The Virginian-Pilot
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First, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed a legal challenge to a key federal finding that greenhouse gases are public health threats, contribute to climate change and should be regulated.
Now, a Norfolk-based environmental group, Wetlands Watch, has filed a challenge to Cuccinelli's challenge, calling his actions "dangerous" and "a stall tactic" against government attempts to tackle global warming.
The group's executive director, Skip Stiles, said climate change is affecting coastal Virginia already, mostly through rising sea levels that make local flooding more common, and that help is needed to contain the problem.
"Our leadership in Richmond either doesn't see the change going on here or chooses to ignore it," Stiles said.
The Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville prepared the necessary papers on behalf of Wetlands Watch and delivered them late Thursday to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.
By petitioning the court this way, Wetlands Watch is joining 18 states and several other environmental groups that support the "endangerment finding" on greenhouse gases. They hope a judge will throw out Cuccinelli's motion.
Cuccinelli's office said Friday that 14 other states agree the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should reconsider its finding in light of new questions about the integrity of climate science, notably because of some intercepted e-mails between researchers who talked about shading test results.
"We believe it is imperative that we ensure the process leading to the finding was carried out consistently with American law and scientific methods," the Republican attorney general said in a statement.
The EPA has said it has reviewed the ramifications of the e-mails and concluded they do not alter the conclusion of decades of research - that the planet is slowly warming and that man-made emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are partly to blame.
Trip Pollard, land and community program director for the Southern Environmental Law Center, recalled a comparison to the e-mail scandal that he enjoyed.
"It's like someone opening the owner's manual of their new car, finding a typo on page 221, and concluding that they shouldn't drive the car," Pollard said.
Clay Lory, who lives on the Lafayette River in Norfolk, is named as the declarant on the Wetlands Watch petition. He said longtime waterfront residents cannot help but notice higher tides, more floods and increased risk to their properties.
"We're like the canaries in the coal mine," Lory said. "We can see the early signs of this. We just need to connect the dots."
No court date has been set for the Cuccinelli appeal, though an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, Frank Rambo, estimated oral arguments w ould take place this winter.
Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com
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an embarrassment
Cuccinelli is an embarrassment and he's trying to make Virginia as backward thinking as South Carolina.
not hoax, but knee jerk faddish science
Water levels aren't rising unless you believe the ground is sinking. I see tree huggin still thrives. We must continue to fight it, and it's efforts that should be better spent working on the economy, or a way to reduce crime without martial law. You know, something that actually effects us.
this heat wave prove global warming
A little while back posters were probing that global warming was a hoax because it was so cold. Well by that rational this heat must then prove that global warming is true.
SLRise no brainer - just facts
I moved to Norfolk in 1957 to a house on the water. While nor'easters would sometimes bring water into the street where we lived, it took a hurricane flood to bring tidal water into our yard, sometimes surrounding our house. But even the strongest hurricane never brought water more than a foot below our first floor level.
The 1962 Ash Wednesday nor'easter brought the worst flooding, but still no water in the house. Over time, more and more often, seasonal storms or just wind-driven tides would bring water into our street and make it impassable. Fast Forward to 2003 and Hurricane Isabel and the house I grew up in had water in the first floor, causing major damage. The house was subsequently raised about five feet above its original elevation, joining a growing number of homes within view that also had been raised.
The jury has eyes; the verdict is in; sea level is rising and the cost to adapt will be enormous whether we like it or not. Skeptics can keep their collective head in the sand, but, beware, the sand will soon enough be underwater.
CO2 and Problems of the Planet
Whether we are or not in denial about what is happening to the global climate, we have to work hard to be in denial about the global population explosion. Interestingly, all other measures to manage Earth's resources pale by the sheer pressure of adding billions of people to the planet without consideration of resource management. No one wants to touch that fact because it truly arouses fear and anger when anyone mentions what it means to exponentially grow the number of people who place demands for the essentials of life, let alone its luxuries. If its not possible to get a global perspective, simply consider population pressures as they are occurring in this nation. I64 is the artery for commerce and the flow of people in Hampton Roads. The pressure on the roadway is real. Yet no one can agree to proceed with alleviating that problem. Health care in the United States: No one can agree and proceed with an equitable solution for access to guaranteed, affordable care without creating inconveniences and cost burdens for others. There seems to be no practical solution for how we control of our own population. Population growth inherently implies growth of CO2
CO2 Regulation
My biggest fear is that one day CO2 will become a regulated pollutant. I would wager that most people don't understand the implications of CO2 regulation. Beyond fossil fuel usage, all species in the Animal Kingdom require oxygen to breathe, and produce CO2 as a byproduct. I can see at a minimum the lobbists for coal power plant operators arguing that if you regulate the CO2 emmisions from the power plant industry, you should also regulate the CO2 emmisions from ALL industries. This about the implications this would have on livestock farms. The lifetime CO2 emmsions for each cow, pig, horse, goat, chicken, turkey, etc could easily be determined and farmers could have to buy CO2 credits for each head of livestock they produce.
Has anyone stopped to consider that there are more people on planet Earth than ever in the course of history. Over 6 BILLION. Each one of us also produces CO2 everyday. Just by breathing humans are producing more CO2 than they were in 10, 20, 100 years ago. Where do we stop the CO2 regulation? Will it come to genocide for the sake of saving the planet?
You Lost Me
You started to lose me with the political comment (most people talk science, not politics), but totally lost me with the record snow this past winter. Wrong on all accounts.
Lost On Climate Change?
Places that were once dry will become wetter, places that were wet, will become dryer. There will likely be no more moderate weather in many areas. All that snow this past winter was really more humidity in the form of snow. More snow does not necessarily mean colder climate, just more water vapor in the air. We also experienced record high water tables this past winter. Unless of course your only news source is FOX and Rush, maybe that's why it's not getting through? I digress...
When the third winter storm rolled in this past winter, Rio de Janeiro experienced a record 104 degree F. What it will take for most people to see the change is about three or four days of tripple digit temperatures in the coming summers for denial to turn in to acceptance then everyone will say that's what we always believed. But by then, maybe it will be too late?
Stay On Point!
It’s sad to read that most of the commenters here are focusing on their political party’s positions and not really looking at the reality. It appears that climate gate fizzled, was really all spin, and there were no real changes to the fact that local coastal storms are increasing in intensity, number, and storm surge. During last November’s Nor’easter I marked a new waterline on my garage floor just a few inches inside the door and about five feet away from the water level that crested from hurricane Isabel nearly seven years ago. Don’t people realize that the record breaking snowstorms that we had last winter are in fact indicators of climate change? Yes, we all know about geologic time, but when you overlay that CO2 chart over the last hundred years you can readily see the 400% increase. And, where were all of the volcanoes during this period? Remember weather is to climate what single years are to about four billion. This has happened before! This is becoming clear even to recent skeptics. But like George Carlin said: “If nature wanted to, it could shake us off the planet like a flea on a dog’s back”. That said, recklessly pumping out more CO2 won’t help the
I agree with martyc54744 to the extent that
Global Warming may have more to do with the fact that our North American population may quadruple in the next forty or fifty years, an increase of third world developing nations burning more fuel in cars, airplanes, factories,etc., and(from Brazil to our local city subdivisions) humankind stripping out planet earth of 02 producing trees and forested areas. At any rate, ANYTHING WE DO CAN'T HURT UNLESS we go about it through political solutions which involve higher taxes and regulations that do nothing but move the problem from USA to another part of the planet (like China).