Palm flood - 'Branson wrong'

The Palm - not about to be flooded according to Nakheel.

The Palm and The World island projects are safe from the rising Arabian Gulf sea levels for at least another 800 years, according to developer Nakheel’s top environment chief – 750 years longer than Sir Richard Branson’s claims earlier this week that they will disappear underwater in half a century.

Shaun Lenehan, head of environment at Nakheel, told Arabian Business that Virgin Group chairman Sir Richard’s “heart was in the right place” in his efforts to reverse climate change but that his claims concerning the Palm and The World projects were “completely false”.

“I back his [Sir Richard] sentiment that the world needs to respond to climate change and his heart is in the right place but to clarify, he got it completely wrong,” Lenehan said.

“The Arabian Gulf has risen 12cm in the last 100 years and we have thoroughly investigated this. In the next 100 years the sea level will rise between 12cm and 50cm every century”.

“We have factored this into our designs and have built the Palm Jumeirah 4m above sea level. There are extremely large tracts of coastal communities that will go under centuries before the Palm Jumeirah. Even parts of Deira in Dubai are lower than the Palm,” added Lenahan.

If Nakheel’s calculations are correct and sea levels rise at Lenehan’s predicted rates then water will only reach the Palms in the next 800 to 4000 years.

In a keynote address to Leaders in Dubai business forum on Sunday Sir Richard said: “Over the next 50 years we will see the Palm projects and the World flooded by water and disappear if the issue of climate change is not addressed by global governments.”

“We are continuing to create this blanket of carbon that is getting thicker and thicker every year and which will ultimately heat up to such an extent that every fish will die and the earth will become uninhabitable."

Sir Richard has committed US$3bn of Virgin's own profits to developing clean energy and has offered US$25m to anyone who can eradicate carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

“The Maldives will be first to go under water, followed by Polynesian Islands,” Lenahan added. “I used to live in the Maldives and there was a 15cm gap between the water and the top of the roads. Parts of Europe including London will go under before the Palm.”

Asked whether Sir Richard’s two own personal islands in the Caribbean would go underwater before the Palm, Lenahan added that the Virgin boss was “high and dry for another millennium” as his land pointed out of the sea “like mountains”.

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READERS' COMMENTS

Rising Sea Levels
Posted by Rajesh Parameswaran, Dubai, U.A.E on Tuesday 4 December 2007 at 12:17 UAE time


With the onset of Global Warming, of course the glaciers and ice caps will melt and the sea levels will rise. What everybody fails to realize is that this is going to happen one way or another. All we can do is slow it down. Surprising for this part of the Middle East that we do not even consider other sources of energy. We have just started looking at Green Buildings, as declared by the Ruler of Dubai but I have my doubts on how effective and stringent the implementation is going to be.

Palm flood - 'Branson wrong'
Posted by kroner Derek, Reykjavik, Iceland on Wednesday 21 November 2007 at 13:00 UAE time

I am sure Sir Richard Branson did not mean literally what he said. He was probably just making us more paranoid to take quicker action, and he used the Palm to say that because it is today the most recognizable landmark from space.

However, the knee jerk reaction of Nakheel and the confidence on each parties claims are extremely dangerous, nobody should claim anything about earth. This is the surface of earth we are dealing with which is very dynamic and it is possible that water may not rise in Palm but there are lot of other things which can go wrong. Hence, nothing is forever not even Rome was.

I fully agree with Ali Fathi on what he had to say on this. Both of the parties should refrain from making such statements.

Nobody Knows
Posted by Ali Fathi on Wednesday 21 November 2007 at 11:00 UAE time


With all respect nobody should make such statements 50 years or 800 years as tomorrow it migh sink or it could live for ages i.e. Tsunami, Gono, Katrina... 
 
Only warning statements & activities to suppor the environment should be made 
 
Best Regards,

strange bedfellows
Posted by langyaw, Dubai, United Arab Emirates on Wednesday 21 November 2007 at 10:00 UAE time


Global warming advocates and real estate developers / brokers will never see eye to eye. And so the figures they use will naturally be those that favor them. 
Both, however, agree on the issue that parts of the world and even entire countries will go under. 
The thing for brokers to do should be to use the conservative estimates by scientists and develop only the foreseeably DURABLE land areas. The UAE, sadly, may not be one of those. 
-- langyaw

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