Georgia faces a stormy future as climate changes

http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/m/section/24/article/113205/

By Tom Crawford
November 4, 2015

Over the past few weeks, extreme weather has ripped through Georgia and the South with a severity we haven’t seen in a long time.

South Carolina was hit by torrential rainstorms that are only supposed to happen once every thousand years. Roads were flooded all over the state, dozens of dams burst, and the University of South Carolina was even forced to move a football game against LSU to Baton Rouge.

A few weeks later, “king tides” hit the coastal areas and reached levels that are typically associated with hurricanes.

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Over in Alabama, according to the Mobile Press-Register, the water coming inland was so high that a homeowner in Fowl River, about 16 miles from Mobile Bay, found a dead shark deposited in her front yard.

“It was crazy,” the homeowner said.

It also illustrated what we can expect to see in the coming years: a lot of extreme weather events that cause a lot of damage.

Sea levels are rising as polar caps, glaciers and ice sheets melt under temperatures that continue to reach record levels. Warmer air also holds more moisture, which means longer and stronger rainstorms like the ones that dumped all that water on southern states.

The consensus among an overwhelming number of scientists is that these extreme weather events and rising sea levels are linked to the effects of global warming and climate change.

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The Environment Protection Agency recently implemented clean-air regulations that require coal-burning power plants to reduce the greenhouse gases they emit by the year 2030. This is a small initial step to address the planet-threatening issue of climate change.

This was the response from Georgia officials: Attorney General Sam Olens sued the EPA to try to have the regulation thrown out.

The attitude of denial prevails in our neighboring states as well. Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s administration forbids state employees from using the terms “global warming” or “climate change” in any public statements or reports.

The North Carolina legislature passed a law that prohibits the state from basing its coastal development policies on scientific predictions of how much sea levels will rise. The lawmakers evidently think they can stop the sea from rising by simply passing a law to make it illegal.

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As the denials from our public officials continue, we will keep getting closer to the day when Tybee Island, Jekyll Island, St. Simons Island — the entire Georgia coast, perhaps — are submerged under water.

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