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White House Threatens Veto Over EPA "Secret Science" Bills
sciencehabit writes The U.S. House of Representatives could vote as early as this week to approve two controversial, Republican-backed bills that would change how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses science and scientific advice to inform its policies. Many Democrats, scientific organizations, and environmental groups are pushing back, calling the bills thinly veiled attempts to weaken future regulations and favor industry. White House advisers announced that they will recommend that President Barack Obama veto the bills if they reach his desk in their current form.
It makes me wonder if they're bringing out these stupid bills because they want to appease voters but know there's no chance of them actually passing because of white house veto.
Think about it; this is a wonderful time for the Republicans to create all kinds of crazy ridiculous stuff that appeases voters but that the politicians know is harmful, realizing that none of it will pass and that they'll get re-elected by their crazy base because "at least they tried."
Hmmmm!
What a genius political strategy when there's not a presidential election next year!
While they're busy sucking up to low-information voters who have a non-specific axe to grind, they're also alienating the support they'll need to not lose the White House for the third time in a row for the first time since the 1940's. I get the feeling they think that because it hasn't happened in so long, they're protected by some kind of voodoo fairy magic and pixie dust that will keep it from happening. But that would be par for the course for the party of "science am fake".
What's weird about making the data from scientific studies publically available? Frankly, I think the data from all government funded research should be public domain.
Yeah, you wouldn't want EPA regulations made from 'settled science' with full transparency. That wouldn't be in these activist's style. Obama went rogue long ago.
an ill wind that blows no good
Its funny to see climate-change denying conservatives and anti-vaccine liberals make the same arguments to support their stance against overwhelming scientific evidence, and yet blast each other as being anti-science.
Can't have the masses getting their info right from the source.
From the article:
"The bills, introduced by a mostly Republican cast of sponsors in both the House and the Senate, would require that EPA use only publicly available, reproducible data in writing regulations and seek to remake the membership and procedures of the agency’s science advisory panels."
The president plans to veto common sense.
"His name was James Damore."
I'm sorry, I still don't see how that's a bad thing. What's wrong with requiring some level of scientific rigor in something before making public policy on the results? Now, remaking the membership and procedures of the agency portion, that's rather vague and more info needed, too lazy to look it up.
The obvious target is to tie up all EPA regulations until courts have confirmed the reproducibility of the data used to base the decision on. It will fall to the EPA to prove their data is reproducible by someone who wishes to not reproduce it. Everything else would be illegal.
Learn to love Alaska
What's weird about making the data from scientific studies publically available? Frankly, I think the data from all government funded research should be public domain.
From the full article, the law as written, would bar the EPA from using any studies involving confidential patient information unless they were made public.
The (Republican) backers response? Apparently they think participants/Patients should sign a waiver agreeing that the raw study data might be made public, or they can simply choose not to participate in the study.
Frankly, I'm disgusted.
The result is clear: very few, if any, studies would be available to the EPA to use as a basis to set policy.
The idea of transparent science is good. But this is clearly an attempt to strip the EPA of any ability to actually do science or regulate based on science.
Public Domain's not the issue here, when the American Statistical Society opposes this bill, there must be some serious problem somewhere.
the devil is in the details:
The secret science bill, for example, would apparently bar EPA from using public health studies based on confidential patient information, wrote the American Statistical Association’s president, David Morganstein, in a 25 February letter to lawmakers. That would force the agency into “a choice between maintaining data confidentiality and issuing needed regulations,” he wrote. Also, efforts to deidentify sensitive data before release—by stripping names and other information—aren’t fail-safe, Morganstein wrote.
Democrats are further concerned about another provision, not included in earlier versions, that would give EPA only $1 million per year to implement the bill, which would entail, among other things, obtaining raw data from study authors. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculated that the bill would cost $250 million annually to implement early on, and that’s only if EPA were to halve the number of studies it used to 25,000 annually, said Representative Donna Edwards (D–MD)
this bill is not even remotely about "transparency." it's about hamstringing the EPA.
If it ain't publicly known and reproducible then it ain't science. No public policy or regulation should be based in reasons that are not subject to examination and validation. This is pretty simple.
Its funny to see climate-change denying conservatives and anti-vaccine liberals make the same arguments to support their stance against overwhelming scientific evidence,
If the EPA is making decisions based on "overwhelming scientific evidence", what exactly is the problem with requiring that that evidence be available to the public, and that people who advise the EPA not base those decisions on unpublished personal research? That's what these bills require.
The only argument I can see that is valid deals with studies including personally identifiable medical information. Those kind of studies should already be required to remove PII prior to use by the government, and the limited number of such datasets shows that this is another case of the perfect being the enemy of the reasonable. Legislation that covers every possible eventuality is going to be overly complex and still have loopholes based on interpretations.
I have a hard time taking seriously any website that loads a 2MB image into a 108x118 author avatar. The topic becomes irrelevant when I see the journalist's picture slowly coming in like a GIF from the 2400bps days.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
It will fall to the EPA to prove their data is reproducible by someone who wishes to not reproduce it. Everything else would be illegal.
Did you read the bills? Where does it say this? I didn't see any such requirement.
The only way to reproduce river pollution research is to pollute another river... in the name of science.
If thats "common sense", please veto it Obama!
I'm liberal and am not an anti-vaxxer.
All the anti-vaxxers I know are republicans.
the devil is in the details:
Yes, such as the 50,000 studies they "use" annually. Thats 137 studies 'used" per day. I guess common sense doesnt figure into your view of things sine you quoted the part where this is detailed, but failed to notice how ridiculous this is.
The EPA employs 16,000 people full-time and contracts out work to many more, so that is 3 studies per employee per year. I fail to notice anything ridiculous about the number.
Do tell us, what is the "right" number of studies?
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
what exactly is the problem with requiring that that evidence be available to the public
Nothing's wrong with that.
That's what these bills require.
Nope. I've participated in medical studies (when I was in college, it was easy money). To meet the strict letter of the law, the EPA must publish my SSN, DOB, and medical history, or they can't use the study.
The bill doesn't require "the evidence" be available to the public (that'd be the completed study). The law requires the raw data be published by the EPA.
It also requires the data be "reproducible". All you have to do with a study with 95% confidence is to it 20 times, and then take the 1 failure to court and show the 1 success to be wrong and unreproducible. It may fail in court, but would cost the taxpayer millions, and delay the introduction of rules by years, or decades.
The obvious point of the law is to add hurdles, while claiming (non existent) benefits.
Learn to love Alaska
the devil is in the details:
Yes, such as the 50,000 studies they "use" annually. Thats 137 studies 'used" per day. I guess common sense doesnt figure into your view of things sine you quoted the part where this is detailed, but failed to notice how ridiculous this is.
you're not a scientist, or even science-adjacent, are you. research institutions, both public and private, review incredible amounts of scientific literature, research results, and related items on a daily basis. that's part of science.
what's not common sense is the belief that the EPA, or any other private or public agency doing science review and research, should stop reviewing data at an arbitrary limit of studies. that's not only the exact antithesis of good science, it's also an asinine claim.
In this article from 2009 our-secrets-live-online-in-databases-of-ruin, researchers were able to identify %87 of Americans with just 3 piece of information: zip code, birthdate and sex. With the mountains of personal data both publicly accessible and in private databases and with what are essentially clearing-houses especially designed to aggregate this data, identifying people in anonymized data is almost trivial unless that data is so heavily sanitized as to be useless to research and in effect fail the "reproducible" requirement of the law.
The one I've heard that rings true is the sanctity of life argument: the Cons being against the abortion with the same zeal as the Libs against the death penalty.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The (Republican) backers response? Apparently they think participants/Patients should sign a waiver agreeing that the raw study data might be made public, or they can simply choose not to participate in the study.
Frankly, I'm disgusted.
Disgusted is putting it lightly, it would cripple medical research and is arguably illegal.
We all know how much the medical industry whines about regulation, but now they're supposed to get patients to sign waivers saying that they 'might' share the data?
Even IF all participants/patients signed the waiver, existing medical confidentiality laws would tie the issue up in court for years. And thats IF anyone is crazy enough to risk it in the first place. And IF the participants were deemed "medically fit" to understand and agree to the waiver.
Pretty sure the folks I have read speaking against vaccines - are mostly not "liberals".
do you have a list ?
Well..the Democrats are using the EPA as a political tool rather than an environmental agency. The guy Obama put in charge of the EPA gleefully admitted that he only job was too destroy Capitalism. Democrats don't care about science. They care about power and control.
The ASA makes most of its revenue by charging large amounts for access to closed academic journals. Of course they're opposed to open access laws.
"... and seek to remake the membership and procedures of the agencyâ(TM)s science advisory panels."
Look into that. That's the tricky part.
You wouldn't believe me if I told you what it says.
It's a shame when the EPA's own strategy gets used against it.
???
From this you get the Republicans are the good guys? If this were my only measure I'd count the Dems as the good guys. This bill is a weird combination of stupid and evil.
There are other convincing reasons to *not* count the Dems as good guys, but this isn't one of them. This is just more evidence that we've got two sets of bad guys with slightly different goals. Generally I find the Dems a hair less evil, but I consider them sufficiently evil that I rarely vote for them. I vote for some third party or other. There's usually one that's less evil in it's promises than the Dems and Repubs are in their actions.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The only argument I can see that is valid deals with studies including personally identifiable medical information. Those kind of studies should already be required to remove PII prior to use by the government
TFA cites a letter sent to the Congressional committee by David Morganstein, president of the American Statistical Association. He writes:
[S]imple but necessary de-identification methods—like stripping names and other personally identifiable information (PII)—often do not suffice to protect confidentiality. Statisticians and computer scientists have repeatedly shown that it is possible to link individuals to publicly available sources, even with PII removed.
You can read Morganstein's full letter here. [PDF alert]
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
""would require that EPA use only publicly available, reproducible data in writing regulations and seek to remake the membership and procedures of the agencyâ(TM)s science advisory panels.""
Explain to me why that is bad? First, unreproducable science isn't science. So requiring that the science be reproducable is requiring that it actually be science. As to the information being publicly avalidable, it can't be peer reviewed unless it can be reviewed by peers.
Here someone will say "but we had some secret shadow council of scientists look it over and they said it was fine."... but since you're not disclosing it, then how can we know? What is more, your selection of scientists could be his buddies for all anyone knows.
I'm not talking about the science being behind a journal paywall. That's one thing. But if the science and data is straight up not disclosed then I'm not approving legislation based on it because I can't get it verified.
Look... republicans and democrats either need to kill each other or the two need to be able to work together reasonably. This is not an unreasonable requirement from what I can see. So... democrats... seriously... what the fuck? If the republicans are doing something stupid, then bitch about that and shut it down. But if they're not... then at least have a rational discussion about it. In fact, strike that... always have a rational discussion.
I know there is a lot of factionalism and tribalism in US politics. But we've come to the point where we need to get over that bullshit or throats need to get cut.
This shit is old.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
... when Obamacare was being shoved down our throats? ObamaCare site sharing data with third parties
These so called scientists have a hidden agenda to get more government handouts. Climate change is a lie. Earth is not older than 6000 years (Source: The Bible). Genetically modified foods and vaccines are evil.
The obvious target is to tie up all EPA regulations until courts have confirmed the reproducibility of the data used to base the decision on. It will fall to the EPA to prove their data is reproducible by someone who wishes to not reproduce it. Everything else would be illegal.
The language of the bill is very clear. It is intended to do what it says: make sure our regulatory bodies (employees of The People) are making their decisions based on publicly available, sound science.
Why should they be able to keep their "science" secret, as they have? That's obviously a non-starter. Especially when they're attempting to shove the most expensive regulations in history off on the public.
While we're at it, how about forcing the DEA to use scientific advice to formulate a rational evidence-based drugs policy too?
Oh, suddenly not so keen?
To meet the strict letter of the law, the EPA must publish my SSN, DOB, and medical history, or they can't use the study.
First you claim that the EPA will have to reproduce the data or it will be illegal, and now this. No, the law doesn't say they have to publish your SSN, and at worst only those parts of your history that are relevant to the study might need to be online. If you think your SSN is somehow relevant to a medical study, you're wrong. And if you think your specific DOB is necessary and not just an approximate age, then you must believe in astrology. I know of no medical issues that depend on a specific age down to a specific day in history. (Were you a Hiroshima survivor?)
It also requires the data be "reproducible".
No, it does not. It says that the data used to make a decision (not all data ever provided to EPA) must be "publicly available online in a manner that is sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of research results." All the EPA has to do is make sure the data is publicly available so that someone who DOES want to try reproducing it can. It doesn't even require the EPA to be the data warehouse.
All you have to do with a study with 95% confidence is to it 20 times, and then take the 1 failure to court and show the 1 success to be wrong and unreproducible.
And now you ignore the word "substantial". If the EPA is basing regulatory decisions on one study with one result and this law stops it, that's a good thing. One study does not science make, and one unpublished study with secret data makes for even less valid science.
The obvious point of the law is to add hurdles,
Yeah, an impossible hurdle of letting the public know the science that is being used to create regulations they have to obey or have the weight of the federal government crash down on them. If the science cannot survive the scrutiny, then it's isn't valid science and shouldn't be used to make regulations.
What's also not common sense is that this would keep EPA from using health studies from confidential sources. By their very nature, such studies are presumed to be repeatable; if not, then the researcher(s) are using questionable statistical methods at best. Like biased sampling methods, for example.
There is nothing in there that would preclude using decent studies which used non-controversial methodology. Whether the subjects of the studies remain confidential, or not.
Umm, no.
The EPA is already on the short side of the budget scale. They use whatever science they can. Limiting what input the can regulate from, hamstrings their bowl of analysis. You'll get 'scientific studies' from Oil and Gas. Those will be accepted to base regulation on. Those pesky university studies, with 50 or a 1000 scientists name on them, won't be considered 'scientific' by partisan placement in Congress and Agency. Sorry, can't use that as a reference for regulation!
This is about limiting input to the EPA! Common Sense? That you have the gaul to beleive that coming from the Republicans is astonishing.
We are blessed with a fair amount of light-duty science shows on TV... but... it seems to be financed by non scientists. Why is Nova paid for by the Koch Brothers ( http://www.cpb.org/ombudsman/d... )? Seems David and Charles are all for pushing the populace to see just enough science to not want to dig further. To displace science provided by scientists. I want to see Science TV shows that make me want to learn more about the topics ... to understand and even participate in the process of adapting / adopting. Why not feel part of science and not subject to it?
How about science that seeks to inform. Rather than fascination with Mars, how about how pollution affects the living world around us... how ocean currents work, how to integrate my home, How to wire up a Raspberry Pi to do myriad things, what life forms am I made of?
There is enough science to go around. Lets light our kids' imaginations!!
Lets have some science with a capital S!
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
A lot hangs on that word, "presumed."
From the full article, the law as written, would bar the EPA from using any studies involving confidential patient information unless they were made public.
This is really reaching, by anybody's standards. I read the article, and Morganstein's letter.
The language of the bill calls for "publicly available science". It does not say that the subjects of any studies cannot be kept confidential. That's just malarkey.
As I wrote above: such studies or surveys, by their very nature, are presumed to be repeatable. The idea is that anyone else who conducted such a study, with a similar but separate sample of individuals, would come up with the same results. After all: that's what the studies are for.
To the best of my knowledge, it doesn't anywhere say that study subjects cannot be anonymous. The only thing that can't be anonymous or secret are the authors and their methodologies.
I don't mind honest debate about the issue, but the idea that the statement "publicly available" could reasonably apply to study subjects is a pretty long and thin stretch of the imagination.
In many fields, it is the case that data ultimately becomes available to the public. For example, in astronomy, the principle investigators are given a time frame for exclusive access to the data, but it ultimately is made available for download.
The issue here is that there are cases where you shouldn't make the data publicly available (public health studies, for example) because it isn't always possible to anonymize public health data (even when names, etc. are stripped). As a result, we need to limit access to those data sets. Researchers can still petition to get access if they can show they have a legitimate need to see the data, but that doesn't satisfy the requirements of the bill.
Statisticians and computer scientists have repeatedly shown that it is possible to link individuals to publicly available sources, even with PII removed.
Sometimes possible, when a study is small enough that the bulk statistics of the population are not sufficient to hide the participants. Yes, when "people who live in Small Town, Alabama who are 43 years old and have the extremely rare disease 'fortunabulosis'" is data in the study, then yeah, you can probably identify the person. But "10000 smokers from the states of Alabama, Florida and Georgia ranging in ages from 30 to 50", no, you are not going to identify the people in the study.
If the EPA is making regulations based on such small sets of data, they need to stop. The problem is not as significant as it is being made out to be.
From the article:
"The bills, introduced by a mostly Republican cast of sponsors in both the House and the Senate, would require that EPA use only publicly available, reproducible data in writing regulations and seek to remake the membership and procedures of the agency’s science advisory panels."
The president plans to veto common sense.
This is the problem with common sense.... sometimes it misses the subtleties. There are legitimate reasons to limit access to certain data sets.
To meet the strict letter of the law, the EPA must publish my SSN, DOB, and medical history, or they can't use the study.
Please show us exactly where it says this.
In a medical study, your SSN, DOB, and (non-anonymized) medical information are not data. In fact they are mostly irrelevant to the actual DATA of the study. Your approximate DOB may be important, and your medical history (and I very highly doubt they would require a complete medical history) might be relevant, but your name or SSN? Fucking hardly.
Here is how that will work:
EPA: We have never seen the like of your flagrant disregard for all regulation, you are single handedly responsible for massive amounts of pollution. We have documentation of your polluting over the last 5 years.
Evil Corporation: Yes well now that we are done with our drilling projects could you reproduce those measurements just to be sure?
EPA: we had highly sensitive instruments, your pollution was beyond obvious - just look at the corpses!
Evil Corporation: So you can't reproduce the data?
EPA: how are we supposed to do that? Use a time machine?
Evil Corporation: well if that's all you got we are done here. Off to expand our corporate rights beyond mere citizenship.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You can read Morganstein's full letter here. [PDF alert]
I read Morganstein's letter. I will repeat what I wrote above: what the bill calls for to be publicly available is the science (i.e. the methodology) and the data. Personal details are not part of the data!!! Those are administrative details.
Just as Morganstein says, simply stripping names is not always enough to de-personalize data. But other methods are easily available.
This is a non-issue.
More likely the supporters of the bill simply suggest that climate change predictions are not repeatable since those deal with outcomes that have not been repeated globally before. Even this would be false, of course, but they will insist loudly anyway.
Our Chinese friends (yes.. the capital-communists ) are beginning to figure out the need to have a balance between industry and pollution for the publics' good. http://thinkprogress.org/clima... The incessant back and forth of the Red Vs Blue (especially when fabricated) is not helping anyone. There is no guarantee that the earth can stay inhabitable... Its up to us to treat it as the gift that it is. Why an instinct to protect our environment is harpooned is beyond me. Here is the question..., Does the perfect net catch -all- the fish? Think about it.
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
If it's not transparent and reproducible, it's not a proposal based on science, but authority. It holds as much weight as a statement by the Flying Spagetti Monster.
If you want a faith based approach to law making, just be forthright about it. It's not like you're alone. But, please don't denigrate the scientific process by claiming that's not what's happening. People are thick enough already...
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
That you have the gaul to beleive that coming from the Republicans is astonishing.
Who has the frenchman to believe that coming fro the Republicans? I believe you mean gall.
If I propose we serve beef burgers, and a vegetarian selection at a picnic and someone says, hey that sounds like maybe your suggesting we serve vegetarian PEOPLE as food?!!!
Would I say... "Not to worry, vegetarians may choose to opt-out of eating or being eaten."
