The Fifth Stage of Key West's Development?

In 2983 . . . Atlantis we shall be?


The above headline is a play off Jimi Hendrix's cut from the Electric Ladyland album titled "1983 ... (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)".

Combining Hendrix's lucid dream type lyrics with freethinking out the box, I've assimilated some "down time" observations of other blogs and news to come up with a sci-fi fantasy future for Key West.

Here's what started this latest thread of blogs and news:

Ocean waters are rising more quickly than Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" showed . . .

An online Reuter's story headlined "Antarctic ice thawing faster than predicted" raises more alarming evidence that glacier melt is happening more quickly than scientists were thinking just seven years ago.

Just recently, I watched a National Geographic special on HDTV. Photo after photo showed glaciers melting more quickly than they were at just the turn of this new century. As far as I know, this National Geo special was the first scientific study to show Al Gore's movie is actually now dated and understating the effects of global warming.

For instance, the image below is a before shot of a famous glacier in Peru from 1980, followed by another shot of the same location in 2002. In the new National Geo special, we saw incredible shots of glacier melt in Antarctica and Greenland.

National Geographic had specialists explain how glacier caps which are over ocean water are not going to raise the ocean water. One specialist explained this by reminding viewers that a glass with ice cubes and a drink will not overflow the glass when the ice cubes melt. It's a simple law of solids/liquids called "displacement".

However, as National Geographic painstakingly showed, glacier melt from land . . . such as Greenland and the Antarctica landmass proper . . . will raise ocean seawater levels dramatically.

If all of Greenland's icecap were to melt, National Geographic says sea levels would rise 22 to 23 feet.

The National Geographic special also pointed out that if Antarctica's glaciers were to melt completely, ocean levels would rise another 200 feet above where they are today.

According to this same special, in 2005-2006, glacial ice melt all over the planet was at the rate whereby sea levels would rise one meter in the next hundred years. Since there are 39.37 inches in one meter, we are talking about a rise of sea levels of a little over one inch every three years.

The National Geographic special was well documented by their own Scientists and with longterm lookbacks in history to photos of Venice, Italy, which is sinking so quickly now that Venice is erecting higher walls around its city center and trying to come up with inflatable ocean barriers which will keep seawater from rising too rapidly at high tides.

As it is now, many Venice, Italy homes's first floors are now flooded and unusable, whereas early 20 century photographs of some of these same homes show highest tides only reaching their doorsteps.

Despite National Geo's well documented research, I read many posts on Motley Fool from people who claimed the research was slanted, biased, and political.

The Reuter's story is giving credence to what National Geographic scientists were the first to alert us to.

(Photo of Peru glacier in 1980 on left; same glacier 2002 on right)

The Reuters story said:

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
NY ALESUND, Norway (Reuters)

A thaw of Antarctic ice is outpacing predictions by the U.N. climate panel and could in the worst case drive up world sea levels by 2 meters (6 ft) by 2100, a leading expert said on Wednesday.

Millions of people, from Bangladesh to Florida and some Pacific island states, live less than a meter above sea level. Most of the world's major cities, from Shanghai to Buenos Aires, are by the sea.

Chris Rapley, the outgoing head of the British Antarctic Survey, said there were worrying signs of accelerating flows of ice towards the ocean from both Antarctica and Greenland with little sign of more snow falling inland to compensate.

"The ice is moving faster both in Greenland and in the Antarctic than the glaciologists had believed would happen," Rapley told Reuters during a climate seminar in Ny Alesund on a Norwegian Arctic island 1,200 km from the North Pole.

"I think the realistic view is that we will be nearer a meter than the 40 cm" in sea level rise by 2100, Raply said. The U.N. climate panel in February gave a likely range of 18 to 59 cm this century, for an average around 40 cm.

Asked at the seminar what the upper limit for the rise might be at a probability of one percent or less, he said: "At this extremely unlikely level the maximum would be two meters."

Skeptics often dismiss such low probabilities as scaremongering. But many scientists note that people take precautions such as to insure their homes against far lower risks, such as fire.

If Key West sees a one meter rise in the next 93 years, many of our streets in New Town will be underwater unless New Orleans style dikes are built.

