The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
NOTE: The excerpt below is from the Nov. 29, 2010 BOTW Archives.
Global Sinking
The New York Times reports that Norfolk, Va., is experiencing an increase in flooding: “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.”
The Times blames global warming. Seriously! “Norfolk has experienced the highest relative increase in sea level on the East Coast–14.5 inches since 1930,” the Times asserts:
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.
But the rise is in relative sea level–that is, the height of the sea relative to land. If the land is sinking–which has nothing to do with global warming–the sea need not rise for its relative level to do so. The Times story does not give a figure for the change in absolute sea level in Norfolk, which leads us to estimate it at zero.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