Or... would I say? Are you nuts? I obviously didn't mean it that way. Fine, whatever... "I propose we serve beef hot dogs and a green salad"? We good?.. Lets move on.
If its a reaching non-issue Why would the backers of the bill suggest study participants can sign waivers or opt out? Why aren't they just fixing the bill to exclude that interpretation?
Where are all the stories about those "obstructionist Democrats" and "the party of No" that we should be seeing by now, I wonder? I mean, with all of the vetos and "walking out" on foreign dignitaries we should be seeing these headlines regularly, shouldn't we?
>> American Statistical Society opposes this bill
> The ASA makes most of its revenue by charging large amounts for access to closed academic journals.
Just curious, but why isn't their acronym ASS?
Or have I answered my own question?
The purpose of a representative gov't like in the U.S. IS TO BE HAMSTRUNG.
Checks and balances are just mutual hamstringings.
If you want efficient government where "things just get done," look to your despotisms.
If it's not transparent and reproducible, it's not a proposal based on science, but authority. It holds as much weight as a statement by the Flying Spagetti Monster.
One can (and should) post the methodology and results without revealing confidential patient health information, sufficient that another group could reproduce the study.
You do not need to know the names of the participants, and have access to their medical records to reproduce the study. Find your own patients and reproduce the published methodology to lend weight or cast doubt on the original study.
That's how medical research should be done.
If you want a faith based approach to law making...
Time for your meds.
Publications comprised 20% (2012) and 27% (2011) of ASA's budget, according to this audited report on page 10 of their membership magazine's June 2013 issue (pg 10) (PDF). They make a big chunk off publications, but I wouldn't say that's "most of" the revenue; membership dues accounted for 29% (2012) and 25% (2011) of revenue.
What's weird about making the data from scientific studies publically available? Frankly, I think the data from all government funded research should be public domain.
This whole flap arose over some studies from Harvard medical school where the population being studied were told their identity would be protected. Some Republican Congressmen when holding a hearing about proposed EPA regulations based on the study asked for specific information that could lead to the identification of individual participants and the researchers refused to provide it. Apparently the collective statistics provided by the study were not good enough for them.
So what's more important, the desires of Congress or the privacy of the individuals who participated in the study?
A lot hangs on that word, "presumed."
Only if you completely missed my point.
CO2 is more about your beachfront property in Florida, California, and New York than it is about the end of Life As We Know It (tm). But then, you already knew that.
What's weird about making the data from scientific studies publically available? Frankly, I think the data from all government funded research should be public domain.
That would outlaw double-blind studies.
All the anti-vaxxers I know are liberal - because I live in the SF bay area, and almost everyone here, especially in my immediate vicinity, is pretty far left of center. Lot's of belief in my neck of the wood in various and sundry questionable "alternative medicine" practices. Lot's of distrust of both government and large corporations. Both of those earned that distrust, but now it has blinded many people I know to the perfectly good and useful things also done by companies and public agencies.
If its a reaching non-issue Why would the backers of the bill suggest study participants can sign waivers or opt out? Why aren't they just fixing the bill to exclude that interpretation?
That isn't in the bill itself. That's what one person said in response to Morganstein's stated opinion about the bill.
The law is not subject either to Morganstein's interpretation, or what a single Representative said about it. That idea has been solidly settled by the Supreme Court.
400-year-old Common Law, still in effect in this country, says that the meaning of the law rests on one thing: what a reasonable person would conclude Congress intended when passing the law. That's why, for example, they have debates about bills in Congress.
I hardly think a reasonable person would conclude that study subjects could not be anonymous. That's an extreme interpretation, not a reasonable one.
And also as I stated up above: that's why the Court challenge to Obamacare is not about "4 words". It's about what Congress intended when passing the bill. There is A LOT more evidence of Congress' actual intent than just those 4 words.
There's a law that was passed recently, it's called HIPAA. You may have heard of it. It basically forces ALL patient data used in research to be "de-identified". You don't need to know a patient's identifying information in order to do a public health study.
Sorry, you don't get to redefine science as "Something a scientist told me."
There is no shortage of people willing to make statements in the authoritative tone, and the stupid and undisciplined accept that as a way to avoid that uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty. I'm not among them, are you?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I've participated in medical studies (when I was in college, it was easy money). To meet the strict letter of the law, the EPA must publish my SSN, DOB, and medical history, or they can't use the study.
HIPAA restricts most (all?) "public health" studies or any study done with patient data to be done with "de-identified" data. Your SSN (how is that relevant to any "public health" study; you're just be a scare monger with that one) isn't going to forced to be released as part of the "raw data".
EPA would pass a regulation, repubs would sue saying it's not reproducable and here is contracitory evidence, then there would be 8 years of sutis and appeals where EPA would have to show reporoducability at each step. repubs are just introducing a stall tactic they can use later.
EPA's work has always been based on publically available rigorous science. the repubs are just raising an issue to squeeze in something else.
believe it or not all those employees are already busy with stuff and don't have time to do what you want them to do.
I've read some excerpts, but haven't had time to read the whole thing yet. Probably not until the weekend.
The bill requires it be "reproducible" but doesn't define that term, so at least one court case will be necessary to define it.
All the court cases will be by polluters, wishing to continue their polluting ways, claiming that it's a matter of "freedom" to poison your air and water.
Learn to love Alaska
What's weird about making the data from scientific studies publically available? Frankly, I think the data from all government funded research should be public domain.
From the full article, the law as written, would bar the EPA from using any studies involving confidential patient information unless they were made public
Every institution or individual which handles confidential medical information in any official capacity is defined by HIPAA as a "covered entity" and is currentlyrequired by law to maintain patient confidentiality when releasing public data. This includes hospitals, academic researchers, doctors, insurance companies and medical device manufacturers. There are large fines for violations of this law. The legal requirement imposed by HIPAA is not that the results of studies be kept confidential, but that personally identifiable information (PII) be anyonymized out of publically release data. This is the way that everyone except the EPA currently operates. The EPA is different: instead of de-identifying data before releasing it, to purge the PII and comply with HIPAA, the EPA claims that data has to be kept secret. The Democrat/EPA argument in this case is a brazen falsehood.
The Republicans are attempting to compel the EPA to follow the same practices to which government restricts the private sector: You can release the data but it has to be de-identfied. Democrats are mis-representing the facts when they claim that Republicans are trying to prevent the use of research data in decision making by requiring that the data be public. Anyone who deals with patient data professionally -- which I do-- knows that the Democrats are shoveling bullshit here; EPA could release data and de-identify it, just like everyone else does, instead of hiding publicly funded research data from the public.
Following is the relevant text of the actual bill:
=======
The Administrator shall not propose, finalize,
or disseminate a covered action unless all scientific and
technical information relied on to support such covered ac-
tion is--
(A) specifically identified; and
(B) publicly available online in a manner that
is sufficient for independent analysis and substantial
reproduction of research results.
(2) Nothing in the subsection shall be construed as
requiring the public dissemination of information the dis-
closure of which is prohibited by law.
=======
It does not say personal or medical details. It says "sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction".
There is NOTHING sinister or unreasonable about this, except apparently in the imagination of alarmists.
First you claim that the EPA will have to reproduce the data or it will be illegal, and now this.
Liar.
Learn to love Alaska
http://news.sciencemag.org/env...
"The bills, introduced by a mostly Republican cast of sponsors in both the House and the Senate, would require that EPA use only publicly available, reproducible data in writing regulations and seek to remake the membership and procedures of the agency’s science advisory panels."
No, I haven't read the bill. Are you calling TFA a liar? Because at this point, it's you or it. TFA is clear. "[The Bil] Would requite that the EPA only use [...] reproducible data."
Learn to love Alaska
The language of the bill is very clear. It is intended to do what it says: make sure our regulatory bodies (employees of The People) are making their decisions based on publicly available, sound science.
You have more faith in government than I do. I read the bill as regulating a regulator to make it more expensive and harder to do anything. Why do you want the most expensive government possible? That's what you are defending and advocating.
Learn to love Alaska
Why should only the EPA have to base policy only on publicly available, reproducible studies?
Any government agency that is making science-based, public policy decisions should only be using data that I am also allowed to access. I am sick of the government doing so much in secret, behind closed doors, where I am not allowed to see what is happening.
There have been some concerns raised elsewhere in the comments, and I don't think any of them cannot be addressed by some changes to the legislation. This could end up being a very good piece of legislation from the standpoint of government transparency and accountability.
Love sees no species.
We disagree about "data". Go look at the hubbub about global warming data. The Data wasn't just the location and temperature, but the email history of the person that collected it, as if that changes the location or temperature recorded.
If they meant the anonymized aggegate data, why wouldn't they say so? If they meant the studies used must be publicly available, why didn't they say so? They didn't specify "data" so "raw" isn't an absurd reading of the type of data required, and that would include my SSN and DOB, as they were collected as part of the "data" when I did medical experiments. And they were labeled as such by the experimenters. That you don't know what an experiment looks like doesn't change legal definitions.
It's not about whether they should matter. But if they are scrubbed from the raw data for the aggregate, then I'd exepct you to sue when you are dumping raw sewage down main street because if they scrubbed my SSN and DOB from the data, what else did they scrub from it? How do you know, if you can't see the data. 10 years later, you may lose in court, but you've wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and delayed enforcement of that rule for 10 years, so it's a win.
Learn to love Alaska
Apparently ...[Republicans] think participants/Patients should sign a waiver agreeing that the raw study data might be made public, or they can simply choose not to participate in the study.
"Apparently they think..." Well, it is clear from your phraseology that you do not actually know any real facts and are either making them up or guessing. Currently subjects are required so sign an informed consent prior to participating in research regardless of what information is released. So the signatures are already going on right now, without any bill having been passed. Secondly, the HIPAA mandate is that the data be de-identified, not as you incorrectly assume, that the personal identifying information be publicly released with patient consent.
this is clearly an attempt to strip the EPA of any ability to actually do science or regulate based on science.
"Clearly?" How can your conclusions be clear when they are derived from your make-believe premises?
Nope. I've actually participated in a medical study. My SSN and DOB were collected, and considered "data" for the purposes of the study. That HIPAA and EPA rules would contradict each other is a great thing for the polluters. Lock everything up in court for decades. That's why this is a bad law that should be vetoed. Write a more narrow one that specifies "anonymized" data, if that's what they mean. That's not what they said.
Learn to love Alaska
Sorry, you don't get to redefine science as "Something a scientist told me."
I never did. So ... there's that.
There is no shortage of people willing to make statements in the authoritative tone, and the stupid and undisciplined accept that as a way to avoid that uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty. I'm not among them, are you?
Again... nobody is redefining science. What are you on about?
This just the kind of tactic that the democrats would think up and use. Not on the EPA at least not now. but on some other area of government that they wanted to slow down.
That one deserves a +1 Funny modup.
I wonder if it will distract people from their efforts to shut down the government financially during a time of war not far back? If the Democrats tried that we'd be hearing screams of "Treason" for the next three decades.
Lots of money from the Obama administration went to weird crap alternative energy scams. Good if Congress can put a lease on them
That isn't in the bill itself.
I realize that.
That's what one person said in response to Morganstein's stated opinion about the bill.
A person who backs the bill, who perhaps could and should have said something a LOT MORE INTELLIGENT about it.
I hardly think a reasonable person would conclude that study subjects could not be anonymous. That's an extreme interpretation, not a reasonable one.
So then what is the REAL dispute? That would lead a president to veto it? Or is this whole debate the syphility ramblings of a 24 hour media cycle that can't seem to find any real news to report on in a world of 6 billion people with nearly uncountable real issues to investigate? (And despite my sarcasm... I count that possibility as entirely plausible.)
On the one hand, people (be they republicans, democrats, or whatever) are generally stupid and incapable of self-governance on a national level.
On the other hand, politicians (be they republicans, democrats, or whatever) are generally evil and interested in exploiting their power for personal gain.
So, all forms of government are an attempt at striking the right balance between incompetence and malice. In the end, they all fail to be "good" by any measure.
If you want a faith based approach to law making, just be forthright about it.
One of the sponsors of the Secret Science Reform Act was Rep. Paul Broun from Georgia. Here's what he's had to say on that topic:
God's word is true. I've come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a Savior. There's a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the Bible says. And what I've come to learn is that it's the manufacturer's handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually. How to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all our public policy and everything in society. And that's the reason, as your congressman, I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I'll continue to do that.
He does want a "faith based approach to law making", but at least he's been "forthright about it".
Republicans are weird, their being all up into this personal responsibility but follow their rules shit, so what did you expect?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Locations of endangered species are often 'fuzzed' (made less-precise) before sharing with the public.
Being forced to give the location of polar bears that are under stress because of climate change could result in poachers going out there and harvesting them all. (and then not only do they get to make a profit by selling the illegally gained corpses, but hey, no more polar bears under stress).
No.. The EPA would propose a regulation and during the required comment period, people could examine the science and the data used and attempt to reproduce it. If they find fault during the regulation process (the EPA cannot just declare regulation, it has to propose it, wait for a comment period, address any concerns brought up, comment, then vote to pass it). But anyone can reproduce the science if it is sound. You will have people in favor of the regulation reproducing it, you will have universities doing the same. if someone cannot reproduce it and others can, you will only have people looking like dumbasses and nothing more.
Any valid health study is surely going to use a large enough set of patients that good science can be derived from their de-identified history data. If you do run a study on such a small set of patients that individual identity confidentiality would be a problem, then you're basing your study on anecdotal lore, rather than good data.
From this you get the Republicans are the good guys? If this were my only measure I'd count the Dems as the good guys. This bill is a weird combination of stupid and evil.
It requires a regulating body to base their decisions on public data. That means data must be opened to the public AND they aren't allowed to pass regulations that go against sound science. If you oppose this bill you are mentally challenged, evil or both.
But go ahead - tell me how global warming is super real and we should just trust you while they pass regulations putting businesses of political rivals out of business without even presenting a justification beyond the word of a bunch of sleezy politicians.
Just as Morganstein says, simply stripping names is not always enough to de-personalize data. But other methods are easily available.
This is a non-issue.
Sez you.
Scenario: Scientific study of infant mortality and birth defect rates in a specific neighbourhood (e.g. Love Canal) is used to justify an EPA order shutting down a major manufacturing facility until such time as it ceases to pollute. The data correlates proximity to pollution sources with health data. Using the now-publicly-available data, the manufacturer identifies every family likely to be involved in a class action suit, applies divide-and-conquer techniques. Lobbyists for the industry hire a quack medical expert who claims the results can't be reliably reproduced. Insurance companies refuse to pay out because they think they can lay the blame on the manufacturer. The company, meanwhile, continues polluting, possibly forever.
Scenario: Scientific study of environmental effects of Chemical A are troubling, but inconclusive. The EPA issues a ruling applying the Precautionary Principle, stopping use of Chemical A until further studies have been completed. Industry lobbyists challenge the ruling, stating that the science is neither well-established nor reproducible. Chemical A is put into widespread use. Further study determines the fears were justified, but it's too late—hundreds or thousands of people are already suffering adverse effects.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Good news, the Earth stopped being inhabitable 4.3 billion years ago
Or, if you meant habitable, C02, it's what plants crave. 800 ppm is actually the sweet spot, and humans can live at that level of CO2 also.
So why have this bill at all if it apparently changes nothing?
Implications and motives are important since laws such as this are expensive to produce - why so much effort been expended? It appears to have been done to either hamper the operations of the EPA or result in increased headcount, so the question is whether it's for the benefit of those who wish to flout EPA regulations (benefiting from an EPA weakened by pointless busywork) or those in the EPA who are jealous of Homeland Security and want an enormous bureaucratic empire just like it.
When "conservatives" push hard to change the status quo it's best to consider why to see if they are actually radicals in disguise (or they are on the take and owned by people who desire radical change).
...The (Republican) backers response? Apparently they think participants/Patients should sign a waiver agreeing that the raw study data might be made public, or they can simply choose not to participate in the study.
Oh come on moderators! That is false, false, false false. It does not deserve the +5 informative.
As many other posts here have correctly pointed out, there is no such requirement for a signed a waiver. According to HIPAA patient data can be published if it is stripped of personal identifying information such as names and soc. numbers. The falsehood that the Democrats are pushing is that research data must be either kept secret from the public or that, impractically, the personal identifying information must be publicly released with signed waivers.
This is about government officials trying to avoid public accountability by keeping secrets. Please stop enabling that by modding up propaganda.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
There's also the whole body of meta-analysis, which definitely has its uses; and also tends to substantially increase the number of studies you 'used' without necessarily vastly increasing the number of pages you had to slog through.
Have you not seen the stupid lawsuits against the EPA? And you can't conceive of a single polluter who might find it advantageous to delay introductions of new rules?
Learn to love Alaska
Nope, but doublespeak and byperbole mix with lawsuits just fine. Seems you are just agreeing with me in the most disagreeable way possible. Wow 2 accusations of liberal and 2 of conservative in one day. Seems like neither side wishes to think, they both just want to throw insults and stick their heads in the sand.
Learn to love Alaska
Except that just today Scalia said that he doesn't have to consider congresses intent. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
Sez you.
I have a feeling I'm going to have to repeat this several times to different people:
Elsewhere in this topic I've posted the actual language of the bill. Given what it really says, these scenarios are completely unrealistic stretches of the imagination.
Richard Nixon was a big supporter of the EPA. He must be sad to see his party try to eviscerate it, instead of bragging that they were the big supporters of it.
All of these requirements add up effectively to denial of service attacks on regulation. They don't have to contest a proposed regulation on its own merits, they could just repeatedly contest the research backing it. Even if published research checks all the boxes they're demanding, they can grind it to a halt by forcing everyone involved to verify the case. And if something doesn't meet the requirements even if it doesn't substantially impact the validity of the research, that's a probably needed regulation that will take much longer to implement, even if it never gets past that stage. There will also likely be a metric ton of industry-generated "everything's fine, nothing to see here" "research" that does fit that opponents will demand to be considered.
You know, today's EPA also has changed regulations to make a pond be considered a "navigable waterway". These regulations are ridiculous. I am awaiting the EPA using their SWAT teams to come after farmers for mis managing their waterways.
If the data isn't sound they shouldn't be basing anything on it because it means the actual basis of the actions is derived from something other than scientific data. You have no argument, only insanity.
So then what is the REAL dispute?
I don't know what the real dispute is. If you look around here you will find where I (later) posted the actual language of the relevant part of the bill. It is really pretty benign.
So what is the real issue here? Hard to say for sure, but I suspect that in part it's political.
Wow, are you naturally that stupid or do you work at it? Unless the "Oil and Gas" studies publicize their methodology and research data, thus opening their conclusions to criticism, they would not be eligible for the EPA to base their conclusions on.
Except that just today Scalia said that he doesn't have to consider congresses intent. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
He's wrong. Well, maybe, maybe not. Before anybody jumps on me for saying that: this is a legal principle that has been around for hundreds of years, and it's big part of what our whole legal system is based on.
Having said that, there IS one way, and only one, he could get around that: if the language of the law is clear and unambiguous, but Congress' intent was really something else, he probably has to rule on the language, not intent. The whole thing about "intent" is really for when the language of the law is ambiguous. Otherwise, why would you need to decide at all?
Okay, the "most" was a bit hyperbolic, but it my point still stands that the publishers of academic journals have long been against open access long before this. They've fought hard against FRPAA (Federal Research Public Access Act) and the NIH Open Access Policy for years for the same reasons. So it's not out of bounds to point out that ASA has a conflict of interest here.
You've never had an even remotely embarrassing medical condition, have you?