If ice melt accelerates at a faster clip, in a worst case scenario, a two meter rise of sea water by 2100 will make many Key West condos and homes uninhabitable . . . unless a series of New Orleans dikes are constructed completely around the island.

My question to all is this: how can we afford to simply wall off and grow Key West dikes vertically when the whole coastline of Florida will be suffering the same predicament? Does the US Federal government send in the US Army Corps of Engineers for a wall longer than the famous Wall of China?

Will mainlander US citizens want to pay the bill for those who want to remain in a below sea level Paradise?

Stay with me for a flight of fantasy . . .

What's easier to market, the next Maccau/Las Vegas or diving the next Atlantis?

Cayo Dave once put up a video on his blog of what Key West and the Upper Keys would look like with rising sea waters. As I have yet to learn how to post the videos directly to my blog with a big button to hit, I simply ask you to click on this red highlighted link titled "Florida Keys Flooded by Global Warming."

The Key West segment is about :44 seconds into the video. Part one shows the effect of a one meter rise of sea levels on Key West. Part two shows what a Category 2 storm surge on top of a one meter sea rise would do to Key West. (A tip of the cap for Cayo Dave and his excellent blog for orginally bringing us this video.)

And then today I read The Real Key West Blog's "Four Stages of Development"

I've only recently discovered this blog and added it to "Links you can use" area of my blog.

Anyway, when you click on this link we are taken to a website with an opening page titled "The Four Stages of Development".

This website titillates the thinking with some photographic evidence and text describing a thought provoking exercise on the four stages of development.

I will list the four stages as put forth by the Key West Neighborhood Associations, but I think you will enjoy this more if you click on to the website to see the photos accompanying the text below:

1. Stage One - The area is in the process of being "discovered." It is frequented by a few adventurous individuals and an occasional travel writer.
2. Stage Two - More people come to visit. There are "Mom and Pop" type lodging places, and a few guest houses. Typically you will see a number of original locally owned eating places. Key West, for example, passed from Stage One to Stage Two with the arrival of Flagler's railroad. It stayed at this stage until the 1960's.
3. Stage Three - Chain motels begin to come in. As larger investors see the possibilities of development and growth, national restaurant chains begin to arrive. This part of the cycle ends with the arrival of resort condominium development. When the number of resort condominium units begins to exceed the number of traditional hotel/motel units, the original atmosphere which attracted the early visitors changes.
4. Stage Four - The area is overdeveloped. The original natural attractions are replaced by "novelty" attractions, i.e. museums, sideshows, T shirt shops, tattoo parlors, and "honky tonk" type attractions. There are demographic disruptions, as "regular people" are forced out by rising prices. This stage is typified by greater vacancies in commercial properties, a shrinking tax base, and a search for alternative sources of revenue. Business ownership tends to be concentrated in the hands of a few.

Putting all of the above together in a lucid dream, what would a fifth stage look like?

A fifth stage whereby we either make Key West a futuristic Las Vegas casino accessible only by hundreds of miles ferry rides from the new mainland of Georgia and Alabama, or a fifth stage where we let Mother Nature reclaim man's folly and we still take those catamaran rides . . . but for a different visit entirely.

The fifth stage of Key West could be either man made Rock of Gibraltar island which descends hundreds of feet below the sea and rises hundreds of feet above. Below would be a wall of dikes on top of dikes rising hundreds of feet from what used to be A1A, Roosevelt Boulevard, Eisenhower Boulevard, Palm Avenue, South Street, Waddell Avenue,and a wall around the perimeter of what is now Trumbo, Truman Annex, Mallory Square, etc.

How would we afford the seemingly unending building of a seawall which needs to rise meters per future century to keep seawater out?

Local property taxes wouldn't cover it unless the island is taken over by trillionaires. And we certainly can't depend on the state of Florida to bail us out when the whole state faces a sinking into the seas.

So what do we do to save the island from sinking?

We make Key West a gambling mecca such as the island of Maccau is to mainland China . . . and we build dikes and walls on top of dikes and walls, growing the island ever upward like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon . . . The wall would reach so high that sunsets would only be seen from top floors of the MGM Key West, Harrah's Sub Mariner Hotel/Casino, and the Hard Rock Hotel.

Key West would have to grow its gaming industry vertically like a miniature version of NYC meets Las Vegas meets Maccau.

