There’s not much dispute these days, up and down the coast, about whether the ocean is rising. The question is: How high will it go here, and how fast?How about promising that government-backed insurance will not protect development in case of damage from storms or sea-water rise? Let the free market determine how confident they are in GOP-determined climate science. I know how confident I would be. If you give me the over-under on 8 inches, I'll take the over.
North Carolinians must wait until 2016 for an official answer. That’s the law.
After promoters of coastal development attacked a science panel’s prediction that the sea would rise 39 inches higher in North Carolina by the end of this century, the General Assembly passed a law in 2012 to put a four-year moratorium on any state rules, plans or policies based on expected changes in the sea level. The law sets guidelines under which the Coastal Resources Commission, a development policy board for the 20 coastal counties, will formulate a new sea-level prediction to serve as the official basis for state planners and regulators.
The backlash fomented by a conservative coastal group called NC-20 prompted commission members in 2011, most of them Democratic appointees, to reject the 39-inch prediction from the panel of engineers and geologists, including Riggs, that has counseled the commission since the 1990s. A new documentary film, “ Shored Up,” shows anguished commission members imploring their science advisers to somehow “soften” the high-water warning.
Now the 13-member Coastal Resources Commission has a new chairman and eight more new members appointed last year by Republican legislative leaders and Gov. Pat McCrory. The 2012 law says the commission must receive a new draft sea-level prediction from its science panel by March 2015, but the new commission has not asked the science panel to start work.
Frank Gorham III of New Hanover County, whose business is drilling for oil and gas in Texas and New Mexico, contributed $8,000 to McCrory’s 2012 campaign. McCrory appointed him chairman of the Coastal Resources Commission in 2013.......Citing trends that show a fairly steady but slow increase in sea levels over the past century, the NC-20 group favors a forecast of only 8 inches of sea-level rise by 2100.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
How High's The Water?
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