Sea Level Rise Putting America's Largest Navy Base at-Risk

If you listen to Republicans - e.g., Senator Inhofe - climate change and global warming aren't happening.  It's all a conspiracy in the minds of these lunatics.  The real conspiracy is between the Koch brothers and the oil and coal industries which seek to perpetuate the myth that climate change is not occurring and that humankind have no role in the visible changes occurring. As local TV-13 reports, the signs are clear at the Norfolk Naval Base - which boasts that it is the largest in the world - and Senator Tim Kaine says that it is time to address reality.  He and those like him who are in touch with objective reality will have an uphill battle given the GOP control of the Senate starting next month.  Here are article highlights:

Touring a flood-prone neighborhood blocks from the world's largest Naval base, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine said Thursday, the time to act is now. Kaine is calling for a combination of needed infrastructure investments, and a reduction of U.S. dependence of carbon-based energy sources.

Probably the most sobering thing to me dealing with this sea level rise issue is the affect on the main Naval base," Kaine said. "Being on Armed Services, this is the center of Naval power in the world and such an important center for America. And when you contemplate the main road into the base eventually being underwater three hours a day in 2040, not because of storms but because of normal tidal action, by 2040, being underwater three hours a day, that was the one thing that made me snap back and say, I've got to take this seriously."

Kaine's comments follow an October Department of Defense report which concluded that Naval Station Norfolk would be at-risk, if, as many scientists have predicted, sea level rises 14 to 18 inches in the next 20 to 50 years.

"We have the time to make the investments to improve the infrastructure," he said. "We just really have to find these resiliency investments to protect this important key to America's national security."

The GOP likes to depict itself as the party of national security yet lunatics like Inhofe are acting as military leaders did on the evening of December 6, 1941.   Not wanting to admit/believe something doesn't make it not true.  At least not outside of the insane asylum known as the Republican Party.

flooded Navy pier parking lot