Coastal Courses: Is Time Running Out?

Filed in archive Golf Courses on May 1, 2007

The Links at Crowbush Cove, PEI.

For the past five years, climatologists have been saying that sea levels are rising.

Arctic ice is melting quickly due to temperature rises and increasing the volume of water in the oceans.

This is one aspect of global warming which has led to the issuance of two frightening reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The IPCC's third and final report is due out later this month.

But a group of scientists in the United States has come to different conclusions than the IPCC scientists on the rate that Arctic ice is disappearing.

They claim it's happening three times faster than the IPCC's computer models suggest.

The American scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado in Boulder, used actual measurements taken from aircraft, ships and satellite observations.

The IPCC used computer models based on "best available" data.

I have written two posts recently about global warming and its impact on the golf industry.

Both have dealt with increased temperatures and increasingly unpredictable and violent weather patterns.

Some of the planet's finest golf courses - courses revered for their history and geography as much as their toughness - are found on the coasts of Ireland, Scotland, England, the United States and Canada.

They are in trouble from rising sea levels and turbulent weather and it could prove impossible to save them.

Fellow journalist and golf writer, Robert Thompson, has authored an excellent article on this subject which is in the current edition of Travel and Leisure Golf.

The Links at Crowbush Cove, one of the finest examples of seaside golf in North America and pictured above, was hit by a powerful Nor'easter on Boxing Day, 2004, which swept in off the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The storm pounded two holes that run along the northern coastline of Prince Edward Island, damaging both.

The holes were repaired without difficult, Thompson says. This time.

But this is not isolated. That's the critical point. It will happen again and again with increasing ferocity. And as sea levels rise, the storms will push water deeper and deeper inland.

Read the article and keep this in mind: global warming is real and it's hitting close to home. Coastal golf courses are threatened. Courses that lie along tidal rivers are threatened.

And as Robert's story points out, they may not be saved.