The New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club is accusing the Christie administration of ignoring and hiding its own report on climate change.

A report issued in June by the state Department of Environmental Protection's Office of Science predicted sea levels will continue to rise. That prompted the environmental group to say the administration should change its strategy on rebuilding at the Shore after Hurricane Sandy.

“We should be building on sound science, not on a foundation of sand that will get washed away with the next storm,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club in New Jersey.

“What this report clearly shows is that climate change is stronger than the storm,” Tittel added, in a parody of Christie’s television commercials inviting people to the rebuilt Shore. “If you do not believe climate change is real and there is a threat from sea level rise, then you wil not take the steps to prepare New Jersey for its future impacts and future storms."

Rather than rebuild on areas close to the Shore that could get wiped out again in storms, Tittel says, the state should offer buyouts to homeowners, as it has in other flood-prone areas.

The report, using data from Rutgers University, projects a sea level rise of 17 inches in New Jersey between 2000 and 2050, and 44 inches by 2100.

“A sea level rise in line with median projections would threaten the majority of New Jersey’s coastline,” the report says. “Atlantic City is predicted to experience floods as severe as those that today happen only once a century every year or two by the end of the century.”

The report also shows that annual precipitation in New Jersey rose from 35 inches in 1895 to an all-time high of 65 inches by 2011, the year of Tropical Storm Irene, although there were often drops along the way. Temperatures in the state, meanwhile, rose from an annual mean of 51 degrees in 1895 to 55 degrees in 2011.

The Sierra Club and the Christie administration disagree on whether the report links Sandy to climate change.

In a key conclusion that is interpreted differently by the two sides, the report says, “While it is quite difficult to attribute one particular extreme, such as a severe hurricane, to human induced climate change rather than to the natural range of variability, the increased probability of these changes occurring can be linked to changes in climate.”

Christie said he hadn’t read the report.

“I’d have to read the report to decide if I’m concerned about it or not,” he said.

Administration spokesmen accused Tittel of taking a routine scientific update out of context. Christie’s spokesman, Michael Drewniak, said Tittel is “in his usual mode of spreading misinformation" and is publicly supporting Christie's Democratic opponent, Sen. Barbara Buono, in the race for governor.

Drewniak reissued Christie’s statement on climate change from 2011, when he said “Climate change is real and it’s impacting our state.” He made that statement as he withdrew New Jersey from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, saying its work had been ineffective.

DEP spokesman Larry Ragonese accused the Sierra Club of “playing politics” and “trying to make it seem like DEP is hiding something.”

There was no need to publicize the report, Ragonese said, because it represented a periodic update by the Office of Science that “sits squarely with our previously stated findings and information gathering on climate change.”

“This report does not suggest that Sandy was caused by changing climate,” Ragonese said. He added that the rebuilding effort at the Shore shows “the need to be more resilient” and is designed “to get people and businesses in the state back on their feet.”

“Would Mr. Tittel suggest that we should have let all of these people hang in the wind while he pondered our future?” Ragonese asked.

Star-Ledger staff writer Ryan Hutchins contributed to this report.

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