North Carolina Chose to Ignore Its Dangerous Sea Levels Years Before Hurricane Florence Hit

Ah long before gratuitous gerrymandering and policing public bathrooms North Carolina's legislature ordered policy makers and developers from "using up-to-date climate science to plan for rising sea levels on the state’s coast". They further ordered that only 30 years of projections be used with the massaged numbers instead of 100 years to adequately project were areas could be developed. They essentially passed legislature denying the role of rising sea levels

But in North Carolina, lawmakers chose to ignore the threats. A panel of scientists on the state Coastal Resources Commission issued a dire warning in March 2010, estimating that the sea levels along the state’s coast would rise 39 inches over the next century. Conservative lawmakers and business interest groups feared the report would hurt lucrative real estate development on the state’s coast and sought to undermine it. A lobbying group committed to economic development on the coast accused the panel of “pulling data out of their hip pocket.”
Conservative state Rep. Pat McElraft, whose top campaign contributors were the North Carolina Association of Realtors and the North Carolina Home Builders’ Association, drafted a bill in response that rejected the panel’s predictions.www.wired.com...

You really should expect more from a legislature to be frank. its one thing to seek more information, but its quite another to simply ignore relevant data and substitute it with wishful thinking. While the US as a whole will shoulder the financial burden of a future rebuild its the people of NC that will pay perhaps an ultimate price for assuming the state would look out for its citizens interest and not greedy developers who will not even be around when things go south

a reply to: FredT

So when are these sea levels suppose to rise?

a reply to: Whatthedoctorordered


It already has. It is and it will.


Global sea level has risen by about 8 inches since reliable record keeping began in 1880. It is projected to rise another 1 to 4 feet by 2100.

nca2014.globalchange.gov...

originally posted by: Whatthedoctorordered
a reply to: FredT

So when are these sea levels suppose to rise?

It has been and it seems to be accelerating.

Global sea level has been rising over the past century, and the rate has increased in recent decades. In 2014, global sea level was 2.6 inches above the 1993 average—the highest annual average in the satellite record (1993-present). Sea level continues to rise at a rate of about one-eighth of an inch per year. oceanservice.noaa.gov...

Hmmmm.... so what's your point. We will be fine. a few will float away, the 'surplus population', Taco Bell will reopen and I will get three crispy taco's and a small drink.

Meanwhile in the stores they are fighting over water and bread, ha ha ha.. We'll be fine inland.

Now I'm gonna go watch Netflix while there's power.

originally posted by: TerryMcGuire
a reply to: Whatthedoctorordered


It already has. It is and it will.


Global sea level has risen by about 8 inches since reliable record keeping began in 1880. It is projected to rise another 1 to 4 feet by 2100.

nca2014.globalchange.gov...

Reliable record keeping from 1880?
Like, when electricity was invented?

I wonder how many "corrections" have been made to those records over the years to "compensate for improvements in instrumentation"?

You realize that the crust of the north American continent is still springing back from the last major ice age, yeah?
To claim we had accurate measurements of sea levels without comparing them to non stationary points before we could even accurately map distance compensated for elevation seems a bit cocky.

a reply to: an325nt

How about this statistic from Fred''s last post



In 2014, global sea level was 2.6 inches above the 1993 average—the highest annual average in the satellite record (1993-present). Sea level continues to rise at a rate of about one-eighth of an inch per year.

Plenty of electricity in 1993 allowing for much more reliable measurements.

originally posted by: FredT


You really should expect more from a legislature to be frank. its one thing to seek more information, but its quite another to simply ignore relevant data and substitute it with wishful thinking. While the US as a whole will shoulder the financial burden of a future rebuild its the people of NC that will pay perhaps an ultimate price for assuming the state would look out for its citizens interest and not greedy developers who will not even be around when things go south

Greed drives the USA, writes the bills, and quiets the politicians. It's a cycle that may never be broken, unless ethics, and logical commonsense rule, but I'm not holding my breath.

You words are acknowledged and understood by a small ethical majority.

originally posted by: TerryMcGuire
a reply to: Whatthedoctorordered


It already has. It is and it will.


Global sea level has risen by about 8 inches since reliable record keeping began in 1880. It is projected to rise another 1 to 4 feet by 2100.

nca2014.globalchange.gov...

~sigh~

The sea levels have been rising for the last 10,000 years.

I'm pretty sure that AGW doesn't have much to do with that.



Also, sea buoys have not shown an increase in sea levels for 50 years.

Now, NASA decided to add a certain amount of yearly sea level rise to their computer model, just because.

However, there is no actual proof that they are rising at all, except for a computer model.

