NC sea level rise report about to be issued. State panel still clinging to gospel of Gore.
The drive-bys tell us that a state panel is about to release its forecasted projections on the rise of the sea level on the North Carolina coast. This report will likely be a key factor in developing regulations governing property insurance and development along the coast. North Carolina-based scientist John Droz — a leading critic of the environmentalist left — says the state panel is still relying on the leftist sources that got its first report rejected by the General Assembly:
[…] I attended yesterday’s (12/15/14) New Bern meeting of the CRC advisory Panel, where they primarily discussed the second draft of their 2015 NC SLR Report.
Dr. Overton again ran a punctual and professional meeting. A few of us who have been following this closely received the draft version of the Report a few days ago, and we shortly thereafter submitted our written comments to the Panel. They were not discussed yesterday, but a variety of other tweaks by Panel members were. One disconcerting point was that some Panel members wanted the Report text to make clearer that this document was intended to be the basis for coastal governmental policies…
After a few hours of discussion, the Panel committed to have an updated draft version (#3) of their 2015 SLR Report ready for public review, on Thursday, December 18th. The next Panel meeting is tentatively scheduled for January 26th. Dave Burton ended yesterday’s meeting with some excellent observations. Please carefully read what he said, as his perspective is what is missing from the Panel.
There is one major over-riding problematic issue here, so let me try again to make this clear…
I found the version #2 draft of the SLR Report to be organized and grammatically well-written. Additionally it did a reasonably good job of making a technical matter understandable to the public — no small feat.
On the other hand, a well-established principle in the construction industry is that a structure’s functionality is limited by the quality of its foundation.
The same applies to Science: the accuracy of any Scientific Assessment is directly dependent on the validity of the assumptions made.
In the case of the CRC’s advisory Panel 2015 SLR Report, the underlying assumption made is that the IPCC is the gold standard for SLR information. Their draft Report is gushingly giddy about the IPCC, all but asserting that it is an unimpeachable source. In fact the Panel is so enamored by the IPCC’s irrefutability that they don’t bother to seriously discuss a single differing source!
This one-sidedness was a fatal flaw in the original (2010) SLR report, and it seems that the Panel has yet to appreciate the significance of that failing. Deference to a sole source is also contrary to the instructions the Panel was given regarding their SLR report: “to conduct a
comprehensive review of scientific literature”. Hopefully the Panel is not abdicating its charge by saying that someone else has done that for them — if so, then why do we need them?
For those keeping score at home, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a UN-backed operation that is pushing the radical left’s environmental positions worldwide.
The uncritical endorsement of the IPCC also has another major problem: it runs contrary to the Panel’s own prior position!
When the Panel considered the IPCC’s earlier AR1, AR2, and AR3 reports on SLR, they evidently felt that the IPCC and their legion of experts were inadequate — as none of those works warranted even a single mention in either of the Panel’s reports.
And in 2010, when the first NC SLR Report was being written, the Panel looked at the IPCC’s latest report (AR4), and summarily
dismissed the conclusions of all the “thousands of scientists from all over the world” as too “conservative.” According to the Panel, these “scientifically vetted” SLR submissions went through “multiple stages of review” supposedly insuring a “comprehensive, objective and transparent SLR assessment.” Yet the fruit of all that work was unappetizing to the Panel!In the 2010 Report, in response to the IPCC’s unsatisfactory effort, the Panel promoted radical researcher Rahmstorf — because they found his unsubstantiated speculations to be “more plausible” than those of the now idolized IPCC SLR wizards. Hmmm…
Droz is referring to German scientist Stefan Rahmstorf, one of the political “patron saints” of the AlGore-ist environmental left. MORE:
AR4 and AR5 were written by the same pool of experts, using basically the same procedure — so how is it that AR4 is unacceptable and AR5 is unquestionably right??? One does not have to have a degree in oceanography or climatology to see the contradiction here.
The solution to this self-created conundrum is for the Panel to identify the IPCC as one of several sources of useful information that should be considered. Any genuine Scientific Assessment includes an open-minded mentality, that is anxious to comprehensively and objectively present all perspectives of the matter at hand. That scientificness was missing from the 2010 Report, and the 2015 Report unfortunately seems headed in the same direction.
As far as the numbers go, it seems that a more reasonable range for NC SLR over the next 30 years would be the linear extrapolation of tidal gauges on one end, with the IPCC’s 2.6 scenario on the other.
The fundamental point is that pre-deciding that the IPCC is infallible is not Scientific, is not in the interest of NC citizens, is in conflict with the instructions the Panel was given, and is contrary to the Panel’s own prior position.[…]
A number of things make this little drama interesting. If things stand as they are, this report will provide a basis for jacking up insurance rates along the coast and restricting the rights of property owners in that region. Basing this report on the positions of the IPCC and people like Rahmsdorf will give the environmental left a HUGE win in North Carolina.
Also,FWIW, the head of the Coastal Resources Commission — Frank Gorham — is driving this whole process. He is an appointee of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.
Whether or not you agree with the overwhelming scientific evidence that the climate is changing and how much of that is human influenced, an honest person would see in the data that sea levels are rising. Just because the Left AND the Right throw their spin on the issue does not mean that our planning should ignore the impacts of rising sea level (and therefore storm surges). If property owners on the coast are going to get hit harder by these factors then the insurance companies will either raise the rates on them or else on all of us. The quarter acre landowner in the piedmont will be paying higher premiums to cover those multi-million dollar estates on the coast when they are consumed by the Atlantic.
The whole theory of global warming is based on computer models, a technique that can be manipulated to show any result the creator wants. One of the top global warmist scientists got caught manipulating data to create the so-called hockey stick chart that was once all the rage of the warmists. And then there are the Climategate emails which show lots of plotting to manipulate data and a frenzy to ”hide the decline”. These, and the refusal to debate are not the marks of science. They are the marks of ideological movement.
The immediate past President of the Czech Republic, Dr. Vaclav Klaus summed up the global warmists as ”a budding totalitarian ideology that is the greatest threat to freedom, democracy, and prosperity in the world today”. The face of this totalitarian ideology in North Carolina is Frank Gore-ham, who appointed these ideological hacks to the Sea Rise Panel. Before moving to North Carolina, Frank Gore-ham organized and served as an officer of the main environmental left organization in his home state of New Mexico. Did the McCrory team not vet this guy or do they agree with environmental extremist?
Gore-ham refused to balance the Sea Rise panel, as the General Assembly demanded. With hacks like Gore-ham in the drivers seat, maybe the General Assembly needs to reform the CRC.
Facts are funny things. They often refute the theories of the ideologues concocted by manipulated computer models. That is why any objective study should be based on facts not theories.
When it comes to ”sea level rise”, here is a good example of how facts refute theories, as told by a leading British newspaper:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/tuvalu/7799503/Pacific-islands-growing-not-shrinking-due-to-climate-change.html
The Al Gore’s of the world will not be happy until they are charging us a Carbon Tax so they can line their pockets just like the bankers have done with their bogus derivatives. Some indidviduals are afraid of working for a living unless they are screwing the middle and low income individuals. As a former high school science teacher the earth’s weather has always been cyclyble. If the HAARP system manned by mad scientists would leave Mother Nature alone we wouldn’t have as much death and destruction around the world from fabricated storms.
Don’t forget the UN and its Chicken Little scare stories about climate, like this one, as reported by a leading German news magazine:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/feared-migration-hasn-t-happened-un-embarrassed-by-forecast-on-climate-refugees-a-757713.html
The UN is trying to grow its power, and scaring people is one of their tactics to do so. One has to take anything coming out of the UN with a grain of salt.