How about you read the entire article and not quote selectively. One major issue is the raw data from clinical studies. In these studies the data identifying the patients is protected to preserve the privacy. The reason for this is that publishing data that identifies the subjects of the study will deter participation, particularly from people with severe conditions. This will ultimately bias the results and will make the studies irrelevant. There is also the existing legislation protecting the patient privacy which prohibits publishing personally identifiable information without explicit consent from the patients. The law that is being proposed will make it impossible to use epidemiological data from medical records. It is pretty obvious that the goal of this legislature is not to enforce "common sense". The goal is to make EPA powerless by preventing it from backing its decisions with real data. The most telling part is that the legislature will quote: "bar academic scientists on the panels from talking about matters related to research they’re doing." WTF? How is EPA supposed to make decisions? By ignoring the advice of scientist who work on the matter and taking advice from people who are completely clueless?
Dispute is hardly the word. It is simply to beat the Republicans in their feeble attempt to win against him.
That's all he does, is beat Republicans. And he's damned good at it.
Why do you want the most expensive government possible?
So that hand-wringers, ninnies and other forms of idiot cannot afford much government.
He didn't, and you don't believe that he did. You made that up as a strawman because you knew you weren't mentally competent to refute what he actually said. No other reason is possible.
So what you're saying is that "Due Process" is inconvenient?
The EPA should be subject to due process. If they're saying they're doing something because of a study... then that study itself should be subject to examination... that includes whether it is reprroducable and therefore science at all... and then you're going to want to know where the information came from so you can audit it.
You're holding the EPA to a lower standard then a corporation that files its yearly tax return.
You're being cousined. It is not unreasonable to ask that studies be reproducible before using them as justification for law and protocol. And it is not unreasonable for those same studies to have their data audited.
If you have such contempt for the political process then just come out and say it now... just say you hate democracy. Say you hate due process. Say you hate freedom of speech. Just admit it.
All these things make dictatorial rule difficult.
Due process forces those that wish to claim power to justify their actions and associate those actions with existing law. Democracy means you can't just take control unless you have a solid majority behind you. Some little cabal can't just do whatever they want. And of course, freedom of speech lets people tell you to your face... that you're a fascist fool. And that's not the image of yourself you want to project when you're pulling these hijinks.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
So the EPA should be able to make rules and then say," Because...this". What is this? No one knows.
Making rules, regulations and public police is serious business and should be done open and above board.If you want to restrict or prohibit something, you should have real science, available science to back it up. All this garbage about privacy is just that. Scientific studies are done all the time protecting the patient's info and is perfectly acceptable science.
I think they don't want to be forced to show their work...just write down "the answer".
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I never did. So ... there's that.
So why did you include the charming little bit about 'their medical records' then?
Only a moron would need a court to define "reproducible".
How so? The results and the disclosures are published after the double blind studies have been completed, the results tallied, and the conclusions formed. After-the-fact disclosures don't affect the results.
look at it this way... if the repubs are pushing a bill, then it must be for a nefarious purpose even if it seems logical on its face. once you realize this and start looking at people's motivations, you'll understand. follow the money!
Sez you.
I have a feeling I'm going to have to repeat this several times to different people: Elsewhere in this topic I've posted the actual language of the bill. Given what it really says, these scenarios are completely unrealistic stretches of the imagination.
Once again: Sez you.
Perhaps you could explain why you think that these scenarios are not likely to happen? I think that the language of the Bill is pretty much designed to stop the application of the Precautionary Principle as a method of environmental protection. By insisting on measurability and replicability of results as the only means of determining policy, you're pretty much throwing any preventive approaches away.
Given the time it's taken in the past to get measures such as, for example, the moratorium on the use of CFCs in consumer goods into place, why would you support anything that makes this task even more difficult and, as others have pointed out, creates an additional burden on the Agency while at the same time limiting its budget to a mere pittance for the actual implementation?
This is a subversive piece of legislation wrapped up in obsequious language. It's disingenuous in the extreme, designed to incapacitate a key agency. And I'm saddened that someone like you, who is otherwise very intelligent, can't see the problem.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Just how does one reproduce a temperature measurement from 150 years ago ? Aside from photocopying the handwritten record ?
Nullius in verba
Sorry, mate, but English is weird enough that inhabitable and habitable actually mean the same thing. Do check a dictionary if you don't believe me.
The meaning you were using goes with the word uninhabitable.
And I presume, as many others have stated, you hold this same standard for all actions of the government? So, based on this, we wouldn't have gone to war in Iraq because we'd still be in the appeals process in court. In fact, the base logic would tie up virtually all attempts at war or even self defense that was based upon any sort of "study".
Speaking of which, I guess this also means all corporations should be disclosing the public their tax records. And all "terrorist plots" should have all their data released to the public. I mean, 100% transparency on everything.
Thats right- the same agency that got CO2, an overwhelmingly nature generated gas without which all life on earth would die, ruled by a judge to be a pollutant. Even more important now that it looks like its making the globe colder- just the opposite of all their predictions. Remember peak oil? That was bogus as well. Banning dursban? Bedbugs came back by the trillions.
Liberal pseudoscience rules supreme at this trample down gestapo agency. Having any reproducibility other than juvenile hysteria will hamper them in controlling your life. Then of course there is the GMO hysteria generated by liberals but thoroughly debunked by actual scientists. Then on to vaccines and every other liberal hysteria there is and it would almost never see the light of day if it were not for out-of-control brownshirts at the EPA who jail farmers for plowing on their own land. Since most of the laws we need are already here, the EPA is a fake agency much like the Department of Homeland Security that gobbles billion$ and now helps illegals get freebies. If you really want the world we live in to be better close the EPA and take DHS with you.
In 2011, 27 > 25. Is it still?
It requires a regulating body to base their decisions on public data. That means data must be opened to the public AND they aren't allowed to pass regulations that go against sound science.
I'd like you to point out at least a couple of instances where that isn't true of the EPA's findings already.
But go ahead - tell me how global warming is a hoax perpetrated by a conspiracy of thousands of scientists around the world for political reasons. [snicker]
With Democrats in control of both houses of congress (I know the numbers don't show it, you have to look at the results) it's surprising Obama feels the need to threaten a veto.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
I know of at least 3 rightist scientists who would laugh at your characterization of climate science being fused with leftist ideology.
You are literally posting misleading information on /. at this point.
Where did you even get the idea that personally identifying information from human subject research must be published? The proposed law makes no such claim. You are re-broadcasting some other commentator's unsubstantiated, alarmist views.
Your history as a human subject in research does not add to your credibility at all.
I have been a human subject, and to go beyond that, have designed, executed and published NIH-funded research at large academic medical centers.
Just because your personal identifiers were collected does not mean they constitute data used to draw conclusions. I don't understand why you would amplify such untruthful, misleading statements on this matter; are you motivated by partisanship?
The problem isn't the level so much as the rate it's changing. If CO2 rose to 800 ppm over 5,000-10,000 years it wouldn't be as much of a problem.
And if the data is sound, this law would open the EPA to decades of delays for every new rule as someone challenges every piece of data.
I agree it should be based on good science. I never said otherwise. I just think moving the bar too high will end up having harm come to people while waiting for the courts to decide whether each and every new rule meets the standards, harming people and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars.
Why do you want to waste taxpayer money, and move the power to the courts?
Learn to love Alaska
And, since all lawyers are morons, it'll take generations to settle on a definition, and every new rule will be challenged and argued for decades.
If it's so simple and clear, why didn't they follow the standard practice and define it in the front of the law under definitions? And no, I don't know it's not there. I haven't seen the full law yet. But if it's not there, it should be vetoed on principle. Let Congress define the word in the law, or block the law.
I don't want to waste taxpayer money on settling all these issues in the courts. Why do you want to give the courts more power and waste billions on litigation?
Learn to love Alaska
Ah, so by the rules in this law, Global Warming can never be proven. Just like it's never been proven that smoking causes cancer. No study on that is "reproducable" because anything that would prove a link by exposing humans to smoke is unethical (thus illegal). It's illegal to prove smoking causes cancer, and thus illegal to repoduce any proof to that effect, so the EPA couldn't regulate smoke, because nobody can replicate a study proving smoke (or lead, or whatever) causes problems in humans.
So, is it malice or stupidity that gives us this catch 22 that makes all effective regulation illegal, and only ineffective regulation could be legal? I vote malice.
Learn to love Alaska
No, global warming isn't. Every prediction the 'scientists' made are 100% false. If you can't see that amidst record-breaking cold then AGW really is a pseudo-science brainwashing religion with no basis in fact.
What is "reproducible data"? I thought that data was unique and that conclusions were reproducible?
Ezekiel 23:20
But anyone can reproduce the science if it is sound.
And what will be the benchmark for that? If the thing in question is the result of a ten-year study, will it include redoing ten years of measurements? Just because a result is reproducible in itself doesn't mean it will be reproduced quickly.
Ezekiel 23:20
As to the standards, absolutely. Any science used to back up a war should be reproducible. Whether it is disclosed or not in that case is a little more suspect because you're talking about war. Wars are won and lost often on secrets. So for example, I would be in favor secrets being kept when those secrets could save lives.
However, science that is not reproducible is not science.
You think you're being clever by conflating very different things together... military intelligence versus a scientific study.
The problem with your logic here, is that if you don't conflate you know I'll agree with you... and if you do conflate then you suggest that scientific studies should be treated with the same skepticism one regards for military intelligence.
For example, if I said I didn't find a military report to be credible that would be entirely valid no? But if I said I didn't find a tested scientific fact to be credible that would be unreasonable on my part.
By suggesting that they're the same thing you either put standards on military intelligence that are unworkable or you diminish the value of science to such a point that it basically hearsay.
I am prepared to engage with you on this issue rationally. But you should be warned now... I am extremely rational. Doubletalk, sophistry, and other fallacious nonsense will simply get vivisected and pinned to an examination table while I take it apart bit by bit putting each little piece in its own little formaldehyde jar with its own little label.
If you are not honest with me or you think yourself to be clever enough to get away with flimflam... then I will engage you as a troll.
If science and logic are on your side... prove it by not repeating any more sophistry.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The temperature last June was -135.4 degrees below 0. Laugh at that. Its just .3 of a degree within being the coldest temperature ever recorded on the planet. Or how about this "scientist", Dr. David Viner of the Hadley Climate Research Center: "We have seen our last snowfall. A snowfall will become a rare and exciting event. Children will just grow up not knowing what snow looks like."
That was in the year 2000. 15 years later with winters colder than ever we see that his "science" was wrong. The number of people freezing to death has not gone down. The number of snowfalls in Florida has not gone down (it snowed there in January). Now if you still believe in whack-jobs who are doing politics and not science then just keep supporting them and not requiring to disclose where they came across this new-found alien science that no one knows about but the Environmental Quacks and no one can see but them. That is how we wind up with anti-vaxxers and the zealots behind the GMO hysteria.
hey that sounds like maybe your suggesting we serve vegetarian PEOPLE as food?!!!
If you suggested vegetarian people as food, wouldn't that make it a humanitarian selection?
Ezekiel 23:20
All anti-GMO zealots are liberals. 100%! Marin County went 79% for Obama last election and more than half of the children there are un-vaccinated. So of course we should hide any study or science from the public and congress lest they actually make us do real science and not invent stuff out of whole cloth for political reasons. Because the EPA just hasn't jailed enough people that can't afford to mount a decent defense in court yet.
The fun and games at EPA never end as long as the taxpayer is buying.
The 2 most liberal states like Oregon and California are the most anti-vaccine. Heck, Oregon is against fluoride. The 2 most pro-vaccine states are conservative. And any anti-GMO person you meet is overwhelmingly liberal.
That was just plain hilarious.
You know, today's EPA also has changed regulations to make a pond be considered a "navigable waterway". These regulations are ridiculous. I am awaiting the EPA using their SWAT teams to come after farmers for mis managing their waterways.
waterways typically are not private resources. In rural areas the states have ultimate authority over the water rights and aquifers. Today farmers are not optimizing their water usage in a sustainable way.
Cute. No idea, but such anger! You should be in a zoo. It's hilarious. Hint: where you are != the entire world.
lolwut?
But anyone can reproduce the science if it is sound.
If they are competent and if they have integrity. This slow trainwreck of a fiasco involving AGW shows how easy it is to pay someone off to say that the science is not reproducible. Just one will be enough to grind a piece of regulation to a halt just as it is now. To think anything else would happen is being sumdumbass.
Because it leaves all sorts of loopholes.
There is no scientific literature on how nasty fracking fluid is (blatantly not just inert chemicals) because the companies using it refuse to disclose what's in it.
With this bill, it would be impossible to regulate because there's no information about it. Depending on how the bill is written it would be impossible to even require information about it because that too would require "scientific studies" and I'll bet there's not a lot of papers out there with platitudes like "things we have no idea at all about may possibly not be good".
Make no mistake, this is not done with good intentions, it is a bill intended to neuter the EPA in order to benefit lage corporations. It's been given a sheen of science to make it seem reasonable, but it is almost certainly not designed for the purpose of making the government more scientific.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And you think AGW isn't real because a single low temperature was recorded. You don't really understand these "logic" and "evidence" things, do you? It's sad. Your society failed you massively - it didn't give you the tools to think rationally, but gave you the hubris to make sure you never realised that. What a mess.
You provide the raw data collected by whatever means, plus the methods used to take that raw data and translate it to a temperature measurement. Very straightforward. You provide the raw data without any adjustment or hedging, so that the raw data is accurate and as complete as you can make it. You then explain very carefully any assumptions you have made about your transformations, without any handwaving or "here a miracle occurs" or "I just know that this means that."
Subject privacy? The first step in any data collection would be to remove identifying information from the incoming data, so that the subject's privacy is maintained. By doing the stripping as the very first step, then publishing the stripped data as the raw data used for the rest of the research, you maintain transparency without compromising subject privacy.
The next step, when you want to coerce people to spend money, is to design a model that will predict what will happen, and measure that model against raw data of what actually happens. From that, you can validate your model, so that recommendations made can be measured against the model to determine the cost/benefit ratio.
It's the "sweet spot" is it? What happens to all our crops which are not geared for that amount of CO2? And what happens to the farmers whose farmland is now no longer farmable? Should they move further north, where the soil has been scraped away by glaciation? Genius. There is so much wrong with your glib, trite post it's simply not funny.
Ah, so by the rules in this law, Global Warming can never be proven. Just like it's never been proven that smoking causes cancer. No study on that is "reproducable" because anything that would prove a link by exposing humans to smoke is unethical (thus illegal). It's illegal to prove smoking causes cancer, and thus illegal to repoduce any proof to that effect, so the EPA couldn't regulate smoke, because nobody can replicate a study proving smoke (or lead, or whatever) causes problems in humans.
If one published the raw, unmanipulated data, others can evaluate the data using other methodologies to see if they come up with the same result. No "adjustments" or "fudge factors" in the first dataset, just the raw measurements. As for proving that smoking causes cancer, there are indeed reproducable studies done with lab animals. There are also reproducable studies using surveys of patient history and outcome, to determine what effect smoking has on overall health outcomes. With proper stripping, the raw data is easily collected and published without affecting patient privacy. And you are an idiot for using the term "Global Warming" because that bugaboo has already been debunked. Look at the snow levels in Boston, for example. Now the scientists erase "Global Warming" and replace it with "Climate Change". You really need to update your arguments.
This.
Requiring EPA to use publicly available data sound reasonable enough until you realize that many of these same (mostly GOP) people have no problem with (often times heavily subsidized) companies refusing to share data.
Like the fracking example parent mentioned; nobody is able to research their methods and the compounds used, because trade secrets. Something similar happened with GM crops, which have been widely planted for over a decade before the scientific community at large were able/allowed to research them.
"Seeking to remake the membership and procedures" is just code for subverting, eroding, EPA until it is a hollow shell of what it was intended to be.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
EPA's work has always been based on publically available rigorous science. the repubs are just raising an issue to squeeze in something else.
Then why is the raw data so hard to get? Why are people "adjusting" the raw data? The adjustments come after the raw data is published, as part of the method of analyzing the raw data. What about the work done by people who don't have "climate scientist" after their name? Is that data considered? As I recall, some of the journals rejected articles submitted by authors in other disciplines, such as areospace.
Just because your personal identifiers were collected does not mean they constitute data used to draw conclusions. I don't understand why you would amplify such untruthful, misleading statements on this matter; are you motivated by partisanship?
They don't really have a bearing on the study. They would, however, absolutely be covered by the proposed law (HR 1030), which is the problem here. If your SSN, DOB, or anything else is collected, it's required to be publicly accessible online. It is, for the purposes of the law, a "recorded factual material" that needs to be "specifically identified" if it's "scientific and technical information" used to support any "covered action" (which is almost everything the EPA does). There is no exception for personally identifiable data in this section.
IANAL, however, I am unable to find a (legal) definition for the term "scientific and technical information" (or "technical information", or "scientific information") in Title 42. If there's no definition somewhere in there, or somewhere else applicable that I'm not looking, this bill is a Supreme Court case waiting to happen, and the EPA will lose multiple years of being able to do nearly anything beyond their current capabilities thanks to litigation. Once that's over, the EPA may still have to provide personally identifiable information, depending on how the court rules.
It looks like simple legislation, since it's only 2 pages, but it leaves open a ton of questions that need to be resolved through litigation if it is passed.
There is too much regulation already! Do you guys really need more? especially from Big Government bureaucracies that feel they can intrude into EVERY aspect of your lives?
How come Slashdotters love to talk about the Big State, but when the Big State comes in the form of the EPA and other unaccountable and job-killing organizations they are all for it? I just don't get it, amigos. The EPA has a role to play, but having your elected representatives put them on a leash so they can only use verifiable science for their decision making is just 'common sense' (which doesn't seem to be common at all these days).
Have you not learned from the IRS and NSA scandals that the Government must be kept on a leash? and the EPA has been waaayyyy too aggressive. Which is why I don't get why Slashdotters complain about Big Government but then scream 'blue murder' when elected representatives try to give more power to Individuals and less to States. Have a think about it folks :)
The most telling part is that the legislature will quote: "bar academic scientists on the panels from talking about matters related to research they’re doing." WTF? How is EPA supposed to make decisions? By ignoring the advice of scientist who work on the matter and taking advice from people who are completely clueless?
Who says that the EPA would be ignoring the advice from people who work on the matter? All the law does is bar the people judging the applicability of the data from judging their own contributions -- that's a conflict of intertest. The EPA holds hearing, where they can solicit the opinions of anyone they want. So your complaint is a red herring.
Of republicans declaring that science isn't science if it's "secret" and this makes the bills good because they haven't actually read the article and has no idea what "secret" MEANS in this context.
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>What's weird about making the data from scientific studies publically available? Frankly, I think the data from all government funded research should be public domain.
My first instinct was the same, until I read the article (I know I know).
The data in question is MEDICAL data, covered by confidentiality laws.
That is critical for environmental regulation - you can't just SAY the stuff hurts people or don't hurt people - you need science. But medical data cannot be publicly disclosed in general.
You can require opt-in but that gets very limiting and automatically introduces bias in the results - it actually makes the data LESS rigorous and verified - this is what the republicans are proposing while furthermore limiting the budget for IMPLEMENTING these regulations to just one million dollars a year - the CBO estimates it would cost at least 250 million dollars and even then only if the EPA cuts the number of studies it does in half.
In short, the "secret science" thing is a lie, this law is nothing but an attempt to kill the EPA without having to actually get rid of it. It's the equivalent to a law that says "police investigating crimes may not speak to witnesses, collect evidence or arrest anybody who doesn't confess".
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Every major science group in the country has opposed this bill, all the scientists oppose it.
