When an individual with no authority makes a decision based on a “belief” that belies reality, whatever consequences ensue generally only affect the idiot basing their life on a “belief.” However, when people with great power, such as those in government, make policy decisions based on a “belief” founded in fallacy and subterfuge, there is a great chance many people will suffer. According to a report released this week, idiot North Carolina Republicans bear a great deal of responsibility for a very significant amount of flood damage after Hurricane Florence rainfall combined with rising sea levels to wipe out tens-of-thousands of home, of which over 11,000 were unnecessary.
The damage from Florence is substantial in the loss of at least 43 human lives, and of course only an imbecile would argue that anthropogenic climate change did not play the exact role climate scientists have warned about for decades. However, there was even more damage related to climate change that North Carolina Republicans were warned about by scientists eight years ago. But instead of heeding the scientists’ warnings, Republicans banned using science to plan for the certainty of increased storm surges due to sea level rise. It was, to say the least, an ill-fated decision that contributed to the hurricane’s damage instead of mitigating Florence’s impact that was definitely enhanced by rising seas.
That accelerated sea level rise, coupled with increased rain, “significantly affected” more than 11,000 additional homes according to scientists at the non-profit sea level research and communications group, First Street Foundation. The scientists discovered, and reported eight years ago, that sea levels off the coast of the Carolinas had risen 6 inches over the past thirty years and was continuing unabated. A six inch rise in a few decades is a very significant and unusually damaging level of sea rise, but it is exactly as climate scientists have predicted. The scientists reported that the rise in sea level caused the Florence storm surge to "significantly affect more than 11,000 additional homes when it slammed into the region nearly two weeks ago.” (Author bold).
The scientists compiled data gathered from several federal organizations that at one time were allowed and encouraged to use science; one wonders if the North Carolina scientists had to use cunning and chicanery to escape the Trump anti-science cabal’s prying eyes. Trump began assailing all science with particularly nasty attacks on environmental sciences almost immediately after his poorly attended inauguration. No doubt North Carolina Republicans were proud they began banning marine-related science eight years ago because their “beliefs” contradicted climate-related science.
Besides gathering data from local governments in “hard-hit coastal regions” and scouring historical elevation data, the researchers tapped the US Army Corps of Engineers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data to “assess how Florence impacted communities compared with past storms prior to the sea level rise.” That comparison revealed that Florence’s storm surge heights impacted more than 51,000 homes.
The head of data science at First Street Foundation, Steven McAlpine said:
"Tons more homes were affected and the damage is still being assessed, but we can already see what a tremendous impact storm surge had on these communities. Even elevated homes were impacted."
The reason North Carolina Republicans, like Republicans across the nation, are to blame for the extra damage from what should have been a less-than-devastating tropical storm is that eight years ago North Carolina scientists predicted that without immediate action and careful planning, exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago was going to happen. The scientists from the North Carolina Resources Commission published a report predicting “that sea levels along the coast would rise 39 inches over the next century due to climate change, putting 2,000 square miles of the coast underwater.” The mention of climate change doomed the report as well as incited Republicans to ban its use for anything because it contradicts every conservative’s “belief” that climate change is a hoax.
That doom and gloom scientific prediction, although based on sound research and empirical data, irritated Koch-affiliated Republicans and powerful real estate and development groups leading them to claim the scientists were simply “pulling data out of their hip pocket.”
Cheered on and paid by major real estate and land developers, the Republican-dominated legislature swiftly “banned state and local agencies from creating any policies using that report, or any other scientific findings on sea level rise prior to July 2016, when the commission's next report would be updated.” (author bold)
Incredibly, Republicans insisted that going forward, any state policy surrounding sea level prediction could only be founded on historical data – even though historical data along with “multiple recent scientific studies reported the exact same findings.” Just last year, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued another report warning that as many as “20 coastal North Carolina communities could be submerged in the next 15 years.”
As a former member of the N.C. Resources Commission and professor at East Carolina University, Stanley Riggs worked on the 2010 report and noted what the real issue is. He said:
"The mindset has been all economics, growth and development at all costs. They keep pushing for bigger and bigger coastal developments and then trying to build dikes and pile sandbags around towns consistently more at risk of flooding. It's insane. About 28,000 of the 51,000 homes damaged in the area were built after 1970. We will, most likely based on trends, continue to develop into at-risk areas and this storm highlights that we need to do it smartly. Otherwise, we will continue to experience worse and worse damage."
What is still a mystery is why the powerful insurance industry fails to employ its powerful lobby to force Republicans to abandon their Koch climate denial stance and take climate change seriously. After all, it is likely that the one industry that should be most interested in immediately addressing climate change is the one paying out billions of dollars in insurance claims for damages that should not occur. In the case of the flood damage from Florence, the climate change-created higher sea level is the reason the insurance industry is going to pay for damages on at least an additional 11,000 homes.
This notion so prevalent in Republican circles that climate science is what Trump would call “fake news” is not only insane, it is inherently dangerous and a threat to the country’s national security according to the Department of Defense among others. For about 11,000 North Carolina homeowners, that scientifically predicted threat of rising sea level due to anthropogenic climate change is no longer a threat or fake news, it is reality.
The majority of Republicans claim the science on climate change, like the scientifically-predicted reality of sea level rise, is fake and they base that solely on their “belief,” or at least that is the claim for the fossil fuel industry’s ears. Apparently in North Carolina the Republicans banned the science documenting sea level rise to please their donors in the real estate development industry even though their preferred “historical data” revealed precisely what the scientists were warning was occurring at a dangerously alarming rate.
Although the people in North Carolina adversely affected by Hurricane Florence and the resulting storm surge and serious flooding are suffering, they are, in fact, partly responsible for their current situation; they do continue electing Republicans to run the state and ban scientific reports. Some Americans may believe that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by 97 percent of the world’s scientists, and perhaps their belief is founded on “biased and flawed research and studies” of 3 percent of the scientists denying climate change. However, even an idiot that is afraid of science or bound to the fossil fuel industry will be hard-pressed to defend a “belief” founded in fallacy and deceit while the sea engulfs America’s coastline.