RALEIGH, N.C., July 3 (Reuters) – Lawmakers in North Carolina, which has a long Atlantic Ocean coastline and vast areas of low-lying land, voted on Tuesday to ignore studies predicting a rapid rise in sea level due to climate change and postpone planning for the consequences.
Opponents of the measure said it was a case of legislators “putting our heads in the sand” to avoid acknowledging the possible effects of global warming.
Backed by real estate developers, the Republican-led General Assembly passed a law requiring that projected rates of sea level rise be calculated on historical trends and not include accelerated rates of increase.
North Carolina is among the state’s most vulnerable to sea level rise with its long coastline and thousands of square miles of low-lying land. A 2012 study by the U.S. Geological Survey says sea levels along the Atlantic Coast from North Carolina to Massachusetts are rising three to four times faster than the global average. Global sea level rise has been projected to rise two to three feet (61 to 91 centimetres) by the end of the 21st century, but in hot spots, the increase may be greater.
A panel of scientists that advises North Carolina’s Coastal Resources Commission, a state policy panel, said coastal communities should plan for about 39 inches (99 cm) of sea level rise by 2100 based on seven scientific studies.
That drew a backlash from a coastal economic development group called NC-20 that called it fake science. The group said making development take into account 39 inches of sea level rise could undermine the coastal economy, raise insurance costs and turn thousands of square miles of coastal property into flood plains that could not be developed.
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“This bill is basically like saying to your doctor, ‘Don’t do any tests on me, and if you do any tests and find something wrong, don’t tell me for four years,'” state Representative Deborah Ross, a Democrat, said. “By putting our heads in the sand literally, we are not helping property owners. We are hurting them. We are not giving them information they might need to protect their property. Ignorance is not bliss. It’s dangerous.”
The debate comes as the U.S. Geological Survey recently projected that rates are increasing up to four times faster between Cape Hatteras north to Boston.
Rep. Pat McElraft, a Republican real estate agent from Emerald Isle who pushed the bill, said the commission would now “use some real science” to evaluate the coast, saying some scientists have debunked global warming.
“You can believe whatever you want about global warming, but when you go to make planning policies here for our residents and protecting their property values and insurance rates … it’s a very serious thing to us on the coast,” she said.
Democratic lawmakers such as Raleigh’s Deborah Ross countered the argument, saying “ignorance is not bliss, it’s dangerous.”
“By putting our heads in the sand, literally, for four years,” she said. “We are not helping property owners. We are hurting them because we are not giving them information they may need to protect their property.”
Republican John Blust of Greensboro appeared indignant about being lectured on climate change, saying “I don’t know what the planet is going to be like in 100 years.”
“If you all don’t agree with our point of view, somehow you’re bad, somehow you’re ignorant … there is a constant almost intimidation factor going on,” he said.
Actually, what the NC Legislature declared is that actual scientific data should not be ignored when creating government regulations. The Left, typified by former ACLU lawyer Rep. Deborah Ross, wants no part of real scientific data. They want to let Climate Movement activists create regulations based on apocalyptic fantasies, without regard to what the actual scientific data shows.
Note that this watered-down but nevertheless useful reform passed in the NC Senate by a vote of 40-to-1.
Re: “…as the U.S. Geological Survey recently projected that rates are increasing up to four times faster between Cape Hatteras north to Boston.”
You should ask yourself, “faster than what?”
The answer is that the USGS/Sallenger study found that in the so-called “hotspot” of sea level rise, sea level is rising up to 4 times faster than the global average rate, which they say was…
“Since about 1990, sea-level rise … [globally] … was 0.6 – 1.0 millimeter per year.“
Does anyone recall the IPCC/NASA claim that sea level has been rising at 1.7 – 1.8 mm/year over the last century, and that it has been rising at 3 mm/year over the last 15 or 20 years? What do you call it when the global average rate of sea level rise goes from at least 1.7 mm/year down to 0.6 – 1.0 mm/year?
Now, let’s not always see the same hands.
Wow, some of those quotes exhibit some serious cognitive dissonance.
DB, scroll back up really slowly until you see some bright colours. That’s called a graph. Isn’t it pretty? Now, in the bottom right hand corner of the graph are some numbers. Could you read them out for me? Good boy, Dave. Now, what do you think 3.1 plus or minus 0.4mm/year actually means? And is that about 4 times faster than the 0.6-1.0 you mention?
A stitch in time saves 9. What these republican idiots have voted to do is pass on what will be the eponentially higher future costs of their current wilful ignorance.
Based on reading the actual paper, what the press release is trying to say is that if the the global rate of sea level rise before 1990 was x mm/year, then from 1990 to 2009 it was in the range x+0.6 to x+1.0 mm/year.
But in the Hotspot, if the rate of sea level rise before 1990 was y mm/year, then from 1990 to 2009 it was in the range y+2.0 to y+3.7 mm/year.
