Crystal Coast Tea Party

My thanks to all TEAers who contributed to WE CARE  last week (June 26th).  I left the meeting with more than $100 in donations  to WE CARE.  This enabled me to mail another 7 Care boxes to our troops in  Afghanistan, for a total of 23 for which I had postage.  Tom Harmon and  Merle Miller came to help me, and we put a total of 40 boxes in the mail  Thursday at the Newport Post Office.  Without the help of you TEAers the  task would have been much more difficult.  Please know that the troops who  receive those boxes really appreciate your participation.  They need to  know that they are not forgotten, but that Americans care about them.  Sam  Sanford and I extend our thanks again for your generosity and for caring.   — Jere Geurin

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS

MEETING MINUTES

OF

19 JUNE 2012

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC

Meeting called to order at 6:07 pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH

Pledge of Allegiance

Invocation by JERE GEURIN

Attendance – 22

BOB asked CATIE MCCABE to pass out the paper ballots prepared for voting tonight for the July 17^th runoff.

DISCUSSION on Candidates:

HOWARD GARNER put in a plug for Ed Goodwin.  “If you will look at his background, his experience, and where he has been, it’s hard to find any one person with the experience he has.  He started out in a tobacco patch, which he has certainly paid his dues working in a tobacco patch.  And then he served in the military, traveled the world as a federal agent, and now is back farming again.  But what really caught my attention about him, was he (a Republican) got elected County Commission in a Democratic controlled county that was bankrupt.  So he won the election; they picked him as chairman with the idea he would make a fool of himself or if things got worse, they could blame it on the ’Republican’.  Instead, he pulled the county out of bankruptcy and now they have a surplus.  So it looks to me like he has done a fantastic job as chairman of the County Commissioners.  That is Chowan County and Edenton.  I had read about the county and their bad financial shape before I ever heard of Ed Goodwin.”

BOB asked how many folks were here last week when Ed Goodwin spoke to us.  The majority raised their hands.  He was pretty impressed with him.  Running against Mr. Goodwin is Kenn Gardner who also spoke to us a couple of weeks ago.  Anybody want to speak for or against Mr. Gardner?    LUKE KUKULINSKI said he thought either one of them were good.  HOWARD said he thought Mr. Gardner was a good man, but he thought Ed Goodwin was more experienced and better qualified.  BOB wanted to know if Gardner was the other one who was an architect.  Answer was yes.  PEGGY GARNER said another thing, in her opinion, was Ed Goodwin is from eastern North Carolina and is more aware of what goes on in our area.  Gardner is not.  He is an architect from Raleigh.  BOB said he thought that we (HOWARD and PEGGY) just liked farmers.  HOWARD and PEGGY said we do, they are smart, usually honest and hard working.  HOWARD said he believed in the man. (continue reading…)

Here are the Republicans who voted with Democrats to defeat Rep. Bradley’s amendment to strip pro-Agenda 21 language from the Food Advisory Council’s charter. They joined with Joe Hackney to provide the swing vote; most Republicans voted with Bradley and AGAINST Agenda 21. Clearly, the below Reps agree with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which claims that Agenda 21 doesn’t exist, and is just an …”anti-government conspiracy theory.”

Remember them well, as they all clearly need to be replaced at their next election.

Rep. Bill Brawley – 919-733-5800
Rep. Larry Brown – 919-733-5607
Rep. Jimmy Dixon – 919-715-3021
Rep. Mike Hager – 919-733-5749
Rep. Mark Hollo – 919-715-8361
Rep. D. Craig Horn – 919-733-2406
Rep. James Langdon, Jr. – 919-733-5849
Rep. Bill McGee – 919-733-5747
Rep. Chuck McGrady – 919-733-5956
Rep. Efton Sager – 919-733-5755
Rep. Ruth Samuelson – 919-715-3009
Rep. Paul Stam – 919-733-2962
Rep. John A. Torbett – 919-733-5868
http://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/blogpost/11222178/

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
MEETING MINUTES OF
JUNE 12, 2012

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:01pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUH
Pledge of Allegiance led by DAVID COX
Invocation by LYN BAKER
No. In Attendance – 43 (including Guest Speaker and Campaign Manager)

