In 1989, a senior UN environmental official warned that entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend was not reversed by the year 2000. This prediction was made in an Associated Press article written by veteran reporter Peter James Spielmann and published on 29 June 1989.
According to the article, governments had a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it went beyond human control. The UN official also predicted that as the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations.
In 2019, Snopes “fact-checked” the claim that, “A senior UN environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000” because it “serves as the basis for clickbait posts from several climate denial media outlets.”
However, because the article was available for all to read, all Snopes could do was demonstrate that Spielmann’s article was not supported by scientific papers or the UNEP report referred to. In other words, the senior UN official lied and Spielmann amplified his lies.
Hellbound and Down 