TCEQ Censoring a Scientific Document

Galveston Bay, and Galveston Island which forms the bay has recently been reviewed in a scientific paper issued by the Houston Advanced Research Center, a nonprofit organization that has dealt with Galveston Bay sustainability issues for 10 years now. The study, funded by the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality, the local EPA, apparently mentioned an unmentionable theory: that global sea levels were on the rise and that it is partially due to human activity.

So they decided to revise the chapter dealing with this issue. A clear case of governmental censorship of a scientific analysis for political ends. You need to read the entire article here. I have another take on it, which follows.

Texas governor, Rick Perry, denies the nearly 100% agreement in the climatology and oceanography community that Earth is undergoing a global climate change, and a part of the reason is the rise in greenhouse gasses generated by human fossil fuel energy consumption.

And Rick Perry appoints the TCEQ, so guess what? The TCEQ is trying to suppress a scientific finding.

The effect of even a 20 centimeter rise in global sea level would be catastrophic to Galveston Island. It would disappear. Wave action would eat it up in only a few decades, leaving no sand behind for the TCEQ commissioners to bury their collective heads in.

This issue is too serious to sweep under the rug. The effects of a global sea level rise will seriously impact our heavily populated coastlines, especially our system of barrier islands, something that the state of Texas has a whole lot of. And this is not just my opinion, or the opinion of nearly 100% of people who work in this field, it is the majority opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States.

In a 5 to 4 decision, SCOTUS ruled that despite what some people might think, despite the economic effects of cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions, the disastrous effects of global sea level rise is serious enough to make people err on the side of caution. Even if global climate change by greenhouse gas emissions is a complete myth, we cannot afford to ignore the data that supports it.

In this the Supreme Court got it exact, and the TCEQ is full of methane.