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A Senate committee on Thursday signed off on a bill limiting the ability of the state to plan for potential sea-level rise, calling it a "common sense" approach that would prevent negative economic consequences along the coast.
The measure would prohibit state agencies from using projections of accelerated sea-level rise – based on global warming and the melting of polar ice caps – in drafting coastal development rules, and instead require that they use only historical sea-level-rise data.
I think the legislature would benefit from the lesson of Cnut the Great.
While most of the graphs on that site show it's rising in most places some are going down, even to the extreme:
Here's The Battery NY which probably has a long timeline, any graph on this site will show a steady rise or steady decline:
Here's the deviation from the mean using 50 year overlapping intervals.
Quote:
Linear mean sea level trends were calculated in overlapping 50-year increments for stations with sufficient historical data. The variability of each 50-year trend, with 95% confidence interval, is plotted against the mid-year of each 50-year period. The solid horizontal line represents the linear mean sea level trend using the entire period of record.
Last edited by thecoalman; 06-13-2012 at 09:00 AM..
As more data are collected at water level stations, the linear mean sea level trends can be recalculated each year. The figure compares linear mean sea level trends and 95% confidence intervals calculated with data beginning from a common year and ending in each year since 2006. The values do not indicate the trend in each year, but the trend of the entire data period up to that year.
The so called "science panel" was ignoring historical data and on top of that, their "report" on the rise was audited showing numerous errors and heavy weight on speculation without any validation. Add in the fact that one of the panel members said there were a few activist members on it who were throwing their weight around to push for a given conclusion and agenda and you see another case of political motives attempting to drive conclusions.
This was a good move as it is forcing them to actually practice science. It never made any sense for them to ignore historical data and use models as validating evidence, especially when you consider the success rate of models.
You don't instate polices based on guessing machines and that is exactly what they were doing. As I mentioned, the panels report was audited and it was found to be highly speculative without any scientific support (a model is not a support, it is a guess).
This now forces them to validate their position by using historical data.
I encourage as much coastal development as possible so long as the government is not involved in insuring the properties. I consider the expensive ticky-tacky infesting our ocean shores as our first protection against the Tsunami created by land slides in the Azores. With enough development the Outer Banks will make an ideal breakwater.
I encourage as much coastal development as possible so long as the government is not involved in insuring the properties. I consider the expensive ticky-tacky infesting our ocean shores as our first protection against the Tsunami created by land slides in the Azores. With enough development the Outer Banks will make an ideal breakwater.
That is neat and all, but the main problem with this issue was concerning the political activism driving policy over proper scientific process. The council was pushing out pseudo-science as if it we fact when all of their support was based on nothing more than weak correlations, poor application of methods, and an entire reliance on models that have never been verified and validated to their projections.
Even when the errors in their study were pointed out, they ignored it. They revised their study when the questions began to arise concerning its flaws, yet they didn't deal with any of the issues that were brought up concerning it. It was a classic case of activism driving policy and thankfully, cooler heads prevailed providing the proper evidence to show their folly.
All of this would have been a non-issue if the panel would have practiced proper scientific process, yet doing such would not lead to the conclusions they wanted, hence the pseudo-science. It is all too common of a problem these days.
Expect more communities to start implementing such requirements. Political activism has been hiding too long under the illusion of science.
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