North Carolina Preps for Global Warming by Banning Science

[jtb1127]

LA Times

North Carolina's wishful-thinking solution to global warming

On what political tout sheet is North Carolina listed as a swing state?

Because it looks like it's already swung, and not in the direction of the Democrats, who hold their convention there in September.

First came last month's vote to put a ban on same-sex marriage in the state's Constitution (a San Diego church has put up a billboard in Charlotte, the site of the Democratic convention, apologizing for the "narrow-minded, judgmental, deceptive, manipulative" vote).

Now the state’s Legislature is considering a law that would, for all intents and purposes, give all the legislators doctorates in climatology. Because the law allows the Legislature to decide what is useful scientific data and what isn’t.

As a coastal state, North Carolina faces the same global climate challenges of rising sea levels and turbulent weather that island countries and other coastal regions have begun to confront, and to ask what to do next: Do they build walls? Draw their population inland and upland?

Here's the NoCa solution: pretend it’s not happening. Pass a law saying it can't happen because we say it can't. Which is to say, ban any government agency from using the standard scientific tools like extrapolating data to figure out what's happening, and thus avoid all those scary, silly scientific facts and figures.

Global warming? Flooding seas? Not in North Carolina. Why? Because they say so, that's why.

News reports point out that businesses and local governments along the state's coast lobbied for the law, which declares that only data from years past can be considered in calculating future sea levels; essentially, if it didn't happen before, it can't happen, period. The pending law bans using real scientific techniques and formulas about rising sea levels because that could mean rising building costs, rising insurance rates and rising restrictions on coastal building. So instead, let's invoke wishful thinking and say it isn't so.

The state's Coastal Resources Commission, which looked into that soon-to-be-forbidden future, had anticipated a sea level rise of more than three feet within 90 years. The precise figure, 39 inches, has now been deleted from the commission's policy.

In Scientific American, science writer and North Carolinian Scott Huler lays out this sardonic fantasist extrapolation about what else his state might consider declaring to be reality:

"According to North Carolina law, I am a billionaire. I have a full-time nanny for my children, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and I get to spend the entire year taking guitar lessons from Mark Knopfler. Oh, my avatar? I haven't got around to changing it, but by law, I now look like George Clooney. There's also a supermodel clause, but discussing the details would be boasting. You think I'm kidding, but listen to me: I'm from North Carolina, and that's how we roll. We take what we want to be reality, and we just make it law. So I'm having my state senator introduce legislation writing into law all the stuff I mentioned above. This is North Carolina, state motto: "Because that's how I WANT it to be."

It's gob-smacking to imagine science forced to operate under a set of legal restrictions that amount to "because we've never done it before, we can't do it now."

Oh wait -- it already has done that. And look at the consequences. Anatomy, astronomy, biology, physics, life itself: Until science was legally allowed, by church and state, to look forward instead of backward, it wasn't fully science at all, and we weren't yet permitted to become the questing, learning, coping species that we are.

U.S. News & World Report quoted a North Carolina university professor named Stan Riggs, a coastline expert, as despairing of the Legislature that "clearly they don't understand science at all" to put such restrictions on analysis.

I tend to disagree. I think they know the science; at least they know the implications of it. They may just choose to ignore it because, after all, a beachfront condo in the hand is worth two in the tsunami.

North Carolina may be about to join the ranks of states like Kansas, which, for a couple of years, took evolution and the Big Bang hypothesis out of the state's science curriculum.

North Carolina's license plates bear bragging rights to the Wright brothers. "First in Flight," they say, about the Ohio siblings who, in 1903, journeyed to Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina's Outer Banks to test their flying machine, equipped with a lot of those doggoned projections and extrapolations.

If the Wright brothers tried their takeoff these days, North Carolina legislators might have stopped them at the state line, arguing, "If we'd been meant to fly, we'd have been born with feathers. Get that thing outta here."

Or, more accurately, they might be saying, "Glub, glub, glub." Because Kill Devil Hills, elevation seven feet, could, in a few years' time, find itself underwater. Unless the Legislature forbids the Atlantic Ocean to rise. That'll do the trick all right.

Alternet

North Carolina Bill Would Require Coastal Communities to Ignore Global Warming Science

Some North Carolina GOP legislators want to stop the use of science to plan for the future. They are circulating a bill that would force coastal counties to ignore actual observations and the best science-based projections in planning for future sea level rise.
King Canute thought he had the power to hold back the tide (in the apocryphal legend). These all-too-real lawmakers want to go one better and mandate a formula that projects a sea level rise of at most 12 inches, far below what the science now projects.
A state-appointed science panel reviewed the recent literature and reported that a 1-meter (39 inch) rise is likely by 2100. Many coastal studies experts think a level of 5 to 7 feet should be used, since you typically plan for the plausible worst-case scenario, especially with expensive, long-lived infrastructure.
The 2011 report by the National Academy of Science for the U.S. Navy on the national security implications of climate change concluded:
Based on recent peer-reviewed scientific literature, the Department of the Navy should expect roughly 0.4 to 2 meters global average sealevel rise by 2100, with a most likely value of about 0.8 meter. Projections of local sea-level rise could be much larger and should be taken into account for naval planning purposes,
Rob Young, a geology professor at Western Carolina University and a member of the state science panel, pointed out to the North Carolina Coastal Federation (NCCF), that this proposed law stands against the conclusions of “every major science organization on the globe.” Young notes, “Every other state in the country is planning on three-feet of sea level rise or more.” The Charlotte Observer notes:
Maine is preparing for a rise of up to 2 meters by 2100, Delaware 1.5 meters, Louisiana 1 meter and California 1.4 meters. Southeastern Florida projects up to a 2-foot rise by 2060.
In place of science, the bill would mandate that only the Division of Coastal Management can put out an estimate of the rate of sea-level rise rate — and they must use an arbitrary, low-ball formula:
These rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time period following the year 1900. Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise.