Considering that they all love and live the scientific method, if this law was what it says it is, they would be supporting it.
You should reconsider judging a law by what republicans claim it does.
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And what about all the existing studies that were done before this law, with good solid scientific result but confidential patient information in it ?
Oh we can't use those anymore ? We have to redo them. Many of them were longitudinal studies spanning decades. I'm sure the republicans would love us to have to do them over, and scrap all the good regulations they led to and not be able to regulate them again for 3 or 4 decades while we redo solid scientific studies that got thrown out for no other reason than having been done before this law passed.
If you hate secret science so much, lobby to have trade secret laws removed from pharmaceutical companies - we have a current deluge of medicine studies that are utterly impossible to reproduce because ACTUAL INGREDIENTS in the medicine given are not included on the bases of "trade secrets" - yet we're expected to trust the results of studies by commercial entities who WANT a specific outcome when they don't have to give us the information needed to do a similar study of our own ?
You don't NEED patient data to be reproducible, you DO need ingredient data.
So why is the republicans trying to block science without patient data while PROTECTING companies that refuse to reveal ingredient data ?
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What's wrong with requiring some level of scientific rigor in something before making public policy on the results?
That would impede the politically driven agenda, so it obviously can't be good.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
You have more faith in government than I do. I read the bill as regulating a regulator to make it more expensive and harder to do anything.
The EPA is part of the government. If you have little faith in the government, why would you want it to be easy for them to act using unpreproducible or other bad science? It is easy for EPA to have a huge negative impact on society and any industry it involves itself in. Surely you don't believe that all of government is filled with bad actors with the one incredible exception of EPA, staffed by only angels and sages instead of political apointees and bureaucrats?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Have you not see the stupid lawsuits brought by fringe environmentalists that greatly drive up the cost of much economic activity for little or no benefit? Have you not seen stupid government regulations that either prohibit various activities or greatly drive up the cost of various economic activities for little or no benefit, or even create actual harm? Surely you can't believe that ALL rules are good rules that must be imposed according to the whims, agendas, or mistakes of bureaucrats and political apointees? Is your thinking that all politicians are evil and untrustworthy, but bureaucrats and political apointees are all sages, angels, sweetness and light? Or is it even simpler: bureaucrats sounds like Democrats and therefore have your unthinking support?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"... until it is a hollow shell of what it was intended to be."
Instead of the overbearing, overreaching, politically biased agency it is now?
Intresting that they chose birthdate instead of age, don't you think? Why do you supppose they did that? Have you seen medical research that relied upon birthdate as a key component of the data rather than age?
Their method is sly, but the intent is obvious, and dishonest.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"all the scientists oppose it." Right. And 97% believe in AGW.
Existing studies can have identifying information removed, leaving raw data to examine. Unless, of course, the raw data has been lost, massaged in the first place or is simply being refused access to. You're making a false assumption ( "We have to redo them.").
"EPA's work has always been based on publically available rigorous science." Really? Just one example. There are more.
>Like the fracking example parent mentioned; nobody is able to research their methods and the compounds used, because trade secrets.
You mean the compounds so secret that there's a wikipedia page listing them all?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
They were disclosed back in 2011.
And lowering the bar allows bureaucrats to impose regulations based on faulty science. By the way, the courts are involved now.
What's more important, having a free society with a vigorous economy, or the ability of political apointees and bureaucrats to decree rules, bans, and burdens on us based on secret science that by definition can't have a concensus?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"Embarrassing" is not a component of scientific research. All you're doing is injecting emotion and hoping it will carry the argument.
>There is no scientific literature on how nasty fracking fluid is (blatantly not just inert chemicals) because the companies using it refuse to disclose what's in it.
That's quite simply not true.
Read: http://democrats.energycommerc...
That is not, in fact, always possible to do.
Not to mention... how long do you think it will take to scrub the identities of people out of a 30 year study involving tens of thousands of individuals ?
5 years ? 10 years ?
Now ask yourself, how much will all this cost ? The reps only gave them 1 million a year to do it - despite the congressional budget office saying this law would cost 250 million a year to implement and THAT figure requires the EPA to cut it's annual studies in HALF.
I would rather have as many studies as possible informing research, not cut the number in half. And this law would make it zero, that's exactly what this law is DESIGNED to do - it's designed to destroy the EPA without having to go through the difficulties of getting people to accept it being disbanded entirely. It completely neutralizes them however. You will never see another regulation about anything harmful ever again if this passes.
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Another hyperbole used as reason.
I notice you didn't provide any.
Except, of course, those conclusions are used in the next step as "data".
That's quite simply not true.
It quite simply is true.
Read: http://www.reuters.com/article...
http://www.newsweek.com/theres...
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And that qualification is objective and unbiased?
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
"Go look at the hubbub about global warming data. ... as if that changes the location or temperature recorded" See "fudge factor"
It can certainly change the result, can't it?
The point is they were widely being used before being scrutinized.
Some of the compounds listed in that report (which I don't think claims to be exhaustive) are known or suspected carcinogens. Depending on the local geology, much of them stay in the ground -- never mind that the fossil fuel lobby argued otherwise when they managed to prevent EPA from regulating fracking.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Care to link to that assertion of yours?
The proverbial Devil is in the Details. While the main public "idea" behind the bills makes sense, the bills contain provisions that make them, in effect, EPA-killers.
The "Public Data" bill contains a provision only giving the EPA $1M per year to make the data public, which is not nearly enough money to do the job. It would essentially stop the EPA in it's tracks, unable to make policy. (Which is likely the true intent of the bill.)
The other bill bars academics from even discussing research they are performing if it hasn't yet been published. (But I'll bet that provision doesn't apply to industry members.) It also requires panels to respond to ALL public comments on their work. In practice, this means their work would never complete. No other regulatory agency has such a restriction.
Look at the snow levels in Boston, for example
Global warming is entirely consistent with increased snowfall in Boston.
Once again, with feeling:
WEATHER IS NOT THE SAME THING AS CLIMATE
(Oh, and for the record, 'global warming' is the phenomenon which is *feeding* 'climate change'. More atmospheric heat allows for more atmospheric moisture, and the two combined lead to more frequent extreme weather phenomena. Scientists haven't switched terms, the press has as they've finally gotten up to speed with what the scientists have been saying for decades.)
Then why is the raw data so hard to get?
Took me 1 google search for "raw temperature data", and a couple of clicks to get to this: http://berkeleyearth.org/sourc... containing raw data files, and link to their sources. Let us know what you find.
You mean the compounds so secret that there's a wikipedia page listing them all?
First, there is no reason to believe that list is exhaustive. According to the page itself, it is "a partial list of the chemical constituents in additives that are used or have been used in fracturing operations." It was only released in 2011 in response to a congressional investigation, having been held secret for 60 years. Nor does it help you know whether fracking fluid is mostly toluene or mostly liquid nitrogen (personally, my guess is that there is very little, if any, liquid nitrogen in fracking fluids, but it's on the list)
Second, from a random sampling of MSDS:
So, under the proposed legislation, even if you know what the chemicals are, you have to wait for someone to get interested enough in them to perform ecological, carcinogenic, and mutagenic studies with those specific chemicals and publishes the results. Until someone proves that a compound is carcinogenic, it would be regulated like it is not carcinogenic.
Perhaps you are willing to have your dinner grown next to a factory that can hold its chemical waste secret for 60 years, and then be unable to regulate that waste for another few years or decades, waiting for someone to bother to measure their health effects. Maybe you believe that no company would knowingly or accidentally release chemicals without clear confidence in their non-toxicity (even if they can't release that data to the public). Maybe you trust those companies, more than the politicized EPA, to balance their profits against potential harm to humans and environment.
No, that would be "bar academic scientists on the panels from advocating based on the research they've done", which is also asinine, by the way. That would bar the EPA from including anyone from the group of people who did the research showing, for example, that compound X causes seizures when it ends up in drinking water or food.
It actually prevents, for example, a research pathologist on a panel from talking about matters of *pathology*, because it is "related to research they're doing". Instead, you've got to go get someone from another field of study on the panel to talk about pathology. Note, this also doesn't put the same restrictions on scientists working for private industry. Just those working for the EPA.
You're right, and the EPA *wouldn't* base their regulations on those studies. However, Congress would still be basing their *laws* on those studies. (Remember how the Tobacco industry produced 'studies' for *years* showing that smoking wasn't harmful? Even *after* it was revealed that they knew those studies were bunk?)
You used the standard dictionary definition of waterway. But the EPA has expanded their, correct in my opinion, oversight of actual waterways to include standing water and even temporary bodies of water from storms. A willful expansion of their power. I think they are giving themselves a club to use against farmers who do other things they don't like but can't stop through their current regulations. So they bogusly expand the regulations they have.
Intresting that they chose birthdate instead of age, don't you think? Why do you supppose they did that? Have you seen medical research that relied upon birthdate as a key component of the data rather than age?
Their method is sly, but the intent is obvious, and dishonest.
Are you being intentionally obtuse? TONS of medical studies rely on birthdate and many of them used to routinely include it in the published data. The canonical case being the publication from the Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission which Sweeney used to find the specific medical records of the then-Governor using only zip code, birthdate and gender https://epic.org/privacy/reidentification/Sweeney_Article.pdf.
Her research is why HIPAA requires those data values be scrubbed from any research set when it's published.
Umm... Yes? Birth date is the data used to *calculate* age.
When you fill out a medical form, do you put your *age* on the form, or do you put your *birth date* on the form.
Next?
The temperature last June was -135.4 degrees below 0. Laugh at that. Its just .3 of a degree within being the coldest temperature ever recorded on the planet. Or how about this "scientist", Dr. David Viner of the Hadley Climate Research Center: "We have seen our last snowfall. A snowfall will become a rare and exciting event. Children will just grow up not knowing what snow looks like."
That was in the year 2000. 15 years later with winters colder than ever we see that his "science" was wrong. The number of people freezing to death has not gone down. The number of snowfalls in Florida has not gone down (it snowed there in January). Now if you still believe in whack-jobs who are doing politics and not science then just keep supporting them and not requiring to disclose where they came across this new-found alien science that no one knows about but the Environmental Quacks and no one can see but them. That is how we wind up with anti-vaxxers and the zealots behind the GMO hysteria.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present the clearest demonstration of the anti-climate-change camp's lack of understanding about the difference between weather and climate and the total lack of understanding of the concept of an average.
Dr. David Viner was talking about snow in Britain, not Florida or Boston, and the last 15 British winters (with the exception of 2010) were pretty warm. Snowfall in the south of England has also gone down dramatically in the last decades. So, while unlikely that it will never snow again, it's quite possible that children will grow up without playing in the snow.
it usually already is publicly available.
the idea that it is not is the big lie behind these bills.
many of the data that isn't is data such as that for medical research, which by its very nature (being patient data) must be confidential.
but then there's another side to this as well:
ok. its publicly available....now what are you going to do with it?
the vast majority of scientific research is already publicly available, but that is largely completely irrelevant as the only people whose input on it actually matters is scientists who can comprehend it and comment (re: peer review) on it intelligently. a good illustration of this is when Andy Shafly (he of the idiotic Conservapeadia) repeatedly demanded "the raw data" from Richard Lenksi's long term E. Coli project so that he (with no knowledge or relevant scientific background) could "confirm" Lenski's results.
this is just more smokescreen from the GOP designed to appeal to an ignorant base.
it sounds good to the ignorant, until you dig into it and think about it for more than a fleeting second or two, and compare it to the actual facts of reality.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
who cares what random people think?
the only people whose opinions matter are other scientists with the relevant background knowledge and experience.
and they chiefly already have access to the data, whether its public or not, and most research already is publicly available or available on request to researchers.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
It's not bloody secret you bloody ignorant troll.
That's why this entire bill is a non starter.
It's a pile of manure designed to appeal to the ignorant GOP base, like you.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
because if they scrubbed my SSN and DOB from the data, what else did they scrub from it?
Even if they didn't scrub your SSN and DOB, how do you know everything else is still authentic and complete ?
Boy, you are naive. The tobacco industry fought for 30 years knowing that smoking was linked to cancer but funding 'research' that disproved the fact. We are seeing the same scenario play out on climate change now. That is what this effort is all about, to give more power to the paid whores and less to the actual researchers.
So far, we've seen one veto of note (Keystone XL), and one 'walkout' (of a speech from a foreign dignitary invited specifically to undermine current US foreign policy).
If you're going to try to shift the 'obstructionist', or 'party of "NO"' label to the democrats, you should compare that to the Republicans who have to date, changed the rules in the House and Senate so that *only* the majority leader of each can propose legislation to be voted on. Those rule changes have, literally, made it impossible for Democrats, or Independents to propose a motion on the floor to bring a bill to a vote. And that's one of the *lesser* bits of obstruction we've been putting up with from them for nearly 6 years now.
Q: Why is it hard to get?
A: It's not. http://berkeleyearth.org/sourc...
Q: Why are they adjusting data?
A: Because you need a common frame of reference. Say a measuring station was located in a park. Then a tree grew. The instrument went from being in full sun to being in full shade. So the readings from AT (After Tree) are not directly comparable to the readings from BT (Before Tree). Or say the instrument went from being in a park in a valley to now being on top of a hill, 1000 feet higher in elevation.
That's why adjustments are made, so that the readings all have a common point of reference.
Also note that WITHOUT the adjustments the data would show 20% MORE WARMING.
That's right, the adjustments to the raw data you are so worried about, actually reduce the amount of warming shown in the data record.
Now...you tell me, just what qualifications does an aerospace engineer have that would make his climate research as valid as an actual climate scientists?
Or do you think that before your operation to remove a brain tumor, you should double check your neurosurgeon's opinion with a geologist?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
but it must be true!
because numbers!
that's what you rational people use right?
Numbers! Big scary numbers!
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
1: No they don't.
2: Just because they (and other journals) charge for access to their journals doesn't mean the data or papers aren't available in other ways. Many scientists' work, both paper and research, is publicly available, regardless of the journal it's published in. The chief things a journal provides is distribution, curation, and publicity (in the sense of alerting the wider world, not in any sort of negative connotation). In this way the researcher doesn't have to worry about distribution, and people interested don't have to directly contact the researcher.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Lets not be silly just to push a narritive. You will come up with a completely different data set if you spend ten years recollecting data. What will happen is the data will be availible so it will or could be statistically validated and analysis redrawn. And i state "could" only because it allows full access to all the information.
Now think about that. How much of the global warming debate would exist today if everything was open at the time instead of refusals to disclose data and so on. This is prety much lae in the UK after the CRU email scuffle in which they forced the disclosure of data.
I am prepared to engage with you on this issue rationally. But you should be warned now... I am extremely rational. Doubletalk, sophistry, and other fallacious nonsense will simply get vivisected and pinned to an examination table while I take it apart bit by bit putting each little piece in its own little formaldehyde jar with its own little label.
That's fine. You're exactly the audience this piece of legislation targets. I mean, really, who would make a rational argument against using good, reproducible, published science to support their policy.
This legislation is social engineering that depends on the distinction between theory and practice. In theory, it's great to use data to support your policies, to have good science backing your regulations, and to know the exact effects you're trying to block or induce. In practice, those data do not exist. There's 150+ chemicals at my job site, and the MSDSs for half of them report "Data not available." This legislation is intended to delay for as long as possible any regulatory action.
Example, pentachlorophenol, one of the most common preservatives for telephone poles and RR ties over the past 30 years, still lacks any human carcinogenicty studies. It looks like penta is metabolized in vivo to a much more carcinogenic compound, and I imagine that another 10 years or so will produce pretty convincing data. Meanwhile, the EPA has been allowed to regulate penta as a probable carcinogen since the early 80s. This includes banning the sale to private individuals (it used to be a popular fungicide for people to spray around their basements). Penta is one of the better studied molecules because of its popularity and explicitly toxic function, and after 60 years, one can still argue that there is no reproducible scientific data demonstrating its role in cancer.
This isn't true in the slightest. A properly designed study can draw important conclusions from only a few dozens of individuals. But it's also irrelevant since, researchers have demonstrated again and again that its fairly trivial to deconstruct annonymized data from all manner of databasies and identify individuals from a very limited set of known information.
Not when you actually know what is being referred to.
But please continue to argue from ignorance. It's funny.
No wondering required, this is a pretty time honored political tactic. Passing bills you know have no chance of making into law (or better yet, no chance of surviving SCOTUS) not only scores points with your own voters but allows the person to escape the negative repercussions of insane bills and the effect they would actually have.
Wow. How completely stupid can you be? You can pay anyone off to say it is not reproducable and anyone can prove them wrong by simply reproducing it. FFS, is logic lost on you? All anyone would have to do is reproduce the results.
Its like you are arguing that anyone could pay someone to say 2+2 is 10 and pulling a calculator out to show it is actually 4 is somehow invalid. All some saying it is not reproducable will do when it is being reproduced by at least one if not more entities is show how wrong they are. And yes, they will have to show their work so their flaws will be highlighted too.
It seems like you are scared to have work used to claim global warming opened up for anyone to inspect. Why is that?
Lets not be silly just to push a narritive. You will come up with a completely different data set if you spend ten years recollecting data.
What I had in mind is what silly conditions will be pushed by people in power who don't like the conclusions of some studies.
How much of the global warming debate would exist today if everything was open at the time instead of refusals to disclose data and so on
At what time? What refusals? What are you talking about? Arrhenius predicted global warming in 1896! Publically, of course. You're saying that somebody has been hiding some data for a century?
Ezekiel 23:20
I would think those granting the consent of the governed when regulation is being made would care.
But if all is as you say and the info is already availible to anyone qualified, i do not see why you are objecting.
As opposed to the various environmentalist groups who get regulations enacted outside normal channels by suing the EPA and then sign a settlement with the EPA for some regulation that has the force of a court order...but is never actually reviewed by a court.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Logic is not one of your strong points is it, ui
Nothing in this is about having to use studies by third parties. Its about science being used to shape regulation being open for review and people being able to reproduce it. I can pay for a study to say anything i want, but the EPA can ignore it as long as their science is sound (available and can be reproduced). If it can be reproduced, the science will speak for itself. If it cannot, then it cannot be used. So in a way, it relates to the tobacco studies as in they couldn't be used because if they were wrong, the data which would have to be made public would show the fault.
Lol.. it wouldn't matter if they did not like the conclusions. If the data is open and it can be reproduced, all they can do is "not like it,".
As for the refusals. This is laughable. I will post some infomation when i get to a computer but i gave you a huge hint when i mentioned CRU. but please, go ahead and try to obfuscate those problems in a discussion about mistrust and the need to open it up.
What's ridiculous is your suppositon that each receptionist and night janitor team up at weekly scrum meetings to compare notes, or that what works out to 2 cents per hour per employee is going to have any effect on congress, science, or agendas. Listen, rich white folks don't care about Congress, science,global warming or YOu. They just keep you concentrating on the gerbil wheel while they live their lives. Go ahead and save the planet you pompous assholes. Nobody worth saving gives a shit what you do. There are over 5 million millionaires in the U.S. and climbing, you are being left behind. Rich white people don't rely on "no child left behind " policies of government. Laws are for rubes. If you understood the inalienable rights that you have you wouldn't need the bill of rights to spell it out for you.
Read the article.
And who is going to go back through 40 years of studies and get personal information, anonymize it and republish so the study can be used as a basis for environmental regulation. Look who is writing this Bill and imagine what they want, what major projects are being held up by something stupid and job killing as environmental law. There is nothing benevolent and reasonable going on here.
Only one comment, upon your comment. If science is secret, what good is it? Is it cold fusion science? Is it monoculture? Or is it, was it deadly science, something like adding peanut oil to food stuffs, in the hope of finding a use for it? Now those with peanut allergies, if they get the wrong food by accident, may die before they get to their pen.
