[whatnext]

From the Washington Post today, maybe I should visit before they're gone:

The ice used to protect them.
Now their island is crumbling into the sea.

ILES-DE-LA-MADELEINE, QUEBEC — High on a bluff overlooking the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Adele Chiasson no longer ventures into her backyard for a simple reason: It is falling into the sea.

“I’m afraid to go out there,” the widow said one afternoon from the safety of her kitchen. She nodded toward the 70-foot-tall, red sandstone cliffs out back that creep closer with each passing year. “You never know when a section will fall off.”

Decades ago, when she and her husband moved to this modest house with its majestic views, they never imagined a vanishing coastline might one day drive them away. But the sea long ago claimed the ground where their children once played. An abandoned road out back has mostly crumbled into the surf below. Two of her neighbor’s homes have been moved inland...

..In the Magdalen Islands, the consequences are unmistakable: Some parts of the shoreline have lost as much as 14 feet per year to the sea over the past decade. Key roads face perpetual risk of washing out. The hospital and the city hall sit alarmingly close to deteriorating cliffs. Rising waters threaten to contaminate aquifers used for drinking water. And each year, the sea inches closer to more homes and businesses...

...Milder winters and longer summers have kept the tourists coming — some 80,000 trekked here last year to wind surf, bike and bird-watch — many arriving on a ferry that now runs year-round.

But the islands’ fragility has brought them a sort of grim notoriety. Time magazine put the Magdalen Islands on its list of “10 amazing places to visit before they vanish.” Architectural Digest included them on its “30 places to visit before they’re gone forever.”...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...limate-change/