The North Carolina Senate has passed a bill outlawing the use of exponential math calculations when calculating climate change impacts on sea level changes. Instead, scientists are required to use linear math. This legislative mandate ignores any advances in mathematics since the Bible was first written. The provision of the bill at issue reads:

“Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise.”

The law also bans any agency from calculating sea level changes other than the Division of Coastal Management, which is required to use legislatively mandated Bible math. Presumably, this means that the colleges and universities in North Carolina are barred from making their own calculations and must instead rely soley on the calculations generated by the Division of Coastal Management which will have used North Carolina Bible math to make the predictions.

The lobbying group that sponsored the mandate to use ancient math in lieu of any math invented by the pesky Greeks in 800 B.C. justify it by stating that historical sea level changes follow a linear pattern, so, future sea level changes must necessarily follow a linear pattern. The lobbying group is committing the logical fallacy by assuming that you can predict the future based on past events. But, they would have to have an understanding of modern science to grasp that concept.

Passage by the North Carolina House is apparently assured. I do not know if the Governor will sign the bill. I hope she does, because then I can laugh at this for years to come. Oh, I should add that my house is at 950 feet above sea level.

A copy of the bill is here: North Carolina House Bill 819