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NYT Syndicate

Maybe the hardened convicts who carved the 19th-century gravestones dotting this tiny island were barely literate, or perhaps one of them just had a wicked sense of humour. Schoolmaster Benjamin Horne went to his repose in 1843 with this sentence chiseled above his head:"Sincerely regretted by all who knew him."
If he ever managed to sleep peacefully beneath that pungent epitaph, Horne can rest no longer.
The very island on which he lies is being chewed away by the sea. The roots of trees that have stood for decades now dangle perilously over a fast-eroding shore. A few miles away, a seaside coal mine once worked by the convicts is under similar assault by the waves.
The ocean is rising in large part, of course, because people the world over have burned so much coal, pumping planet-warming carbon dioxide into the air. Perhaps a new stone marker ought to be planted above the eroding mine: Cause, Meet Effect.
Chris Sharples, a coastal consultant, has lately been spotting such problems all over southern Tasmania, including once-sturdy electric poles in danger of falling over as the ocean strips the land away. Under a brilliant sky, he walked the shoreline near the historic mine one recent day and pointed to a steep scarp cut by the waves, a bellwether of recent damage.
"It's a smoking gun for sea-level rise causing an acceleration of erosion," he said."And it's coal! Mined for burning!"
Both the imperiled island cemetery and the coal mine are part of the Port Arthur Historic Sites, in the far southeastern corner of Tasmania, the Australian island state. Convict ancestry was once a badge of shame in Australia, but now it is bragged about, and Port Arthur, a 19th-century prison that received some of the most incorrigible criminals in the British Empire, has become one of the country's premier tourist attractions.
It is also under costly siege by a rising sea, and Port Arthur is but one example of a looming global problem.
In country after country, managers of national parks and other historic sites are realising that climate change, with its coastal flooding and erosion, rising temperatures and more intense rainstorms, represents a profound risk to the heritage they are trying to preserve.
Venice, home of architectural and artistic masterpieces, is under such grave threat that $6 billion worth of sea gates are being installed to protect against increased tidal flooding. Rising temperatures seem to be on the verge of wiping out large sections of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Coastal erosion threatens scores of treasured sites in Scotland, including the spectacular Neolithic ruins of the Orkney Islands. The famed statues of Easter Island are in danger.
In the United States, most of the glaciers that in the 19th century dotted what is now Glacier National Park have already melted, and the rest are expected to be gone within this century. Archaeological sites on the Alaska coast are being lost. The very symbol of the nation, the Statue of Liberty, cannot be considered safe: Flooding from Hurricane Sandy, made worse by a century of sea-level rise, destroyed much of the infrastructure on Liberty Island in 2012 and closed the monument to visitors for months.
Rising ocean temperatures and rising sea levels are two sides of a coin: Most of the excess heat trapped by human emissions of greenhouse gases is absorbed by the ocean, and the water expands as it warms, accounting for much of the rise in the sea over the past century. It has gone up about 8 inches since 1880, which sounds small, but has been enough in some places to cause extensive erosion, forcing governments to spend billions to cope. The problem is worse in places where the land is also sinking, as in Venice and along much of the East Coast of the United States.
Over the long term, the rise of the sea appears to be accelerating because of runaway growth in greenhouse emissions, and scientists fear much bigger effects this century, perhaps so large they could ultimately force the abandonment of entire coastlines.
Although awareness of the risk to historic sites and natural wonders is growing, the effort to tackle the problem is in its infancy. In most places, discussion and report-writing have yet to give way to concrete action."We're a long way from managing this issue well," said Adam Markham, who is deputy director for climate and energy with the Union of Concerned Scientists, and who was the lead author of the most recent report on world heritage sites.
David Luchsinger was in charge of the Statue of Liberty for the National Park Service when Hurricane Sandy ravaged Liberty Island in 2012, and he led the team that brought the park back to life on July 4 the following year. Luchsinger, retired and living in New Hampshire, said the issue with historic sites was not just finding the money to make them more resilient but also slowing the emissions that are putting them at risk in the first place.
"To turn a blind eye on how sea-level rise and climate change are going to affect preserving our history is just, to me, unacceptable," he said."That's where we come from. That is who we are."
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27/05/2017
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