by Steve Haner
The latest projection from the ever-trustworthy federal authorities sweating out the climate crisis is that the sea level will rise one foot along Virginia’s coast by 2050, rising the same amount in 30 years as it rose in the previous 100.
The news quickly swept across the Commonwealth. Here is the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s take and here the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (both firewalled, sorry.) And The Washington Post.
What do the stories fail to mention? That this is a far less dire prediction than the ones distracted news consumers are usually fed. Governor Ralph Northam’s administration prepared a climate adaptation report last year that assumed 2.2 feet of rise by 2050, and almost seven feet by 2100. I wrote about it on Bacon’s Rebellion in August. The higher prediction of almost seven feet is also cited in a lawsuit against the state reported previously.
Even this more modest prediction is still incredibly unlikely. Nothing has changed with the actual measurements of the slow but steady rise in relative sea level, the focus of the earlier-cited article I did with Kip Hansen. For the new prediction from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to come to pass, those measured rates will need to double or triple promptly. (more…)
