Hey, if the California Air Resources Board can create an entire cap and trade industry just by inventing emissions 340% higher than any actual evidence, it can go the other way. Science is all postmodern and relative that way - once you let people you agree with make stuff up, anyone can do it.
North Carolina knows what I am talking about. A state-appointed science panel - hopefully more ethical and rigorous in their methods than ours are - has warned of a one-meter rise in sea level by 2100 and a group called NC-20, named for 20 coastal counties who think preparing for a sea-level rise would be worse for business than an actual sea level rise, have gone on the offensive against that claim.
Some local governments agree with the people who think the sea cannot rise and have passed resolutions against such sea-level rise policies. But then politicians went much further. Republicans (the political party must be noted specifically when Republicans are anti-science cranks in politics or culture) have created their own bill, which sort of reinvents climate science the same way anti-vaccine people on the left reinvented medicine. They say projections can only be based on historical trends.
Scott Huler at Scientific American Blogs is much funnier about it than I am, mostly because he does not live in California where this kind of fluff passes for science all of the time: "Which, yes, is exactly like saying, do not predict tomorrow’s weather based on radar images of a hurricane swirling offshore, moving west towards us with 60-mph winds and ten inches of rain. Predict the weather based on the last two weeks of fair weather with gentle breezes towards the east. Don’t use radar and barometers; use the Farmer’s Almanac and what grandpa remembers."
I wish there was more clear thinking like this in California. Unfortunately, we can't blame Republicans. The few left have been gerrymandered out of power so we're only left with Democratic anti-science crackpots and making fun of both sides is lonely business in science media.
