Jun 182012
Here is a wonderful solution to the problem of climate change: if you don’t like the science, outlaw it. At least this is what the state legislature of North Carolina is doing, in an attempt to address the escalating costs of protecting the state from rising sea levels.
I may have concerns about the quality of climate models and the validity of some of the more hysterical predictions, but politicians should be obligated to follow the best scientific advice available. Picking the science based on ideological preferences belongs to the Dark Ages, not the 21st century.
Have you seen this article (and its links)? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/11/science-vs-agw-advocacy-in-north-carolina/ It appears that the politicos actually did the right thing this time out. Certainly it seems odd that nobody actually spoke against the bill, if it’s such a disaster.
Legislating science is never the right thing, even if it is about legislating that the Earth is round or that humans descended from apes. Note that my point is not about who is right or who is wrong on the topic of sea level rise… I have my own serious doubts about climate modeling and alarmist predictions, and I would have no objections of NC’s legislature opted to delay implementation of any costly countermeasures. But that’s not what they did… they went much further and decided to legislate science. They basically told a state agency to ignore scientific results, no matter how well founded they might be, if the results happened to disagree with their ideology. As to the comments by Droz, he may be 100% right insofar as the rise of sea levels is concerned, but shame on him for supporting this travesty.