That change in the rate of rise is 3-4 times the global amount.
At the bottom of the press release that Dave linked to is another link that will take you to the original paper and its supplementary information. Reading it is helpful.
the way the paper was written confused a lot of journalists, so its no surprising that someone who is easily misled could ball it up.
Rather than dope it out and get it wrong, my answer is to ask someone smarter than myself what it all means.
one such smart person answered:
I figured it out, but those authors get no prizes for clarity. Nor
does the USGS press office for that matter.
The authors effectively measured the _acceleration_ of sea level rise,
but expressed it as a change in velocity (i.e. v(t2) – v(t1) =
delta-v) and coined the term “sea level rise difference” (SLRD) to
describe the change in sea level rise velocity at two specified dates
(e.g. over 60 years).
So what they really said was that the rate of sea level rise in the
northeastern US has accelerated 3-4 times faster than the rate of sea
level rise accelerated over the globe as a whole during the last 60
years..
Or to put it in human terms, the rate of sea level rise was estimated as:
NYC from 1950 to 1980: 2.50 mm / yr
NYC from 1980 to 2010: 4.45 mm / yr
Global from 1950 to 1980: 1.5 mm / yr
Global from 1980 to 2010: 2.1 mm / yr
Hence they calculate the NYC 60-yr SLRD as 1.95 mm / yr, and compare
it to a global 60-year SLRD of only 0.6 mm / yr.
Hence the sea level rise in New York (and more generally Northeastern
North America) is claimed to have accelerated much faster than the
rest of the globe.
If you followed that, congratulations. Much of the press coverage has
confused SLRD (a measure of acceleration) with sea level rise itself.
During the satellite era of sea level measurement (i.e. since 1993),
the rate of rise is indeed about 3.2 mm/yr.
Just another step in the Republican war against science. You have to hope it will eventually backfire against them. I can’t imagine the people of North Carolina like being laughing stocks (not to mention making foolish real estate development decisions).
The bill passed in the NC Senate on a 40-to-1 vote. There are not 40 Republicans in the NC Senate.
This was push-back, by both Republicans and Democrats, against the Climate Movement’s war against real science. The Climate Movement activists’ attempt to sabotage the already weak economy of coastal North Carolina by promulgating absurd regulations based on apocalyptic fantasies, without regard to what the actual scientific data shows, has backfired against them.
Whether it is push-back or caving into real estate developer pressure, the NC legislature is not using prudent risk mitigation measures.
One meter, 39in, sea level rise is not an apocalyptic fantasy. It was apparently based on 7 peer reviewed scientific studies.
You have your own ideas what the sea level situation will be, but you have your work cut out for you in order to overturn the current estimates.
Nope. It’s based entirely on Rahmstorf (2007), though they apparently didn’t understand the study they relied upon. Read the CRC’s 2010 Report.
Color me skeptical of your assessment on sea level rise literature, considering your previous displays of strong political and emotional aversion to climate change.
From the top of page 12 of the CRC’s 2010 Report:
It would appear that they consider 1 meter likely, hold Rahmstorf 2007 in high regard, and recommend planning for 1 meter as the estimate for policy and planning.
Or as Otter puts it in what you are responding to:
The CRC 2010 report:
http://tinyurl.com/6vatk9h
Earlier link (using href) busted by WordPress.
http://tinyurl.com/dabvcrc2010
Dave, maybe you should consider publishing your results in a peer reviewed journal, assuming you can put a damper on your ad hominem and invective, e.g., alarmist and absurd. Can you explain why the researchers who publish peer reviewed material in this area are consistently overestimating the rise in sea level? My apologies if I seem to put too much emphasis on peer review, but it does help to filter out the crackpots.
Well, in this case the Report to which I was replying was not peer-reviewed.
I did cite peer reviewed literature in my critique — and, unlike the authors of the Report, I actually understood the literature that I relied on.
DB, According to news reports, the bill didn’t pass your senate by 40-1 until it was amended by the House 68 to 46 to remove the requirement that planners use only linear estimates of future sea level rise. The compromise does give the coastal developers a breather. State agencies can’t consider accelerated sea level rise until 1 July 2016 after a “Commission and the Science Panel” submits a new comprehensive study of peer reviewed science by 31 March 2015.to consider “the full range of global, regional, and North Carolina-specific sea-level change data and hypotheses, including sea-level fall, no movement in sea level, deceleration of sea-level rise, and acceleration of sea-level rise.”
Did I get anything wrong?
Yes, the previous (stronger) version passed the Senate 35 to 12, but was amended in Conference Committee to the version that passed 40 to 1.
DB, Regardless of the legislative maneuvers, if Gov. Perdue signs the current version into law, will NC and/ or developers self insure as FEMA updates the National Flood Insurance Program to create more accurate floodplain maps and rate structures that will not subsidize new development in projected flood prone areas?
