March 11^th

In a truly Orwellian twist Governor Rick Scott of Florida has banned the terms “climate change” and “global warming” from the permitted phrases used in state communications. He also absolutely denies that he did any such thing. I saw the press conference in which he was asked about it. In it he ducked and dodged and refused even then to say those awful words. Instead he said that Florida was focused on state problems yada, yada, yada. As if the rise in sea levels already occurring, and those predicted to come, would not be a problem for Florida.

Governor Scott’s anxiety about any acknowledgment of climate change is understandable. There is a building boom in Florida. He wants that to continue as long as he is governor and after that, well, who cares? He certainly doesn’t. Given that vast stretches of Florida are less than three feet above sea level; to be specific that’s 145 billion dollars-worth of homes and 2100 sq. miles of land. Drop down to less than two feet above high tide and there are71 billion dollars in homes which have a good chance of disappearing before a 30 year mortgage is paid off!

The Governor has decided that building permits and forecasts will use the sea rise over the last hundred years to forecast how much sea rise to predict for the next hundred years; that’s eight inches and that’s a joke! If you are Governor Scott and you want folks to come to Florida and build, build, build, you do whatever you have to do to quiet this climate change nonsense. First, don’t let anyone talk about it; maybe then it will go away!

The governor’s insistence that he has given no order to ban the terms “global warming’ and “climate change” have a difficult time with some facts; Typical is the case of a young woman who recently obtained a Ph.D. in epidemiology from a Florida University. Unfortunately for her it involved the effect of climate change on ciguatera, a food produced illness. Before she could publish her paper she had to get clearance from a Florida bureaucrat, Sharon Watkins, who oversees the department which had to approve this woman’s paper.  Well, there was a holdup because you see the effect of climate change was at the heart of this research so that term was in the write-up for publication and this would not do at all. This scientist was not allowed to publish a paper on the effects of climate change because her paper mentioned climate change. Ultimately the bureaucrat and the scientist reached an agreement by calling climate change “climate variability.”

The Governor has another problem: government flood insurance premiums are being adjusted upward because the program is running billions in deficits. One family bought a new home in Florida expecting a 3 thousand dollar flood insurance bill; it was 21 thousand dollars. That’s a federal program and there is nothing Scott can do about it; playing with words won’t help. Florida is in a pickle and Scott is only worried about what will benefit Scott.