As the National Academies report to the Navy pointed out, observations suggest SLR won’t be linear: Thanks to satellite data, “it is now possible to detect acceleration in sea-level rise over the past few decades.”
Here is NASA’s website with the data plotted showing the recent acceleration:



See also the Real Climate post, “Is Sea-Level Rise Accelerating?”
A 2011 study led by the U.S. Jet Propulsion Laboratory using satellite data concluded, “The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace.” The JPL news release explains how the authors concluded we face 1 foot of sea level rise by 2050:
The authors conclude that, if current ice sheet melting rates continue for the next four decades, their cumulative loss could raise sea level by 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) by 2050. When this is added to the predicted sea level contribution of 8 centimeters (3.1 inches) from glacial ice caps and 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) from ocean thermal expansion, total sea level rise could reach 32 centimeters (12.6 inches).
Sadly, even if this inane bill never becomes law, anti-science forces are already winning the battle to block sensible adaptation to global warming in North Carolina, one of the states most threatened by sea level rise.
A coastal economic development group called NC-20 attacked the state science panel’s recommendation to the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission to plan for 1 meter of SLR. And even though the panel reconfirmed its findings again in April, the Charlotte Observer reports, “NC-20, named for the 20 coastal counties, appears to be winning its campaign to undermine them”:
The Coastal Resources Commission agreed to delete references to planning benchmarks – such as the 1-meter prediction – and new development standards for areas likely to be inundated.
The N.C. Division of Emergency Management, which is using a $5 million federal grant to analyze the impact of rising water, lowered its worst-case scenario from 1 meter to 15 inches by 2100.
Several local governments on the coast have passed resolutions against sea-level rise policies.
One North Carolinian writing in Scientific American said the proposed bill is “exactly like saying, do not predict tomorrow’s weather based on radar images of a hurricane swirling offshore, moving west towards us with 60-mph winds and ten inches of rain. Predict the weather based on the last two weeks of fair weather with gentle breezes towards the east. Don’t use radar and barometers; use the Farmer’s Almanac and what grandpa remembers.”


The irony is that North Carolina celebrates scientific and technological achievement on its license plate and state quarter – the Wright Brothers “First Flight” at Kittyhawk. Oh, and its state motto is Esse quam videri, which means “To be, rather than to seem.”
You’d think such a state would pass laws based on science and what actually is, rather than what seems to be popular with narrow economic interests.

Isn't this a big-government breach of freedom and information, or does that not apply to state governments? How could they even considering basing research off something that is changing solely off of data from the past? Of course, the bill was introduced by the right, no surprise there.

 

[Mango Elephant]

I saw this on the Colbert Report earlier today. I thought they were joking. If this passes, I gonna be pissed.

 

[Synobun]

HAH, America.

 

[Rashiminos]

That article is also a slanted piece of work. My guess is that the law fails to pass based on how it hamstrings the initiatives of various municipalities (especially in the Outer Banks). Storm in a teapot.

 

[Cynovolans]

This bill hasn't actually been introduced yet has it? I can't imagine it being voted for; it seems really unnecessary, and destructive.

 

[Save_Ferris]

Just because they don't believe in global warming, it doesn't mean that they're Republicans. There is a correlation, yes, but the two do not fit in definition. There are a lot of Republican scientists.

 

[History_Buff]

Still, I'd wager that more than 75% of American GW deniers are Republicans.

 

[Formaldehyde]

That's hardly a gamble. Now if you said 95% I might be tempted to take you up on it, but I probably still wouldn't.

 

[Silurian]

From the OP

The pending law bans using real scientific techniques and formulas about rising sea levels because that could mean rising building costs, rising insurance rates and rising restrictions on coastal building.

Rather than preventing "rising insurance rates" this is likely to actually accelerate them. If no one is planning for increased flooding then the effect of the flooding will be worse.

Also if no one is deciding what areas of the coast are too risky to build on then the insurance companies may just decide not to insure anywhere because they could all be too risky.

 

[Mr. Dictator]

Sink, Carolina, sink!

 

[jtb1127]

This bill hasn't actually been introduced yet has it? I can't imagine it being voted for; it seems really unnecessary, and destructive.

It was introduced, not passed voted on.

Just because they don't believe in global warming, it doesn't mean that they're Republicans. There is a correlation, yes, but the two do not fit in definition. There are a lot of Republican scientists.

Still, I'd wager that more than 75% of American GW deniers are Republicans.

That's hardly a gamble. Now if you said 95% I might be tempted to take you up on it, but I probably still wouldn't.

Here's some actual numbers:

With the exception of Jon Huntsman — who barely registers in polls — you can't find a Republican presidential candidate who unequivocally believes in climate science, let alone one who wants to do anything about it. Instead of McCain — who has walked back his own climate-policy realism since the 2008 elections — we have Texas Governor Rick Perry, who told voters in New Hampshire over the weekend that "I don't believe manmade global warming is settled in science enough." And many Republicans agree with him: the percentage of self-identified Republicans or conservatives answering yes to the question of whether the effects of global warming were already being felt fell to 30% or less in 2010, down from 50% in 2007-08. Meanwhile, liberals and Democrats remained around 70% or more.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2096055,00.html#ixzz1wykdA7hy

It's not exactly what we're looking for but good enough. They seem to be vastly republican.

 

[choxorn]

If North Carolina can propose a law banning science, can the sane parts of the country propose a law banning North Carolina?

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

HAH, America.

Don't laugh. I bet Harper's taking notes.