Trying to dissect most legislation is – tedious. The step before the conference committee compromise was reported. “On June 12, 2012, North Carolina’s Senate passed, by a vote of 34 to 11, a bill forbidding the use of sea level rise predictions which incorporate the expected impacts of climate change in the creation of any state or municipal policy. Though the state’s House of Representatives voted on and unanimously rejected House Bill 819, the bill’s supporting senators are considering enacting a moratorium to accomplish its intended result, and a revised version of the bill is pending.”
If the standard is to include HB 819’s entire legislative history, I pass. Before that all I can find is this database.
http://legiscan.com/gaits/view/307978
W/r/t insurance, Charles, from the inception of the Beach Plan in 1969 through FY 2011, Beach Plan policyholders have paid $2,187,652,210 in premiums and only incurred $783,834,995 in losses.
$2.2 Billion in premiums earned compared to $784 million in incurred losses over 41 years, and you’re worried that coastal property owners are being subsidized?
Thanks for the information about Beach Plan Dave. The participating insurance companies seem to be doing well – even through Irene. I noticed that NC now allows them to retain more of their annual surplus in reserve – a wise move. The federal equivalent is trying to get ahead of the flood plain game. The program’s insurance companies are running a deficit.
http://www.fema.gov/about/programs/nfip/index.shtm
Thanks for looking into it, Peter, instead of just being snarky like “uknowispeaksense.”
A few things you should know…
1) 0.6 mm/year is the global average long term sea level rise trend you get if you simply average the trends from the 159 tide stations in NOAA’s list. That’s probably where the USGS’s 0.6 mm/year figure comes from, though they probably didn’t use the exact same list of tide gauges.
2) 1.1 mm/year is the global average long term sea level rise trend you get if you take the median of those same 159 stations, or if you do a properly geographically-weighted average. (The simple average is dragged down by a cluster of northern European gauges which are affected by post-glacial rebound.) Something like that is probably where the USGS’s 1.0 mm/year high-end figure comes from.
3) The 1.7 – 1.8 figure is inflated by the addition of Peltier’s glacial isostatic adjustments, including a completely bogus 0.3 mm/year addition to compensate for hypothesized sinking of the deep ocean floor, and other computed adjustments (such as “an additional spatially [but not temporally!] uniform field” added “to represent changes in GMSL”).
4) The 3.0 or 3.2 mm/year figure is a very different number, representing satellite altimeter measurements over the open ocean. It should never be compared to coastal measurements from tide gauges; doing so is simply an error (though some commentators have used more colorful descriptions).
5) Unless you live in Lake Woebegone (where all the children are above average), it is safe to say that if there’s a “hotspot” where sea level is rising faster than the average, there must necessarily also be a “coldspot” where sea level is rising more slowly than the average, or falling. Indeed there is, but it is revealing of journalism’s sorry standards that a “hotspot” makes headlines, but “coldspots” never get mentioned at all.
6) It is well-established that there is a 60-year cyclical factor which affects sea level rise (among other things). See, for example, Jevrejeva, Moore, Grinsted & Woodworth (2008). So if you take a 30-year period and compare it to a 60-year period, you’ll see an illusory acceleration or eceleration, depending on your timing, because you’re comparing a 30-year half-cycle to a full 60-year cycle. It’s pretty elementary, but Sallenger apparently didn’t know that.
7) The obvious answer to my question would be that a drop from 1.7-3.2 down to 0.6-1.0 mm/year represents a sharp deceleration in the rate of sea level rise. But, in this case, the obvious answer isn’t really the right answer.
Although there is evidence of a small amount of deceleration in rate of sea level rise since the Roaring ’20s, it’s nowhere as much as you’d guess by comparing those numbers. The real reason for most of that apparent deceleration is that all those numbers are apples-to-oranges comparisons:
The 0.6-1.0 range represents real sea level data, as measured by coastal tide stations, and averaged.
The 1.7-1.8 range represents heavily adjusted data from coastal tide stations combined with computer models.
The 3.0-3.2 range represents a different kind of measurement entirely, from satellite altimeters, measuring the surface height of the open ocean, and then adjusted with computer models; there are severe quality issues with that data, as well.
If you compare apples to oranges, you can create the illusion of either acceleration or deceleration. Unfortunately, it is a very common error.
I’ll stop being snarky when people like you stop pretending you know what you’re talking about.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120312003232.htm
Greenland Ice Sheet May Melt Completely With 1.6 Degrees of Global Warming
Has anyone done a trend analysis for how much SLR projections have changed over time. James Hansen’s 5M by 2107 is looking better and better. (OK more and more on the mark; better is not really appropriate for a 5m rise)
We have changed forcing 60 times faster than anything in the paleo climatic record and we still believe changes will be slower. As science fills in more of the blanks, expect some more bad news.
