Assumed sea level rise....

The Moreton Bay Communities Alliance  has reported that the MBRC has decided in its December 9th Coordinating Committee meeting not to adopt the 0.8m assumed sea level rise that was a key factor in the Beachmere's  rezoning.

The minutes are not yet available online  on the MBRC site,  but can be read here  on the MBCA facebook page in all their council-speak.

What does all that mean? With all the argy bargying the language of zoning is not street person friendly. So I'm hoping to track down some clear information about where the Beachmere community may be at re rezoning the rezoning.

An 'assumption' -- or not -- of 0.8m sea level rise isn't quite the key issue. Why would any rise happen and why would any sea level rise stop happening...or slow down?

The key issue is the rate of climate change -- and what causes it.

Even the Abbott's government's own Australian Dept of the Environment points out:

There is robust evidence that sea levels have risen as a result of climate change based on observations from tide gauges, paleo indicators and satellite measurements. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report finds that sea level has risen by 0.19 m since the beginning of the 20th century.

Over the last century global average sea level rose by 1.7 [1.5 to 1.9] mm per year, in recent years (between 1993 and 2010) this rate has increased to 3.2 [2.8 to 3.6] mm per year. The IPCC report finds that the rate of sea level rise over the last century is unusually high in the context of the last 2,000 years.

However the IPCC suggests that sea level rise by 2300 could be kept to less than 1 m if concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are stabilised below 500 ppm.

How climate change and sea level rise impacts on local communities is captured in these comments  from  NSW Minister for the Environment, Rob Stokes:

"It's much more complex than simply taking a bathtub view that the sea will rise equally everywhere like the water in a bathtub. The science indicates that it won't be like that."

Planning policies will be looking at coast protection works, especially in instances where it will be more economically viable to protect an area with existing housing rather than to relocate the housing.

But this will be costly.

"In many cases Councils by themselves simply don't have the money," he said, "So we will be looking to put together a plan as to who benefits most from coastal protection works.

"Is it the local owners, is it the council or is it the wider community? And if so how do we divide up who pays?"

Of course what the MBRC has done is try to shift the initial responsibility onto seemingly 'at risk' communities, like ours.  In effect, telling us that we're on our own. And state government is complicit in this because there is a determination in the media  and at all levels of government not  to face up to the reality of climate change.

That's the spin.

Of course ,the insurance industry always prefers reality.