Luckily for the state of North Carolina, the current legislature has the willingness and ability to ban social science as well:
Bloggers and TV comics have ridiculed it, and now state legislators will get their first chance Thursday to debate unusual legislation that would put tight restrictions on how state and local agencies cope with rising sea levels.The Senate Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Committee will air the proposal, which was drafted by Republicans in response to controversy over a state-appointed science panel’s warning that a rise of one meter (39 inches) is likely by the end of this century. Coastal economic development interests protested that the figure was much too high, and they persuaded the state Coastal Resources Commission to reject the panel’s findings.
According to draft legislation circulated by Republican legislators in the past few weeks, the coastal commission would be the sole agency empowered to calculate the expected sea-level rise for state and local agencies and institutions. The legislation would dictate to the commission’s scientists what they could – and could not – consider as they make their forecasts.
Sea-level predictions must be based only on straight-line projections from historical data, the legislation says, and “shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise.” ...
Coastal geologist Stan Riggs of Eastern Carolina University, who served on the panel that made the one-meter forecast, called the legislation a “terrible” effort to suppress science and public education.
Here is the abstract from some economic research that would be suppressed since the sea level rise forecasts are made by scientists:
This study estimates the impact of sea-level rise on coastal real estate in North Carolina using a unique integration of geospatial and hedonic property data. With rates of sea-level rise approximately double the global average, North Carolina has one of the most vulnerable coastlines in the United States. A range of modest sea-level rise scenarios based on the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report projections (2007) are considered for four counties of North Carolina—New Hanover, Dare, Carteret, and Bertie—which represent a cross-section of the state's coastline in geographical distribution and economic development. High-resolution topographic LIDAR (light detection and ranging) data are used to provide accurate inundation maps for the properties that will be at risk under six different sea-level rise scenarios. A simulation approach based on spatial hedonic models is used to provide consistent estimates of the property value losses. Considering just four coastal counties in North Carolina, the value of residential property loss without discounting in 2030 (2080) is estimated to be about $179 ($526) million for the mid-range sea-level rise scenarios. Low-lying and heavily developed areas in the northern coastline are comparatively more vulnerable to the effect of sea-level rise than the other areas.
Here is Colbert's take:
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| The Word - Sink or Swim | ||||
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