The NY Times sounds a sea level rise alarm

Eye-opening and sobering (and well-written) article in the New York Times about sea level rise.  Read the whole thing if you can.

The flooding of the coast caused by global warming has already begun

I've excerpted some of the more eye-opening stuff from it below.

"But the local leaders say they cannot tackle this problem alone. They are pleading with state and federal governments for guidance and help, including billions to pay for flood walls, pumps and road improvements that would buy them time.

Yet Congress has largely ignored these pleas, and has even tried to block plans by the military to head off future problems at the numerous bases imperiled by a rising sea. A Republican congressman from Colorado, Ken Buck, recently called one military proposal part of a “radical climate change agenda.”

Are you KIDDING me?

“When we distract our military with a radical climate change agenda, we detract from their main purpose of defending America from enemies” like the Islamic State, said Mr. Buck of Colorado, the Republican congressman who sponsored the measure. His amendment passed the House 216 to 205, though the Senate has yet to agree to it.

Many people in Congress, almost all of them Republicans, express doubt about climate science, with some of them promulgating conspiracy theories claiming that researchers have invented the issue to justify greater governmental control over people’s lives. So far, this ideological position has been immune to the rising evidence of harm from human-induced climate change."

Are you KIDDING me?

"The region has one mayor, Philip K. Stoddard of South Miami, who is a scientist himself — he studies animal communication at Florida International University — and has been a close reader of scientific papers about climate change since the 1990s.

“I remember lying in bed at night thinking, ‘I hope this isn’t real,’” Dr. Stoddard, a Democrat, recalled. “I hope other data comes in that contradicts it. It took me several years to get my head around it and say, ‘Oh, God, it is real.’”

He's NOT kidding.

There are a lot of reasons to wish for the GOP to lose control of Congress (and especially the House of Representatives) this November.  Rep. Buck of Colorado is one of them.

We have got to, collectively and globally, get serious about this.  (And keep building nuclear power plants for baseload stable energy.)