Well Golly! Some NC Republicans Now Willing To Admit Global Warming Is A Problem!
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Downtown streets and parking lots along the Cape Fear River, like those surrounding tourist attractions such as the battleship USS North Carolina, flood regularly, including last week as the remnants of Michael blew through town. Flooding during Florence cut off Wilmington from the rest of the state for days. Lagoons full of hog manure on industrial farms northwest of the city overflowed, contaminating water sources and killing fish. Toxic coal ash, too, was released into the river.
Separately, fishermen have noticed in recent years that black sea bass are migrating north because of warming ocean temperatures. Other watermen say they’re finding more saltwater fish such as flounder upriver as the sea level rises. “I’m not a scientist. I just know what I see,” said Carl Marshburn, a Republican who has operated tour boats along the Cape Fear River for three decades. He said he’s had to start coating the bottom of his river boats with antifouling paint to prevent barnacles and other marine organisms from growing amid saltwater intrusion.
No longer is the topic taboo among many conservative business owners, homeowners and voters here in New Hanover County, a swing county in a swing state, both of which Trump won by just four points in 2016. Politicians have adopted a GOP-friendly term to discuss climate change, referring to sea level rise as “recurrent flooding,” said Rob Zapple, a Democrat in a competitive race to hang onto his New Hanover County commissioner seat. “They can see and feel and understand the effects,” he said. “All of a sudden, we were allowed to have a conversation with our Republican counterparts.”
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Many other GOP politicians, too, remain wary of bringing up climate change as a campaign issue. All 12 Republicans representing North Carolina in Congress, including Rep. David Rouzer, whose district includes Wilmington, have expressed doubts about global warming or its causes. Rouzer was among the Republicans who, in 2012, attacked climate science to kill a state report warning of the dangers of climate change. Instead of planning for the ocean rising by three feet by the end of the century, as scientists predicted in the report, Republicans came up with a new 30-year forecast that predicted sea levels rising by a maximum of eight inches. They said that the longer outlook would erode property values and hinder development along the state’s coastline.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-north-carolina-hurricanes-do-what-scientists-could-not-persuade-republicans-that-climate-change-is-real/2018/10/17/45136c56-d0ac-11e8-8c22-fa2ef74bd6d6_story.html?utm_term=.5a8786eb14a3
