Dr Jeff Masters is offended: North Carolina ignores science in sea level planning

An interesting political battle is underway in North Carolina on how to plan for 21st century sea level rise, newsobserver.com reports.Sea level rise scientists commonly cite one meter (3.3 feet) as the expected global sea level rise by 2100, and more than a dozen science panels from coastal states, including a state-appointed science panel in North Carolina, agree. However, a coastal economic development group called NC-20, named for the 20 coastal counties in North Carolina, attacked the report, saying the science was flawed. NC-20 says the state should rely only on historical trends of sea level rise, and not plan for a future where sea level rise might accelerate. North Carolina should plan for only 8 inches of rise by 2100, based on the historical trend in Wilmington, NC, the group says. Republican state legislators introduced a bill that follows this logic, requiring the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission to make development plans assuming sea level rise will not accelerate. On Thursday, a state senate committee signed off on the bill, sending it to the full Senate. NC-20 also successfully made an “intense push” to get the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management, which is using a $5 million federal grant to analyze the impact of rising water, to lower its worst-case sea level rise scenario from 1 meter (39 inches) to 15 inches by 2100.

The man puts up all of the requisite graphs to show why what the legislature is doing is brain-dead, but doesn’t grasp that none of that will change the minds of people whose political survival is dependent on being ignorant.

The best hope for avoiding total disaster is that the people who buy in these developments raise hell after they discover that they can’t get flood insurance. The flood insurance program is for people who “might” be flooded, not for those who will certainly be under water.

The Fraudster-in-Chief doesn’t give up once he gets a bad idea. The problem with ‘running government like a business’ is that you end up with a CEO like Ken Lay for a governor.

The Miami Herald documents the atrocity:

Gov. Rick Scott and the Obama administration traded legal barbs and counteraccusations Monday as each side announced it would sue the other over Florida’s controversial noncitizen voter purge.

Scott’s chief elections official sued first, filing a federal lawsuit in Washington that accused the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of unlawfully refusing Florida access to a federal database that could help the state spot and remove noncitizens from the voter rolls.
…

Moments after the state filed suit, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas E. Perez roared back in a sharply worded five-page letter from the U.S. Department of Justice, which ordered the state two weeks ago to stop the purge because it could violate two federal voting laws.

The state’s program is too “faulty” ” and comes too close to election time to not endanger the voting rights of thousands of lawful U.S. citizens, Perez wrote. He said Florida has repeatedly ignored Homeland Security’s warning that the department’s database, known as SAVE, isn’t designed for the noncitizen hunt on which Florida embarked.

“The significant problems you are encountering in administering this new program are of your own creation,” Perez wrote.

While the reporter is attempting to be ‘fair and balanced’, the reality is that there is no ‘silver bullet’ for purging a voters list. There are 67 counties in the state, and each of them is headed by an elected Supervisor of Elections, who has great latitude in how they run the system in their county. There is no one, uniform model for voter lists which aren’t even on computers in the less populated counties.

The state doesn’t seem to understand that the DHS data base was not designed for the purpose that the state wants it to perform, and DHS certainly isn’t going to put any effort into a ‘special request’ unless it is accompanied by the money to pay for it.

More taxpayer money wasted on lawyers.