If we prepare for a 5m ie 15 foot rise and it turns out to be less than that then we will be ready a little early. Whatever the rise over the next 100 years it will keep going. To do nothing, ensures a costly post event adaptation process.
“The Rising Sea” by Duke University professor emeritus Orrin Pilkey is a book I can highly recommend.
http://tinyurl.com/7dv8r8x
Dr. Pilkey spends a substantial part of the book discussing the unique situation of the beaches of North Carolina.
Further reading:
http://earthsky.org/earth/orrin-pilkey-interview
http://risingsea.net/ERL/NC.html
rabiddoomsayer asks, “Has anyone done a trend analysis for how much SLR projections have changed over time.”
Yes, actual sea level rise has consistently ended up being lower than projected by Climate Movement alarmists. Each IPCC Assessment Report has had a lower projection than the one before.
1. IPCC 1st Assessment Report (1990) “FAR” :
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_first_assessment_1990_wg1.shtml
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapter_09.pdf
“For the IPCC Business-as Usual Scenano … At the year 2070, the rise is 21-71 cm, with a best-estimate of 44 cm.”
2. IPCC 2nd Assessment Report (1995):
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1gFp6Ioo3aka3NsaFQ3YlE3XzA
“The ‘best estimate’ for IS92a is that sea level will rise by 49 cm by the year 2100, with a range of uncertainty of 20-86 cm. These projections of future sea level rise are lower than those presented in IPCC (1990).”
3. IPCC 3rd Assessment Report (2001):
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/
Figure 11.12 shows best estimate of at 2100 of +39 cm vs. 0 cm at 1990.
4. IPCC 4th Assessment Report (2007):
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-es-8-sea-level.html
“For an average model, the scenario spread in sea level rise is only 0.02 m by the middle of the century, and by the end of the century it is 0.15 m.”
Are you surprised?
Oops, sloppy, sorry. I need to read what I cut & paste. That’s
the “scenario spread,” not the rise, for AR4.
For AR4, the SLR range given across all scenarios is 0.18 – 0.59 m; the midpoint of that range is 38.5 cm. For scenario A1B, the midpoint is 34.5 cm. All those are for “2090–2099” as compared to “1980–1999.”
good lord – Dave, this may work at the local tea party meeting, but not here
What are you complaining about, Peter? Did you not realize that each IPCC Assessment Report has projected less SLR than the one before?
Or maybe you didn’t notice that was a reply to a comment that’s still awaiting moderation?
Are you playing dumb, or do you really not know the distinction that the AR4 made in its sea level projections?
hint: its in the vid
rabiddoomsayer asked, “…how much SLR projections have changed over time.”
I answered his question. The answer is that SLR projections have gone down, down, down.
Each IPCC Assessment Report to date has projected less sea level rise than the one that preceded it. The reason is that, despite ~ 2/3 century of furiously pumping up CO2 levels, mankind has yet to cause any measurable increase in the rate of sea level rise.
There are clearly non linear process at work, feedbacks that work together and critical points that are not always obvious. I am glad it is not my job to provide an accurate estimate. In such an environment a small underestimate in a single factor can have a huge effect on the end result.
Lets consider: The GIS is melting at an accelerating rate. The melt day anomalies are very much toward more melt days. The lubrication effect is not fully modeled. This year GIS albedo has reduced substantially. We have changed forcing much faster than prior to the melt-water pulses.
Now if we consider the Antarctic it appears that all SLR modeling is based on the continuation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current will continue as is. While I have no indication that this is not the case, if the current is significantly perturbed it will be a game changer for SLR. Another game changer would be any collapse of the GIS. Sea level rises could affect the underpinning of the WAIS.
I tend to arrgh when I see the atmospheric temperatures around the Arctic, but much smaller sea temperature rises are actually more critical. Water carries orders of magnitude more heat and the flows are complex three dimensional processes.
Do we realy know the upperbound.
Rest easy, rabiddoomsayer. One thing we do know is that Greenland was warmer 1000 years ago than it is today (proven by agricultural communities & trees), yet there was no catastrophic melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
Rest easy, I don’t think so. Add a Bond Event to the equation and it gets worse very quickly.
If by “worse” you mean colder, then, yes, a Bond Event would make the climate worse. But it’s unlikely to cause sea level to rise. It’s generally thought that a Bond Event would cause increased accumulation of snow and ice on land.
Dave Burton said:
“One thing we do know is that Greenland was warmer 1000 years ago than it is today (proven by agricultural communities & trees), yet there was no catastrophic melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet.”
I splutter: proven by what?
You expect me to accept that as proof:
Proven by actual written records (which ended circa 1400, when the LIA set in), by analysis of medieval garbage dumps, by fragments of timber, etc.
I like the youtube link, though. 🙂