GUEST SPEAKER – Ed Goodwin, Candidate for Secretary of State

GUESTS- Betty Gardner (wife of Candidate for Secretary of State Kenn Gardner)
Mary Lou Mason (friend of Lyn Baker), Garrison & Barbara Swigert,
Art and Patricia Sims (friends of ED and GLADYS SUESSLE)
Richard Blackwell (Mr. Goodwin’s campaign manager)

Welcomed members not seen recently – STEVE and DONNA BIBB, MADELEINE SCHAW

Welcomed members from other TEA Party groups – SANDRA HELMS and JOYCE MANLEY             (members of the Western Carteret TEA Party group), and
LILLIAN CREGER and SARA PEREGOY, (from Craven County TEA Party group).

BOB asked Mrs. Gardner if she would like to say a few words.  Mrs. Gardner said, “Kenn really enjoyed coming and speaking with you last week and unfortunately he had a prior commitment, a meet and greet, so he wasn’t able to come tonight; but he asked me to come because last week some really exciting news happened in our campaign — Dr. Mike Beitler endorsed Kenn for Secretary of State.  And I have a quote from Mike here that says ’Kenn is a proven conservative businessman who has been recognized nationally for his innovation and leadership.  For thirty years he has grown businesses across North Carolina and has the experience we need as our next Secretary of State.’  So we are really thankful for Mike’s endorsement and looking forward to a great campaign.”  (Applause)

BOB read the announcement LYN BAKER had given him ‘Celebrating GOD and Country’, Sunday, July 1, at the First Baptist Church in Morehead City.  It is their annual Independence Day Pig and Chicken Pickin’ at the Family Life Center.  It starts at 6:00 pm with music and speakers.  Tickets must be purchased in advance.  LYN has the tickets or can tell you someone else who also has them.  The tickets are also available at the Church Office beginning Monday, June 4th through Friday, June 29th from 12:00pm on.  No tickets will be sold after 12:00pm, Friday, June 29th.

PEGGY GARNER requested that, when members ask questions, to please state their name prior to asking.  Transcribing the minutes from the recording, sometimes it is hard to tell exactly who is speaking.

BOB informed the group that Ed Goodwin, Candidate for Secretary of State was with us tonight.  He said it was very good of Mr. Goodwin, at such a late date, to be able to find time to come on down to see us.  ‘I say it was such a late date because the primary runoff is July 17, so the clock is ticking.  We are still trying to get John Tedesco, Candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction.  Hopefully we will have him in early July.  I think he is shooting for July 3rd, but no promises; but we supported Mr. Tedesco in the May Primary and will probably do so again in the runoff‘.

He then told us that STEVEN BEST had information on a gentleman who was running independently for president.  He asked STEVEN if the gentleman had confirmed if he would come and speak to us.  STEVEN said it was not confirmed as yet.  He has been informed that he is welcome any Tuesday night prior to the election.  He is Terry Jones, a preacher out of Florida who wants to be a write-in candidate.

BOB said, ‘You all have seen the handouts here on Mr. Goodwin.  He is from Edenton…a local boy…and he is Chairman of the Chowan County Commissioners.  He is running for Secretary of State‘.  He then turned the floor over to Mr. Goodwin.  Told him to take as much time as he wanted.  We’ll have a question and answer period after he completes his talk.

