Here is a link to the disappointing (because there is no juvenile humor) definition of the post title from Urban Dictionary. Here is what I am referring to:
Two years after coastal real-estate interests and Republican legislative leaders squelched a science panel’s warning that the Atlantic Ocean might climb more than three feet higher on North Carolina shores by 2100, a regulatory commission will start anew Thursday on its assignment to develop the state’s official sea-level forecast.
The Coastal Resources Commission, meeting in Atlantic Beach, will ask its volunteer group of geologists and coastal engineers to update their forecast by next March. Their timetable is dictated by a state law establishing a moratorium until July 2016 on any sea-level prediction that could be used as the basis for new state policies or regulations.
The 2012 law also ordered the commission to launch a parallel study weighing the environmental and economic costs and benefits that would come from any sea-level regulations – or the lack of regulations – in the future. This inquiry could provide an outlet for developers and others who warned of dire economic consequences two years ago, but it is not expected to blunt their drive to dilute the science panel membership and discredit its warning.
Most of the scientists who agreed in 2010 on a 39-inch forecast are still members of the panel, and they are not expected to change their minds. ...
[Rob Young, a Western Carolina University geologist] and the panel are in sync with a stack of warnings from the world’s leading science boards – and reinforced last week by 250 scientists and government officials who contributed to the 840-page National Climate Assessment – that the planet is warming and the seas are rising.
But many North Carolina political and business leaders hold to a contrarian view shared by some of Gov. Pat McCrory’s 2013 appointees to the Coastal Resources Commission, and by several people who have been nominated to take part in the new science panel forecast. They dispute arguments that human activity is warming the planet, and that the historically slow pace of sea-level rise will soon start to accelerate.
North Carolina’s 2012 law was lampooned by bloggers and TV comics who joked that legislators were trying to fight sea-level rise by making it illegal. But many state politicians are still skeptical. In a debate leading up to the recent Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat, all four participants scoffed at scientific warnings about climate change.Gorham said he wants to “let the scientists be scientists” and produce their forecast without having to worry about any economic impacts.
The scientific panel will be working with a different time horizon, 30 years instead of 100. This makes sense for the economics, since most benefits and costs are gone by then if a positive discount rate is used. But, it makes little sense in terms of the geology. Unless one just doesn't care or want to know what the scientists think.
Also, I haven't seen any news about the benefit-cost analysis panel. It will be interesting to see how that one looks.
