By RASHAD ROLLE
Tribune Staff Reporter
rrolle@tribunemedia.net
RISING sea levels could cause the tourism industry to lose almost $900 million a year by 2050, says a research group.
Sea rise, surge or erosion could cause as much as 1,200 square miles of Caribbean coastal land to be lost along with damage or destruction of half of the major tourist resorts.
A report by the Inter-American Development Bank titled “Climate Change’s Impact on the Caribbean’s Ability to Sustain Tourism, Natural Assets, and Livelihoods” forecasts the destruction unless Caribbean governments take action.
Governments must put up more than 200 miles of levees and sea walls to the tune of almost $6 billion or the region will be in peril according to environmental groups like CaribSave, a research partnership between the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) in Belize and Oxford University in Britain.
“With 80 per cent of the land lying less than one metre above sea level, all sectors in the Bahamas are highly vulnerable,” says CaribSave.
It warns that the tourism industry could face annual losses of almost $900 million by 2050.
Dr Ulric Trotz, Deputy Director and Science Advisor at the CCCCC, told Tim Padgett, Americas Editor at WRLN, that when the Bahamian economy begins to fail because of the loss to its industries, many residents will begin seeking refuge in the USA.
He was quoted as saying: “In 50 years, if the (models) are correct, the entire (Caribbean) landscape will be changed. Our beaches will have disappeared, our coastal areas eroded, our infrastructure degraded. It would certainly wreak havoc on the way we live.”
As accelerating sea level rise became more apparent in the 1990s, CARICOM began raising concerns about the issue.
CaribSave and other organisations have since applauded the Bahamas for creating adaption mechanisms in the past decade but they remain critical of the level of resources committed to enforcing environmental laws.
Brian Soden, a professor of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami, told Mr Padgett that as the century progresses, “smaller, low-lying islands may actually have to be evacuated.”
He said the Bahamas is particularly vulnerable because although many of the Caribbean’s eastern islands were formed volcanically and have a bit more elevated breathing room, western islands like the Bahamas are “downright flat.”
“The Bahamas (were) not driven by tectonic activity, but through the development of sediments that form very shallow, sandy barrier type islands,” Mr Soden said, adding that these types of islands are not good for sea-level rise mitigation.
Comments
banker 11 years ago
This is satellite measurement of actual rise of sea levels. Doesn't look like "junk science" to me.
banker 11 years ago
Actually you are right. If you look at the map, in the Bahamas, the sea level has fallen. But that is due to North American tectonic plate activity on the East Coast. But in general, the sea levels are rising around the world. The polar ice caps and glaciers are receding.
paul_vincent_zecchino 11 years ago
The UN globaloney cabal's 'global warming/climate change/ice age' gag ran outa gas. So now they're back to the 'rising seas' trick?
Yeah. Right. And all we have to do to fix the Childrens' Terror called 'risisng seas' is surrender our wealth, property, liberty and very life to the UN and its internationalist gangsters.
No thanks.
The seas are not rising. There's a lot of junk science around which says they are, but junk science is junk science.
Chairman Mao ordered that all crop seeds be planted deep in the ground, where no sun could reach them and they'd never grow. He used the lie that 'deeply planted seeds will develop a communal energy and grow mighty crops.' He knew better. His goal was to rid his country of 'useless eaters' by means of famine.
Mao knew the trick would work because Trofim Lysenko, the founder of Lysenko Junk Science, used it a few decades previously to starve ten million to death in the Ukraine in the famine known as the Holodmor.
"Experts" denied all this of course and denounced any who dared speak of it as 'lunatics, cranks, undesirables....'. The New York Times regularly denied the existence of these famines.
During the mid 1980s, when President Reagan allowed many soviet dissidents asylum in America, they exposed it to the world, and shamed the NY SLimes and the leftist Elite gangsters for whom it scams.
It's all out there on the Net and in the history books for any who wish to see for themselves.
banker 11 years ago
wow -- I never knew that Chairman Mao was responsible for sea level rising by planting seeds deep to starve the people. Thanks for that bit of "real" science.
paul_vincent_zecchino 11 years ago
Banker -
It's the same 'science' - "Pure Socialist Science" is what lenin called it. Marx admitted well prior to 1900 that communism would be a genocidal flop, and that the only way to destroy the system - his primary goal - was to promote 'damage to the environment as a reason to destroy the burgeoning technological progress man was making.
It's all the same science. In 1970, the American leftist movement, guided by their Moscow controllers, discouraged street demonstrations and promoted instead 'getting into the system, the bureaucracies, the schools, the institutions, to destroy the system from within.'
Their chosen weapon was the sham 'environmental movement', born on Earth Day, 1970, April 22, Lenin's Birthday.
It's the same junk science. This stuff was cooked by the rockefelons and their pals decades ago, to gull the unsuspecting into forfeiting their liberty, property, and very life.
The Club of Rome, a sham group of 'scientists' of the chairman mao/Trofim Lysenko school of scientists, in 1970 sternly published "Limits to Growth". This fake pile of childrens' terrors was circulated to colleges, to scare impressionable students into going along with the Club's dire and false predictions in order to gain control over them.
Among other scare tacticts put forth by this pack of Elite ghouls was that the oceans would rise, America would flood, Florida and the 'Caribbean' - which includes the Bahamas to these pig-ignorant Leninists - would be under water. Additionally, oil would run out completely and Earth would be covered completely in asphalt. Not merely 90%, nope - completely.
When you read overblown statements, you know it's a hustle.
Oh, and of course, we would run completely out of air as well. All by 1985.
All by 1985.
So you see, according to the sham enviro-communists who hate life and want to depopulate Earth by 95% so they can have it as their playground, we're already deceased.
