The End of Beaches

(Click on pic for full-sized image)

I've been trying to write a post about An Inconvenient Truth, which I saw a couple of weeks ago, ever since I saw the damn thing, but it keeps veering off into a whole bunch of other issues like our ability to act and create change and the whole thing turns into some big long ranting mess. But I was reading this article about global warming in the New York Times today, and this one statement caught me, regarding "the basic finding that a warming world will be one in which shrinking coastlines are the new normal for centuries to come." That's when it came home to me, even though I had kind of already realized it, that the first things to go if the ocean levels start to rise will be the beaches. And I thought of the beaches along the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula, a place I've been going to since a small child, possibly one of the most beautiful places in the world, if you ask me, and I swear I actually started to tear up thinking about those beaches disappearing forever. I'm a fucking mess, apparently. But the thought of no Wreck Beach, no Spanish Banks, Jericho, Kits, English Bay, no Tofino, no Olympic Coast... I don't want to live in a world with no beaches.

So to let all your horror scenarios play out in full, check out this hack on google maps that allows you to see what the projected rising water levels would do the coastlines around the world.

BTW, the pic above is from my bro, who took it at 2nd beach near LaPush, on the Olympic Peninsula, and that's me and the fam in the far corner, with the beach all to ourselves in all its glory. One of the many reasons I love the place.

[ALRIGHT, DEPRESSING STUFF DONE...for now]