Political satirist Stephen Colbert's solution to unfavourable climate science is simple: "If your science gives you a result that you don't like, pass a law saying that the result is illegal. Problem solved."
Legislators in North Carolina are apparently of the same mindset. When a state-appointed commission announced that North Carolinians could expect 39 inches of sea-level rise by 2100, the Senate responded with a bill that legally prevents the Division of Coastal Management from using the climate model that forecasts fast-rising sea levels. Instead, the legislators would like to see coastal management use only a linear model, which predicts a mere 8-inch rise by the same year.
The 8-inch model, based solely on historical records from the last 100 years, flies in the face of modern climate science. Sea level rise is due to a combination of climate-driven factors: warmer temperatures cause ocean water to expand, and rising temperatures are melting the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps. The combined feedback makes for exponential ? not linear ? growth. Yet the North Carolina bill states: "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."
"This is unprecedented," says Orrin Pilkey, professor emeritus of geology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. "It's the first time a law has dictated the shape of a curve."
NC-20, the group behind the bill, has argued that incorporating the 39-inch predictions would be an enormous economic burden on coastal communities. "The legislature has declined to face the problem of what we're going to do about it, and instead has attacked the science," contends Pilkey.
Though the bill passed the Senate by 34 votes against 11 and seems poised to make a smooth run through the House, Pilkey and other climate scientists are hoping that the governor will veto it.
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