Island dwellers as climate deniers. Residents of Tangier are pretty confident that erosion, not climate change, is the cause of their woes, as island resident Lonnie Miller explained to Public Radio International.
“So are we going to get more street tides, tides on the street?” Miller asked “Yes. But is it global warming? No.”
This “head in the rapidly washing away sand” approach has opened up the residents of Tangier Island to ridicule from some — but aren’t they just doing what much of the rest of the country is doing? Asking for a wall to keep the ocean at bay while not acknowledging that the ocean is rising?
Perhaps not surprisingly, the mayor of Tangier Island is a Trump supporter … but not scientist.
“I’m not a scientist, but I’m a keen observer,” Mayor Eskridge said. “If sea-level rise is occurring, why am I not seeing signs of it?”
His island is literally being washed away by sea level rise and he can’t see any signs of it. And yet while he can’t see signs of sea level rise, he is asking for the government to pay for engineering solutions to protect his island — from sea level rise.
Related reading:
Virginia Islanders Could Be U.S. First Climate Change Refugees. (Scientific American, 12/11/2015)
The flooding “has changed our daily route. It’s meant we can’t work that day because of the tides,” said the 55-year-old Parks in an interview this fall whle driving the golf cart. “These carts are very expensive. We can’t ride these carts through salt water because the under part will erode.” Meanwhile, the mobile home she purchased with her husband in the late 1980s is about 150 feet closer to the bay’s edges than it was back then, as the edges of the island shrink. Unlike 20 years ago, if there is a storm at high tide, “everything on Tangier is covered with water,” she said.
Other climate change as a matter of fact posts:
South of the Arctic Circle in Alaska. (8/25/2017)
New Orleans. (8/12/2017)
Kenya. (7/23/2017)
Portugal. (6/19/2017)
The Netherlands. (6/19/2017)
Brazil. (6/8/2017)
Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. (5/20/2017)
Madeline Island, Wisconsin. (2/23/2017)
Mexico City. (2/19/2017)
Kansas. (1/29/2017)
Moose of Maine. (1/21/2017)
Florida Keys. (1/14/2017)
California wine country. (1/11/2017)
Kaktovik, Alaska. (12/20/2016)
Bolivia. (7/11/2016)
Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park. (7/7/2016)
Kiribati. (7/6/2016)
Peru, (5/21/2016)
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