Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Republicans in North Carolina seek to outlaw climate change


Common Dreams reports that Republican legislators in North Carolina are so concerned about scientific predictions concerning the rise of sea levels by 2100 due to climate change and how that might effect the value of real estate on the North Carolina coast that they are considering legislation TO OUTLAW THE RISE OF THE SEA LEVEL ON THE NORTH CAROLINA COAST due to climate change.

If the Republican dominated legislature votes as expected, scientists will be prohibited from factoring in the anticipated impact of climate change and the accelerating melting of the polar icecaps on Carolina's low-lying coastal communities. By legislative decree, the state's own researchers will be forced to base their predictions solely on historical climate data, rather than the acceleration of global warming that climatologists expect to occur in the coming decades.  Read more here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/05

House Bill 819 establishing Costal Management Policies reads in part.
Section 2 (e): The Division of Coastal Management shall be the only State agency authorized to develop rates of sea-level rise and shall do so only at the request of the Commission. These 11 rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time 12 period following the year 1900. Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly to estimate 13 future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise. 14

No comments: