You may have seen a letter to the editor in the Mercury Times yesterday from Alan Talansky and Linda Asbury of the San Mateo Area Chamber of Commerce that reads

We have strong concerns about the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission's proposed amendments to the Bay Plan on Climate Change. We recognize that global warming is expected to result in sea level rise in the bay of 16 inches by midcentury and 55 inches by 2100. By then, more than 213,000 acres of bayside communities will be vulnerable to sea rise.

The San Mateo Chamber of Commerce encourages the BCDC to go back and adopt a strategy that will affirm local government authority on land-use decisions and the need to first assess sea level threats to bayside communities before adoption of new zoning controls and guidelines; as well as acknowledge the role private investment and development could play in providing protection solutions to threats posed by sea level rise-related flooding, storm surge and inundation.

The letter is a synopsis of a much larger press release from a group called Protect Our Bayside Communities.  Their cover letter is signed by Asbury and William Nack of the local Building & Construction Trades Council and includes this little gem

Few people would dispute that global warming is causing oceans and the San Francisco Bay to rise.  Some scientists even predict that we'll see a 55 inch rise in Bay waters before the end of the century.

I guess these people aren't reading the news–"global warming" had to be recast as "climate change" since the data on warming is ever more suspect as the UN IPCC members' e-mails leak out and raise serious questions about scientists' integrity.  We will be following "Protect Our Bayside Communities" positions but right now it looks more like "Protect Our Special Interests" and fearmongering looks to be the main tactic.