Sensible Erection | North Carolina to dictate rate of sea-level rise by senatorial fiat

Wednesday, 30 May 2012

North Carolina to dictate rate of sea-level rise by senatorial fiat

quote [ (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 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. ]

Eyes to be accused of perjury?

PDF of Replacement House Bill 819

(f) Any State agency, board, commission, institution, or other public entity thereof and any county, municipality, or other local public body that develops a policy addressing sea-level rise that includes a rate of sea-level rise shall use only the rates of sea-level rise developed by the Division of Coastal Management as approved by the Commission. If the Commission has not approved a sea-level rise rate, then the sea-level rise policy shall not use a rate of sea-level rise.

[sci&tech] [by Ankylosaur@9:40pmGMT] [+10 WTF]

Comments

schatten00777 said @ 10:35pm GMT on 30th May
This really isn't all that odd. Rates of sea-level rise are important for city and county planning, and this ensures that everyone is on the same page. It also minimizes costs, as only one agency will be doing this rather than multiple organizations repeating the same work. Additionally, it sets standard limits on the assumptions used to calculate the rates. This is no different than the US Constitution mandating the decennial census with limitations on statistical techniques.

zarathustra said @ 11:18pm GMT on 30th May
This could also be important for land owners. I've never done property law ( except for family house purchases), but when I was in law school in NC almost 20 years ago we read some cases about coastal property where boundaries were set by land marks - from the water line so many feet in and then the next property was from that line so many feet. After one particular storm that changed the waterfront of one of the outerbank islands, this made it so that the properties in the middle were being claimed by the people around them. I don't recall the outcome or if they ever got around setting a rule for such situations. I would think rising sea levels could have a similar effect.

Didel said @ 4:15am GMT on 31st May
Last I heard, the property lines stays the same, regardless of inundation (or when it happens (probably many millenia from now) a decrease in sea level) and the owner owns that land, even if it's under water. So if you get flooded, you're SOL. You can't claim any property, you have what you have, regardless of shifting sands and changing sea level.

But if you're on the outer banks, the smart money is all on the back part of the islands. At least the smart money of anyone who's going to buy property on a barrier island with increasing sea levels. (ie, still pretty dumb people).

But yeah, I'm sure I'm forgetting some details.

Ankylosaur said @ 11:24pm GMT on 30th May
It prohibits considering that the rate is accelerating. If the data show that the rate is accelerating, then it prohibits taking actual data into consideration. Why?

If your answer is that just because it was accelerating during a certain time period doesn't mean that it will continue to accelerate because the future is unknown, then that just begs the question of the assumption of a linear progression. Why not then just draw a plateau at the last data point?

The US Constitution doesn't require that the Census Bureau assume a linear rate of population growth and disregard evidence to the contrary. It requires that the bureau count the population and report on what they find, those actual, non-dictated-in-advance findings then being used.

schatten00777 said @ 11:31pm GMT on 30th May
Whether those assumptions are reasonable should be debated over, and criticized based on scientific evidence. But like I said, setting standards on the assumptions used to calculate the rates isn't all that unusual, and can have real benefits. And the US Constitution does set limits on how the census is to be conducted - see the Supreme Court decision in recent years on limiting estimation techniques.

Didel said @ 4:29am GMT on 31st May
In this particular case, the real reason this is a problem and is fucking stupid is because they've already had a scientific panel sit there and say, "according to our best estimates we predict it's going to probably be about a meter in 100 years."

And then the incredibly powerful outer banks developer lobbyists got together and managed to get the legislature to say, "nuh uh, we're not scientists so we're mandating it be 8 inches based on no fucking clue."

They did so many things wrong here. They took data from Wilmington and based their conclusions off that (which is quite a bit ways inland actually and not part of the barrier islands system) instead of much better information from Duck (which has a US Army Corp of Engineers station which has collected data for quite some time now).

I also heard one interesting thesis on this. NC has had been democratically controlled for about the past 100 years, this changing 2 years ago. The barrier islands of the state have always had greater representation and power in the legislature than either population or economic input would really dictate. And many of the big time democrat leaders of the NC legislature have come from the area, or have a lot of connections to the area. So the outer banks have always gotten lot of pork. In some ways, this could in part be a "fuck you" to the democratic establishment of the outer banks from the now controlling republican party.