OR

Three-hundred years from now, we may not be able to afford to wall off Key West and the whole state of Florida. American taxpayers might be so angry over government subsidies to people who make unwise life decisions that Mainlanders will look at coastal people as "On Your Own Owners of ex-USA Real Estate."

Anyway, three hundred years from now we will probably be colonizing new areas in outer space. The future will be out there, not saving the Earth from unstoppable climatic change.

So what do we do as Key West sinks into the ocean?

We let the sucker sink and turn it into an ultimate tourist destination . . .

We market Key West as the ultimate tourist destination whereby diveshops located hundreds of miles North on the new US mainland will ferry divers via solar/hydrogen powered speed catamarans to the hidden island of Key West . . . America's Atlantis.

Imagine this:

As a tourist in Key West's near future, you have to wear dive gear. You grab the anchor line of the cat which is tied off to what used to be Sloppy Joe's bar at 201 Duval. You dive down. You swim through the sidedoors or the two open front doors and see a plaque under green waters with sunlight dappling the words, "Still the best Party in town!"

You swim down and behind what used to be the bar. Instead of bartenders, you see schools of yellowtail, grouper, and several reef sharks. A giant sea tortoise swims off what used to be the stage. Underneath the stage where giant sub-woofer speakers were once mounted, a giant eel poke his head out. Sunlight is slanting down through green waters on the Green Street and through the side doors of old Sloppy Joes you see a pod of dolphin frolic by what was Guy Harvey's Restaurant across the street.

Outside, acroos the street at the old taxi stand in front of Rick's bar, battery powered submersiblewater taxis allow you to hold on to tow ropes. You and your friends float effortlessly behind touring the new underwater Duval Street.

There, in the 400 block, is the old La Concha hotel. You let go the tow ropes and drift up a few floors. Lolling about on its old sundeck near old swimming pool are barracuda sunning themselves in the sunlit ocean waters which are greener than the old pool water tinted with chlorine. Parrot fish, sergeant majors, grunts, yellowtail and other schools of fish are gliding in and out of missing windows and down former halls.

Over at Fast Buck Freddies, the windows are filled with permament mannequins pointing at old glass encased photos of Key West back when it was an island above the ocean waters. Divers take underwater photos of each other pointing at the photos to "prove" to the folks back home that they "dove" Key West. And underwater t-shirt purveyor is selling water logged merchandise which says "I dove Key West".

You swim through Fast Buck's front doors and you see other divers sitting in chairs smiling and gesticulating to others dancing on the ceiling upside down like an old Lionel Richie music video from the latter part of the 20th Century.

You get back to your water taxi and drive down to the old "butt plug" buoy of the Southermost Point. A new plaque is beside the old buoy pointing out that in year 2283, the "new" Southernmost Point is to be found in the hills of Texas . . . which by the way . . . is now beachfront property. Still, divers pose by the old buttplug mounument which says Cuba is 90 miles to the South.

The mountains of Cuba are now the only part of Cuba above water. The island is much tinier. And it is no more than 600 miles from the new US mainland.

After an hour, your crew rises from the depths, and the Catamaran sends a Zodiac to pick you up. You take a brief brunch on the Catamaran while it moves North to what used to be the Convention Center at the top of the old island.

You dive down to the Convention Center and swim inside a grand ballroom where an underwater band is playing and people in Scuba gear are smiling and dancing.

As a joke, some Catamaran tour guide placed a glass encased poster on an easel at an exit to the Convention Center. The poster is circa 2007, and it says, "There has never been a better time Key West Real Estate." Divers are standing by the sign smiling and having their photos taken.

Now all the condo rooms are filled with sea life, detritus, and sea grass, a hundred feet below the surface of the green waters. These rooms are Mother Nature's new birthing grounds for species which had all died out due to overdevelopment, overfishing, cruise ship pollution and inadequate sewage treatment in the "old days".

On the trip back to the mainland hundreds of miles away, whales were sighted over what was once Disney World in Orlando.

Back on dry land, divers tip the catamaran crew and tell the Georgians or Alabaman taxi drivers taking them back to their hotels how beautiful Key West . . . the new Atlantis, was.

Where will we go form here? I don't know, but I don't see Real Estate multiplying forever if the near future is an underwater Paradise.

Rock, under the sea, in an octupusses garden in the shade...