Mr. Goodwin said, ‘Thank you sir and Good Evening.  I am from Edenton, North Carolina.  That is where I was born and raised on a farm there and that is where I was taught my conservative values…not just by my mother and father but my church family as well as the many families of the people I worked with on the farm.  I retired after many years of being away from home.  I stayed away 33 years total and I retired and came back to farm.  That is one time that I did exactly what my daddy told me to do.  He told me to go off and see the world, son, and after you are satisfied, come back home and take care of me and Momma in our old age.  And the Good Lord saw fit to allow me to do that and I had six years with my daddy on the farm before he died.  My brother and I farm the same farm (5 generations of farmers)…the family farm.  We do not own all the land.  We rent half of the land.  We own 300 acres and we rent 325.  My daddy rented some of that land for 45 years.  He always wanted to buy it but the families would never sell, so we still farm that rented land….peanuts, cotton, soybeans, wheat, milo, rye, butterbeans, snap beans and field peas.  So we do stay busy.  After I got out of high school I went to East Carolina University.  I thought that was where I should be.  My momma did not want me to go, ‘cause I was 17 years old when I left and I turned 18 in my freshman year.  I was not ready for college life, of being independent and on my own.  Especially at that time, East Carolina was known as the number two party school in the country.   And my momma did not like the fact that her 17 year old son was going off and being dumped into that environment and my momma was right.  My grades were not good and I got drafted.  By the time I went into the service I was 19 years old but how do you tell a 19 year old young man or boy to tighten up and do right.  That’s kind of tough.  Some of us are hard headed.  I had to learn the hard way, and I did learn the hard way.  So I got that nice piece of paper that all of you signed, that represented all of you.  I think you can appreciate this letter…it said…’Greetings! Your friends and neighbors have chosen you to represent them in the armed forces of the United States of America.  Report to Fort Jackson, South Carolina on so and so date on so and so time.  Then you read the next page and it says the bus will pick you up at the local bank at 6:30 on a certain date and you will be on that bus and be gone.  Well, my daddy, a World War II veteran, who had instilled in me a love of this country, told me ‘I don’t want you to go, son’, and he just cried and cried when he told me that.  He said listen to your cousins…they are killing them over there at an increased rate because they are sending all the green horns over there.  Use your head one time, boy.  You know how to shoot a gun and I taught you how to fight with your hands.  So, I went to see a recruiter.   The Army had me.  I went to see the Air Force recruiter.  I had to drive 60 miles to see the nearest recruiter.  I walked in and said I want to join the Air Force right now and I want to do this or that.  He said ‘Did you just get drafted?’  I said ‘Yes, sir’.  He said, ‘OK, I can get you out…you are late reporting…but you are not in the cycle where you are violating the law, yet.  If you’ll do good on this test, I can do something for you.’  And I thought about what my daddy said, ‘Use your head, son!’  So, I took that test.  Got through and the guy graded it and said ‘you can be anything in the Air Force you want to be up to this, right here’.  He showed me all the military specialty codes.  That was a 31652G-1…that was like an MOS (military occupational specialist).  What that meant was they sent me to nuclear school.  So guess what?  Did we ever nuke Viet Nam?  Nope, should have, that’s what my daddy always said.  If they would just do what was right, they could go ahead and win that war…you wouldn’t have to go over there.  But, I did not have to go over there.  I went to nuke school…intercontinental ballistic missile school…underground silos at that time.  And that is what I did for 4 years while I was in the military.  Got out.  Got my head straight.  I farmed for a while, fished some, built some houses, moved some houses, and then I went back to East Carolina to finish what I started.  I’ve always been like that.  If I start something, I got to finish it.  Might take me a little while.  Some of you ladies know that ’honey do list’ that you give to your husbands?  You know he is going to get around to it sooner or later, right?  (Laughter and several nos.)  No?  I was trying to help you guys out.  (Someone said when you have a composition book full, it is kinda hard! More laughter.)  One of you will get trained after while.  I don’t know which one it will be.  But I went back to East Carolina and I finished; and school was fun then because I was hungry and I knew I would not get a second chance.  So I went to school under the GI Bill.  I feel like I earned it.  And then Uncle Sam recruited me and hired me as a Special Agent NCIS and I did that for 23 years before I retired and came home.  During that period of time, they needed somebody in the Soviet Union as a Nuclear Weapons Treaty Inspector and they needed an agent who was kinda espionage trained, kinda intelligence trained and somebody that knew nuclear weapons.  That is kind of an odd combination.  And they found an old farm boy from eastern North Carolina.  So I went for 4 and ½ years.  I did not live over there permanently. I would go and stay anywhere from 40 to 60 days at a time; four or five trips per year for 4 ½ years.  And I did nuclear treaty inspections in the Soviet Union.  That is the coldest I have ever been in my life.   (Laughter)  Sometimes we watched them launch ’em and blow ’em up.  And you know what….everyone they ever launched …worked.  I am sure they had it rigged so we would see that; but everyone of them worked.  I did that 4 ½ years.  I spent 5 years in Japan running operations in that part of the world for the United States and what I was tasked to do.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I was trained in many different specialties in there as well as being on protected service details for a lot of foreign leaders and presidents of the United States as well.  So I have had a very blessed career there.  So I can tell you this, before I retired and came home… as a gun specialist and a unarmed defense specialist I worked at Blackwater for two years…training military guys because military guys are not trained how to act like police officers and go into local homes or businesses and find the bad guys.  That is not what the military has been trained to do.  So I worked under a contract at Blackwater, training military people when they would go overseas to teach them how to go into urban combat.  Go into a house and get somebody and take them out…best to bring them out alive…That is what I did.  I got tired of that.  I got it out of my system and then I came home and started to farm with my daddy.