Which means, I guess, since I can fly in a video game I'm currently playing that I should be able to in reality. And CGI is now real!

If one thing more than any other is used to justify proposals that the world must spend tens of trillions of dollars on combating global warming, it is the belief that we face a disastrous rise in sea levels. The Antarctic and Greenland ice caps will melt, we are told, warming oceans will expand, and the result will be catastrophe.

Although the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only predicts a sea level rise of 59cm (17 inches) by 2100, Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth went much further, talking of 20 feet, and showing computer graphics of cities such as Shanghai and San Francisco half under water. We all know the graphic showing central London in similar plight. As for tiny island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, as Prince Charles likes to tell us and the Archbishop of Canterbury was again parroting last week, they are due to vanish.

But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

Despite fluctuations down as well as up, “the sea is not rising,” he says. “It hasn’t risen in 50 years.” If there is any rise this century it will “not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm”. And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about.

The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on “going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world”.

Please adjust your viewpoint to reflect actual science.

Thanks in advance!

a reply to: Lumenari
Thank you for the assistance in answering the earlier poster who asked when the sea levels were going to start rising.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Sooooo....is it only rising where they measured it?
Or is it only rising in certain places?
Because it certainly isn't world wide...
Kind of like the only place the mean temperature shows any significant rise happens at recording stations in urban heat sinks or directly in front of building exhausts...

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

All he/she did was assist in showing that your factual data is pretty much junk science.
It's entirely based on computer models that have been adjusted more than my granny's bra...and the more adjustments thay make the more incorrect it turns out.

a reply to: Lumenari

Thanks for pointing that out. Mankind overestimates our significance in most areas of existence.

a reply to: FredT

Only thanks to numerical voodoo, not because of anything rooted in reality of physical science.

I work with tides as an engineer. I've done a lot of coastal work and, what the public is told to believe is not backed up by any actual data. If sea levels were getting higher, Mean High High Water elevations, which EVERY coastal project is federally mandated to design around, even in coastal, non tidally influenced wetlands, would show that. The numbers don't show that.
tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov...
tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov...

tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov...
tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov...

Anchorage, Alaska, DOES show a higher sea level, but it's a result of all of our datums drastically changing following the 64 earthquake. We had multiple coastal areas where the ground elevation dropped 15-20 feet. Aside from datum changes, however, the sea isn't rising. Banks are eroding... for sure, but a large part of that is thanks to the environmentalists demanding the old junker riprap and revetments made from dumping cast off concrete, metal, and ceramic debris be removed in many areas. It's also thanks to groups protesting/blocking restoration of beachfront using sea walls and man made tide breaks.

So no, North Carolina's didn't ignore anything valid about the sea levels... all they did was have enough balls to build along a coastline which has been hit by hurricanes since time began.

originally posted by: TerryMcGuire
a reply to: Lumenari
Thank you for the assistance in answering the earlier poster who asked when the sea levels were going to start rising.

Sea level changes are not easily predicted. In fact, the earth is not a bathtub and, should glaciers melt, some sea levels will drop while others rise. This will be most apparent around Greenland. As the glacier melts, it will no longer exert a gravitational force on the sea, and those sea levels will drop many meters. Nothing is as simple as it is made out to be.

Water vapor is the most important green house gas but we don't hear much about that. We do know that there was a warm period around 1000 or so, hence the name Greenland. Not Whiteland or Snowland. Then we were plunged into the little ice age and we are still coming out of it which means we are getting warmer again.

The science is not "settled." Those that state such are hacks looking to profit from the fears of others.

originally posted by: TerryMcGuire
a reply to: Lumenari
Thank you for the assistance in answering the earlier poster who asked when the sea levels were going to start rising.

And thank you for illustrating to anyone that reads this thread that members of the Cult of Gore can read something, but only understand the parts that reaffirm their religion.

I debunked your idea that man made climate change is making the sea levels rise.

Feel free to post a rebuttal.

Now, I'm not the person to tell you what to believe in. That is your choice. What I will tell you is that what you believe is an easily proven lie. You can go on from there.

However, if you want to know EXACTLY what your religion is actually doing, we don't have to go any further than the IPPC itself.

Ottmar Edenhofer, a co-chair of the IPCC, said back in 2010, “The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. … First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”

There is some truth, my friend. I hope it sets you free.

a reply to: FredT

LOL... rising sea levels? REALLY?? You think that the sea levels rising has ANYTHING at ALL!!! to do with what Florence will do? You are even more in fantasy land than is apparent by your adherence to the falsehood that is man made global warming.

