This story is about why laws bowing to sea level worries will make signs like this at left more common in one Australian town.

I’ve seen stupidity from local city governments before, but this one takes the cake. Residents of a small Australian port city are being “squashed” by an old law that says rooftops can’t be higher than the local historic pub, while new building codes demand a 1.5 meter (~5 feet) upward offset to deal with “sea level rise”. Is it any wonder one resident says this?

“We’re sick to death of the climate change issue and how it’s impacting our community,” she says.

From the Australian:

Higher floors, lower roofs: the town being shrunk by climate change angst PORT Albert, on Victoria’s southeast coast, is a pretty-as-a-picture fishing village that is at war with the science of climate change. Residents in the village have been told that because of rising sea levels, new housing has to be built on stumps almost 1.5m above ground level, despite the fact many of the town’s original colonial buildings have withstood time and tide on ground level without ill effect since the 19th century. At the same time, a heritage overlay in the village, introduced more than a decade ago, prevents roof lines being built higher than the roof of the local pub, which is claimed to be Victoria’s oldest continuously licensed hotel. Residents have seen land values plummet by 38 per cent in the past year under the weight of the overlays. Investment in the town has stalled. And Port Albert Progress Association president Donna Eades says that, with rising floor levels and roof lines limited by the height of the pub, “the next generation of Port Albert residents will have to be pygmies”. Ms Eades says Port Albert residents have been made the “guinea pigs” for rising sea-level predictions, while the charm and character of the historic township has been sacrificed to climate change fashion. “We’re sick to death of the climate change issue and how it’s impacting our community,” she says.

h/t to WUWT reader Rosalind Smallwood. Full story here:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/higher-floors-lower-roofs-the-town-being-shrunk-by-climate-change-angst/story-fn59niix-1226096410709

Let’s look at some nearby Sea Level Data. From Stony Point, Victoria, about 80 miles NW of Port Albert, courtesy of Australia’s BoM:

Source: http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO71054/IDO71054SLI.shtml

Looks pretty darned flat for the past 20 years, doesn’t it?

Next we have Lorne Jetty, Victoria, about 150 miles NW of Port Albert:

Source: http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO71056/IDO71056SLI.shtml

Yes I can see why the local government of Port Albert is terrified of sea level rise /sarc

It may be that civil disobedience in building codes will become rampant there, which may be the last resort of many to this madness.

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UPDATE:

Just to be sure, I plotted the data provided by BoM myself (from the source links I gave above) in the two graphs below and calculated the change in sea level rate using a polynomial curve fit for each station.

Lets take the worst case rate of Stony Point, Victoria with rate of 2.45 mm/yr.

The vertical offset required by the Port Albert town government is 1.5 meters, or 1500 mm.

At a rate of 2.45 mm/yr into 1500 mm, that result is 612 years for the offset to be met. If we use the lower rate from Lorne Jetty, the number rises to 1304 years.

It seems to me that all of the buildings built this century will be long gone before they need the offset required by the Port Albert town government.

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