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Rising sea levels in North Carolina matter.
The Bush/Cheney White House had a remarkable way of dealing with discouraging news: when government reports would point to a serious problem, officials would simply eliminate the reports. Unfortunately, Republicans in North Carolina have adopted the same strategy when dealing with the climate crisis.
In 2005, for example, after a government report showed an increase in terrorism around the world, the administration announced it would stop publishing an annual count of international terrorist attacks. After the Bureau of Labor Statistics uncovered discouraging data about factory closings in the U.S., the administration announced it would stop publishing information about factory closings. When a report showed Washington shortchanging states, Bush's OMB discontinued the report. When Bush's Department of Education found that charter schools were underperforming, the administration said it would sharply cut back on the information it collects about charter schools.
Solving problems is hard. Deliberate ignorance is easy. Just ask GOP officials in North Carolina.
Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are circulating a bill which would limit their state agencies' ability to calculate sea-rise levels, a proposal that one member of the state's Coastal Resources Commission science panel has termed "bad science."
The bill has not yet been introduced, but the language in the version being circulated would make the Division of Coastal Management the only state agency allowed to produce sea-level rise rates, and only at the request of the Coastal Resources Commission, and then only under the following conditions:
"These rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time period following the year 1900. Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise."
As Eric Lach added, "In other words, instead of taking into account global warming to predict higher seas, as expected by most scientists, the bill would have the state rely only on the historical record."
As practical matter, this would, Western Carolina University geology professor Rob Young explained, run counter to the findings of the National Academy of Sciences and "every major science organization on the globe."
What North Carolinians don't know can't hurt them, right? If the data is discouraging, why act when the data can be eliminated?
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Put fingers in ears, and shout, "LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
(Because that always worked so well on the playground.)
Science bad.
Ignorance isn't bliss, and in this case it's only harming the residents. When did willful ignorance become a "family value"?
Have you read Charlie Pierce's Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free (published a few years ago now)? I instantly regarded it as a classic. From the "book description" at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Idiot-America-Stupidity-Became-Virtue/dp/0767926145
I highly recommend it to anyone who asks your question...
Thanks for the tip, I'll look into it. But whatever happened to "common sense" - I guess it died an unnatural death?
"but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise.", sooo if that is the case you are to not publish the truth? how can a law tell you to lie?
"...can a law tell you to lie?"
Rape-Public-Con-Men clearly think so. Consider the law passed in Kansas, and similar laws proposed (and, by now, maybe also passed?) by those know-nothing knuckleheads in Indiana, New Hampshire, etc., which require doctors to lie to their patients, e.g. to assert links between abortion and breast cancer, notwithstanding substantial evidence showing otherwise.
Better not get in the way of wealthy North Carolina land developers from building homes that could reasonably be underwater or at least dangerously close to flood levels in the future, noooo.
It is a good thing Noah did not live in North Carolina.
Are these clowns (no insult to real clowns intended) going to be eligible for Federal Flood Insurance?
Of course, to be true to their Confederate Principles, they should refuse Federal Flood Insurance, and only buy State Flood Insurance. I wonder how many do that?
i would look to the insurance industry to abate development. they are the one's who will be holding the bag. already they ceased development in nc/sc by refusing or reneging on policies. even my state farm agent can't insure his home from flood damage :)
Heads in the sand? I suspect a different (and more scatological) location.
Oh well. Even if this law somehow gets passed (and Rape-Public-Con-Men don't seem to care if people are openly laughing at them, really hard), it would only apply to state agencies, right? Presumably, other institutions, e.g. educational centers, could still work with reality. Any attempt to impose such restrictions on them would seem to run, er, head-long, into the First Amendment.
I'm trying to figure out how the picture relates to NC, given that it's (I think) a pic of Charleston, SC. (Nit-picky, I know)
Nope, that's Wilmington, NC.
Assuming they had any sense of honor, something often claimed by many Southerner, I would expect the legislators from NC to refuse any federal funding that comes from any division that uses science to determing necessity. No aid from NOAA, no military assistance, no help in controlling disease, etc. Certainly they wouldn't want to be hypocrites, would they?
I am hoping that the ridicule shown these people will wake them up. But that's not the way to bet.
Nothing like keeping Americans in the dark. Why do people think this is good to keep so many secrets? We know Thomas Jefferson was a staunch advocate for an informed electorate.
Thomas Jefferson
- More quotations on: [Education]
Whenever people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, quoted in The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations
As for religion:
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
http://www.nobeliefs.com/jefferson.htm
rachel in a recent commercial of yours i saw you talking about the rich and millions donated to superpacs etc. and how one or two peoples can control election outcomes. do you mean like seiu leaders or george soros ? or hollywood elitists? or bill ayers, or the rev. wright? or what is your point? i thought you were on the democrats side? this is not helping the rhetoric from the opposite sides that you so self righteously proclaim how the horse hockey doesn't help does it? and how people need to stop talking the bull ^%&^^%$#? when cleaning start with your own house maybe? demo's have plenty of money and use it to influence peddle all day every day so don't show your holy halo so often miss goodie shoes.
Wow! Just Wow What a comment . Is that you Steve Doocy ?
"High-five" Sick'n'effin! I think "Steve's" busted! LOL
Steve, you seem like kind of a dolt. You know, a dullard.
Once again people fail to realize how effective writing can strengthen your argument. In Steve's case the opposite is also true.
Maybe we can convince the supporters of this bill to pass a measure to outlaw gravity, and then to jump off a tall building.
As we know, ignorance is always a great idea. The history of the world is that progress has always been accomplished through stupidity and heads-in-the-sand. It hasn't?? Better not report that!
Trofim Lysenko would be proud of today's GOP.
Since when are fundamentalist religious nutjobs the arbiters of what is or isn't good science? They're the flat-earth society, indeed. Think the world is round? Careful, you might get burned at the steak.
People need to investigate who is really behind this bill. Is this about land developers? Insurance companies? I would bet there's more to it than just propogating fundamentalist bad science.
I see an image of a future governor rejoicing to Carolinians that "this makes the ocean more easily accessible to from Charlotte. Look I can see it from here!"
If the people are stupid enough to buy into the religous rights "don't think, we'll do your thinking for you" agenda, they deserve the result. Just don't ask me to pay for it.
They do the same thing with their Dr.s They want to perpetuate lies of Medicine so they take their licenses for treating the truth, close down their clinics, and leave the pts. seeking real treatment in some other state. NC is LOSERS for sucking up to the lies to protect profits instead of Helping the people. Thank God we had a President who was smart enuf to get US patent relief so everyone can study the lies...NC for sure is NOT.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yOno_2m_8LY
NC has destroyed many doctors fighting for the truth...Say thanks for keeping us paying in SS for the next 299yrs. to take care of them all instead of fixing them.