“the sea still rises.”

American coastal geologists Orin Pilkey and Rob Young have published this article on global warming in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer. Their position: “plain evidence of global warming abounds.”

The article, in the literary sense, takes the reader on a flight beginning with the North Carolina Outer Banks to observe dead trees along a drowning Albemarle Sound and an eroding stretch of barrier islands.

The flight then heads northwest, across the Canadian Rockies to look at shrinking alpine glaciers. Then, on to Alaska and a coastal community built on permafrost. Melting permafrost coupled with coastal erosion, worse now since the sea remains ice-free more months of the year, threatens to take out the village. From Pilkey and Young:

“Clearly, the Earth has revealed undeniable evidence of rising sea levels – drowning shorelines, shrinking arctic sea ice, warming oceans, and melting permafrost and ice sheets. It’s all there for anyone to see.”

Would Americans shut down all the medical schools, hospitals, and clinics if they found out a few doctors were guilty of malpractice? As ridiculous as that may sound, the global warming deniers frothing over bad behavior on the part of some IPCC and University of East Anglia climate researchers seem to be suggesting a comparable purge of global warming research.