Ignorance CAN Kill

The Winston-Salem Journal takes on the anti-science know-nothingism of the Republicans in the NC General Assembly, which decided, by virtue of statute, that our low-lying coastal counties are prohibited -- prohibited -- from planning for sea-level rise.

Another by-product of Tea Party extremism, as the Journal editorialist correctly divines:

Tea-party Republicans put the environmental movement and climate science on the wrong side of the culture war that is gripping the United States. Therefore, they refuse to recognize that the planet is getting warmer, seas are rising accordingly, and man is playing a part in both. It matters not that the vast majority of real scientists provide hard data to support their projections. To the tea drinkers, facts and science don't count, only anger at the left does. 

This would all be kind of humorous, in a Stephen Colbert sort of way, if so much didn't ride on sea-level-rise projections. They guide development along our beaches. The state and local jurisdictions have already allowed far too much construction along our hurricane-prone, sandbar-based coast. Now they are refusing to plan ahead for higher seas that will devastate investment on the coast.