This story is about why laws bowing to sea level worries will make signs like this at left more common in one Australian town.
I’ve seen stupidity from local city governments before, but this one takes the cake. Residents of a small Australian port city are being “squashed” by an old law that says rooftops can’t be higher than the local historic pub, while new building codes demand a 1.5 meter (~5 feet) upward offset to deal with “sea level rise”. Is it any wonder one resident says this?
“We’re sick to death of the climate change issue and how it’s impacting our community,” she says.
From the Australian:
Higher floors, lower roofs: the town being shrunk by climate change angst
PORT Albert, on Victoria’s southeast coast, is a pretty-as-a-picture fishing village that is at war with the science of climate change.
Residents in the village have been told that because of rising sea levels, new housing has to be built on stumps almost 1.5m above ground level, despite the fact many of the town’s original colonial buildings have withstood time and tide on ground level without ill effect since the 19th century.
At the same time, a heritage overlay in the village, introduced more than a decade ago, prevents roof lines being built higher than the roof of the local pub, which is claimed to be Victoria’s oldest continuously licensed hotel.
Residents have seen land values plummet by 38 per cent in the past year under the weight of the overlays. Investment in the town has stalled. And Port Albert Progress Association president Donna Eades says that, with rising floor levels and roof lines limited by the height of the pub, “the next generation of Port Albert residents will have to be pygmies”.
Ms Eades says Port Albert residents have been made the “guinea pigs” for rising sea-level predictions, while the charm and character of the historic township has been sacrificed to climate change fashion.
“We’re sick to death of the climate change issue and how it’s impacting our community,” she says.
h/t to WUWT reader Rosalind Smallwood. Full story here:
Let’s look at some nearby Sea Level Data. From Stony Point, Victoria, about 80 miles NW of Port Albert, courtesy of Australia’s BoM:
Source: http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO71054/IDO71054SLI.shtml
Looks pretty darned flat for the past 20 years, doesn’t it?
Next we have Lorne Jetty, Victoria, about 150 miles NW of Port Albert:
Source: http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO71056/IDO71056SLI.shtml
Yes I can see why the local government of Port Albert is terrified of sea level rise /sarc
It may be that civil disobedience in building codes will become rampant there, which may be the last resort of many to this madness.
==============================================================
UPDATE:
Just to be sure, I plotted the data provided by BoM myself (from the source links I gave above) in the two graphs below and calculated the change in sea level rate using a polynomial curve fit for each station.
Lets take the worst case rate of Stony Point, Victoria with rate of 2.45 mm/yr.
The vertical offset required by the Port Albert town government is 1.5 meters, or 1500 mm.
At a rate of 2.45 mm/yr into 1500 mm, that result is 612 years for the offset to be met. If we use the lower rate from Lorne Jetty, the number rises to 1304 years.
It seems to me that all of the buildings built this century will be long gone before they need the offset required by the Port Albert town government.
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It amazes me that this government has no rules about living on flood plains but has imposed rules about the height a building must be above sea level. Surely the free market should be able to decide the value of these low houses and the insurance companies can decide the premiums of insurance. Someone needs to take those responsible to court!
The best part is the way the article is written. Nowhere does the reporter attempt to treat the concerns of the residents as Neanderthal anti-science ignorance. Nor does he even quote any of the usual “authorities” on the side of the Carbon Crime.
Instead, he writes “the people of Port Albert are furious by the uncritical adoption of climate change predictions…”
Objective reporting in this context is a huge victory. You’d never see this in a major American newspaper, and I’m pretty sure it’s rare in Aussie papers as well.
That’ll teach them! Reminds me of the 13 1/2th story of that building in Being John Malkovich.
You pays your pennies, you takes your chances. Once again, proof that elections have consequences.
What in the world is happening in Australia? Have they too lined their aquaducts with lead?
They, that think themselves powers who should be obeyed, could be reminded of the money wasted on de-salination plants by greenies claiming rising temps and drought. Demand that they look at real data of sea levels and stop messing with the people’s lives – the village united could just lock them out of office perhaps? Simply refuse to comply with idiotic rules. Easier to do in a small community all affected by this.
And for icing on the cake this bit of funding fraud from our (formerly) much loved CSIRO.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/why-saving-a-species-is-a-mathematical-matter-20110725-1hwce.html
Scientific fraud or mendacious incompetence???
regards
((its bloody cool here))
“I’ve seen stupidity from local city governments before, but this one takes the cake.”
It does appear to take the cake but it’s possible we’ve both just led sheltered lives and this level of stupidity is new only in context of climate change hysteria.
It’s a state law but try this on for size:
“The Arkansas River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little Rock.”
Perhaps the city council in Port Albert should take a page from Arkansas codes and just make it illegal for sea level to rise above the floor of the pub. I don’t know about you but that would negate any angst I might harbor about rising sea level if I lived in Port Albert.
Oh FFS, are you serious? One law is meant to protect against future damage and possible loss of life, the other is an ordinance designed purely for aesthetic reasons, and you deniers blame the law that is there to potentially save people and property?
The article points out that the older buildings have remained unharmed… of course! Sea level is rising, that’s the whole point of the new law! The question is, will they remain unharmed for much longer?
You then point out that sea level is relatively stable over the last 20 years, but how has it been since the 19th Century? The point of these laws is to make sure buildings that will likely still be around in 50 or a 100 years time are safe THEN, not NOW.
Of course you know this, you aren’t stupid, you just know that this is the best you’ve got while people are dying in a heatwave in the US. Pathetic really.
“The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling!”
“Uhmmmm, no. We just raised the floor 5 feet…….”
