[DIV class=storyheadline]Just wait, says Sierra Club, you too may be under water
[DIV class=storysubhead]Environmental group shows what could happen if the icecaps melt and the oceans rise
[TABLE width="100%" border=0] [TBODY] [TR] [TD colSpan=2] [/TD][/TR] [TR] [TD colSpan=2][FONT class=storybyline]Miro Cernetig[/FONT][/TD][/TR] [TR] [TD colSpan=2][FONT class=storypub]VANCOUVER SUN[/FONT][/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE] [DIV class=storydate]
Thursday, May 04, 2006[/DIV]
[DIV class=storytext][!--begin story text--] [TABLE style="FLOAT: right" cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=3 width=250 align=right border=0 valign="top"] [TBODY] [TR] [TD] [TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2 border=0] [TBODY] [TR] [TD][img height=210 src="http://media.canada.com/canwest/111/vs_cp_flood_waters3_top_210.jpg" width=210 border=0][/TD][/TR] [TR] [TD class=storycredit]CREDIT: Vancouver Sun Files[/TD][/TR] [TR] [TD class=storycredit]Some scientists say new findings on melting glaciers suggests a great global melt may be occurring faster than expected.[/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE][/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE] Real estate agents like to say nobody's making Vancouver waterfront anymore. But global warming just might, creating beachfront as far out as Surrey, if you wait a century or two, according to a new satellite map from the Sierra Club of Canada.
Using data published in the journal Science, the environmental group unveiled a map today showing much of the Lower Mainland will be under water within the next two to three centuries if some of the more worrying warming predictions prove true.
"You're going to be saying goodbye to all of Delta, most of Richmond, the airport, the ferry terminal and lots of Surrey," predicts Kathryn Molloy, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada's B.C. chapter. "It even looks like David Suzuki's [Kitsilano] house is going to be under water."
The group's map supposes the accuracy of the research published two weeks ago in Science, in which some scientists said new findings on melting glaciers suggests a great global melt may be occurring faster than expected. The Sierra Club's map, which it plans to send out by the thousands in the days ahead, assumes sea levels will rise by six metres within three centuries, about the midpoint of what Science suggests may be in the cards.
Under that scenario, English Bay would swell. Major chunks of Kitsilano and North Vancouver would be drowned. Richmond and Delta would become islands within an enlarged Strait of Georgia. West Vancouver, with its high cliffs, would mostly still be dry land, but the roads and power lines that connect it to the outside world could be under water.
"This is a wake-up call. I was surprised by it," said Molloy. "It's a bit frightening when you look ahead. . . You don't even need the water to rise this much before it would start playing havoc with power grids and other infrastructure."
But the map must also be taken in context. It is the latest tool by the environmental movement to get the public's attention on the perils of global warming, which an increasing number of scientists now say is taking place. The Sierra Club is projecting the phenomenon at the local level, to let people see if their own house is doomed.
Even the celebrity magazine Vanity Fair is doing the same, giving over its latest edition to the subject. It features Hollywood stars Julia Roberts and George Clooney on a green-tinted cover of its "green issue" calling for "a New American Revolution" to fight global warming.
The influential magazine uses similar mapping techniques as the Sierra Club, showing the flooded cityscape of Washington, D.C., a drowned out Manhattan where New York skyscrapers poke out of a vast ocean and the Hamptons inundated with monster waves destroying the mansions of the super-rich.
But is it a scare tactic or realistic scientific scenario?
That will ultimately depend on what global warming scenario takes place. Vanity Fair's flooded Manhattan presupposes a Hollywood-like doomsday scenario of a 24-metre (80-foot) rise in sea levels. Its illustration of a washed-out Washington is based on a six-metre (20-foot) sea level rise. The shots of the Hamptons being washed away is based on a more moderate 0.9-metre (three-foot) rise amplified by a Category 3 hurricane.
As for the global warming map of the Lower Mainland, it assumes what Science describes as a "catastrophic" rise of six metres in sea level. But the magazine also says seal levels might only "reach something like half a metre higher by 2100. That would be substantial, not catastrophic."
The Sierra Club is not sending out a map today of that less scary sea-rise scenario. But Molloy notes the group's six-metre estimate is also being conservative, since Science also said some research shows the sea could rise as much as 10 metres in a century or two.
Molloy said the Sierra Club hopes the map, which turns Vancouver into something like Venice, will prod the provincial government to develop an aggressive strategy to reduce the release of gases contributing to global warming; perhaps even matching California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent by 2020.
"It [the map] is a tool to get people's attention," said Molloy.
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Water, water everywhere Few municipalities would escape flooding; some would be overwhelmed
Municipality Population Muncipality Flooded Per cent
hectares hectares flooded
Anmore 1,673 2,512 - 0
Belcarra 723 534 11 2
Burnaby 204,324 9,093 664 7
Coquitlam 121,973 12,285 1,106 9
Delta 102,655 18,508 14,053 76
Langley 122,841 13,912 848 6
Maple Ridge 73,280 4,394 958 22
New Westminster 57,480 1,576 507 32
North Vancouver 133,842 10,842 276 3
Pitt Meadows 16,673 8,844 6,717 76
Port Coquitlam 57,563 2,981 1,508 51
Port Moody 28,458 2,666 36 1
Richmond 173,430 12,815 11,622 91
Surrey 393,137 31,778 7,199 23
Vancouver 583,267 11,701 1,057 9
West Vancouver 44,149 5,962 23 0
White Rock 19,577 512 14 3
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