But this is incredibly stupid of the legislature (which isn't surprising, the NC Republican party is just stupid.) But they'll probably get support from the Democrats too, because it's the democrats of the Outer Banks that are the monied interests in this case, money that comes from continued development, which means less regulations due to sea level rise.

mechanical contrivance said @ 11:06pm GMT on 30th May
Legislators have tried to dictate the value of pi, so why not this?

arteitle said @ 12:33am GMT on 31st May
They weren't really trying; in fact they didn't really know what they were doing.

mechanical contrivance said @ 1:07am GMT on 31st May
Of course they didn't know what they were doing. They're legislators.

antares said @ 11:17pm GMT on 30th May [Score:1 Funny]
There is virtually universal agreement among scientists that the sea will probably rise a good meter or more before the end of the century, wreaking havoc in low-lying coastal counties. So the members of the developers’ lobbying group NC-20 say the sea will rise only 8 inches, because … because … well, SHUT UP, that’s because why.

Makes perfect sense.

sanepride said @ 11:19pm GMT on 30th May
Well if this doesn't establish once and for all that global warming is a hoax I don't know what does.

incpenners said @ 1:57am GMT on 31st May
Finally, you've come to your senses.

sanepride said @ 2:15am GMT on 31st May [Score:2 Insightful]
Sure. Why should I listen to climatologists when I can get the truth from North Carolina bureaucrats.

backSLIDER said @ 2:34am GMT on 31st May
I see you've play "knifey forky" be for.

Ankylosaur said @ 2:48am GMT on 31st May
Don't forget celebrity divination. All science questions can be answered by the movements of members of the Black Eyed Peas.

Naruki said @ 3:42am GMT on 31st May
Eww. I don't want to know the future that badly.

Roulette1337 said @ 11:42pm GMT on 30th May
http://depressioncomix.tumblr.com/

Might as well put this here.

Apparently this is the Sexy Loser guy's new comic.

Warning: sad

lilmookieesquire said @ 12:17am GMT on 31st May
Nice to see Clay's been cheerier as of late!

Mad March Harris said @ 1:15am GMT on 31st May
Did his Thin H Line thing die out?

biblebeltdrunk said @ 4:26am GMT on 31st May
Wasn't this posted already? while on the topic he has a new version of the thin h line - thinhline.tumblr.com/, Ghastly ghastly's comic and clone manga have both had small updates as well, and ghastly got a blog.

mrklipp said @ 4:37am GMT on 31st May
I'm going to have to take issue with the term comic, as there is nothing comic about this.

These are drawings posted with depressing text. It's far closer to a cry for help than a comic.

Asscheeks Akimbo said @ 11:55pm GMT on 30th May [Score:5 Funny]

Nice.

mechanical contrivance said @ 1:08am GMT on 31st May
He's trying to start the reactor to save Mars.

azazel said @ 1:19am GMT on 31st May

sua_sponte said @ 4:49am GMT on 31st May
I think the entire state of North Carolina should be deeply, thoroughly and extravagantly ass-fucked with the massive, gnarled, horse-like cock of William Shatner. And then, after an extended session of extreme Shatnerian buggery, finishing with a copious explosion of man-chowder deep in to its lower colon, the entire state should get fucked again, in the face, this time by the entire offensive line of the Green Bay Packers. This should be followed by an entire hour of bare-ass face-sitting under the enormous, steaming muff of Rosie O'Donnell. Then three hours of continuous analingus on the entire male roster of World Wrestling Entertainment, all post-match to maximize the sweat quotient.

Then the really gay stuff starts.

Spock said @ 5:46am GMT on 1st Jun
It's painless and quick.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 12:48am GMT on 2nd Jun
Extrapolated linearly? Hahahahahahaha!

papango said @ 12:58am GMT on 2nd Jun
This is all very Canute of them.

I wonder what happens when the people who buy the ocean front property are nipples deep in non-legislature approved sea water. Will they be insured because insurers can't refuse when there is no 'evidence' the water will rise? Or will they not be covered because the water can't be rising so they have no claim? I forsee the insurance companies bending the legislature over the committee room table and reaming the money out of them when the water does rise and they have to pay out. If the developers don't get there first when the projects they've invested in are damaged.