I started to build my house and found out that regulations were unbelievable that the county had, as far as me building a house.  So I asked to see the land utilization plan, the development plans, and I asked to see the county budget.  And they asked me why do you want to see them?  Because I am a citizen and I am entitled to it.  What are you looking for?  I said I will know when I find it.  So that was like a red flag to me.  Something wrong in my local government if they would not let me see that.  So I had a job to do…wanted to finish building my house, farming with my daddy and everything, and then I decided to run for County Commissioner.  So in 2008 I ran for County Commissioner in my home county.  I ran against a minority female in a Democratic controlled county and I was the first Republican elected in that county.  You know your North Carolina history…real quick….Edenton, North Carolina was the colonial capital of this colony (before it was New Bern, before it was Raleigh …it was Edenton).  One man from Edenton signed the Declaration of Independence.  One man from Edenton signed the Constitution of the United States.  One man from Edenton was on the first Supreme Court of this country.  Another man from Edenton was the first Secretary of the Navy.  And the first political activism by women in this country occurred in Edenton, North Carolina….the Edenton Tea Party.   When the TEA Party started to develop in North Carolina, they had a ‘tea party’ and they planned it in Edenton, North Carolina because of those women.  There was about 600 people on the court house green down there on the wharf.  And that was years ago.  That was the first tea party thing in modern times, if you would, in North Carolina, like that.  So I come from a place where we get fed up kind of quick and we don’t like to take a lot of junk.  So when I got elected to the Board of Commissioners, as a Democrat controlled board, they elected me chairman and I have been chairman four years in a row.  Now why would five Democrats elect the first Republican to be chairman?  (HOWARD said hoping you would make a fool of yourself).  There you go.  They are smarter than you think.  They wanted to elect that Republican so that if it gets any worse that what it already was, they could blame it on him.  It has been brought to my attention by some people that are against me that think that I have inflated my story of Chowan County.  You can look it up.  You can read the news.  Chowan County was bankrupt.  We had a thirty million dollar slush fund, and nobody knew it.  When I won the election, and before I got sworn in, it was announced that Chowan County was broke.  The state was going to take us over.  We were 32 million dollars in debt and we had lost a 30 million dollar reserve fund that we had had and we still had to make payrolls.  We still had debt service to do.  So anybody that want to challenge whether or not Chowan County saved theirself, come see me.  Five Democrats and two Republicans…we worked our tails off for the last three and a half years.  We have rebuilt Chowan County’s administrative system and financial system.  We have reduced our loans from 23 loans to 11.  Any money we saved for the first 2 and ½  to 3 years we paid on debt service.  We had to change our asset  to debt ratio and if we didn‘t do it we would go under.  I made the motion, as Chairman of the County Commissioners to raise taxes one time, and I raised it 3 and ½ cents.  I made that motion at 6:15 one night….the first budget we worked on… I made it at 6:15 that night.  The motion was approved at quarter to 1 the next morning.  It is in the newspaper.  You can Google it, you can search it, you can find it.  We sat there.  We rejected every budget that the County Manager brought forth.  He brought forth five budgets.  We threw everyone of them out and then everybody said what are you going to do.  He threw up his hands and said you all can do anything you want to.  We said fine, we’ll write the budget; so that is how long it took us…from 6:00 that night until quarter to 1 the next morning.  We wrote the budget.  We cut almost 4 million dollars out of that budget.  And we are still operating on that budget.  We are operating on a budget from 5 to 6 years ago.  But people want to challenge that and say it is not true.  It has been inflated.  I didn’t do it.  We did it.  Democrats and Republicans.  Why?  Because we are citizens of that county and we love our home and we will push to the max.  There is no telling what we can do when we really resolve ourselves and we are pushed to the max.  So 5 Democrats and 2 Republicans changed that.  But guess who would have gotten blamed for it if it didn’t work?  I would!  Guess who never takes credit for anything?  Me.  I don’t.  Ask some of you people who have heard me talk before, I never say I did it, We did it….Chowan County did it.
There is also some dispute about my business interests.  I created two businesses from the ground up.  One of them was based upon a patent that me and my business partner developed based upon my years experience with the government and his years of experience as a computer specialist/programmer.  Have a patent on that.  We built the business up and sold it because somebody wanted it more than I wanted it.  So I made a business decision.  I unloaded it.  And I unloaded it at a good time too.  The other business was something that was near and dear to me.  It is a biostat. It is what is called a hemostatic agent.  It stops blood flow.  In combat situations and emergency and hospital operating rooms.  It is made from ground-up shrimp shells from a certain body of water in the world.  And the product enzymes is called ’chitizen’.  It breaks down in the human body into glucosamine, and do you know what that is?  Basically sugar, right?  Our current combat goals in quick clot that the military uses is ’clay’ based.  It is made from dirt – clay.  We haven’t had soldiers live long enough to see if there is any health side effects from having that introduced into their bodies, yet.  We’ll probably find out in the future about that.  So I still own a percentage of that business and we have been tested and we have been run through the wringer and we have started to sell that, so I’m still interested in that…..and my farming business. Read More!

