Some waterfront properties in B.C. could be under water in a few hundred years, warn some climate change analysts.

"We just sort of say, 'Oh yeah, don't worry about it, it'll never happen, it's just prediction'," Shawn Leahy told CTV News.

He's a regular on the dykes bordering the Straights of Georgia that run between B.C.'s lower mainland and Vancouver Island.

While the experts don't think anything will happen in the near term, they do predict the following:

Rising global temperatures are melting the polar ice caps, releasing water that had been stored as ice.

The ocean level will rise, flood the wetlands cover the dykes and submerge the homes those dykes currently protect.

As global warming turns much of the Lower Mainland into Atlantis, thousands of people will have to relocate.

Raising the sea level one metre would have a significant impact on Canada, which has the world's longest coastline.

For example, storm surge is already a threat to low-lying communities.

According to data from the journal Science, a six-metre rise in sea level would flood much of Vancouver.

The Sierra Club of B.C. has said 91 percent of Richmond will be flooded, along with 76 percent of Delta and 32 percent of New Westminster.

Vancouver's international airport and the Tsawwassen ferry terminal would be left submerged.

Environmentalists say the only way to combat this scenario is to cut greenhouse gases now.

"Previously scientists thought that the levels of sea level rise would be much, much less. They're talking ten times greater than we expected, so this is a big wake-up call," said Ian Bruce, a climate change analyst.

With a report from CTV's Todd Battis