Sarasota News Leader

06/06/2014

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commitments, efforts to filter stormwater and more. The report itself makes the salient point that small island nations produce a tiny percent- age of the world's greenhouse gases and yet will suffer the worst impacts from climate change and rising sea levels. Those impacts include a loss of biodiversity and forests and declining fisheries that provide sustenance to native populations. The increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events are a concern, too, as is damage to the islands' tourism industries. Small islands are also 90-percent dependent on imported oil for their energy requirements, Beneke pointed out, describing their need to develop solar, wind and geothermal resources. Sarasota may not be an island, but it will feel the force of rising sea levels, too. Barbara Lausche, the director of Mote's Marine Policy Institute, ran through a number of practical suggestions for how Sarasota County can mit- igate damage from rising seas. But we need to begin now, she said. "The next 20 to 30 years are critical." Sara Kane, the public outreach manager for the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program, said her organization estimates that property near Sarasota Bay or the Gulf of Mexico is worth $3.6 billion and that one out of every 17 jobs in the area depends on the bay. Those numbers demonstrate the massive financial losses that could affect the community if the sea level rises too much. But not everyone was buying it. Blogger Richard Swier, who publishes at drrichswier. com, called the report "flawed" because the "Pacific Ocean is actually cooling and the sea A NASA photo shows the polar ice cap in 1980. Image from NASA Sarasota News Leader June 6, 2014 Page 8

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