Wow!  Your grassroots pressure on NC House Republicans to fight Agenda 21 is really working!

As I told you in a previous email, the Local Food Policy Council is an advisory board funded by taxpayers operating under the authority of the NC Department of Agriculture.  The Council’s job is to provide advice to policymakers with the goal of strengthening NC farms and local food producers.

This past Wednesday, the NC House was scheduled to vote on HB 1098, a bill which would have re-inserted pro-Agenda 21 “sustainability” language into the charter of the NC Local Sustainable Food Policy Council.

Wednesday morning, Campaign for Liberty members bombarded House Republicans with phone calls and emails demanding that the House adopt Rep. Glen Bradley’s amendment to remove the progressive Agenda 21 language from the bill, or kill it completely.  As a result, House leadership backed off, and pulled the bill from last Wednesday’s agenda.  Your pressure worked!

At first, they rescheduled the bill to be voted on next Wednesday.  But now that Campaign for Liberty members have HB 1098 on their radar, NC House Republicans are trying to hide the Agenda 21 language we’re fighting in another bill, scheduled for an earlier vote.

The new bill we need to target is SB 491, and it’s scheduled for a floor vote on Monday, June 18th.

To that end, I need you to do two things:

First, contact your NC House Representative and instruct him/her to either support Rep. Glen Bradley’s amendment to remove Agenda 21 language from SB 491, or vote against the bill.  You can look up your Representative’s contact information here.

Next, contact Rep. Thom Tillis at 919-733-3451 or by email at Thom.Tillis@ncleg.net and tell him to oppose Agenda 21 in NC!

We don’t have a lot of time, but our goal is still the same.  It’s time to turn the heat all the way up, so that the politicians in Raleigh understand that it’s more controversial to ignore the progressive left’s Agenda 21 than it is to stand up for private property rights and individual liberty!

Time is of the essence, so call now!

In Liberty,

Adam Love
NC State Coordinator
Campaign for Liberty

P.S.  NC House Republicans are trying to pass pro-Agenda 21 legislation SB 491, scheduled for a vote Monday, 6/18!  Contact Speaker Thom Tillis at 919-733-3451 or by email at Thom.Tillis@ncleg.net as well as your own NC House Representative and tell them to oppose Agenda 21 in NC!

