I love it when the Provincetown Banner pulls a fascinating tidbit out of the archives of that town’s former paper, the Ptown Advocate. Here’s one such bit, from 1947. Seems global warming was news even then!
April 17, 1947
EXPERT PREDICTS SUBMERGED COAST
Provincetown’s famous son, Commander Donald B. MacMillan, gave radio commentators and columnists a delectable subject to toy with last week when he predicted that at some far distant time much of New England would be inundated and that his own Cape Cod would be inhabited by fish and other sea life.The vigorous, 72-year-old commander, now preparing for his 25th expedition to the Far North, says that the great ice cap covering much of the top of the world is melting and that when the process is completed in the dim, distant future, the ocean will have risen 100 feet.
This would mean that not only all coastal communities would be inundated in whole or in part, but that such inland cities as Springfield, Lawrence, Lowell, Hartford, Conn., and Bangor and Augusta, Me., would disappear beneath the gradual flood.
Many national capitals, including our own, would become playgrounds for fishes, and in New York City, only the skyscrapers would pierce the surface.
How Day After Tomorrow! I for one, hope Provincetown never disappears. That would be a tragedy I don’t ever want to witness. This week’s Banner also pulls up news from 1966 of the first ferry service from Boston to the summer playground, via a boat called the Island Queen. How appropriate.