But we're not. Because they aren't on the level.
The same crowd that destroyed much of the world with its communism has been using the bogeyman of 'environmental disaster' for thirty years, knowing that communism itself holds no economic worth.
paul_vincent_zecchino 11 years ago
Funny how these scare-mongers who want to separate us from our liberty and property always think we'll miss these crucial points. But in the Net-centric information era, citizens catch this stuff. Thanks.
linnassau 11 years ago
This is spoken about in Revelation 16:20 And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. 21 And huge hailstones, about one hundred pounds each, came down from heaven upon men; and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, because its plague was extremely severe. But many people do not seem to believe in God's Holy Word anymore and worse do not read it. Right now the islands of the Caribbean is under threat from rising sea levels.
concernedcitizen 11 years ago
@rory can you imagine if we started stoning for sex out of wedlock or sweet hearting ,,geez we wouldn,t have a women in the country ,including the church ..lmao
concernedcitizen 11 years ago
WHAT I FIND SO Amazing that as a black race that was so affected by slavery many cling to a fantasy book that condones /promotes slavery .A ND YES I DO BELIEVE IN GOD , i just think the bible is a period piece about the jews struggle as slaves to the romans ,thats has been picked apart by the likes of the catholic church and king james ..
John 11 years ago
The Black race has proven to be among the most faithful to God and despite their trials and tribulations God have never left them or forsaken them. God refers to slavery as just a moment where he winked or turned his head. Remember a day with God is like 1,000 years with man. However If you feel the Bible is a fantasy book then you are entitled to hold on to this belief No one can force you to believe.
As for the sea level rising, there may have been a few inches of rising sea levels, only because man's activity that generates heat and causes ice caps and snow to melt has increased. This can be easily counteracted by increase use in solar energy that will consume some of the heat energy produced by the sun. The bible reminds or clearly instructs us that this earth will not be destroyed by water a second time but by fire.
And yes the God does promise to rain down hailstones weighing 100 pounds on mankind that inhabits the earth. But this will only happen when the righteous people and the believers have gone on with the father to dwell in heaven forever. this is one last attempt by God to give salvation to the people that remain on earth so they do not be cast into hell with satan and his followers. But as the scripture says, rather than repent and be saved, they choose to curse and blaspheme GOD!. The good thing about being a Christian is that no matter what goes on on this earth, God is still in control. He promises never to leave or forsake his own. The righteous will not be forsaken and neither will their seed have to beg for bread. God is in control...amen!
TalRussell 11 years ago
Oh Comrades best not dismiss outright such as being no more than leftist propaganda socialist warnings. Mother Nature has taught us all that water always seeks out its lowest level. I know we all want to believe our tiny Bahamaland is a special place on God's earth but we still are go'in to always be subject to the destructive forces of rising sea waters and other forces of Mother Nature. What happens, if they're right?
paul_vincent_zecchino 11 years ago
No less an authority that our Creator promised that "Earth would be inhabited forever."
The Left is trying to replace the True God with the false god of an almighty global governance, as they call it.
banker 11 years ago
Let me guess -- you are a Florida Republican right? Sympathise with the Tea Party? Think that the earth is only 4,000 years old or so? Think that Adam and Eve walked with the dinosaurs?
ThisIsOurs 11 years ago
@Paul
Revelations6: 13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. 14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. "Moved"? Sideways or down?
Revelations 21: 21 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea
Read the whole bible not just the feel good parts and prepare
proudloudandfnm 11 years ago
Most climate scientist, like 98% believe in climate change and believe man is impacting it. Not sure about this 2050 thing of theirs but we should take this seriously and do what we can to ensure our kids DO NOT HAVE TO MOVE TO THE USA at sometime in the future.
One thing we absolutely must do to ensure our world is a safe place in the future is to ignore ANY REPUBLICAN on this issue. Those morons wanna make this a political thing. This is not a left/right thing as this idiot paul vincent wants us to all think it is.
It is not science fiction to believe that 6 billion human beings are having an impact on our climate. Especially after the science community backs the theory in such a huge majority as they do....
proudloudandfnm 11 years ago
As for Rory. Well if any of you were on BI you'd know rory/sickman/general crazy/captain Bahamas is the most negative racist moronic piece of crap to ever surf the internet. He lives on his mama's couch still and NEVER EVER Leaves her home. He gets his info from folks like sean Hannity and rush Limbaugh. He aint exactly an expert on the subject, or any subject actually. Except maybe IT. In everything else he's an idiot.
TalRussell 11 years ago
For all my red shirt Comrades who believe rising sea levels is nothing more than leftist propaganda. Partnerships for Resilience: Climate Change and Caribbean Tourism
.. // http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak7cVJ9S…
SP 11 years ago
Wow…..You guys are taking this too personal and way too serious.
Sea level rise or not is irrelevant....Nothing we can do about it now anyway….Any damage is already done!
We should be concentrating and focused on getting rid of the PLP & FNM Sunshine Boys group of pirates.
The Bermudians have set a good example in their 2012 elections of what we need to do here if we’re going to save the country for future generations of REAL Bahamians.
ThisIsOurs 11 years ago
You could be right about it being too late, *"In the Indian Ocean, the entire nation of the Maldives is facing destruction as sea level rise threatens to wipe out the islands. In the South Pacific, the island nation of Tuvalu is widely regarded as the poster child state for sea level rise. On those islands, seawater bubbles up through the surface and is inundating locations that were not previously touched by seawater just a decade ago.
Authorities predict the islands will be uninhabitable within the next 100 years"*
Where do you find refuge for 300,000 people tomorrow? Tough question. How to get responsible govt today? Another tough question
Anyone remember what a few hours of continuous torrential rain did to Nassau...when was that? yesterday?
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