Jaden

a reply to: FredT

I have lived across the street from an ocean beach for a long time and have never seen any changes at all except for the tides levels changing. Not at all.

a reply to: Lumenari

It is kind of you to grant permission for a rebuttal post though I admit freely that I am not the opponent your stated opinion might consider me to be. It appears to me that you have decided that I am representative of a vast cabal that you have taken issue with.

I responded to one poster who asked the question '' So when are these sea levels suppose to rise?''
I wondered about that as well so went to Yahoo and typed in sea rise rates and found that link
nca2014.globalchange.gov...

I found many to refer to but as this one seemed to be a reputable enough source seeing as it is a federal agency overseen by a rather wide spectrum of overseers it would suffice to answer the posters question.

I then responded to another poster who questioned that information due to it being from the 1880s and unreliable due to electricity not being there to aid in the studies taken at that time with further information provided by the OPs second post offering more recent information.

You offered more information to me, information which you purport to be ''EXACTLY what my religion is doing''. As I read the bit you pasted what I found was interesting. Having no idea what the IPPC was I turned to yahoo again and found it to be either en.wikipedia.org...
or
en.wikipedia.org...

So then I looked up Ottmar Edenhofer

What I found about him is that he is no scientist but rather is an economist attempting to deal with the economic ramifications of climate change. Without looking more deeply I found in Wiki as sole statement from him about climate change which read ''"Denying out and out that climate change is a problem for humanity, as some cynics do, is an unethical, unacceptable position.''

So here he does not seem to be pointing any fingers as to the ''how'' of climate change but merely the '' that'' of climate change.

The quote you offered is interesting in that it does seem to be a testament to the ''it is nothing but a scam to steal from the rich and give to the poor'' notion that has been touted by climate change questioners for a couple of decades.
That side of the CC equation has always been a serious consideration however the quote you offer seemed to me to be questionably out of context.

While reading through it it seemed to jump around a lot. As posted it was one paragraph yet in that one paragraph it seemed to bounce from statement to statement with little context drawing them together. Almost as if the place you got it from just pushed into that one paragraph a number of bullet points designed to appear what was hoped to be just that, proof of the authors own biases. As yo offered no link or suggestion of where you got that quote I had no ability to further investigate it's authenticity.

But back to this ''your religion'' notion. Earlier you said ''I debunked your idea that man made climate change is making the sea levels rise. '' when in reality it is not my idea but rather the idea of a large percentage of scientists studying the situation. I myself have not interest in the '' how'' of climate change, just the ''if''.

What I know about this field began back when Bush was running for pres in 04 when the Pentagon came out with a study saying that it was real and a national security threat. You can look that up if you want, as it should be easy to find.

So the ''hows'' are in question for me , and for that matter I don't care either way. If it is man caused due to industrialization and all that goes with it then it seems that the whole question is moot. If that is the cause then it is far to late to do anything about it, it would have at best taken immediate action and world agreement on the issue twenty years ago to have made any satisfactory changes to our world economies and societies to do any thing about it. That horse, as they say, has left the stable.

If it is not man made, but rather the cyclical cause or the solar flare cause or the solar system temperatures or the ''cloud'' of whatever that some have said is affecting our weather that is the cause also matters not to me.

All that matters to me is how in hell are we going to arrange ourselves to adapt to it.

Yet all of that which accounts for my simple take on the issue may be moot to you as you seem to have grouped me, and I can easily guess all others who you think oppose your own sense of this issue, into one ''religion'' with Al Gore as it leader.
I for one at least never read his book nor do I know if there were more than one. As well, I never saw his movie or read more than one of his speeches on the issue. I don't like Al Gore.

So you can understand that when you say that you know the EXACT truth on the issue I must take your understanding with a grain of salt as you have already proved to me that your notion of EXACT is at least in the case of ''my religion'' far from the mark.

originally posted by: Masterjaden
a reply to: FredT

LOL... rising sea levels? REALLY?? You think that the sea levels rising has ANYTHING at ALL!!! to do with what Florence will do? You are even more in fantasy land than is apparent by your adherence to the falsehood that is man made global warming.

The numbers speak for themselves. Sea level has and continues to rise. Higher sea levels make the storm surge associated with a hurricane event potentially far worse and they can go even further inland because they are starting at a higher level. According to NOAA there is a 300-900 percent greater change of flooding because of this. Factor in that the government (which lets be fair, pretty much packed with deniers in NC) suppressed evidence that would have required a whole different building pattern that would have NOT placed so many developments in surge areas speaks for itself. It was $$$$$$ over science. Not sure if I can explain it more simple than that as even you average 5 year old can grasp the basic meaning of all this.

But hey you want to simply shout out pointless slogans not backed up by any facts, I have to ask are you IN the NC legislature? That would explain oh so much