Geoscientist 22.07 August 2012
When Richard Feynman was called in to help investigate the 1986 Challenger disaster he famously conducted a simple demonstration to show how cold affected the elasticity of the rubber O-ring seals between sections of the solid rocket boosters, which had failed. However, as he later pointed out, that was only the accident’s proximal cause. At root lay an institutional failing - NASA’s persistent adjusting of safety envelopes, to help speed up its processes in order to keep to its launch schedule. NASA was confusing what was, with what it believed. This never works because, as Feynman famously put it, ‘nature isn’t fooled’. Nature doesn’t care what we believe.
Well, new research indicates that the coast between North Carolina and Massachusetts is undergoing the world’s fastest sea-level rise. The result, published in Nature Climate Change by Asbury Sallenger1 (USGS, St Petersburg, Florida) and colleagues suggests that sea level between Cape Hatteras and Boston is rising at between three and four times the global average. Barely a fortnight before appeared however the North Carolina Senate tried to ban state agencies from reporting that sea-level rise is accelerating.
The law, approved by the North Carolina Senate on June 12, banned state agency scientists from using exponential extrapolation and insisted they stick to linear instead. International ridicule led to its being rejected a week later; but North Carolina’s agencies now have to wait between three and four years for a new, home-grown sea-level study to report before they can say anything.
In true disaster-movie style, local industries and coastal communities fearing loss of investment were behind the political move, citing a single published paper from 20112 that suggested, contrary to the vast majority of research, that sea-level rise had slowed since the 1930s.
It is natural, perhaps, for politicians to confuse dreams and reality. Unless they were so deluded, they surely wouldn’t want the job in the first place. What is odd about this story is that it reveals how many legislators manage to preserve their delusion despite all the evidence to the contrary that life must by now surely have thrown at them. Imperviousness to evidence is perhaps another way of saying ‘conviction politics’.
Sadly, while it may be possible to fool all the people all the time, we forget Feynman’s dictum at our peril.
References
- Hotspot of accelerated sea-level rise on the Atlantic coast of North America, by Asbury H Sallenger Jr, Kara S Doran & Peter A Howd. Nature Climate Change(June 2012) doi:10.1038/nclimate1597
- Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses by J R Houston and R G Dean. Journal of Coastal Research: Volume 27, Issue 3: 409-417. 2011 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1