"All of the vetos"? Really? That's rich!
Obstructionist Obama! Still with fewer vetoes than any Republican President who didn't die before completing a year in office!
Obama has, to his name, a whopping 3 vetos in his 6 years in office.
That's the lowest since James A. Garfield (who was President for just over 6 months in 1881). As an interesting bit of trivia, he's the *only* Republican President to have fewer vetos than Obama. The next closest republican is Warren G. Harding, with 6 vetos during his 2 years and 5 months in office.
The full list of Presidents with fewer vetos than Obama:
James A. Garfield (1881) 0
Millard Fillmore (1850-1853) 0
Zachary Taylor (1849-1850) 0
William H. Harrison (1841) 0
Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) 1
John Q. Adams (1825-1829) 0
James Monroe (1817-1825) 1
Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) 0
John Adams (1797-1801) 0
George Washington (1789-1797) 2
Source: http://www.senate.gov/reference/Legislation/Vetoes/vetoCounts.htm
I have no idea what the CRU has to do with that. I accepted global warming as a fact a quarter century ago. The reason was that the research of many people at that time and before that said it was happening. There was no reason to think otherwise. There isn't any reason to think otherwise now, and there hasn't been any reason in between the two points in time. How anything that happened at one scientific institution at one point in time - beyond some ground-breaking discovery (which didn't happen, naturally) explaining how and why everyone else was wrong - could have invalidated the work of many different scientists from countries all over the world eludes me. Not to mention that to my knowledge, nothing significantly improper was demonstrated to have happened in the institution you mentioned, despite multiple investigations.
Ezekiel 23:20
There is nothing weird about it at all, and I agree with you 100%.
That said, not all research is public or publicly-funded. This bill will prevent the EPA from using non-public research, and that which is not publicly-funded lacks any lever with which to make it public. To give a concrete example, if this bill were to pass, the EPA will now not be able to consider the blend of chemicals in a fracturing fluid, because the information about what those chemicals are and why they are in the blend is proprietary information of the company doing the fracking.
www.wavefront-av.com
What theyre saying is due process is being used to conceal the true intention and effect of the law.
They can't come right out and say this is the Let Polluters Rule the Country bill.
They can, however, call it something else while advancing their real agenda.
Appeals to authority when a guild opposes a law will result in laws which favor stronger guilds.
No.. The EPA would propose a regulation and during the required comment period, people could examine the science and the data used and attempt to reproduce it. If they find fault during the regulation process (the EPA cannot just declare regulation, it has to propose it, wait for a comment period, address any concerns brought up, comment, then vote to pass it). But anyone can reproduce the science if it is sound...
You reading it how a normal person would read it. From a normal person's perspective, it sounds like it's common sense. Read it like a politician or a lawyer. From that perspective, there's loopholes here you could drive a planet through. In fact, the loosest interpretation would pretty much guarantee that the EPA could never pass any regulations ever again which is exactly what people like "I gotsa snowball" Inhofe and his corporate sponsors want.
~X~
I read somewhere the Koch brothers save 300mil on a 30mil investment to think tanks each year. That 300 mil is EPA fines. Quite a return really on for a couple guys whose company's gas line leaked so bad it blew up 2 kids driving through the emissions near their home. I'll see if I can find the article again.
In essence many companies know they are going to be fined it is in their budget, they save money by making the EPA and other agencies ineffectual. They believe because people buy their products that this justifies the terrible things they can do for money.
Except for that doesn't explain asking for a study to be reproducible or disclosure of evidence means pollutors rule. It just means there's some sort of due process.
The problem with you idea is that you're just assuming the government is doing the right thing. Look at the crap out of the NSA these days. The government does dirty stuff sometimes. And what would stop the EPA from passing regulations that hurt one company but not another because some lobbyist paid off a politician that influences that. What defense would anyone have from that? None because you've removed all due process from the situation.
Yes, it means the EPA gets taken to court, but being taken to court is not a bad thing. It is a normal part of our government.
We have three branches of government. It is the job of the judiciary to audit the other branches for legality. If a branch can't be audited then the judiciary can't do their job.
Explain why you think the EPA should be able to operate with impunity and no oversight?
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I am sorry but 30% of their budget is a huge ding.
Then pass your regulation without citing any science at all. Just do it "because"... that would at least be honest.
If you have science to back it up then you can cite it. if you don't then you can't cite it.
What is happening now is that they're citing something that isn't science because it either can't be reproduced or the data is suspect.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
As if the DNC isn't as lousy with dirty money and ill gotten gains as the GOP. Maybe if your a brain dead idiot you actually believe that they aren't.
So what you're saying is that "Due Process" is inconvenient?
The EPA should be subject to due process. If they're saying they're doing something because of a study... then that study itself should be subject to examination... that includes whether it is reprroducable and therefore science at all... and then you're going to want to know where the information came from so you can audit it...
No. He's saying that it's impossible to review PUBLICLY what is held PRIVATELY. "Trade Secrets" is the corporate equivalent of "National Security". In addition, corporate snow-jobbing of the public has been going on for decades, and is already quite effective at stalling actions. Remember leaded gasoline? Asbestos? Acid rain? The measures here make it even easier to use those same tactics to effectively neuter or stop regulation entirely.
You can't take crap like this at face value. You have to read it like a politician. This has nothing to do scientific veracity, and everything to do with how to neuter the EPA so that corporate whores like Inhofe can line their pockets with more "free speech" while trashing our environment.
~X~
Sure they do... in the same way that the recent Republican-backed net neutrality bill would have preserved genuine net neutrality, and was not even slightly an Orwellian doublespeak-named poison pill stuffed chock-full of loopholes in order to accomplish exactly the opposite.
Let's take a look at HR 1030, shall we? In part, it reads:
In other words, what it really means is "the EPA is prohibited from regulating anything to reduce global warming because no possible justification would be deemed capable of 'substantial reproduction of research results' until after we've collectively finished 'proving' it by cooking the planet... or at least, all proposed regulations would be tied up in court for decades by industry shills arguing such."
And what about the other one, HR 1029? It reads, in part, that:
In other words, legitimate scientific and technical points of view must be "balanced" by industry shills.
In other words, it's trying to say "quit blocking appointment of our industry shills to the board! It's making it too hard to effect regulatory capture!"
There's more bad stuff in there -- along with some good stuff, which is unsurprising because if the bill were all bad it would be too blatantly obvious even for some Republicans to support it -- but I can't be bothered to go through and analyze the whole thing.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Then data should be publicly available. If your building a model to predict something for instance there is no way anyone can test the damn model and verify it's correctness or incorrectness if the data that was fed into it is secret.
The language of the bill is very clear. It is intended to do what it says: make sure our regulatory bodies (employees of The People) are making their decisions based on publicly available, sound science.
The language is clear. I agree. But that isn't what it says.
Read all congressional measures as if you were lawful/evil. You'll find that more than a few of measures like this one do not say what you think it says. In this case, this seemingly innocuous and even beneficial measure becomes an extremely powerful tool for effectively neutering the EPA.
~X~
I don't make my mind up based on what other people are saying.
I am not a herd animal. Fucking cattle can all move as one... I'm a human being. I don't work that way.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You've got this entirely backwards: you're trying to argue that the EPA should be required to justify erring on the side of caution by prohibiting a potentially-harmful thing, when in reality the company wanting to do the potentially-harmful thing should justify that it isn't harmful before being allowed to do it.
You first.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
So wait, what do you mean a company should have to prove whatever they're doing is okay for the environment?
Explain what that means please? Because it sounds like it would either be impossible or so fucking expensive that the economy would collapse and we'd be eating each other within six months.
As to admitting things... I like democracy, I like due process, I think a good argument has nothing to fear from an audit or examination.
You can't reverse this on me.
The people fighting this sort of thing ultimately are useful idiots for fascism. You want the government to do whatever it wants without anyone being able to defend themselves in court or hold the government to basic due process. You also don't want anything to be subjected to the democratic process. You want everything to happen behind closed doors where "your people" will just do whatever it is they want and most people won't even know it happened.
That's text book tyranny. And the only thing that keeps me from calling you a fascist is that I think you're probably too stupid to realize what is going on here.
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Now the scientists erase "Global Warming" and replace it with "Climate Change".
Those are two different things. Get with the program.
And while you're off "reproducing the results," industry has had free reign to spend a decade or so fucking everything up. You might as well change the name from "Environmental Protection Agency" to "Environmental Hindsight Agency" since all it'll be able to do is say "yup, that really was a bad idea after all" after the damage is already done!
It "seems" like you're intentionally mischaracterizing the situation to suit your own argument. The burden of proof should be on you to explain why we should run full speed ahead changing the climate, not on the EPA to explain in excruciating detail precisely why erring on the side of caution might be prudent common sense.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
That's fine... then don't enact legislation on the issue. If you're trying to make something public policy in a democracy then the people have a right to audit the study.
As to neutering the EPA... requring that the EPA be subject to due process is not neutering. That is how the government is supposed to work.
When you get a parking ticket is it neutering the police if you can take the officer to court to challenge the ticket? No it isn't.
This is just due process. It is a normal and very healthy function of our government. You make the EPA immune from due process and it is like giving the officer the ability to issue tickets without giving you any ability to take him to court if he fucks you. Lets say I just ticket you in your drive way or say you drove 1000 miles an hour when you haven't been in the country for a year?
See.... you take the officer to court when that happens. If the EPA can make regulation on the basis of specious studies then people have no defense against it.
The mistake people keep making is that you're assuming the EPA is only doing good things and is never wrong or corrupt. That's not reasonable. The EPA is as likely to fuck up a regulation as any other branch of government.
Look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
A democratic US senator stepped in to help them. I point that out because you sound like the sort of person that just looks at the R or the D after a name and then turns their brain off.
That simplistic thinking is not useful. Stop doing that.
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Every major science group in the country has opposed this bill, all the scientists oppose it.
Appeal To Authority isn't a rational basis for agreement. Can you cite any specific objections that "all the scientists(!?)" have?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
...when in reality the company wanting to do the potentially-harmful thing should justify that it isn't harmful before being allowed to do it.
That's an awesome idea! Maybe we can have them do exactly that. We can call them something cool, like, I dunno, I think "environmental impact statements" has a pretty good ring to it.
Oh, wait - those are generally required anyway.
*eyeroll*
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Fuck yes! Because if it didn't have substantial potential for harm, the EPA wouldn't bother trying to regulate it in the first place.
Clearly, you have no fucking clue what fascism actually is, because "you want [corporations who have effected regulatory capture on the government] to do whatever [they want] without anyone being able to defend themselves in court or hold the [corporations] to basic due process" and are too goddamn stupid to notice that you're advocating for exactly the same damn thing you're claiming is bad!
Basically, what you're trying to argue here is that government control is somehow worse than corporate control, even though the only real difference nowadays is that corporations are motivated entirely by greed and have no oversight by the public, while government is (supposed to be) motivated to serve the public good and does have oversight by the public.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Yeah, and the Republicans hate that and are trying to change it, which is the issue we're discussing. The point of the proposed bills would be to preempt things like this.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
No, it's about being able to bludgeon the EPA in court with your bogus study, in order to delay regulations for as long as possible.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
And if the EPA acted lawlessly like that, they'd just keep doing it even if these bills passed, so what's the point? "Oh no, you're acting illegally! So in retaliation, we'll... make it illegal a second time?" Yeah, that'll work really well!
If the problem is government acting illegally, the fix is oversight and enforcement of existing laws.
No, you'd still have exactly the same defense you have now. Since these bills are only concerned with science (at least, according to your reasoning in this thread), they can't possibly affect whether the EPA can write discriminatory rules because science is not necessary in order to challenge a discriminatory rule. In other words, to defend against a discriminatory rule you don't have to prove that it's unscientific, just that it's discriminatory.
Of course. But the EPA's regulation should be in force for the duration of the court case, rather than allowing entities to pollute unchecked until the court rules.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
It's actually, the "open, reproducible science bill":
http://news.sciencemag.org/env...
One might think that the name "secret science bill" was dreamed up by a Democratic staffer intending to kill the bill, but that's actually the name Republicans gave the bill; Republicans really are bumbling idiots. If they had it called the "open, reproducible science bill", it would have stood a much better chance.
As to the content of the bill, there is a real problem with the EPA and other government agencies using immature science and irreproducible results as the basis of legislation, but that problem can't be fixed through new laws. The only way to reign in the EPA is to cut it down in size substantially or abolish it altogether and have state agencies deal with these issues.
Sorry, sophistry detected. You lose
Quote: "So for example, I would be in favor secrets being kept when those secrets could save lives."
Weasel words: 'would', 'secrets', 'when' (what is the meaning of is), and especially 'could'
Anything kept secret 'could' save lives. But all information is power, and that power can (and has been) be used to control, oppress, harass, and kill those you have information about. Including, incidentally, secret information.
False dichotomy: Because revealing secrets, including military secrets, often saves lives.
Hidden assumption: The lives in question. Which lives count? Lives of the elite (a few) or the inconvenient people in their way, or simply irrelevant in their calculations (millions of war dead, including soldiers simply doing their job, but worst of all massive numbers of civilians and other innocents.)
But worst of all, going to war based on secrets in a constitutional democratic republic is simply untenable. The people cannot rule if they do not know what is going on. We are supposed to elect representatives, not dictators, monarchs, or despots. But good luck convincing those in power, both nominally and literally.
.
The problem is the vast number of privately funded studies that don't support the funders goals and get buried (i.e.: "negative results".) This is an attempt to prevent the EPA from negotiating to see those results - which they'd probably have to promise to keep confidential in order to have access to them. This allows corporations to prevent the EPA from banning something simply by not publishing negative results.
then don't enact legislation on the issue. If you're trying to make something public policy in a democracy then the people have a right to audit the study.
Not acting is also a form of public policy.
That is only true if the EPA is relying on faulty science that cannot survive the scientific method. Of this case, if such is to be true, nothing is different than today other than it would be easier to detext witg an open and transparent EPA. But should ths EPA use sound scientific arguments then it wiuld be easily proven as such and the court battles eaasily dismissed.
If you put any though into it, you would see that the bill actually prevents the situation you decry by placing a legal qualifyer on the premise of regulation.
of the people, but due to gerrymandering, still managed to elections. This can only continue for so long.
Science is not "faulty" just because its hypotheses are difficult to test or take a long time to test... but opponents of regulation would argue it is (and courts, being made of lawyers instead of scientists, would treat such claims as plausible). That's the problem!
These bills are about subverting the scientific method into a political excuse to destroy all environmental regulations -- period.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Would you please detail to us which oil companies you are shilling for this time?
as long as your bad eyesight is sufficiently profitable.
It is easy for EPA to have a huge negative impact on society and any industry it involves itself in./quote>It's easy for the military to have a huge negative impact on society and any industry it involves itself in. Are you arguing that the EPA is *worse* than no EPA? That since the EPA started, the benefits to the quality of life aren't worth the costs to the industries it has involved itself in? Overall, has the EPA done good or bad?
Because if this law passes, the cost for the EPA to function will increase greatly, and what it does, good or bad, will be reduced.
Learn to love Alaska
...is what they want, then how about greater transparency in religion-based policy making too.
And when someone pulled out that calculator, you would simply claim that their results must be faulty and that we should spend the next decade or two debating simple math. I know you think you are being clever, but anyone that has raised children can quite easily see past the BS, since they have already had to deal with it themselves.
Because if they don't anonymize it, they could track down every person in the study to verify the integrity of the data. Wasn't that the point?
Learn to love Alaska
There is at least one company that makes it fracturing chemistry available. Everything that goes to a wellsite has an MSDS (Some Europhiles are starting to call them SDS) and has transportation placarding. The stuff is off-spec food grade stuff, guar, xanthan gum, and vinegar. Add some cayenne pepper any your have a popular sauce that pretty much every restaurant in town has on its table. Hazardous yes, toxic?......
Anybody who's watched the EPA fight with some corporation knows it goes way beyond FUD tactics. They will try to setup roadblocks to even being regulated in the 1st place. Then after the information is gathered, they not only try to deny the facts and create uncertainty about them --even clear results-- but their P.R. people attack witnesses, officials, the agency, and they almost always fund attacks against the EPA, government regulation, and fund politicians who do the same (or buy them to do that;) it's not even well hidden because we don't have any good journalists to point out the "other side" is usually just a few corporations (and their hired PR hitmen.)
They also will fund PR campaigns about how smoking is good for you, etc. hire some PhD whores (from brothels called "think tanks,") or advertize how we are not using ingredient X anymore, when they just lowered it's amount or choose something they knew was worse. Even more diabolical are the TV ads they will buy that don't sell anything at all just so the TV news will not report bad things about them. This includes PBS. I knew people who worked in TV news; it happens!
They'll also dodge and ignore things even in court to drag out the product sales as long as possible knowing people are dying and even when the court proves their whole plan they just get a small monetary fine which still made it worth doing (thinking of Merck. ) The process is quite similar because we have an industry of experts who know how to game the whole system who help anybody with enough $ to hire them.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Karmashock is just doing his usual tactic of trying to sound intelligent while pretending to not have a giant boner for the republicans. Anyone who warns you how rational they are is probably a fucking idiot. Case in point.
First you claim that the EPA will have to reproduce the data or it will be illegal, and now this.
Liar.
Emphasis mine, words are a direct quote from you. The actual law says nothing like what you claim.
Ignorant.
It makes sense until you understand what will be required to implement this. Especially, put yourself in the mindset of being anti-science, and how you might take advantage of these requirements. At any point, you can object to an EPA policy by saying it does not comply with this law and try to suspend enforcement until the issue is settled.
I can't object to the principle, but the financial requirement is intended to shut down regulation. And you fell for it.
EPA will have to prove reproducibility, not actually reproduce it. Read again, slower this time, and without the rabid frothing at the mouth.
The law requires it be reproducible. If someone claims it isn't. How do you think that would be settled in a lawsuit? I think the only way would be for the EPA to prove reproducibility of it. If you think that requires actually reproducing it, then that's your opinion, not mine, even if I were to agree with it, I hadn't said it.
Learn to love Alaska
Did you read the bill? Because you did not say that. Also, how do you have public science without having the data to analyze? Before you answer,
Technical information relied on being publicly available means the data has to be available for analysis. I don't know any other way to interpret it. There is the exclusion saying " Nothing in the subsection shall be construed as â(A) requiring the Administrator to disseminate scientific and technical information," but that just allows private individuals to host the information, such as researchers making it available themselves.
If it's not available, it would not follow this law, and thus would be illegal to base a decision on it.
Now, remember all of the discussions we have had about the difficulty in anonymising data sets? Because that's what people are objecting to regarding this part of the bill(s). Plenty of discussion on this site so I won't get into that.
I read the bill, and I cannot find support for your argument unless you base it on selective reading of the article.
But only an idiot refuses to consider expert opinion before making up their mind. You're not a unique rebel, you're just an ignorant fool.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Except for that doesn't explain asking for a study to be reproducible or disclosure of evidence means pollutors rule. It just means there's some sort of due process.
Yes, that is what they're representing this law purports to do.
The point I'm making is that this is not necessarily the case.
The problem with you idea is that you're just assuming the government is doing the right thing.
No, you're actually the one assuming that Government, or in particular, Congress, is doing the right thing in passing this bill.
See the sentence of yours I just quoted. You're taking it as true.
And what would stop the EPA from passing regulations that hurt one company but not another because some lobbyist paid off a politician that influences that. What defense would anyone have from that?
Now apply this logic to this bill. Can you see how that might work?
