Climate madness in Queensland

From the "I'm more moonbattish than you" department. Huge swathes of coastal Queensland are being declared off-limits for developers as the government bases its planning decisions on the IPCC's sea level predictions:

Queensland is a coastal development "hotspot", and in the past few years several local councils have been forced to make their own estimates of future rises in sea levels due to global warming [er, surely "climate change" - Ed], and have applied them to development applications. However, Queensland is believed to be the first state to put a figure on how much the sea will rise.

The Bligh government policy is based on the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and predicts sea levels will rise 30cm by 2050 and 80cm by 2100. Government and industry figures yesterday predicted that if these guidelines were adopted by local councils, it would have an effect on coastal development in all major coastal towns.

That, you would have thought, was moonbattish enough, given that sea levels have risen at the same rate of 2 or 3 mm a year for the past few thousand years, and if anything are slowing down. The likely maximum sea level rise would be about 30cm by 2100.

But no! The Queensland Conservation Council picks a ridiculous figure out of the air, and runs with that instead:

QCC spokesman Simon Baltais says recent data shows sea levels will rise by up to 1.5 metres.

"When you look at the latest science coming out of all of the countries - Australia, Europe - they're all talking sea level rises greater than one metre," he said.

"So they're using the easy way out by saying they're using IPCC data. The truth of the matter is, contemporary science is saying it's a lot higher."

What contemporary science is saying 1.5 metres? Answers on a postcard… no, forget it. Climate madness.

Read it here and here.