Norfolk, Virginia is home to the world’s largest naval base. It’s also going to be swallowed by the sea. The mayor of Norfolk thought about consulting Speaker Boehner on the issue, considering that it is quite expensive to become part of the ocean’s floor, but he realized that the Speaker is not a scientist and cannot offer an opinion on whether the climate is changing in Norfolk. If Norfolk wants to make some effort to save at least part of itself, it will not be able to rely on help from the current iteration of the GOP. This is another reason why the Republicans will not win Virginia in a presidential election anytime soon.
The city hired a Dutch consulting firm to develop an action plan, finalized in 2012, that called for new flood gates, higher roads and a retooled storm water system. Implementing the plan would cost more than $1 billion — the size of the city’s entire annual budget — and protect Norfolk from about a foot of additional water.
They had to scrap that plan though. It would have been pointless.
As the city was contemplating that enormous price tag, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) last year delivered more bad news: If current trends hold, VIMS scientists said, by the end of this century, the sea in Norfolk would rise by 5 1/2 feet or more.
“Clearly, we’ve got more work to do,” said Ron Williams Jr., Norfolk’s assistant city manager for planning.
Five and half feet sounds bad, but that’s just the estimate for what will happen if we follow Speaker Boehner and keep our fingers in our ears. If we actually “Drill, baby, drill,” as many Republicans want us to do, then the estimate is worse.
Put it all together, as VIMS scientists did when they were asked by the General Assembly to study recurrent flooding in tidewater Virginia, and models suggest tides ranging from 1 1/2 feet to 7 1/2 feet higher by 2100.
Five and a half feet represents “business as usual,” a vision of the future without “significant efforts by the world’s nations to curb greenhouse gases,” the report said. “Recent trends in Virginia sea levels suggest we are on [this] curve.”
The mayor doesn’t really want to discuss the business as usual vision.
Larry Atkinson, an oceanographer who is co-director of the Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Initiative at Old Dominion University, said when the mayor was asked about the report, he waved away the question. “He says, ‘I can’t think about five feet. What do you want me to do, move the whole city?’ ”
It’s not just Norfolk, Atkinson said. Much of the Eastern Shore would be underwater; Baltimore and Washington would be in trouble, too. “At five feet,” he said, “the Mall’s flooded.”
When the Washington Mall is flooded, I suggest we create a robotic dolphin called The Magic Boehner that children can ride around to see the sites. It will have an on-board computerized narrator that will tell the kids the Tidal Basin used to be a pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial instead of the Mall itself. It will explain that we used to have memorials to the veterans of World War Two and Vietnam, but those had to be moved to higher ground in Maryland. It will explain that there was once a Speaker of the House who said he wasn’t a scientist so he couldn’t do anything to prevent any of the devastation. When the kids get off the robotic dolphin, it will cheerfully tell them, “Thanks for riding The Magic Boehner; they call me magic because magic is the opposite of science.”