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.”
