Realists, evidence expose Walker's climate change defects

Talk about different messages about climate change by officials in two inundated state capital cities.

* From Wisconsin GOP Governor and active climate change denier Scott Walker, not a peep about any relationship between climate change and flooding in Madison which water science experts there showed in real time what climate change had unleashed in that flooded capital city.

Record Rain in Madison is What Climate Change Looks Like – Especially in Midwest

It’s been more than 24 hours since a severe weather system stalled out over Dane County and dumped anywhere from 3.92 (Dane County Airport), to 11.63 (National Weather Service in Middleton) to an unconfirmed 15.33 inches of rain in Cross Plains...

Today, that water is still working its way downstream and our lake levels are rising. Lake Mendota isn’t just knocking at our back door, it’s let itself in... 

We’ll also be keeping a closer eye on the weather. Because we’ve seen it in our own work- from shrinking lake ice to declining walleye populations to increasing harmful algae blooms – climate change is not just some future problem looming on the horizon. It’s here now. And we’re dealing with its impacts.

I'd earlier noted that same water science building was just across the lake from Walker's official residence, but it might as well be on Mars, given the distance he'd put between himself, state policy and the science going on there.

* Now compare Walker's 'approach' to "what climate change looks like" to what this South Carolina public official had to say as his state's capitol city was about to flood:

Climate change is real, says South Carolina mayor rushing back to hurricane

SAN FRANCISCO — Steve Benjamin, a mayor from South Carolina, flew into this city to talk about climate change — and was rushing back out to deal with a hurricane. 

“We in the Carolinas are forced to deal with the realities of climate change every single day,” Benjamin told USA TODAY from the tarmac at San Francisco International Airport as the Democratic lawmaker waited for his plane to return him to Columbia, S.C., the state capital of 134,000 where people are bracing for Hurricane Florence, which has already forced the evacuations of more than 1 million. 

Sidebar - - other Wisconsin local officials, like Milwaukee's Tom Barrett, and a couple of Dane County leaders, get it, too: 

We don't need any more Wisconsin residents washed to their deaths. 

No more homes and businesses and farms and roads and budgets damaged or destroyed while purportedly-relevant officials sit idly by - - 

- - ignoring reality and the facts...

It's good that Madison Mayor Paul Soglin and Dane County Executive Joe Parisi had been taking at the local level available steps to manage water and acknowledge a changing climate, as I'd noted here and here, earlier.  

But politicians who won't get serious about life-and-death science and policy-making in Wisconsin need to be moved out and replaced with authentic leaders who will respond to a wakeup call that is sounding louder, and more frequently.