Letter to the Editor
“What is the NCGOP Leadership Hiding?”

In February 2012, I wrote a Letter to the Editor (LTE) of our local paper. It asked the question “What If” and followed with a number of questions about what appeared to be interference in local and district elections in North Carolina. It began with the question “What if two NC Senators and a NC Representative came to our County and picked the candidate to run for the Senate seat that represents you, the voters of Carteret, Craven, and Pamlico Counties?” Well, that did happen in NC Senate District 2 Primary race (and they lost). Similar stories are being circulated about other counties in eastern NC like in Pitt County, and more recently in NC House District 6. In fact, it has been claimed that at the recent NCGOP Convention in Greensboro, a delegate from Carteret County was passing out a flyer that asked questions similar to those in my February LTE. Questions like “Is the NCGOP intruding into local or state and national primaries,” and “Are they recruiting and supporting newly switched Democrats and opportunist RINOs to run against conservative incumbents and principled new candidates,” and “Are they running Decoy Candidates so as to manipulate elections and place their puppets?” The flyer also cited portions of the NCGOP Plan of Organization that prohibits such actions by Party officials. The flyer, and the lady distributing the flyer quickly attracted the attention of no less than four senior Party officials, , who confronted the lady distributing the flyer with fingers wagging, tongues lashing, and threats of suing for libel and slander flowing. But wait, there’s more!

Science vs AGW Religion in North Carolina

What’s been happening recently in North Carolina (NC) is a microcosm of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) story: politics vs science, ad-hominems vs journalism, evangelists vs pragmatists, etc.

The contentiousness is over one of the main AGW battlefields: sea level rise (SLR). NC happens to have a large amount of coast line, and has become the US epicenter for this issue.

The brief version is that this began several years ago when a state agency (Coastal Resource Commission: CRC) selected a 20± member “science panel” to do a scientific assessment of the NC SLR situation through 2100. This could have been a very useful project if there had been balance in the personnel selections, and the panel’s assessment adhered to scientific standards. Regrettably neither happened and the project soon jumped the rails, landing into the political agenda ditch.

In their 2010 report the panel concluded that NC should expect a 39 inch SLR by 2100. Their case was built around a 2007 paper by Stefan Rahmstorf, and was not encumbered by a single reference to a perspective different from Rahmstorf’s. Shortly after the report was released, state agencies started making the rounds of NC coastal communities, putting them on notice that they would need to make BIG changes (elevating roads and bridges, rezoning property, changing flood maps for insurance purposes, etc.).

As an independent scientist, I was solicited by my coastal county to provide a scientific perspective on this report. Even though I wasn’t a SLR expert, I could clearly see that this document was a classic case of Confirmation Bias, as it violated several scientific standards. But to get into the technical specifics I solicited the inputs of about 40 international SLR experts (oceanographers, etc.).

I compiled and edited their responses to the CRC panel’s report into what I called a Critique.
This 33 page document discussed how real science works, and then went through the 16 page CRC document, essentially line-by-line. In doing so numerous specious claims, unsupported assumptions, and questionable models were pointed out. It wasn’t pretty.

It was during this time that I was solicited to work with a small coastal organization called NC-20 (there are 20 NC coastal counties). Since they were interested in promoting science-based solutions (my agenda) for NC coastal issues, I agreed to be their Science Advisor and a board member (both non-paying, volunteer positions).

Initially we had hopes that the CRC panel’s report could be fixed, so we met with the head of the CRC, explained our concerns and handed the Critique to him. He appeared to be receptive and we were optimistic that this important matter could be straightened out. That proved to be an illusion, as none of the CRC panel members ever contacted us about fixing any of their mistakes, or about doing a more balanced assessment. Shame on them.
We subsequently asked that the Critique be posted on CRC’s SLR webpage, but they refused to do so. So much for presenting the facts to NC citizens.

