President Obama held back the rise of the oceans as long as he could, but as he prepares to turn over his desk keys to his successor, the seas have caught on and are creeping back up, perhaps intending to climb even higher than when Obama assumed office just out of spite.
Hot off the virtual press from Newsweek, the magazine that warned of the dangers of “The Cooling World” in 1975, is an alarming article about Honolulu sinking due to climate change.
Honolulu is sinking, and climate change is to blame https://t.co/AUWcMzLDQa pic.twitter.com/VKEX9cHmW3
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) May 2, 2016
@Newsweek a You're about to get trolled by a lot of people who aren't scientists, but think they know more than scientists.
— SoutheastNative (@SoutheastNative) May 2, 2016
Like, say, Al Gore? Leonardo DiCaprio? John Kerry? Bill Nye? No, he’s probably too busy preparing yet another research project for peer review and publication, or judging bubble wands at the White House Science Fair.
Miami is also sinking, but slowly.
Marco Rubio won't acknowledge climate change, but his hometown of Miami is slowly sinking due to rising sea levels https://t.co/XmfKiY6Glk
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) March 11, 2016
We’re sure the government will intervene soon, but Honolulu and Miami will have to wait in line for their share of $1 billion in grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to prepare communities for the effects of climate change.
The US government is spending $48 million to resettle the first US "climate refugees" -previewing the wave to come.https://t.co/mytsFSdEjc
— Coral Davenport (@CoralMDavenport) May 3, 2016
The first recipient, the New York Times reports Monday, is Isle de Jean Charles, La., which will receive $48 million to resettle its climate refugees. (A wise investment, considering Slate’s revelation that the rise of ISIS could be traced to “climate migrants” displaced by the effects of global warming.)
Coral Davenport and Campbell Robertson write that the earth on which the Native American tribes of southeastern Louisiana have lived for generations “is now dying, drowning in salt and sinking into the sea.”
They add that “since 1955, more than 90 percent of the island’s original land mass has washed away. Channels cut by loggers and oil companies eroded much of the island.” Whether that’s true or not, it sounds like the erosion was caused by poor land management and not a global rise in ocean levels.
The federal grant, which must be spent by 2022, will be used to move the island’s residents to a community that doesn’t yet exist.
History tells us that the Native Americans who populate Isle de Jean Charles fled there to escape the Indian Removal Act of the 1830s, and now the benevolent government that drove them there is back to displace them again at taxpayer expense in the name of climate change. Any bets on when the first waves of non-American citizens will begin to demand that the United States accept them as climate refugees?
@CoralMDavenport @nytimes Are Manhattan officials making plans to do likewise for their great city?
— EnergyPoint Research (@EnergyPointInfo) May 3, 2016
Believe it or not, HUD awarded the grant money according to something called the National Disaster Resilience Competition, and New York City was one of the “winners,” receiving a $176 million share of the prize money. For now though, Manhattan’s climate refugees will have to continue to pay for their own travel to the Hamptons to escape the effects of climate change that the less fortunate city dwellers call “summer.”
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