This phenomenon is something that materialists would like to put on the back burner. Yet thousands have already been displaced and dispossessed due to flooding from global warming. As we wrote in the 1998 edition of DIVINE NATURE, “United Nations studies show that a warming climate could raise sea levels, which are already rising, by 1.5 to 6.5 feet over the next century. If sea levels rise 3 feet, this could submerge 1 million square miles of lowlands. These lowlands are inhabited by one billion people and include one third of the world’s cropland” Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf, a senior scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research near Berlin writes: “…the huge lecture and consultancy fees offered by the fossil-fuel industry are a much surer way to line one’s pockets than competing for scanty research grants and earning government salaries. The fashionable tenet of new-right ideology that all people are driven by sheer self-interest ignores the many people in many fields who do not put money at the top of their agenda and pride themselves on working responsibly for the common good. I would be relieved and delighted if global warming turned out to be a false alarm. Unfortunately, the scientific evidence that it is a serious threat is solid.” (source: NEW ZEALAND HERALD, 18 January 2000).