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North Carolina is no stranger to the “if you dislike it then you should have made a law against it” model of legislation, but this is extreme: The state General Assembly’s Replacement House Bill 819 would rule that scientists are not allowed to accurately predict sea-level rise. By all legal calculations, the sea level will now rise eight inches by the end of the century. Sure, so far models have predicted an increase of more than three feet, but if they keep that shit up, they’re going to JAIL.
OK, there’s not really a prison sentence attached to this proposed rule, but that doesn’t stop it from being crazeballs. See, actual sea-level rise is nonlinear, because there’s feedback — the warmer it gets, the more the water volume expands, and the more stuff melts, and the more it expands, etc. That’s how most scientific models arrive at their predictions, because that is how physics works. But an increase that big is extremely inconvenient for a state with a beach-based tourist trade. So North Carolina’s solution is simple: Change how physics works, or at least change how people do physics.
Accordingly, this bill mandates that models use a linear increase — a consistent amount of change every year, based on historical data. This will lead to predictions that are much less catastrophic, and much more reassuring for people building resorts in the Outer Banks. The predictions will also be flat-out wrong, but that’s nothing new for North Carolina.
http://grist.org/list/north-carolina-tries-to-outlaw-sea-level-rise/?fb_ref=fbrw
OK, there’s not really a prison sentence attached to this proposed rule, but that doesn’t stop it from being crazeballs. See, actual sea-level rise is nonlinear, because there’s feedback — the warmer it gets, the more the water volume expands, and the more stuff melts, and the more it expands, etc. That’s how most scientific models arrive at their predictions, because that is how physics works. But an increase that big is extremely inconvenient for a state with a beach-based tourist trade. So North Carolina’s solution is simple: Change how physics works, or at least change how people do physics.
Accordingly, this bill mandates that models use a linear increase — a consistent amount of change every year, based on historical data. This will lead to predictions that are much less catastrophic, and much more reassuring for people building resorts in the Outer Banks. The predictions will also be flat-out wrong, but that’s nothing new for North Carolina.
http://grist.org/list/north-carolina-tries-to-outlaw-sea-level-rise/?fb_ref=fbrw
