On April 10 in West Palm Beach, the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Bill Nelson, chaired a hearing on sea level rise and extreme weather. More than 200 people attended the hearing. Senator Nelson, accompanied by U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Boca Raton) and the mayors of West Palm Beach Mayor and Palm Beach County, explained the reason for the hearing:
“While there are some who continue to deny that climate change is real, South Florida offers proof that it is real and it’s an issue we’re going to have to confront in the decades ahead…. we sit at Ground Zero for the impacts of climate change in the United States.” www.palmbeachpost.com/...
Noting that three-quarters of Florida’s residents live near its 1,200 miles of coastline, Nelson said Florida is more vulnerable than any other state in the continental U.S. to rising sea levels, which are already causing frequent flooding.
One panelist testified that “multiple lines of evidence” point to carbon dioxide and methane produced by human activity causing an increase in global temperatures. “That’s a fact,” he said. Another panelist said data gathered during the past five years have shown that flooding and other impacts of climate change are worsening:
“We know a lot more and we’re a lot more scared…. King tides have convinced us the problem is not in the future, it’s now.”
Panelists called for strengthening building codes and requested federal help to protect south Florida with seawalls and “buttressing roads and shorelines.” They spoke of the costs of pumping out floodwater; they noted that saltwater has contaminated wells used by Broward County cities; they described high tides flooding streets in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. One panelist emphasized:
“We have every reason to believe current trends we’re seeing are going to continue. There is no credible science whatsoever that the trends we’re seeing today are going to reverse themselves.”
Currently, the Florida and federal governments prohibit government employees from even using the phrase “climate change.” Senator Nelson criticized these policies and said that such rules interfere with efforts to address the problems.
However, a federal press release about the hearing avoided the forbidden phrase and spoke only of “future risk”:
"The hearing will examine the impacts of sea level rise and extreme weather events. Since 2006, sea level rise in southeast Florida has tripled, averaging about nine millimeters a year...."
https://www.commerce.senate.gov/.../west-palm-beach-to...