Explain why you think the EPA should be able to operate with impunity and no oversight?
Here's my post again:
"What they're saying is due process is being used to conceal the true intention and effect of the law.
They can't come right out and say this is the Let Polluters Rule the Country bill.
They can, however, call it something else while advancing their real agenda."
I don't see how you get that premise from what I said, therefore, you need to explain why you think that's what I said, when what I said was rather different. Or did you miss my point about what was being done, even though from my perspective (see above quote of yours), you seem to be contending that is the problem with the EPA. Yet you don't want to apply it to Congress's actions with this law? Or am I mistaken about your understanding, and you are able to understand and acknowledge how claiming something to be due process is just an excuse for accomplishing another end?
Perhaps you could explain why you think that these scenarios are not likely to happen?
Because the language of the bill says nothing about requiring any kind of personal details, or anything else that the alarmists claim it is aimed at.
I think that the language of the Bill is pretty much designed to stop the application of the Precautionary Principle as a method of environmental protection.
If by that you mean: "Rulemaking should not have to be based on sound science," then I agree: it would appear to prevent that situation.
I, for one, think that's great.
>Read: http://www.reuters.com/article... [reuters.com]
Welcome to Slashdot, where a vote by a state legislature gets moderated up higher than a congressional report detailing all the chemicals used in fracking.
>http://www.newsweek.com/theres...
Or where a person tries to cover up the fact that he got proved wrong because he hasn't checked his facts since Gasland came out in 2010 by stating, "Well, there's still more stuff we can know."
Shall we take a peek at what you originally claimed? Ah yes - "because the companies using it refuse to disclose what's in it."
Bullshit. And you know it's bullshit. Don't try to cover it up by saying, "Well, we don't know *everything* about all the chemicals". This is not the same, and you know it.
>The point is they were widely being used before being scrutinized.
No, the point is you watched Gasland back in 2010, and thought your claim was still true today in 2015.
>Some of the compounds listed in that report (which I don't think claims to be exhaustive) are known or suspected carcinogens.
No kidding. I didn't say they were safe. I said your claim that nobody knows what is in them is wrong.
>First, there is no reason to believe that list is exhaustive. According to the page itself, it is "a partial list of the chemical constituents in additives that are used or have been used in fracturing operations."
It a comprehensive list provided by the major fracking companies as to the compounds used in the last five years.
> It was only released in 2011 in response to a congressional investigation, having been held secret for 60 years.
Yeah. Four years ago. And yet you're defending people who made these claims:
"Like the fracking example parent mentioned; nobody is able to research their methods and the compounds used, because trade secrets"
"There is no scientific literature on how nasty fracking fluid is (blatantly not just inert chemicals) because the companies using it refuse to disclose what's in it."
My purpose in posting here is to note that these claims are, in fact, factually wrong.
>Perhaps you are willing to have your dinner grown next to a factory that can hold its chemical waste secret for 60 years, and then be unable to regulate that waste for another few years or decades, waiting for someone to bother to measure their health effects.
Clearly, your logic is, "Well, ShakaUVM corrected a factual error in two posters, therefore he must hate the environment and want everyone to get cancer."
Perhaps you should think that through a little more next time.
EPA will have to prove reproducibility, not actually reproduce it. Read again, slower this time, and without the rabid frothing at the mouth.
I am not frothing at anything, so stop projecting. I read it again. I read it many times. It simply does not fall upon the EPA to have to prove reproducibility. I suggest you read the law, if you don't believe that my verbatim quote from it was correct.
The law requires it be reproducible.
Stop lying. The law requires that the data be AVAILABLE so that someone who wants to TRY to reproduce the results can do so. It does not mandate that the EPA do such an analysis, nor does it mandate that the EPA actually host the data. Here, I'll quote it again. Maybe you'll read it now:
Here's the one mandate upon EPA: all data must be online for any data used in support of regulation. It must be in a form that is "sufficient to" allow independent analysis. There is no requirement for the EPA to prove anything about that data. "Independent analysis" means something, it's not just words put in to make the law longer.
If someone claims it isn't.
Stop lying. There is nothing in that law that says the EPA has to do anything with the data just because someone says the results aren't reproducible.
How do you think that would be settled in a lawsuit? I think the only way would be for the EPA to prove reproducibility of it.
No. The original study authors would be involved. The EPA HAS NO LEGAL REQUIREMENT TO PROVE ANYTHING. Read the fucking law. Show me where it says they do.
I think the only way would be for the EPA to prove reproducibility of it. If you think that requires actually reproducing it, then that's your opinion, not mine, even if I were to agree with it, I hadn't said it.
The ONLY way the EPA could prove the results are reproducible is to actually reproduce them. So when you say they have to prove they are, you are saying they have to do it. That's a lie They don't. And since you did say it, calling me a liar for saying you did is .. a lie.
It doesn't matter, you are lying either way. Nothing in that law requires the EPA to prove anything about the data. It has to make sure it is ONLINE so someone ELSE can study it -- independent analysis -- if they want to. The law doesn't even say that the EPA as to provide the data. In fact, (2)(A) is EXPLICIT in saying the EPA does NOT have to disseminate the information.
The law does what it says. The EPA is prevented from using secret or hidden or cloaked or whatever data when creating regulations that impinge on the lives of large numbers of US citizens. They've got enough power creating regulations without legislative approval based on published science, they don't need to be able to do it on unpublished private stuff.
Because if they don't anonymize it, they could track down every person in the study to verify the integrity of the data. Wasn't that the point?
No, that's not the point. The law says nothing about "integrity of data". It says nothing about EPA proving "integrity of data". It says "independent analysis and substantial reproduction of results".
That means "what are the data used to reach the results?" "How was it collected?" It means means being able to take the data as it was collected and look at it for potential process errors or measurement bias. Were outliers excluded for correct reasons? Do those same numbers support a different conclusion if you include other possible mechanisms of action?
It does NOT mean doing an identical study using the same identical people for a medical study. It does NOT mean that someone has to come ask AK Marc the same questions and do the same blood tests or whatever abysmal thing you were subjected to in order to detect false data.
It means that someone else WHO WANTS TO can do the study again with a different set of participants using the same techniques to see if the results are substantially the same. (Not identical, just substantially the same.) For example: the EPA proposes a regulation about second hand smoke based on a study that shows an effect in mice. The data for that study has to be online somewhere and have sufficient content so that I can look at it and say "you didn't account for this potential cause", or I can duplicate the study if I want to go that far. The law doesn't require the SSN and DOB of each and every mouse involved so I can go get the same mice and use them in the study. I just have to be able to do the same things done in the sturdy to the same kinds of mice to see if the numbers support the conclusions. That's what is meant by "reproduce the results".
HIPAA doesn't cover patient data per se. HIPAA covers specific entities and governs what they can do with patient data. This is why lawyers aren't required to follow HIPAA guidelines regarding patient data and why the law isn't broken when a lawyer's office distributes a bunch of scrap paper to schools with patient data on it. If the research is not conducted by a covered entity or the information is not protected information then HIPAA's privacy laws do not apply.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
If your SSN, DOB, or anything else is collected, it's required to be publicly accessible online.
That is not true. The only requirement is that the data online be "sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of the results". You are arguing here that the SSN and DOB of a participant in a study is somehow required to be able to analyze the data, even though you admit at the start "They don't really have a bearing on the study." They are not relevant to the study, so they aren't required to be online. It's just nuts to think that there will be some relevance to the SSN or DOB. What, do you think medical studies actually would have a result that "everyone whose SSN ends in 4 is more likely to die from cancer"? That's the ONLY kind of result that would require SSN data to be included, and if the EPA is going to base regulations on such patently absurd results I then I think this law is a godsend. It will allow people to identify the charlatans who would come up with such a result and brand them for what they are.
And if someone who is trying to analyze the results claims they need the SSN and DOB of every participant, they should be ignored.
But since it is unlikely that any such result would ever be relied upon to support a regulation, so the issue is moot.
... but it leaves open a ton of questions that need to be resolved through litigation if it is passed.
Like the EPA has never been sued before. And if they create regulations based on specific people's SSN or DOB, then they deserve, nay BEG, to be sued until they stop.
As for "specifically identified", that does not say that participants must be "specifically identified", it says the scientific studies must be identified. Who did them, not who was used as guinea pigs.
This.
Hypothesis: Smoking causes cancer 20 years later.
Test: Have a group of people smoke cigarettes for 20 years.
Measure: They got cancer.
Policy: We should really ban these products; they kill our citizens.
Law: Study must be reproducible before laws can be made... Please spend 20 years reproducing the study and then make a law.
Nope. I've actually participated in a medical study. My SSN and DOB were collected, and considered "data" for the purposes of the study.
Your SSN has nothing to do with your medical condition or status, does it? Then how could it be data that is required to analyze the results?
That HIPAA and EPA rules would contradict each other is a great thing for the polluters.
HIPAA and EPA rules don't contradict each other, nor does this proposed federal regulation create a contradiction. Even were you to somehow convince anyone that your SSN and DOB are data that are required to make independent analysis possible, the LAW ITSELF deals with any potential HIPAA conflict. When you get around to reading it, in full, you'll find:
If other laws say the information cannot be disseminated, then this law doesn't require it, either. But it didn't require it anyway because SSN and DOB are not required to analyze or reproduce the results.
Posting A/C because I've modded, but based on what I know of chemistry, my suspicion is that the first two of those three compounds are likely to be somewhere between moderately bad and pretty nasty. The last one is probably pretty safe unless you ingest a lot of it. The other problem being skirted is that nobody really knows how fast and at what concentrations these things will leach into groundwater.
FWIW, I have a Ph.D. in chemistry from a Tier 1 research institution. I think a lot of chemical hazards are blown out of proportion (a much smaller number are understated), but that doesn't mean I want large quantities of them in my water. I think most GMOs are safe and really don't have that much problem eating them (not worried at all about those new "Arctic" non-browning apples or even Bt corn), but that doesn't mean we shouldn't test them.
Look it up, that "sweet spot" applies to most everything we grow. It's actually a number used for co2 concentrating hothouse systems.
Soil is the result of climate, the composition of soil actually will change in your imagined scenario. For example, in the most fertile farmland in the USA, which is in an area in Illinois, the ground gets cold enough that bacterial action stops. This is in contrast to areas with depleted soil further south, where nutrients get broken down and washed into water table all year.
There is so much wrong with your glib trite rebuttal it's simply not funny
Scenario: Scientific study of infant mortality and birth defect rates in a specific neighbourhood (e.g. Love Canal) is used to justify an EPA order shutting down a major manufacturing facility until such time as it ceases to pollute. The data correlates proximity to pollution sources with health data. Using the now-publicly-available data,
Property records are an already public data source of people who were in proximity to Love Canal or any other specific manufacturing facility.
Scenario: Scientific study of environmental effects of Chemical A are troubling, but inconclusive.
In other words, "we're scared of chemical A but can't prove any danger." Red flag words are "troubling" (emotion, not science) and "inconclusive." You can't prove "absolute safety", so "inconclusive" can only mean "we can't prove danger".
The EPA issues a ruling applying the Precautionary Principle, stopping use of Chemical A until further studies have been completed.
Then they have to ensure that the data from the studies they base this ruling on are online for others to see. Why is this a problem?
Industry lobbyists challenge the ruling, stating that the science is neither well-established nor reproducible.
Do we know what one concept of science is supposed to be? I think it's "reproducibility." You don't think the industry being singled out for unsupported regulation will file a lawsuit no matter what? Really? Since the law doesn't require that the EPA prove reproducibility of the data it uses to create special rules, why would reproducibility become a new issue?
Further study determines the fears were justified, but it's too late -- hundreds or thousands of people are already suffering adverse effects.
In other words, anything that anyone fears should be banned not on the science proving a danger, but because science cannot prove a lack of danger. It might turn out to actually be dangerous so it is better to ban it even when science cannot show any danger -- just in case.
"Think of the Children."
Would all the people who are opposing this law because it would open the science to independent analysis please raise your hands if you also think that science should be the prime basis for climate-based regulations? I find it odd that someone might claim that science should trump political or social concerns in one area but science is not important in environmental regulation.
Read the article and you'll see why it's evil. It's supposed to sound reasonable but contain hidden clauses that basically shut down the EPA. FTA:
Democrats are further concerned about another provision, not included in earlier versions, that would give EPA only $1 million per year to implement the bill, which would entail, among other things, obtaining raw data from study authors. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculated that the bill would cost $250 million annually to implement early on, and that's only if EPA were to halve the number of studies it used to 25,000 annually, said Representative Donna Edwards (D-MD).
"It forces the agency into an untenable position"-either ignore the bill's requirements because of lack of funding or comply with them and stop using scientific studies almost entirely after the money runs out, Edwards said. "The majority is actually legislating failure," she said.
WHYEVER would the "most transparent administration in history" want to allow major government regulations to be influenced by secret data and findings that cannot be reviewed for either correctness OR political influence in them? Why, the very notion is absurd. And why would DEMOCRATS oppose such a thing? It's not like they have any major figures involved in keeping official government communications secret from other parts of the government, or that they have been swilling down foreign cash to fund presidential campaigns or anything!
That's a pretty generic accusation. I think you need to get more specific. Over the history of the EPA the regulations it has imposed have had a far more positive effect on the nations economy than negative.
If you think that is how science is done, you probably need to go back to watching lady gaga and let the adults talk.
Here is what the real study would be. People notice lung cancer incidents are on the rise and people with cancer admit to being smokers. Someone analyzes the data and draws the correlation between people with lung cancer and smoking. They find a connection in the data and make policy accordingly. Someone gets a hold of the data and does their own analysis and says Yep, they are right or no they are wrong.
But here is some interesting facts for you that make smoking and cancer not as cut and dry as you think it is. In today's pop culture, it seems it is a given that if you smoke you will get cancer. "Fewer than 10 percent of lifelong smokers will get lung cancer". "In the game of risk, you're more likely to have a condom break than to get cancer from smoking." but from an analysis perspective " Smoking accounts for 30 percent of all cancer deaths and 87 percent of lung cancer deaths; the risk of developing lung cancer is about 23 times higher in male smokers compared to non-smokers; smoking is associated with increased risk of at least 15 types of cancer".
So lets stop pretending that something like smoking and cancer is so obvious that the tobacco company's denials were baseless.
CRU is the climate research unit from University of East Anglia who refused to provide climate data used to push the global warming narrative when requested by people they considered hostile to their cause. Accusations of this were made several times and denied but someone hacked into the email servers and released a bunch of email showing them discussing withholding the information. Now it is said that the original raw data does not exist any more nor does the methods and processes used to correct irregularities of it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
http://jennifermarohasy.com/20...
Now, I know you are a global warming pusher and have your own beliefs but this is not about you in the slightest. All that I'm a believer bullshit you just posted is irrelevant to what was said. Let me repeat that in less convoluted terms in case it was too difficult for you. What kind of grand conspiracy would you be tilting at instead of windmills if the data and process were made available early on when the notion of anthropogenic global warming was being introduced instead of hiding it because of fears that people would pick it apart? I would be more than 80% of the so called deniers- the ones who actually believe there is long term warming but either do not believe humans are the chief architect of it or that there are agendas hidden within the claims so the so called solutions should not be trusted would not be questioning anything right now. But you go on stating how you was always a believer and the appearance of improprieties did nothing to shake that belief.
And this is different from now how? Whenever the EPA advances regulation changes, it spends a large amount of time in court already. You are either not aware of how this crap works or are pushing some narrative you know to be incorrect.
No silly. The burden of proof in a free and democratic society is on the government to show the necessity for regulating and restricting those freedoms. If government wants to say you cannot do X, they need to demonstrate a valid reason for it. Using hidden studies or hidden science to do so is ridiculous. To say otherwise is just silly.
FFS, you cannot just accuse something of being wrong or incorrect. You have to show why it is and that opens your claim up for review which will show your faults.
Why don't you use some critical thinking skills here. When has any legitimate science ever been trumped by the nuh-uh hypothesis? The science either speaks for itself or it cannot stand the light of examination. That goes both ways too.
The "polluters" are also providers of jobs. We need some balance after all our biggest problem is unemployment. The real unemployment rate (U-6) is 11.6%.
Science is not faulty, but taking freedoms based on unproven or incorrect science is. That is the problem. Government should not by extra-legislative processes, declare you are no longer allowed to do X for reasons we do not understand at the moment but might eventually.
Your SSN has nothing to do with your medical condition or status, does it? Then how could it be data that is required to analyze the results?
You are 100% right. But the law doesn't say "medical data". It says "data". The consent form I signed considered my SSN and DOB to be data. Your assertion that the law is wrong, but will be done correctly is beyond my faith in lawyers. It'll tie up every rule for 10 years, until the law makes it to the Supreme Court to define the term you assert is defined differently than the medical doctors conducting the experiments that would be covered by it.
Learn to love Alaska
1/ The EPA sets and enforces rules.
2/ Examining the science behind that is the task of other orgs.
3/ Requiring the EPA to examine the science would either require cutting back on other actions or expanding the size of the EPA.
Thus since it's adding more functions without more funding it looks like a deliberate effort to make the EPA less effective in what it currently does.
That's how I see it. Can you see anything wrong with what I've written?
Accusations of this were made several times and denied but someone hacked into the email servers and released a bunch of email showing them discussing withholding the information. Now it is said that the original raw data does not exist any more nor does the methods and processes used to correct irregularities of it.
Interesting, but the first link shows that CRU scientists would be lousy lawyers, and the second is unrelated to CRU completely. And now for a dose of facts about the CRU affair:
The British House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee investigated the matter and concluded: "Within our limited inquiry and the evidence we took, the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientific consensus as expressed by Professor Beddington, that 'global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity'."
The Independent Climate Change Email Review team investigated the matter and concluded: "On the specific allegations made against the behaviour of CRU scientists, we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt. In addition, we do not find that their behaviour has prejudiced the balance of advice given to policy makers. In particular, we did not find any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments."
Lord Oxburgh’s independent panel investigated the matter and found "absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever"
The US Environmental Protection Agency investigated the matter and stated that they "reviewed every e-mail and found this was simply a candid discussion of scientists working through issues that arise in compiling and presenting large complex data sets. Four other independent reviews came to similar conclusions."
And so on and so on. Should I continue? More or less, the worst thing anyone in possession of facts has to say about the CRU scientists is that they suck at communicating. Bummer, but not an uncommon one.
Now, I know you are a global warming pusher
No, I'm not a global warming pusher, CO2 is a global warming pusher. I have no interest in contributing to global warming.
and have your own beliefs but this is not about you in the slightest.
No, it isn't. It's about you and presumably some other people apparently being unable to grasp basic principles of reasoning. Even if if you found out evidence of gross academic misconduct having happened within CRU (which didn't happen), it still wouldn't prove anything about global warming (or the lack of it). If you find flaws in a study saying "P", it doesn't mean you've proven "not P". All you have at that moment is an empty set of proven claims. And if you have ten independent studies of global warming, all of them saying the Earth is warming, every study having independent data, research, and people involved, and one of the people or teams is found to have made anything invalidating that one study - anything from flawed methodology through measurement errors to even outright scientific fraud, it demonstrates nothing about those other studies. All it demonstrates is that from the one flawed study in question, no conclusion can be made about the subject in either direction. Arguing otherwise would be an argument from fallacy, which is a formal fallacy in its own right.
Ezekiel 23:20
lol.. are you daft? those facts are irrelevant as I already stated. No one is arguing or disputing them. You however appear to be dismissing the years of shrouded appearances of impropriety that fueled skepticism about global warming as if it never happened because nothing technically happened that was wrong. It completely misses the entire issue of mistrust it caused a lot of people to generate. You could at this point link to Professor Jones risking his life to save two nuns and an orphan from falling off a cliff to certain death and parade him around as a public hero and it would not change what happened or the skepticism that grew from it one bit at all.
