Vanishing Maldives?

This picture of the concrete wall around Male' is taken from Global Coral Reef Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to growing, protecting and managing the most threatened of all marine ecosystems—coral reefs.

GCRA is a coalition of volunteer scientists, divers, environmentalists and other individuals and organizations, committed to coral reef preservation.

The GCRA findings reveal a grim picture. They say, "All around the world the corals are dying. There are many causes, but the major one is global warming, caused by the fossil fuel addiction of people often on the other side of the world.

Global warming has an equally evil twin, global sea level rise, caused by the melting of glaciers and ice caps, and the volumetric expansion of warmer oceans. The result of this double onslaught is that almost all the white coral sand beaches of the world are vanishing with ever increasing speed before our eyes.

The most serious effects are in the world's lowest lying islands, where the winds may have piled beach sand no more than a few meters high. Whole nations, the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, and Tuvalu, Kiribati, Tokelau, and the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, along with thousands of other low islands around the world, could vanish entirely in the coming generation—as could most of Bangladesh."

No scientist can know what the future holds for us but the predicted weather patterns are worrying signs that require immediate attention and action.