This stupidity is dumber than a box of rocks.
And exactly how does the town think the sewer and water system will function? Mail delivery? Roads? Clearly it must prohibit all new construction.
Civil disobedience in building codes does not work in Australia.
The local council / shire can get (and have done this) a court order to pull down a building that does not have the proper planning approvals or that is not built to drawing.
@Jason
>What in the world is happening in Australia? Have they too lined their aquaducts with lead?
I’ve been wondering about this too. (Conspiracy theories abound at this point). Perhaps fluoride was actually a bad idea after all, and the future belongs those of us with bad teeth…
.
But meanwhile, you can still build homes in river floodplains (and get government insurance or rebuilding grants after you are flooded).
Canada isn’t any wiser. But you can build back in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, also … and put mansions on the Belize sandbars of Ambergris.
As a former Qld local government officer it was part of my job for many years to try to get people to (a) make sure they got the cyclonic design right, and (b) be aware of the potential for flooding. “The area may be dry today, but it is still a swamp … ” etc.
The same minuscule tide level changes in Queensland also. No evidence whatsoever of sea levels rising. Trouble is – no one seems to understand AHD (Australian height datum) and HAT (highest astronomical tide) any more. There are about 270 tide gauges in Queensland. They ALL have slightly different levels, and there is no evidence that any are actually wrong, apart from the few where there is known change taking place, eg rise/fall in the land level, coastal geometry etc.
The differences are attributable to natural variation. Each bay is different – you can’t take the levels from one and apply them to another. The shock/horror 1m rise is output from seriously defective modelling. I have done a fair amount of modelling, some valid, some not. I would never have released the sort of junk we are seeing today.
Regards
http://people.aapt.net.au/jclark19/
“……….are furious by the uncritical adoption of climate change predictions that 1:100 year flood levels will rise from a present 1.75m to 2.68m in 2100.”
============================================================
Indeed, and this touches on something that even skeptics have been mostly uncritical of…….not the wild azz assertions that we’re all going to drown soon, we’re critical of that, but we are not critical of the base assumptions going into these assertions. I’m working through it, but its slow going…. mostly because I’m lazy, but general sea level rise hasn’t had the critical eye put upon it nearly as much as temps have.
The sat data is entirely suspect, and the mechanical measurements are inadequate. I’m saying the general sea-level rise, while accepted hasn’t been demonstrated. And it certainly hasn’t been shown recently. We’ve just generally accepted that because the sea-level did rise (at least what was known) it has continued mostly unabated. I think it needs demonstrated.
quote: “disobedience in building codes will become rampant there”.
Doesn’t work like that. The council will first order a stop work injunction on the building. If that doesn’t happen, hefty fines are imposed. If the building is completed the council will order it to be altered. If that doesn’t happen the Council will use legal force for compliance. Either more hefty fines or Council will undertake the work themselves and charge the owners for the cost to modify. Or even demolish the building and charge the owners clean-up.
Disobedience is not a wise option.
As for insurance companies; they will not insure any building which has historically flooded in the past.
For many Aussies, Climate Change appeared to be a wonderful reason to feel like they were contributing to doing “the right thing” for the planet. Up until the repercussions, which are just starting to become evident, it seemed harmless. Now that the Aussies are staring down the barrel of a new tax and idiotic local laws, the reality is starting to set in. Hopefully, it’s not too late to shut the gate.
How about unincorporating the town, or all of the town except for the pub? Make a new town out of the parts that seceded.
Here is yet another example of bad science driving public policy in ways that are truly hurting people. It boggles my mind that our climate elites don’t understand this…
Here’s what you need to get more than 1m of sea level rise in the next century. The average rate has to be more than 10mm/year. Actually, we have 3mm/year. So it should go from 3mm/y to 17mm/y to have an average of 10mm/y. So the rate has to increase by something like 1.4mm/y every decade. If this was true, the sea level rise would have been null 20 years ago and it would be 1.5mm/y higher now than at the start of the century. Oh, but I guess we are still 10-20 years away from the tipping point just like 30 years ago.
the damage is being done on all fronts.
27 July: Gold Coast Bulletin, Australia: Lucy Ardern: Rebate change hurts Coast solar jobs
UP TO 150 jobs are under threat at two of the biggest solar retailers on the Gold Coast thanks to a problem-plagued Federal Government rebate system.
Beyond Building Energy and Ecovation both confirmed they had been forced to restructure and said other companies would soon be doing the same…
The problem for solar companies is fluctuations in the value of renewable energy certificates (STCs).
Under the Federal Government rebate system, certificates are issued to a householder when an eligible system is installed. The householder often transfers STCs to the installation company in exchange for a discount.
Companies such as Beyond Building Energy and Ecovation factor the value of those certificates into quotes, but when they go to cash them, their redemption price may have halved.
Industry experts say the problem is being felt nationwide and comes on the back of failed government initiatives such as the insulation scheme, green loans and other solar rebates.
A spokeswoman for Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency Greg Combet said efforts had been made to help retailers, but the scheme would be reviewed by the new Climate Change Authority…
http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2011/07/27/335955_gold-coast-business.html
I guess this is somewhat on-topic… well, it is Australia!
This sounds like a fantastic thing to support:
http://justgroundsonline.com/forum/topics/convoy-of-no-confidence-in-the
Unfortunately, rational argument alone will not hold sway, so “good on them” to all who are willing to take this step to making their views known. This is really coming to a head in Australia now, and I think the unfolding of the process there will be significant globally.
There you have it — proof positive that intelligence is not a prerequsite for government employment.
There’s just no end to stupidity in this day and age…