This is not new news. NC was the butt of jokes back in 2012 for this. But I must rant nevertheless.
Teabaggers are a sad, pathetic joke. And when you put them in charge of a state, like in my home state of NC, things get fucked up. Roads and homes get built Teaparty Republican Fucked Up, all because ignorant Teabagger Republicans vote in corporate-puppet Teabagger politicians who all like to put their fingers in their ears and go "la la la la" about climate change. Besides, to them, if Democrats want to save the world and the kids' future from the Teabagger Onslaught, then they decide to do the opposite. Because liberals. Because Clinton and Benghazi.
The Greatest American Teabagger, Gov Pat McCrory of Duke Power and global warming-denial infamy, and his 2010-elected band of idiots, the Republican-dominated legislature, put in place a law in 2012 that told everyone in government to NOT talk about sea level rise and climate change until 2016.
Or something.
This is life in loony Teabaggerland.
There’s not much dispute these days, up and down the coast, about whether the ocean is rising. The question is: How high will it go here, and how fast?
North Carolinians must wait until 2016 for an official answer. That’s the law.
After promoters of coastal development attacked a science panel’s prediction that the sea would rise 39 inches higher in North Carolina by the end of this century, the General Assembly passed a law in 2012 to put a four-year moratorium on any state rules, plans or policies based on expected changes in the sea level. The law sets guidelines under which the Coastal Resources Commission, a development policy board for the 20 coastal counties, will formulate a new sea-level prediction to serve as the official basis for state planners and regulators.
The backlash fomented by a conservative coastal group called NC-20 prompted commission members in 2011, most of them Democratic appointees, to reject the 39-inch prediction from the panel of engineers and geologists, including Riggs, that has counseled the commission since the 1990s. A new documentary film, “ Shored Up,” shows anguished commission members imploring their science advisers to somehow “soften” the high-water warning.
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/...
Let's shame these assholes every step of the way:
Now the 13-member Coastal Resources Commission has a new chairman and eight more new members appointed last year by Republican legislative leaders and Gov. Pat McCrory.
Supposedly this new "commission" needs to come up with a new science panel report by March 2015, per the N&O article, but they haven't bothered asking the science panel to start work yet.
Meanwhile NC is building roads according to Teabagger Lalaland assessments so roads and homes are being built Teabagger Fucked Up.
The whole world will soon be Teabagger Fucked Up. But they sure showed us liberals and if their kids in the hellish future decide to be liberals, well, they showed them too! (I am indeed such a person, the son of an ignorant mother and willfully ignorant but intelligent father, both Republicans.)
Frank Tursi, assistant director of the N.C. Coastal Federation, a nonprofit education and advocacy group, said the 2012 law prevents government agencies from considering accelerated sea-level rise when they plan for bridges, water lines and other long-term projects.
“The longer that’s delayed, you’re putting more structures and more people in harm’s way,” Tursi said. “More houses are going to be close to the ocean, and roads aren’t going to be as high as they ought to be.”
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/...
From my layman perspective, climate predictions have proven to be too conservative: I keep hearing "we're beyond worst case scenario at this point" and such.
Luckily, scientists know their reputations are on the line when they issue reports for government agencies. And luckily 99% of real climate scientists don't bow to such pressure as this pathetic NC-20 group of corporate-sponsored Teaparty Republican climate deniers.