Hmm.. using semantics to deny the obvious. Well, I guess this thread is about the appearance of deceit and proprietary.
You however appear to be dismissing the years of shrouded appearances of impropriety that fueled skepticism about global warming as if it never happened because nothing technically happened that was wrong. It completely misses the entire issue of mistrust it caused a lot of people to generate.
Except that as I have demonstrated, that is a logically wrong conclusion to make.
Hmm.. using semantics to deny the obvious. Well, I guess this thread is about the appearance of deceit and proprietary.
Without semantics, sentences are meaningless, even grammatically correct ones. You can't NOT use semantics in communication. I'm not sure what your point is there.
I Specifically said it created two classes of skeptics that would not be skeptical and mistrustful today had it been open and available.
Researchers don't often print or show or present everything. Especially if ongoing research is involved. The Rosetta probe photos, for example, also have a period in which they're available only to the PI's team so that someone else wouldn't steal their thunder before they publish. There's nothing inappropriate about that, especially if you have dozens of lines of independent research about the same going on in different places.
the fact that there are people right now who are considered skeptics who would not be if the information was not withheld or shrouded by secrecy in the past.
Nothing was "withheld" or "shrouded by secrecy" when I made my decision a quarter century ago. ANYONE could have done so at that point. So how is it relevant?
The rest of your drivel is off topic to my point. I do not care about it one bit at all.
You don't care about people doing flawed reasoning? How can we have any serious discussion on any topic, then?
Ezekiel 23:20
15 years after the fact, yes. Are we to ignore those years when the information wasn't available and those opinions and positions were formed? There is an entire work of art revolving around the mistrust that is now in place because of that. You would be a fool to dismiss it.
I can see you actually are daft. The point was obvious.
You know, this is like saying busses are yellow. No one was trying to create or shape public law with Rosetta probe photos. No one was or is trying to take freedoms away with them either. It's a little different when you say I found a cure for cancer and no one can do X because it causes cancer. The first, it would be perfectly fine with the information being hidden. With the later, it would create all sorts of skepticism and revolt over the idea when the information is withheld and hidden. You are correct, there is nothing inappropriate about withholding information obtained by the Rosetta probe photos. There is however, all sorts of problems about withholding information obtained by the Rosetta probe photos and using that information to impose penalties and restrict freedoms as a matter of law and government policy.
It's like you are holding an apple and an orange and trying to talk about cars and cannot see that all three are different.
Nobody cares about when you found religion. It's not important and others not finding it at the exact same time is not important either.
It appears we cannot because you cannot even stay on topic in the first place. You have not addressed any point I made, you just dance around it proclaiming when you got religion and that numerous official panels declared nothing was done wrong. Hell, the fact that there had to be an investigation and declaration by multiple sources proves my point but you want to change the narrative to how much you believe and how good of a disciple you are.
You obviously have more spare time than I do. I note you didn't RTFA. What TFA says directly contradicts you and agrees with me. Perhaps they are wrong. I don't have the time to read every proposed bill the day is comes out. Apparently you do, but don't have enough time to read TFA related to the thing you are posting about.
Learn to love Alaska
Are we to ignore those years when the information wasn't available and those opinions and positions were formed?
The information wasn't available 25 years ago for the simple reason that this was a different line of research that would happen in the future. I'm sure there will also be a lot of research going on 15 years from now but that doesn't mean we can't draw any conclusions now.
No one was trying to create or shape public law with Rosetta probe photos. No one was or is trying to take freedoms away with them either.
That is irrelevant since nobody forces you to shape public law with CRU's research either. You're perfectly free to completely ignore CRU even exists, and the relevant scientific landscape won't change.
Nobody cares about when you found religion. It's not important and others not finding it at the exact same time is not important either.
If you're calling accepted research performed by multiple independent parties over many decades as "religion", it's obvious 1) where you stand and 2) that any reasonable discussion with you is out of question. Is evolution "a religion"? Is general relativity "a religion"? What kind of science isn't "a religion" to you?
It appears we cannot because you cannot even stay on topic in the first place.
The topic you raised was people (those "skeptics" you talked of) unqualified to make judgments on that affair because they lack either the necessary knowledge, intellect, or both. (And if not, pray tell, what else was the topic?)
Hell, the fact that there had to be an investigation and declaration by multiple sources proves my point
That's like arguing that just because a person had to go to court to face charges proves the prosecutor's point. It's utter rubbish.
Ezekiel 23:20
And yet claims were being made from it, demands that policy and law be shaped because of it, and you would have us believe that 15 years ago, it was all infantile studies not worthy of that? And yes, I said 15 years, you seem to be fixated on 25 years (probably because of when you were converted).
It is completely relevant as it was being used to impose changes and this is exactly what the repeatability and availability requirements are for.
It doesn't matter where I stand but I'm calling your actions religious as you seem more bent out of shape about anything making it look bad than any fundie I have seen when you throw evolution in their face. You are completely skirting issues and talking past them trying to imagine how that makes things perfect now or something. It's the functional equivalent of "the bible says".
The topic I raised was that they largely wouldn't exist today if the information was available then and people were not legitimately running around saying they lost the original data or they will not share the data so it is impossible for them to validate their conclusions. Saying there is nothing wrong with what the CRU and other scientists did is the same as saying there is that is perfectly acceptable. I'm saying it caused an entire industry of skeptics to rise which would not be there if this law was in place and followed at the time.
No, it's arguing that just because a person had to go to court to face charges proves that people suspected him of committing the crimes. I never said their claims were valid, I said they were created by the mistrust caused by the lack of transparency.
And yet claims were being made from it, demands that policy and law be shaped because of it, and you would have us believe that 15 years ago, it was all infantile studies not worthy of that? And yes, I said 15 years, you seem to be fixated on 25 years (probably because of when you were converted).
As studies get expanded, results get more precise. Some policies can be drawn from older studies and are available from an early date, but other policy recommendations require further studies. What's so difficult to understand about that?
It is completely relevant as it was being used to impose changes and this is exactly what the repeatability and availability requirements are for.
IPCC uses a wide range of studies to arrive at policy recommendations, not one study from a single institution such as the CRU, and beyond that, I've already mentioned that the CRU results weren't invalidated by any investigation. So what is it that you're arguing for here? Either including the CRU results (if they're valid) or excluding them (if they aren't) won't change anything.
It doesn't matter where I stand but I'm calling your actions religious as you seem more bent out of shape about anything making it look bad than any fundie I have seen when you throw evolution in their face. You are completely skirting issues and talking past them trying to imagine how that makes things perfect now or something. It's the functional equivalent of "the bible says".
I "seem more bent out of shape about anything making it look bad"? I'm not sure I understand that, but I'm simply arguing that if claims that make something look bad are later found to be invalid, there's no point in perpetuating them. Had those claims been vindicated, that obviously would have been a reason for taking steps against the CRU. You still haven't said what I'm "skirting". We've already concluded that the claims about CRU were found to be unfounded, what else is there to discuss?
No, it's arguing that just because a person had to go to court to face charges proves that people suspected him of committing the crimes.
You can suspect anything about anyone. That's no reason to take action before the truth is found out. Regarding "suspicions", see below.
I never said their claims were valid, I said they were created by the mistrust caused by the lack of transparency.
Except they weren't. Climate change deniers don't need any reason for mistrust. Even with full transparency, they'd still throw accusations at climate scientists that they're conning people to get grants. They're doing that all the time. They were doing that even before the CRU "affair". So that wouldn't prevent the problem in the first place
Ezekiel 23:20
There is nothing difficult about that. However, that has nothing to do with the fact that they have been using the information and results to shape policy in government and take freedoms away for quite a while and more specifically, when the information was being sought after and refused.
Ok, it's obvious that you are more interested in pushing your beliefs than discussing what was said. You fail big time too because all it does is reinforce the skepticism people have when you completely ignore what they say in order to preach your narrative.
I've said what you are skirting in every post I have replied to you. I've said it 5 different ways and you keep ignoring it in order to run the CRU's defense.
So if someone is suspected of a crime, no one should arrest them until the truth is found out?
Lol.. Well, they certainly had enough reasons for it whether they needed it or not.
Yup, they were doing that before the CRU emails were made public- you know, back when democrat staffers cut the AC on capital hill and scheduled James Hansen to talk to congress about global warming on a day they specifically picked to be historically one of the hottest days of the year. You know, the day the hockey stick which has since been revised was introduced to America in large scale. Yep, they were making those claims when statisticians were trying to get the data and being told no because they will just pick it apart. Yep, they were making those claims when it was discovered by someone who was denied access to that data that there was mathematical problems with the claimed temperature records which was dubbed the y2k bug because it became obvious at the year 2000 mark. Yep, they have been making those claims when people started saying meteorologist should lose their credentials if they said something was not because of global warming.
Yeppers, as I said, an entire industry of skeptics has cropped up over the years because of the lack of transparency and appearances of improprieties.
Subjecting something to due process implies no right or wrong doing on either party. It rather admits that we do not know and that people have a right to their day in court.
What is more, you are entitled to face your accuser... and that includes examining all evidence brought against you.
If you are unwilling to do this then you have no business using the power of the government to get your will done. If you use the government, then people have a right to due process. And that means insisting that the evidence be made avalidable for audit and that the evidence be subjected to some scrutney.
In court, the accused has the presumption of innocence. The bruden of proof is on the accuser. In this case, that would be the EPA whenever they do something to anyone. They are just like the police officer that writes you a speeding ticket. If you take him to court, you are the accused and the police officer is the accuser. The burden of proof is on him to show that you broke the law.
Now he might just cite his personal testimony which might be enough in and of itself given that it is a relatively small crime and the burden of proof scales with the severity of the crime. But if I show up with pictures of the area and other such things... I might be able to convince the judge that I am right and the officer is wrong.
And that is just due process.
I get my day in court. That is my right. And the EPA isn't above the constitution. If they start setting things by some sort of scientific study... and they do something to me on that basis... then I get to challenge that study. Which means the EPA are going to have to present it in court or drop the charges.
This is a civil rights issue. I have a civil right to due process. End of story.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Actually the burden of proof is on the accuser. In this case that would be the EPA whenever they do something. The burden of proof is on THEM that they're right and within the law.
The accused has the presumption of innocence and is entitled to face their accuser, examine all evidence against them, and fight it in court.
If the EPA is unwilling to present their evidence then if challenged in court they must automatically lose since they are refusing to present the evidence.
Why do so many people not understand basic due process? Do you people get basic civics in high school or what? This is asinine.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It will give people leverage in court to demand basic due process. That's the point. I don't expect the EPA to be reasonable. I expect the law to be tightened up a bit so that anyone that challenges them when they step across the line can slap them around with the legal system.
Which is the only real defense against a corrupt executive... a zealous judiciary.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You're assuming the government only does good things. The NSA actions alone render that position laughable.
*laughs in your stupid face*
As to not knowing what fascism is... since you fucked up by the numbers on the first point I really doubt you're going to make any more sense there... But I'll read it anyway for the sake of argument.
So your argument is a strawman where you suggest that expecting basic civil rights and due process means I want a corporate oligarchy to rule with impunity over everyone. Never mind that what I actually asked for was that the government present evidence for why it does things and be open to challenge in court. That is basic due process which is a constitutional right and a basic civil right. Your attempted negation of basic civil rights is evidence of fascism.
You stupid stupid stupid stupid, man.
*shhhh*...
*puts index finger on your quivering lips*
So so stupid.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I do consider expert opinion. I just don't slave my opinion to it.
I am a human being. Not a cow. I think. I reason. I do not simply notice which way the other cattle are going and follow along.
Please... moo at me some more... I'm sure it will be more convincing the next time.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Nobody moo'd at you, nobody said you had to agree with anybody else.
You however have NOT considered expert opinion. You declared something bad science despite many expert scientists defending it. You didn't offer any supporting evidence for why your view should be more valid than their expert opinion, you didn't offer any data to debunk the grounds for their defence.
You just ignored them - and then you claim to "consider" their views. You haven't ACTUALLY considered ANYTHING unless you have look at the supporting arguments and evidence and considered counter arguments and evidence and had the expertise t(whether by yourself or acquired through another expert) to actually compare which set of evidence is more accurate or valid.
That's exactly the fallacy that drives the climate-change denial movement. Somebody makes a convincing sounding argument, presents what he thinks is evidence and people are fooled by it because they don't go the next step to see how that supposed evidence have held up to scrutiny - which would quickly show that it's all been thoroughly debunked by numerous independent studies.
Scepticism does not elevate one above expertise, and citing expertise is NOT an appeal to authority fallacy.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
As to expert opinion, I am considering it. I am just not slaved to it. I consider it and everything else and I weight each input as seems reasonable to me.
When you say I have to accept the majority position... which is what you're doing... you are mooing at me.
As to my reasons for deciding one thing or another. It varies form on thing to the next. if you want to talk about a specific thing then we can do that. I'll tell you what my opinion on the matter is, why I hold that opinion, and I'll offer the supporting evidence as best I can.
But if you're attempting brow beat me or shame me or use some sort of peer pressure to submit to your position without that discussion... no. I don't work that way.
As to climate science, you can't strawman me by saying I am in conformity with your opposition anymore than you can shame me into accepting your position.
I am neither a warmist nor a skeptic. The issue is complicated and the first thing you have to admit is that there are political interests on both sides. Al Gore didn't stump for the warmists because he's a deep believer in science. You have a lot of politicians on that side that back it because they see political advantage in it... PERIOD.
And once you've accepted that reality we can dispense with these holier than thou speeches and get to the science.
My position? There's clearly some climate change. However, the models backed by the warmists are not accurately modeling that change. So they're clearly in need of some adjustment.
Does that mean everything is fine? Nope. Means we don't know. And I am fully in favor of exploring the issue and trying to figure out what is going on.
Do not tell me the science is settled because it isn't. Do not tell me the discussion is over because that just means you want to play power politics instead of have a rational discussion on the issue. You're basically saying you think you can get what you want faster by putting on war paint and trying to cut my throat in the dark. And we'll just see about that.
But if you want to have a discussion... I welcome it. Very few warmists actually are able or willing to have such a discussion. All they're typically good for is prancing around presuming their own superiority whilst not backing it up with anything.
And I'm not claiming the skeptics are any better. Many of them are political reactionaries that are just reflexively resisting the political elements in the warmist camp.
But I am neither. I'm am a stable independent rational thinker. I've had my personality analyzed a few times by friends. I have a psychologist and a marketing buddy that did it once just for the fun of it. I am not a common personality type. You do not know me. And in all likelihood you will superimpose a misapprehension on me.
I do not hold my position out of ego or dogma. I don't do this because I think I'm so amazing or because I worship some holy book or code above all else. I do this because this is what I do. It is how my mind works and it is how my personality is structured.
I process information as relationships... linkages... associations. Simply saying something is true because X people said it is so is a weak justification in my system of thought. Its like a one legged table. Wobbly. I must have many linkages to justify a position. And I associate everything literally with everything else. Everything in my mind is a web of association.
I had a very hard time in school until I learned how to teach myself. Because the teachers would just say "hey this is true, memorize it"... and I can't. I'll just forget it almost immediately unless I can tie it to my mental web. So whenever I learn something I muse upon it. I see where it links my web. And no linkage no matter how tangential is irrelevant. Most concepts link at dozens of places and sometimes hundreds.
My way of thinking is not superior or inferior to yours. It is merely the way my mind works. And so, I say again... I neither discount entirely the support of given people
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Apparently, you fail to understand that the NSA and the EPA are different things. What does that say about your intelligence?
First, your statement is a strawman: I did NOT suggest that "expecting basic civil rights and due process means [you] want a corporate oligarchy!" I suggested that allowing corporations to dominate the EPA means you want a corporate oligarchy.
Second, these bills are absolutely not designed to preserve "due process." They just use Orwellian doublespeak to claim that while actually doing exactly the opposite. They are, in fact, designed to cause regulatory capture and therefore corporate oligarchic rule. That is their purpose.
Your claim that these bills uphold civil rights and due process, or that opposition to them is opposition to civil rights or due process, is a vicious lie!
Regulations can be challenged in court now; the only difference is that they currently aren't subject to prior restraint by corporations before the court cases are completed.
Now, go fuck yourself.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This is a civil rights issue. I have a civil right to due process. End of story.
Except that isn't the whole story. You're pontificating about due process and how just and wonderful it is.
But what you're blinding your eyes and covering your ears to, is the notion that really bothers people here, namely that it is about rigging the system under the pretense of due process.
Is it inconceivable to you that major industry would seek to hamstring the regulatory bodies that stand in their way? Is it beyond your capacity to realize that they have lied about science before? Do you not want to admit that they lobby to get legislation that protects their interests over the rest of us?
It seems so. You'd rather go on and on about ideal principles because you've naÃvely chosen to believe one side. Or maybe yo are aware, but aren't honest about it.
Which is it, naÃve or corrupt?
As to whether the EPA and NSA are different things... clearly I didn't because I distinguished them by name.
I previously said prior to that "you think the government can do no wrong"... and then I cited a government agency that everyone agrees did wrong and continues to do wrong.
Your position is that the EPA does no wrong? Obviously I can. Anything can.
Which is why we have due process. If a government agent wants to do something and a citizen protests... they can take that agent to court. Where upon that agent will have to defend their action. They'll have to show evidence etc.
Otherwise the actions of that agent are without due process which is unconstitutional.
As to the strawman you accused me of... Explain again how my statement doesn't conform completely with you position. Your correction appears to be a difference without significance.
You are quite clearly suggesting that the EPA should be able to operate without due process.
As to things being challengeable in court now, are they? Many government agencies have shown reluctance to provide evidence for their actions. And really, you have no business enacting any policy on scientific grounds unless that science has been tested and the entirety of the study is open to public audit. Absent that, I have no regard for it.
And saying this is all about "corporations" etc is complete tribalistic horseshit. You should be ashamed of yourself. Civil rights and civil rights indifferent to whomever they refer to. You're not going to tell me that people you don't like are not entitled to civil right are you?
Does that means civil rights don't apply to you if I don't like you? Corporations are property. And property is owned by people with rights. Just as I can't randomly bull dose your house and when asked why respond "SCIENCE". You can't go after some corporation you don't like without a legal justification for it. The EPA has increasingly broad powers to go after polluters and various hazards to public health. That is fine. However, they can't just do whatever the fuck they want and when asked respond "SCIENCE"... they have to actually present the fucking study and be able to defend the fucking thing. If they can't do that then they're at best acting irresponsibly.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
So you're saying that because the courts are inconvienent you want to act without due process?
No. If you have a problem in the courts, then you deal with it there.
Our system of government does not work... AT FUCKING ALL if the court system completely fails. And you're saying the courts can't do their job here yet you want to retain the ability of the executive to do whatever it wants WITHOUT due process.
No, bitch. That's not how this works. You either follow the fucking law or you have no legal authority. You're just some jackass with a gun.
Here is a core issue that many of you fascist asshats don't seem to grasp. The constitution is what gives the federal government its right to do things in the first place. You undermine that and you undermine the federal government's authority IN GENERAL.
At best, what you'll have after pissing all over every legal and moral tradition of the society will be superior force of arms. You'll have a lot of federal agents with guns and a military perhaps... and good luck keeping the republic together if that is all you've got.
We are a republic. Which from the greek means rule by law... or more literally Public Thing. But what it means is rule by law. That is our society. We are not a true democracy where the majority can do whatever the fuck they want from one moment to the next. We are a society first and foremost governed by LAW.
