The answer to that question could only be, "Yes." And so it was in a one-sided report in a Rhode Island newspaper.
A news article in the March 22 Providence (R.I.) Journal by G. Wayne Miller details how a portion of the beautiful harbor town of Newport will be underwater due to the effects of anthropogenic global warming by the year 2100.
"The ocean covers the place where once-popular Perrotti Park used to be. The park benches that stood on dry land are gone. So are the water fountain and coin-operated binoculars through which visitors once observed the harbor," Miller wrote. "Adjacent to the park site, America's Cup Avenue is history, too, along with the harbormaster's building and the salon, restaurant and stores that did business on nearby Long Wharf. It is 8:16 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2100."
Miller explained that was the "most optimistic" of scenarios, despite the rising tide of skepticism that the globe is warming, or as WGN-TV in Chicago on March 22 proposed the globe could be cooling due to a decline in sunspot activity. Miller's article ran to nearly 1,100 words and didn't include a single voice of dissent from global warming alarmist orthodoxy.
"This is no science-fiction scenario," Miller wrote. "This is the most optimistic real-life projection that scientists today make for the year 2100 -- a year in which some people born in 2009 will still walk the earth. A less optimistic scenario calls for the sea to rise 19 feet from today. If that happens, fish would swim where this article was written, in downtown Providence."
The solution - alternative energy, according to Grover J. Fugate, director of Rhode Island's Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC).
"We're going to have find ways of getting a hold of this carbon monster," Fugate said to the Providence Journal. "There is a sense of urgency. Some of the climate scientists are giving us essentially two decades before this train can't be turned back. Unfortunately, we as society often wait for more visible signs. And by the time you get visible signs, a lot of times it's too late."
These pleas for costly, less-effective non-carbon energy sources by the state's CRMC come at a time when Rhode Island's economy is facing the brunt of the nation's economic woes. The state's unemployment rate is at 10.5 percent - third highest in the country behind only Michigan and South Carolina.
