We would recommend to President Michel that he should restrict Rolf Payet’s activities to promoting the Seychelles University and not to put government’s money where Rolf Payet’s mouth is even.

Building defences for a one in a hundred year occurrence such as tsunami borders on the alarming and wasteful use of resources, just as Al Gore wants the world to change its economic fundamentals now to prevent a “catastrophe” that may or may not happen in 100 or even a thousand years. Instead we should build a sound economy that would amass sufficient wealth to repair damages caused by Mother Nature as they occur, or even to counter the effect of climate change induced by man’s economic activities or cows farting (yes that too can cause climate change according to the alarmists).

THE EVENT THAT CAUSED THE PREVIOUS TSUNAMI TO REACH SEYCHELLES 200 YEARS AGO

Krakatau erupted in 1883, in one of the largest eruptions in recent time. Krakatau is an island volcano along the Indonesian arc, between the much larger islands of Sumatra and Java (each of which has many volcanoes also along the arc). Here are some highlights from the summary of effects:

1. The explosions were heard on Rodrigue Island, 4653 km distant across the Indian Ocean, and over 1/13th of the earth’s surface.

2. Ash fell on Singapore 840 km to the N, Cocos (Keeling) Island 1155 km to the SW, and ships as far as 6076 km WNW. Darkness covered the Sunda Straits from 11 a.m. on the 27th until dawn the next day.

3. Giant waves reached heights of 40 m above sea level, devastating everything in their path and hurling ashore coral blocks weighing as much as 600 tons.  (In Seychelles people rushed to the shore as the sea receded to collect fish.  It is not known if anyone died.)

4. At least 36,417 people were killed, most by the giant sea waves, and 165 coastal villages were destroyed.

5. When the eruption ended only 1/3 of Krakatau, formerly 5 x 9 km, remained above sea level, and new islands of steaming pumice and ash lay to the north where the sea had been 36 m deep.

6. Every recording barograph in the world documented the passage of the airwave, some as many as 7 times, as the wave bounced back and forth between the eruption site and its antipodes for 5 days after the explosion.

7. Tide gauges also recorded the sea wave’s passage far from Krakatau. The wave “reached Aden in 12 hours, a distance of 3800 nautical miles, usually traversed by a good steamer in 12 days”.

8. Blue and green suns were observed as fine ash and aerosol, erupted perhaps 50 km into the stratosphere, circled the equator in 13 days.

9. Three months after the eruption these products had spread to higher latitudes causing such vivid red sunset afterglows that fire engines were called out in New York, Poughkeepsie, and New Haven to quench the apparent conflagration. Unusual sunsets continued for 3 years.

10. Rafts of floating pumice - locally thick enough to support men, trees, and no doubt other biological passengers - crossed the Indian Ocean in 10 months. Others reached Melanesia, and were still afloat two years after the eruption.

11. The volcanic dust veil that created such spectacular atmospheric effects also acted as a solar radiation filter, lowering global temperatures as much as 1.2 degree C in the year after the eruption. Temperatures did not return to normal until 1888.

IF THE SEA LEVEL HAS RISEN IN SEYCHELLES IT MUST HAVE RISEN IN MALDIVES TOO

Both Seychelles and the Maldives lie in the Indian Ocean. If, according to Rolf Payet, the sea level around us has risen, it must also appear in the Maldives too. Has it?

Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner One of the foremost experts in sea level is Swedish professor Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner who headed the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden until very recently. Dr. Mörner has been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years.

Dr. Mörner was also the past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. In 1999 he led a group of scientists in an expedition to the Maldives to record the past sea level changes and to understand the present to future prospects of the islands. This is what he and his associates wrote in a scientific paper called New Perspectives for the future of Maldives:

In 1999, the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution initiated a special research project in order to decode the history of the Maldives, record the past sea level changes and understand the present-to-future prospect of the islands (INQUA, 2000; Tooley, 2000). In our study of the coastal dynamics and the geomorphology of the shores, we were unable to detect any traces of a recent sea level rise. On the contrary, we found quite clear morphological indications of a recent fall in sea level.

Our information comes from numerous islands in the Baa–Raa–Guidhoo Atolls, from Viligili island in the North Male Atoll, from Lhosfushi–Garaidhoo-Kodoomaafushi islands in the South Male Atoll, and from Hithadhoo island in the Addo Atoll.

Many islands are affected by erosion. Erosion maybe caused by sea level rise, sea level lowering, change in wind direction and change in wind intensity. Hence, it is not a measure of sea level rise (as often claimed).

The level of re-deposition of the sand and shingle set in motion by erosion is a much better indication of actual sea level changes; moving in over former land if sea level is rising, and adding lower levels seawards if sea is falling.

Erosion may, of course, also be caused by human interference with the coastal dynamics and sediment supply. In the Maldives, there are many examples of severe erosion due to the construction of causeways between islands, dredging, harbour works and sea defences. In most cases, however, those effects are easily understood in terms of actual human coastal activity.

More recently, Dr Morner gave an interview to a magazine called EIR on the issue of sea level rise which run an article with the title, Claim That Sea Level Is Rising Is a Total Fraud. We reproduce an excerpt of that interview which shows the duplicity of the Maldivian government on the issue and perhaps shed some light on our own government’s duplicity in order to get funds from the developed countries: 

Then we went to the Maldives. I traced a drop in sea level in the 1970s, and the fishermen told me, “Yes, you are correct, because we remember”—things in their sailing routes have changed, things in their harbour have changed.

I worked in the lagoon, I drilled in the sea, I drilled in lakes, I looked at the shore morphology—so many different environments.

Always the same thing: In about 1970, the sea fell about 20 cm, for reasons involving probably evaporation or something. Not a change in volume or something like that—it was a rapid thing. The new level, which has been stable, has not changed in the last 35 years. You can trace it so very, very carefully. No rise at all is the answer there.

I’ll tell you another thing: When I came to the Maldives, to our enormous surprise, one morning we were on an island, and I said, “This is something strange, the storm level has gone down; it has not gone up, it has gone down.” And then I started to check the level all around, and I asked the others in the group, “Do you see anything here on the beach?”

And after awhile they found it too. And we had investigated, and we were sure, I said we cannot leave the Maldives and go home and say the sea level is not rising, it’s not respectful to the people. I have to say it to Maldive television. So we made a very nice program for Maldive television, but it was forbidden by the government! Because they thought that they would lose money. They accuse the West for putting out carbon dioxide, and therefore we have to pay for our damage and the flooding. So they wanted the flooding scenario to go on.

November 16, 2007
Copyright 2007: Seychelles Weekly, Victoria, Mahe, Seychelles