A rising sea, an eroding coastline, and carbon emissions have all conspired in a synergy of climate change which today puts billions of dollars in Bermuda waterfront property at risk.That assessment comes from David Wingate, a former Government conservation officer with almost 40 years experience looking out for Bermuda's environmental interests.

The active 71-year-old says he'd still be on the job if the civil service would have allowed him to work past 65.

During a tour last week of the South Shore coastline he told The Royal Gazette: "The planning guidelines for development on our high intensity coastline should be much more stringent than they are now.

"Houses should be required to step back at least 100 feet more than they are right now."

He makes that statement after 50 years of study and published papers on coastal bird habitats like the Cahow and the Longtail.

The waterfront nests of those birds have been essentially washed away because the coastline is constantly eroding.

There's reason to worry that waterfront homes will be the next to go, he says, particularly if hurricanes intensify as some scientists have predicted.

The most reliable hurricane forecasts available warn not of more storms from the Atlantic Ocean, but stronger ones.

That's why Mr. Wingate's message is unapologetic and laced with doom. He said: "With the current predictions the expectation is that the high intensity hurricanes that can really do this damage are likely to double in frequency.

"The category fours are likely to happen once every 50 years — even Fabian wasn't a category four, it was a three. People have no idea. A category four would double the damage Fabian caused. Double it!

"If the worst case scenario arises and we get hit by a category four next year and a category five in 20 years time, yes then by the end of the century these houses could be gone," he said while pointing to million dollar cliff side homes facing the ocean off Tucker's Town Road.

"But they wouldn't go in a slow incremental way, they'll go in one catastrophe."

Scientists cite a number of reasons for rising sea levels.

First because the globe is warming, the ocean is warming, and as the temperature goes up the ocean expands in the heat.

And as the globe continuously warms, it slowly melts the Arctic ice caps and eventually ups the ocean's height.

In the end, the higher the levels of the ocean, the bigger the threat to our coastline — especially when a hurricane hits, literally picking up the sea and shovelling it onto shore, destroying everything in its path.

Ultimately the origin of the warming globe boomerangs back to how the world generates carbon emissions — from cars, power plants, and other things that burn fossil fuel.

Anyone who was in Bermuda during September of 2003 knows that Hurricane Fabian gave Bermudian homeowners a significant scare.

Damage for individual property owners, especially on the South Shore, was substantial.

In the wake of that storm a lot of people made the effort to either build or reinforce their home's protection from the sea.

Government coastal engineering consultant Smith Warner International wrote in 2004: "With appropriate planning regulations and building practices Bermuda's coastline properties can be protected from damage and a natural or semi-natural appearance preserved."

Behind the Cloverdale Apartments in Smiths Parish, for example, the coastline is dotted with concrete sea walls to hold back the ocean from entering someone's home during a storm.

But Mr. Wingate argues the natural and aesthetic beauty of the cliff face on the South Shore is being destroyed as a result.

While standing on the shoreline on Wednesday he said: "The entire coastline is concrete, they've turned the coastline into a seawall."

However unfortunate, those sea walls are the only way for people to protect their property from the storm surge which will almost definitely be coming in the next hurricane.

Mr. Wingate says he understands the dilemma: "Bermuda is already subdivided into so many tiny little private properties, many of these coastal lots only go back so far.

"They don't have the space to move the home back on their own property, they'd have to buy space on someone else's property and that person's going to say, 'the hell with you I've got my house and I'm safe, you're not going to take over my space'.

"Nobody's going to sacrifice what's already built, they're going to want to defend it."

Simultaneously, Mr. Wingate is urging caution when it comes to new coastline construction.

He said: "The last thing we should be doing is building hotels into the cliff face which is exactly what the Jumeirah proposal at Southlands plans to do."

The issue of sea level rise is very much on the radar of the Ministry of Environment.

The Smith Warner report in 2004 and the State of the Environment Report in 2005 outlined details on the growing threat of sea level rise.

The 2005 document said: "Such low-lying areas under threat include the International Airport, the Causeway connecting St. David's and St. George's to the main island and businesses along Front Street in Hamilton."

During an interview last month, more than a year after the report was released, Minister Neletha Butterfield still had some of the report's main points in the forefront of her mind.

She said: "When we have hurricanes come, you will know the last one Fabian, the sea level rose especially in the City of Hamilton. And also at some of the other low areas like the airport. So we're very concerned about that."

The Minister said huge boulders were brought in to secure some of the low levels near the airport and the Causeway.

Minister Butterfield said she too is concerned people have not tuned in on the issue of climate change as attentively as they should. On that point she'll get no argument from David Wingate, who admits his cautionary tale sometimes sounds like the work of a doomsayer.

But he's reminded the people who predicted a flooded New Orleans were called doomsayers too. They were proven correct.

* Tomorrow see The Royal Gazette for Bermuda's addiction to energy.

How big a threat?