In early June, convicted felon Donald Trump enhanced his “stable genius” status by claiming: “When they say that the seas will rise over the next 400 years, one-eighth of an inch, you know. Which means basically you have a little more beachfront property, OK?”
Yep, a guy whose Mar-a-Lago property rests on a barrier island roots for rising oceans. Too bad, Barron.
Meanwhile, the first of about 300 one-time residents of Gardi Sugdub Island off Panama’s Caribbean coast are moving to the mainland, “the first of 63 communities along Panama’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts that government officials and scientists expect to be forced to relocate by rising sea levels in the coming decades,” the Associated Press reported at the first of June.
“We’re a little sad, because we’re going to leave behind the homes we’ve known all our lives, the relationship with the sea, where we fish, where we bathe and where the tourists come,” Nadine Morales told AP, “but the sea is sinking the island little by little.”
“Which means basically you have a little more beachfront property, OK?”
As with most of his alternative facts [more than 30,000 lies documented by The Washington Post during his four-year presidency] Trump is wrong about his claim of a one-eighth of an inch sea level rise over 400 years.
On June 4, Ja’han Jones of MSNBC reported, “According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average sea level has risen by an eighth of an inch per year since 1993, so Trump only overshot by a multiple of 400. Then we get to the ‘beachfront property’ remark – an ignorant, arrogant and fundamentally cruel quip that truly epitomizes the risks in electing a shoddy real estate mogul-turned-reality TV star as president.”
In fact, an April Washington Post analysis found: “At more than a dozen tide gauges spanning from Texas to North Carolina, sea levels are at least six inches higher than they were in 2010 – a change similar to what occurred over the previous five decades.”
The gauge at Miami just south of Mar-a-Lago registered a six-inch rise over that period.
Jianjun Yin, a University of Arizona climate scientist designated this rise as “very abnormal … unprecedented … irreversible.”
“Which means basically you have a little more beachfront property, OK?”
A CBS News analysis of other data in February “identified at least 45 seaports where the coastline could be permanently altered due to hazards like rising seas and erosion that could disrupt operations or close them for days.”
“Which means basically you have a little more beachfront property, OK?”
In early June, The Greek Reporter duly reported: “Delos Island, situated in the middle of the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea, considered the most sacred of all islands in ancient Greek culture is in danger of flooding due to rising sea levels according to a study by Greek scientists.”
“The study,” The Greek Reporter says, “evaluates the future impacts of sea rise caused by climate change on the seafront of ancient Delos. It warns that a sea rise based on digital surface models ranging from 87 cm to 148 cm [38 to 58 inches] is anticipated by 2150, requiring both resilience strategies and adaptation solutions as well as mitigation policies to cope with the effects of climate change.”
Of course, short-term greedheads refuse to look past the daily bottom line. They figure they won’t be around to reap the damage they continue to cause.
Delos won’t be the first historical site lost to rising seawater.
Heritage Daily reported on June 1 that Italian archaeologists “have discovered a submerged Roman structure near Campo di Mare on Italy’s western coast.”
And archaeologists and historians alike rue the lost coastlines from the Ice Age which saw so much water concentrated at the poles and in glaciers. Some of the likeliest earliest habitable sports were deep-sixed when the ice melted.
“Which means basically you have a little more beachfront property, OK?”
This Trump felon fella lives in Florida, right?
In May, Alex Harris of the Miami Herald reported what we have seen on TV news footage: “Sea levels are rising, swamping roads and homes in South Florida.”
That is present tense “are” – despite Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis banning the term “climate change” from state laws. Yeah, his and Trump’s deliberate dumbness could not stay separated forever.
Last week, Mother Nature called DeSantis on his ignorant arrogance with torrential rains and flooding. He declared states of emergency – the day after he vetoed more than $200 million in water protection projects from the state budget.
“Which means basically you have a little more beachfront property, OK?”
Yeah? Tell that to the Commission of Small Island States who contribute little to the greenhouse gases fueling climate change but face territorial reductions or extinctions due to the projected rising oceans.
A young person from Tuvalu has been photographed holding a sign reading: “To the rest of the world: please, could you prepare a place for my country to stay.”
And, of course, that Trump felon has a different view of climate change when his assets are at stake.
In 2016, Politico outed him for petitioning Irish officials “to build a sea wall designed to protect one of his golf courses from ‘global warming and its effects.’”
“Which means basically you have a little more beachfront property, OK?”
I’ll let Politicus Editor Jason Easley sum it up: “We can now add climate change and sea levels to tariffs and hurricanes to the list of things that Donald Trump does not understand.”
