New York’s Response to Comments on Part 490 Sea Level Rise Amendment – ​​What’s the reaction to this?

Roger Kayazza

Here are some comments published in early 2024 about The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has proposed an amendment to Part 490, “Projected Sea Level Rise” (Amendment). Kip Hansen wrote an article titled Sea level rise in New York state: Fantasy is law. a few days later Anthony Watts responds An article from the New York Post By Carl Campanile, titled: Sea levels around New York City could soar to 13 inches by 2030s due to climate change: State study. I prepared a review and summarized it in the post. In September 2024, the DEC adopted the amendment. To no one's surprise, their public opinion assessment eliminated all concerns expressed.

Part 490 Projected Sea Level Rise

DEC's Climate Change Regulation Amendments webpage describes the amendments to the regulation:

On September 22, 2014, the Community Risk and Resiliency Act was signed into law—Chapter 355 of the Laws of 2014 (CRRA). CRRA is designed to ensure that decisions about certain state permitting and spending take into account climate risks, including sea level rise. Among other things, CRRA requires the Department of Environmental Protection (Department) to develop, through regulations, science-based national sea level rise projections. Therefore, the Department proposed a new 6 NYCRR Part 490, Projected Sea Level Rise (Part 490). Part 490 establishes projections of sea level rise over different time intervals for three specified geographic areas, but does not impose any requirements on any entity. Revised Part 490 was adopted in September 2024 without any revisions to the draft that was released for public comment in January 2024.

Kip Hansen Summarize New York's sea level rise history and DEC projections are detailed in his post. What you need to know is that for 167 years, sea level in New York City has increased by 3 millimeters per year. Sufficient part of the observed increase is due to local subsidence so that the remainder is “Very close to the 20th century global sea level rise figures quoted by standards of 1.7 or 1.8 mm/year. (Opinions vary—see NOAA here.)” Kip explained that the expected increases contained in the amendments “have not occurred in the decade since the 2014 update of the report and based on historical records are extremely unlikely to occur in the near future”. He noted that “all projections in the amendment, NYSERDA’s 2014 report, and the New York State Climate Assessment call for a doubling or tripling of New York City’s long-term sea level rise rate.”

RCP8.5 Comments

Kip, Anthony, and I all agree that these projections are flawed because the method estimates unrealistically high predicted sea levels based on impossible climate model scenarios. Depending on the version of the IPCC report used, the modeling scenarios are called Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) or Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). As Anthony reported here and here , the RCP-8.5 scenario has been debunked by many. My review focuses on abusing RCP-8.5 using some of these references and adding others.

The amendment modifies future sea level rise projections required by New York regulations.

I raised concerns about RCP-8.5 in my pre-proposal draft of the amendment. The Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) uses the label SSP5-8.5 for this scenario and acknowledges that these emissions scenarios are not credible:

The Ministry acknowledges that current greenhouse gas emissions policies will result in actual emissions being lower than SSP5-8.5 projections. Therefore, the inclusion of higher projections of sea level rise, especially those based on SSP5-8.5, may lead to the consideration of less likely scenarios, at least in the near future.

So how does DEC justify continuing to use SSP5-8.5? RIS goes to great lengths to justify its use with the following statement: “Unfortunately, the current literature does not provide a basis for assessing emission levels from unstable ice shelves and ocean ice cliffs, which are important contributors to sea level rise at high altitudes. factor.

Response to RCP8.5 comments

DEC is required to respond to submissions. The public comment assessment document sets out my arguments in response to comment 6. ” The reply pointed out:

Response to Comment 6: DEC described its rationale for incorporating SSP5-8.5 model output into its forecasts, including the rapid ice melt scenario in RIS. Taken together, the above emission reduction gaps, uncertainty about the causal chain of sea level height, including the stability of ice cliffs and ice shelves, and reports of accelerated ice loss in Antarctica and Greenland reduce confidence that SLR will be limited to projected levels . The CIA Methodology Report (page 21) provides additional reasons for including predictions based on SSP5-8.5:

• Continuity with previous projections for New York State based on representative concentration pathways with the same end-of-century radiative forcing.

• Stakeholder interest in these projections is based on a CIA needs assessment.

• Determine the value of a broad range of reasonable outcomes.

• Current climate impact models underestimate possible outcomes when driven by only moderate greenhouse gas forcing.

DEC believes that including high-probability (albeit unlikely) forecasts to consider the consequences of low-probability but high-consequence events is a more prudent alternative than limiting forecasts based on SSP2-4.5.

The key thing I disagree with is the value of incorporating inherently impossible scenarios. All of the reasons cited seek to justify what is essentially an administrative decision to perpetuate the narrative of the existential threat of climate change, in this case exemplified by projections of rising sea levels.

Tellingly, the response claimed that the extreme forecasts were included because “stakeholders are interested in these forecasts and are based on the CIA's needs assessment.” New York State agencies like to claim they have robust stakeholder processes. However, the operation of the stakeholder process is fraught with stress. The New York Research and Development Agency's (NYSEDA) CIA Needs Assessment Steering Committee is a relevant example. “The assessment is guided by a steering committee composed of climate scientists, assessment experts, and representatives from nonprofits and state and municipal agencies,” the report states. “I am very critical of the review process because I know there is tremendous pressure within NYSERDA to adhere to the narrative, And I'm sure there's no room for anyone anywhere near the steering committee to be skeptical of the extreme impact narrative. Additionally, technical analysis conducted by NYSERDA will not be funded in the future if the answers do not support the narrative.

Another reason to use impossible scenarios is to “determine the value of a wide range of outcomes.” In this case, I think the value lies primarily in the “scare the people away” narrative, to continue the narrative that New York politicians are here to save the planet, even in the face of increasingly obvious costs, threats to reliability, and the inevitability of personal choice. Avoided reduction. This will only stop when the political balance in New York changes.

in conclusion

Surprising no one, their assessment of public opinion allayed our concerns. There is no reasonable defense for using RCP-8.5. As long as New York State continues to claim they follow the science but ignore it at inconvenient times, the rush to bottom is more likely to turn into a death spiral.

Roger Caiazza blogs about energy and environmental issues in New York at the Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not that of his previous employer or any other organization with which he is associated.

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