In brief, the North Carolina General Assembly has passed a law that places a four-year moratorium on changing the state’s policy on, and planning for, sea level changes. That’s rather odd given their state’s substantial and low-lying coastline; one might have expected the North Carolina legislators to welcome any new ‘scientifically valid’ data or information regarding sea level changes.
Alas, the new law restricts all sea-level predictions used to guide state policies for the next four years to those based on “historical data”. In other words, ‘don’t bother us with data that we (and our good friends, the coastal developers) don’t want to hear’.
As Stephen Colbert was quoted to say, “If your science gives you a result you don’t like, pass a law saying the result is illegal. Problem solved.”
ETA: Oops . . . I forgot to say that as an outside observer (I’m Canadian), I continue to be astounded by the current American epidemic of partisan subversion of reality-based solutions for reality-based problems.