A week ago, the New York Times had a piece on the effects of global warming on the coastal town of Norfolk, Virginia. “As sea levels rise, tidal flooding is increasingly disrupting life here and all along the East Coast, a development many climate scientists link to global warming,” the Times reported without reference to any of the climate scientists or their respective studies that would show sea levels rising.
The piece itself relays the difficulties of living in a place where, after it rains, certain streets flood with water, causing a major political mess. But it’s the political mess that the Times tries to hit on. After all, “Climate change is a subject of friction in Virginia. The state’s attorney general, Ken T. Cuccinelli II, is trying to prove that a prominent climate scientist engaged in fraud when he was a researcher at the University of Virginia. But the residents of coastal neighborhoods here are less interested in the debate than in the real-time consequences of a rise in sea level.”
It seems, however, that it’s not only the residents of Norfolk (specifically in the neighborhood of Larchmont) that aren’t concerned with the debate surrounding climate change. In this article, the New York Times suggests that it isn’t much interested in it, either.
Take, for instance, this climate change piece (it’s one the environmentalists are likely to approve of, by the way, not one written by a skeptic) in Der Spiegel.
“It is certainly correct that the total amount of liquid in the oceans is increasing. But the way water expands in ocean basins differs widely,” the German weekly magazine asserts. “There will be regions of the world where nothing much will change, while the sea level will rise by well over the 1-meter average in others. ‘The sea level could even fall along some coasts,’ says [oceanographer Detlef] Stammer.”
The theory is, that while there might be more water in the ocean, gravity will likely cause water to rise more in the south, while water in the north would decrease.
Now, back to Norfolk. Let’s see Norfolk’s in the Northern Hemisphere, and though it’s not as north as, say, Greenland, whose water level seems to be decreasing, it’s much further north than the tropical pacific, which Der Spiegel says has had a rise in its water level.
This is all to say that, in reality, the water level surrounding Norfolk is more likely than not remaining constant – or very close to constant. Consider this world image that accompanies the article:
[img caption=”Photo Credit: Der Spiegel” float=”center” width=”640″ height=”453″ render=”<%photoRenderType%>”]12639[/img]
While it’s not definitive, it’s pretty safe to say that much remains uncertain. But you’d have to read between the lines to get that from the New York Times piece.
In an off handed kind of way, the Times does indeed hint at why Norfolk might be getting flooded more frequently than in the past: “Like many other cities, Norfolk was built on filled-in marsh. Now that fill is settling and compacting. In addition, the city is in an area where significant natural sinking of land is occurring.” But the message of the article is unmistakable: This is all a result of climate change. How the Times reporter Leslie Kaufman gets there isn’t very clear, since she only refers to “many climate scientists.”