On the positive side of things, due to our objections, the state did (temporarily anyway) back off from the rules and regulations that they had threatened coastal communities with. [BTW NC-20 is NOT disputing that there will be SLR. The amount of NC SLR is unknown, so a genuine scientific assessment of the NC SLR situation should be undertaken. What such an assessment entails is explained in the Critique’s Part 1.]

By all appearances it seems the CRC assumed that the prestige of their science panel would win the day against the NC-20 upstarts. To help assure that outcome they engaged in an intensive PR campaign to pervert this as a science vs real estate developers issue (with them representing the science side, of course!). Here’s a sample of several articles that appeared, and another.

It was during this time that a CRC Panel member wrote me saying that they agreed with the Critique, and apologized for signing off on the Panel’s report! The member stated that the Panel was driven by a few activists, and that everyone else simply went along. This was no surprise, but that an individual had the good conscience to apologize was refreshing.

Anyway, the CRC panel’s disinformation campaign didn’t work, as we didn’t go away. Further, almost everyone who actually read the Critique ended up being on our side. One legislator who liked it asked us to make a presentation to interested state legislators in November 2011. We took that opportunity and it was well received. (See my part.)

Not long after that the CRC panel changed their tactics. Their new plan was to issue an Addendum to their 2010 report, and then claim that all of our concerns were answered. If only that were the case! Their nine page document was prepared with zero contact with us — which tells you all you need to know about the sincerity that they had in any scientific resolution.

My response was to follow the successful earlier pattern, so I passed it on to my network of international SLR experts for their commentary. Again they were forthcoming, so I was able to compile and edit a detailed 18 page response that I called a Commentary. We again sent this directly to CRC, asked them to put it on their SLR website — but posted it ourselves on our own site. [We received no response from CRC, and they have yet to post our document.]

What happened next was a BIG surprise.

We were notified that state legislators were as exasperated as we were with the politicalization of these technical issues — and that they were going to introduce legislation to stop the agenda promoters! Wow.

In this case, SLR legislation was drafted by a staffer who has a PhD in oceanography. The main point of the document was that future SLR projections must be made based on extrapolating prior empirical data. In other words, state agencies would not be allowed to create policies that were based on speculations about some possible acceleration!
As a scientist, I’m always concerned about legislating technical matters. In this case, though, the evidence is quite clear that certain NC agencies have no genuine interest in real science. So what to do? Defunding them is a possibility, but that might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Replacing the agency’s problem people is another option, but the logistics for that weren’t practical. So putting some constraints on these dogmatists has some merit.

Not surprisingly, the backlash was immediate. These evangelists are used to getting their way, and for legislators to actually stand up against their religion was an unexpected development.

In their anguish they lashed out to anyone they could blame for this roadblock in their crusade — including yours truly. There were numerous rants (some national) lamenting how “good science” was being thwarted by ignorant legislators. Even the Colbert Report had fun with it.

Of course, the reality that the legislators were actually trying to protect NC citizens from promoters masquerading their agendas as science, was rarely reported. Such are the times we are living in, where talk is cheap, and few understand what science really is.

What’s worse is that thousands of scientists are off the reservation, and have no interest in adhering to scientific principles or procedures. The solution (in my opinion) is that such renegades should have their degrees revoked, just as a priest is defrocked for violating his vows.

In any case, here is a piece about the NC SLR bill (H819), which includes a link to download a PDF version. Last Friday, there was a brief committee hearing where this measure was discussed and voted on. It passed unanimously.

As I understand it, the NC Senate may be voting on this measure this week. I am hoping that they will not be dissuaded from their worthy objective. I wrote this (word limited and edited) NC op-ed to respond to some of the misinformation.

IMO there are parts of this bill that can be improved, and I submitted written suggestions. If you’d like to add your comments, please direct them to the bill’s sponsors: Senator David Rouzer and Representative Pat McElraft. (Please copy me.)

Some are predicting that this measure will pass the legislature, and then be vetoed by our lame-duck Governor. As an optimist, I’m hoping that since the Governor no longer needs to cater to the green constituency, that instead she can send a message that real science should be the basis of the state’s technical policies. That would give her legacy a major positive boost.

John Droz, jr.
Physicist & Environmental Advocate; Morehead City, North Carolina
6/11/12