THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

And for the Maldives, the bulk of the island nation is around 3 ft above sea level or at least it is now. And that puts The Maldives at the fore front of nations expected to disappear when the sea levels rise. And they need not rise the full 8 ft. Storms and tides become more destructive as the seas rise.

Most of the nation lies about 3 feet above sea level, with a high point of about 8 feet above the water. That makes the idea of rising sea levels no mere abstraction. Residents here say they don’t have the luxury, as GOP frontrunner Donald Trump put it, of not being “a believer” in global warming.

“Sea level rise is not merely scientific theory, and for us is not a matter of political debate,” said Abdulla Shahid, a member of the Maldives parliament and a former Foreign Affairs minister. “The threat of sea level rise, to us, is an existential issue. It is a very serious matter.”

There can be no dismissing the science, nor contending as GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz did in an interview with NPR that “The scientific evidence doesn’t support global warming.”

“If the projections are correct, it means the death of a nation,” Shahid said. “The Maldives could be completely inundated by 2085.”...

They are very aware of the water’s presence. Which makes them especially fearful when they hear predictions that sea level might rise 3 feet. If that happens, 80 percent of Maldives’ land would be at risk – more during storms and high seas.

Already, sea level rises threaten the country’s fresh-water wells in a nation heavily dependent on desalination for drinking water. Access to drinking water is one of the first things Maldives residents talk about. Last year, a fire at a desalinization plant in the capital of Malé forced the nation’s leaders to fly drinking water in from India.

Which leaves this country distraught over the continuing debate in the United States over whether climate change and human impact on it are real. The theory behind global warming is so simple that NASA even summarizes it on a website for kids: “Most scientists say it's very likely that most of the warming since the mid-1900s is due to the burning of coal, oil and gas.”

Rising sea levels would also mean the end of America's dick, Florida. But at least Florida is attached to higher ground that the people can easily move to when the floods come.