At high tide, when the wind is strong, from my veranda in Bel Air Gardens I could swear the sea seems taller. I hope it is just my imagination, born of needless worry about global warming and its effects. But perhaps it is true, perhaps the sea is getting taller all around the world – warmer and taller and fiercer.
There seems to be a dispute among experts about how serious global warming and its effects really are. But just as I read one report which reassures me that the seriousness of the matter is exaggerated and that my family and I will not wake one morning soon to find the sea marching up the stairs, the very next day I read a report by marine biologists that hard and fast evidence of global warming is to be found in the awful fact that almost all of the Indian Ocean’s coral reefs have died in recent years. The beautifully coloured reefs have been turning into piles of grey rubble as the coral expels the minute organisms that live in the hard limestone core and cannot tolerate a rise in sea temperature of over 1-20 Centigrade, a norm which recently has been regularly exceeded. And, in any case, the current heat dome which has settled over Guyana tells me the inconvenient truth.
