This is a third post on newspaper stories that I recently read. Today's post deals with science, politics, and rising sea levels. Incidentally, the title is a blatant reference to John Allen Paulos's brilliant book, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper.
Senate approves law that challenges sea-level science
The NC legislature approved a measure that promotes development along the NC coast. The legislation addresses a 2010 report prepared by the NC Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Panel on Coastal Hazards that reviewed the scientific literature and gave several projections for sea level rise by 2100. (See p. 10-12 and Fig. 2 of the NCCRC report.) The report states: "Given the range of possible rise scenarios and their associated levels of plausibility, the Science Panel recommends that a rise of 1 meter (39 inches) be adopted as the amount of anticipated rise by 2100, for policy development and planning purposes." (NCCRC, p. 12)
Some representatives in the state legislature felt that preparing for a 1 meter rise in sea levels would hurt development. The newspaper article says "The bill’s main backer, ... said the more severe prediction of sea-level rise would sink property values, hurt tax revenues and inflate insurance rates." Therefore, the legislature decreed that models that predict an acceleration of sea-level rise should not be used. This, in effect, results in NC planners using the lower bound from the 2010 NCCRC report, which is "the amount of rise that will occur given a linear projection with zero acceleration." (NCCRC, p. 10)
The exact wording of the bill that passed is available online. See Paragraph (c) on page 2.
Has the NC legislature "rejected the science" in the NCCRC report, as some have claimed? Or is it the responsibility of an elected official to adopt the portions of the NCCRC report that are least onerous to his present constituents? Given that the officials will all be dead in 2100, what responsibility does an elected official have to citizens that are not yet born?
Comments?
2 Comments
While they may be putting their heads in the sand figuratively, the rising sea levels may do it to them (or their descendants) literally.
There is no unique answer, I believe, as it all dependes on two factors - projected data and the loss function that reflects the preferences of a given decisionmaker. Given that by 2100 all the officials will be long gone, then todays optimal decision could indeed be very risk seeking; therefore adopting the lowest predicted raise in the sea level (providing none of the official is really concerned about the long run consequences of such a decision) is a reasonable strategy. On the other hand - judging from the Fig.2 in the report - the forecast value is very questionable by itself anywhere beyond 2030, hence the decision to adopt a lower forecasted level may still be acceptable. At first glance, e.g. it does definitely look as if the sea level is going to raise, but I have serious doubts about the exponential rate.