And if the law means shit to you then fine... You get anarchy. We can just break out the razor blades and start carving each other's eyes out.
Deal?
Work within the system rather then doing your best to subvert it like a pack of fucking ignorant barbarians.
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I am not. I am suggesting that the standard of evidence for EPA regulations should be "preponderance of evidence" (i.e., how issues are decided in civil cases) and not "proof" (similar to the standard for criminal cases) which would hamstring the EPA and cause harm by allowing industry to pollute with impunity because "proof" is impossible. The "preponderance of evidence" standard still counts as due process.
We're talking about the EPA. Has the EPA done that?
Okay, so what counts as "tested?" If "testing" requires waiting until the harm has already occurred and then saying "yep, there's the harm" then you can fuck right off because that's not reasonable. And that unreasonable standard is what the assholes pushing these bills want.
Corporations are not people. And if you disagree, you can fuck right off about that too.
And people give up some of those rights in return for the limited liability afforded by incorporation. You don't like it? Then don't fucking incorporate!
What, you thought incorporating was a "have your cake and eat it too" kind of situation, with no downside? That incorporating lets you reap all the benefits of your actions, while shedding all the responsibility for them? Well isn't that just a nice little pile of fascist horseshit.
Nobody's stopping anyone from forming (regular, i.e., not "limited") partnerships and exercising their civil rights all they want. Of course, if they don't want to do that because they're afraid of being held accountable for their sociopathic actions, then that's just too damn bad for them and I have no sympathy at all.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
As to evidence, no one is asking for what you're saying they're asking for.
1. What is being asked for is that a study be reproducible.
2. That the data a study is based on be available for audit.
That's it.
This furthermore has nothing to do with your bizzare belief that the government need not respect the civil rights of people simply because they are involved in a corporation.
A corporation is property. Like your house. I don't get to bulldoze your house because "science"... I have to explain what law I'm doing it under and then I need to justify that. And I don't get to bulldoze your house before you can even defend yourself. You can't just say that no government policy can be subjected to challenge until they've actually done it. Would it be reasonable for me to say you can't complain about me bulldozing your house until AFTER I've done it? So If you know I'm going to do it, if I've got the bulldozer right there, and I'm just waiting for the moment when you're looking paying attention... you apparently have no right complain about what I will absolutely do the instant you turn your back? Get real.
If the government changes policy on something then part of the point of congress is to watch that and try to control that garbage before they do something stupid.
The courts you might well note will generally not respond until after something has already happened. True. But the congress can respond before they actually do it by making that bulldozing of your house something they're just not allowed to do without some proper justification.
And that's all this bill is asking for, sport. Proper justification.
You want to turn this into the same old dried up stupid "but the republicans are evil and CORPORATIONS!" horseshit that has been little more than an admission that you're a tool for a generation. Go for it.
But I'm going to need more to justify this than "But I hate corporations and fuck the constitution". Its just not a very strong position.
As to corporations not being people, neither is your house. So can I burn it to the ground whenever I feel like it? Or do YOU have rights as an owner of that house?
See, the reason corporations are considered "people" is because their owners are the shareholders and the shareholders often don't have direct control over the corporation. So to handle that legal nightmare, the corporations themselves are treated as people under the law. They can't vote and they don't have a driver's license. But they do have property rights and they do have civil rights. They are entitled to due process. You can't just fuck them over without legal justification.
I know that is difficult for idiot fascists to process but yes... the law does apply to you too, shit for brains.
As to rights that people give up when they incorporate... at no point do they give up a right to due process.
List for me the rights under the law that you think people give up when they incorporate. Tell me if Due Process is any of them.
You guys are so fucking dumb you're really incapable of having this discussion. Just shut up and stop posting on anything that has anything to do with civics. You know nothing about the US legal system. Just comical.
*shhh*
I know you were about to say something stupid. Just keep your gaping mouth shut and fuck off. Its for the best.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
So you're saying that because the courts are inconvienent you want to act without due process?
Nope. I'm saying that the claims being made here that this is simply about "due process" or whatever other description is given to it, are not the entire truth.
You seem to have a problem grasping this concept, that the concern people have with this legislation is that it is only purporting to serve to estrablish some form of due process when the reality may be that the industry lobbyists have written legislation so as to advance their agenda of warping the process to create a barrier to prevent them from being regulated by government.
This seems to be something you're having a problem grasping, even though multiple people have addressed you on this subject, including myself.
Please try answering these questions:
Can laws be other than they are represented to be? Can adherence process be used to obstruct rightful conduct? Is it possible for a law to be written with an agenda that is not entirely aboveboard? Is it possible to construct a law so as to impair someone in government from acting rightly without violating that law?
This will let me know if I am correct in my assessment.
No, you're wrong.
1. The kind of studies Republicans want to be "reproducible" are ones which are based on analysis of historical record, and "reproducing" historical record is fundamentally impossible. Reproducing the analysis using the same historical data is possible and is already done, but that's not good enough for them.
Since when have the data the studies are based on not been available for audit? As far as I can tell, you're making that accusation up out of whole cloth.
That's a poor analogy. The real analogy is that you're wanting to build a new house (in a wetland, for the sake of argument), and trying to claim that the government should have no ability to protect the wetland by stopping you until after you've already destroyed it.
BULLSHIT! The EPA already requires "proper justification" in order to act! What these bills do is require impossible justification in a naked attempt to destroy the EPA entirely.
FTFY. And I completely agree, so please feel free to fuck off.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Let me rephrase that a little: If anyone is pushing a bill, but no one is complaining of an actual problem that that bill will solve, then it's always for some nefarious purpose.
As in this case: What problem with the EPA are we trying to solve here? I think the American public is rather convinced it's doing just fine.
None of which matters because the law is only asking for two things:
1. That the study be reproducible.
2. That the data in the study be avalidable for audit.
The reasons the evil nazi goblin republicans are doing this is at best ad hominem.
If you want to talk about this in a RATIONAL way... then explain why insisting that a study you wish to base legislation and policy on be reproducible and that the data be available for audit is a bad thing?
Saying "but evil cannibal republicans want it!" is not a valid reason to oppose something. That's just primitive tribalism.
Someone from outside of your tribe does something so you hate it... great. How far we humans have come.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Answering your question:
""Can laws be other than they are represented to be?""
Your question is itself misleading. Are you saying the stipulations of the law are not accurate?
What I think you meant to ask was "can a law's proposed intentions be different from its actual intentions?"
Yes. However, a law cannot be otherwise than it is. If I make a law that outlaws people from having red hair and my intention is to outlaw a given person that has red hair... while my intention is to outlaw that one person the law itself is actually outlawing everyone with red hair.
The terms of the law are the terms of the law. You say the intentions are otherwise than what the backers say. Fine. But that doesn't change what the law actually is or isn't.
If the terms of the law as written are reasonable then the intentions of the writers no matter how unreasonable are not relevant.
You're trying to logically defend an ad hominem argument. You should know better.
As to process itself being used as a weapon against people... Oh yes. That is of course quite possible. And there are a lot of laws passed specifically on those grounds. Many of the gun control laws recently were written largely with that intent. To make gun ownership so expensive or such a hassle legally that it just became impractical to own one.
So yes. That is an issue. However, I don't see that being required to back up your bullshit if you're going to pass legislation or policy is a significant burden. If you're going to impose federal power on people and say "do this or we'll send men with guns after you"... then yeah... you need to back your bullshit up. Or no. You don't get to do that. If you find due process to be an unreasonable burden then you're in the wrong country. Move to Saudi Arabia or something. They don't spend a lot of time worrying about due process there. Someone powerful says something and before you know it someone's head has been cut off. Very efficient.
As to agenda's you're just asking the first question again. I'll refer you to my response there.
This last question is basically a repeat of the second question. I'll refer you to my response to that.
As to your assessments... we are all entitled to our opinions and the ability to judge each other as we wish. You are free to judge me to be a fish or a flying squirrel or whatever you're about to say. And I likewise have the same freedom.
Judge and prepare to be judged.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
As to what republicans want to do, that is just more ad hominem bullshit.
The point is the law... not your irrational hatred of your political rivals.
On topic, what is wrong with a study being reproducible?
As to data not being made available, there were many situations where raw data was denied or was actually said to have been destroyed. So I don't know what you think you're talking about. That is absolutely an issue.
As to the analogy, frankly I don't care what your opinion of any analogy is... because the point is that due process is required.
And that means if the government wants to do something on the basis that "science" says it is a good idea... it is not unreasonable for government to be required to present the study and have it audited. Absent that, you're trying to treat "science" like a blank check. Where you can just do whatever the fuck you want and then whenever you're called on it... you just say "SCIENCE" and if someone asks you to explain what the fuck that means you say "I don't have to!!!" WEEE.
That's fucking retarded. If you use science to justify legal action then your science becomes evidence in a legal court case. And that means it gets audited.
Deal with it.
Either don't use it or use it and expect it to be audited.
As to the justifications being impossible... only impossible if you don't have real science. If your studies are independently reproducible and the data is accessible then your study will comply with the law.
You're only going to have a problem if your study can't be reproduced and if you keep your data secret so it can't be audited. In which case, your justification is bullshit.
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It requires a regulating body to base their decisions on public data. That means data must be opened to the public AND they aren't allowed to pass regulations that go against sound science.
I'm sorry, are you actually defending preexisting regulations based on data they pulled out of their asses (read: to quell political rivals, support contributors by limiting competition or otherwise just saw an opening to sift some money from people)?
And if the data is sound, this law would open the EPA to decades of delays for every new rule as someone challenges every piece of data.
That's quite the strawman you pulled out of your ass there. Did it hurt or are you just used to it by now?
Give me specific examples of your accusations. Otherwise you're just pulling it out of your ass.
Citation needed.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Yes, using "birthdate" instead of "age" obviously makes it easier, but that kind of misses the point of why "anonymization" doesn't work.
I think a good example is the "anonymized" data released by Netflix for its contest many years ago. They replaced account holder's names with just a simple number, so all anyone got was a list of account numbers and what movies that account watched and how they rated the movie. Totally anonymous, right?
Then someone got the clever idea to look for combinations of watched movies which were also watched by users of Rotten Tomatoes and rated with similar scores. From there they read those reviews which weren't as anonymous perhaps because the reviewer knew the review would be displayed publicly, and so they were able to identify quite a few of these people, and now they knew everything they'd watched on Netflix. If Netflix had porn, they'd now know what kinds of porn these people were into, even though they never reviewed porn on Rotten Tomatoes because they don't want people to know their porn habits.
So say you know someone's age. With 350 million people in the U.S., if we assume there are 80 ages (for simplicity, no one wants to look up age distributions for a simple example) then there are about 4.4 million people who are that age. Then you discover their ZIP code. Perhaps not even by number, but just by "they were close enough to this environmental disaster to be affected, and it was a rather local event." There are about 44,000 ZIP codes in use in the US, so now you know they're one of 100 people. ...and you know their sex because it's considered totally anonymous and always included, so really they're one of 50 people. Do you know anything else about them? ...because at this point you hardly have to know anything more at all to know exactly who they are. Almost anything in their medical history that's non-private enough to have been posted on Facebook will do, e.g. maybe they had breast cancer ten years earlier and that was included in the "anonymized" data due to potential relevance to the cancer they got from this toxic chemical that was dumped in the local water source. Well, there you go, now you know exactly who this anonymous person is.
Now perhaps a lot of times you'll be stuck there at 1 of 50 people, but is it really any better if only 1 out of 100 people can be identified? Would you participate in a study if it involved a 1 in 100 chance that your medical history will be made public and you'll be harassed by random corporations?
The only anonymous data is data which doesn't exist.
It makes me wonder if they're bringing out these stupid bills because they want to appease voters but know there's no chance of them actually passing because of white house veto.
It's a combination of pure idiocy, ideology, and corruption.
Idiocy, because that's quite simply what it is.
Ideology, because they place their political agenda over everything else.
Corruption, because their political agenda is whatever gets them the biggest bribes.
None of which matters because the law is only asking for two things:
Understanding of what other people are saying does matter, then you can have a discussion with them. That you think it doesn't matter is rather troubling.
There's a reason I'm interesting in establishing a basic understanding of your thoughts.
You do understand that, right?
But let's consider your responses to my questions.
Your question is itself misleading.
How is it misleading? Where do you think I'm leading you?
Are you saying the stipulations of the law are not accurate?
That would be one way to interpret "laws being other than they are represented to be" if you wish.
What I think you meant to ask was "can a law's proposed intentions be different from its actual intentions?"
Nope. That's a different question. Similar, but not the same. I asked my question in a different frame.
I can put it another way, if you are having a problem understand it. Like "if a law is represented as reasonable, can it actually be unreasonable?"
Of course, you should know that "reasonable" is just a convenient term, not an exclusive, there was a reason I kept my question generic.
You're trying to logically defend an ad hominem argument. You should know better.
You're trying to ascertain my intent from your own biases, maybe you should know better? I've stated my actions, and they're quite different from what you contend them to be.
As to process itself being used as a weapon against people...
That wasn't what I asked. I'll quote again.
"Can adherence process be used to obstruct rightful conduct?"
Sorry for leaving out the "to" between "adherence" and "process" though, my bad.
I didn't say weapon, or people. Or even limit it to laws. Just take it as "adherence to process" as it is.
As to agenda's you're just asking the first question again. I'll refer you to my response there.
No, as I said they are actually different questions. I deliberately asked both. So I'll give you a chance to respond to it separately.
This last question is basically a repeat of the second question. I'll refer you to my response to that.
Nope, it's actually a nuanced version of that question, to take it from a generic situation and apply it to a specific one. They are related, and that was intentional on my part. I am trying to establish an understanding of your position.
But given that you mistook how I was asking the question in the first place, I'll ask you to review your answers again.
As to your assessments... we are all entitled to our opinions and the ability to judge each other as we wish. You are free to judge me to be a fish or a flying squirrel or whatever you're about to say. And I likewise have the same freedom.
Yes, we are in the same existential position, however that doesn't mean that there aren't consequences to our actions, including judging others. Whether or not that fits under your aegis of freedom, I don't know.
Welcome to Slashdot, where a vote by a state legislature gets moderated up higher than a congressional report detailing all the chemicals used in fracking.
Yep, the date on the one I cited being 4 years more recent has nothing at all to do with it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Specific example: they don't have to regulate based on actual verifiable scientific data.
Do you even know what a strawman is?
Learn to love Alaska
At first, that's what I thought. But sadly, the current way corporations attack legislation they don't like is to pay "scientists" to offer an alternative and contradictory conclusion and then claim there is no consensus. In the lack of consensus they are usually allowed to do whatever the hell they like. This bill is designed entirely to fit their playbook.
Seriously? Republicans did it, therefore it's evil? That's some incredibly partisan bullshit right there.
You didn't rebut anything he said. Posting the methodology and the results are key to the peer review process; if I don't know how some data were obtained, how can I review it? Maybe they're using an older method, or accidentally chose the wrong statistical test for analysis. If they don't tell me what they did, it makes it a lot harder to be confident in the results.
I don't know, but I suspect that long term studies use birth date as the participants age changes during the study.
--
JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
I think not. Your proposition presupposes that these Republicans know this sort of thing is harmful. I do not get that message from what I read and hear from them.
I think they want these kind of bills to pass, while also realizing that if it doesn't, they will garner votes for trying.
RFT!!!
Dave Kelsen
--
"Now the trumpet summons us again - not as a call to arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are; but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, 'rejoicing in hope patient in tribulation', a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself." -- John F. Kennedy, 1960 inaugural speech
>Yep, the date on the one I cited being 4 years more recent has nothing at all to do with it.
Still no acknowledgment that the companies have, in fact, disclosed what is in their fluids.
Do you even know what a strawman is?
Apparently better than you do.
You obviously have more spare time than I do.
Perhaps. I have enough time to actually read a TWO PAGE law to see what it says and don't have to take the word of someone who may have an agenda. You've spent enough time spreading misinformation about the content of the law that you could have read it three or four times by now, and when you are challenged to cite a part of the law that supports your incorrect claims you might have actually read it just to try.
I note you didn't RTFA. What TFA says directly contradicts you and agrees with me.
And just how did you "note" that I did not? Since I did, and then actually followed the links to the laws, it seems you are wrong yet again. As for TFA agreeing with you, well, the actual law doesn't, and I think the courts will pay a bit more attention to the law and not some article about it.
I don't have the time to read every proposed bill the day is comes out.
1. It was a full two pages long. What an onerous task.
2. You were making claims about what the law says without bothering to read it. That makes you look stupid.
3. You weren't telling us what every proposed bill says, you were talking about one. "Every" isn't an issue; "one" is.
4. I quoted for you the relevant sections, so you've just admitted that you don't even bother to read what you reply to.
Apparently you do,
When I enter a discussion about what a law ways, and the law is a scant two pages long and is self-contained, yes, I make time to read it so I know for myself what it says. You would rather parrot a longer, incorrect, and apparently politically motivated and biased report on the bill instead of deal with the truth.
but don't have enough time to read TFA related to the thing you are posting about.
Well, you see, there's a difference between us. Just as the bill you so vehemently oppose calls for the EPA to use "the best available science" (another direct quote), I use the best available source. In this case, the bill itself (all forty two lines). You choose second hand information, which seems to have led you to make quite a few erroneous statements.
Let's summarize, shall we? The law requires:
(1) The EPA use the best available science. Is this an issue? Should this not be the standard already?
(2) The source of the data and science be clearly identified. It does not say that every participant in every study must be identified. Is identifying the source of data used to make regulatory decisions a problem? Should this also not already be the standard?
(3) That the data be online in a form sufficient to allow independent analysis and substantial reproduction of the results. It does not require EPA to do this analysis (thus the word "independent"), it does not require anyone to do the analysis. It does not require EPA to put this data online (and (2)(A) says that explicitly). And (2)(B) explicitly exempts from this requirement any data that is restricted by other statutory requirements. I.e., no SSN, DOB, or other PII for medical studies. Why is it a problem that the data the EPA uses to base its regulations on has to be online?
So, what's the problem? Your repeated "the EPA has to prove reproducibility" is a lie. Your concern that your SSN is going to be put online is not changed by this law since this law doesn't require it, nor does it require your DOB. This law just doesn't have the downsides you keep claiming it does, and I've quoted it enough by now that you could have figured that out.
You are 100% right. But the law doesn't say "medical data". It says "data".
It doesn't say just "data". It says data "sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of the results." It further says that the online data requirement does not supersede any nondiscretionary statutory requirement. You agree that your SSN and DOB are not relevant but think that somehow they are required for independent analysis of the results, and you trotted out the HIPAA acronym but don't seem to believe that HIPAA would be a nondiscretionary statutory limitation.
Your assertion that the law is wrong,
Liar. I did not assert the law is wrong. I assert that YOUR interpretation of a law you did not read is wrong.
but will be done correctly is beyond my faith in lawyers.
If your DOB and SSN are put online by the people who ran your study then your problem is with them. It will not be EPA's fault because the EPA didn't require it, simply because this law doesn't require it AND it specifically excludes such data.
It'll tie up every rule for 10 years,
Only those rules that aren't based on the best available science, using studies that are not clearly identified and are not available online in sufficient form to allow independent analysis of the results. Those are the only rules that this law would create legal difficulties for.
until the law makes it to the Supreme Court to define the term you assert is defined differently than the medical doctors conducting the experiments that would be covered by it.
You're talking about the word "data", which is IRRELEVANT. The controlling clause is "sufficient to allow independent analysis." If the people who ran your study think your SSN is required to analyze the data they collected, they're morons and they shouldn't be conducting studies to start with. Your problem will be with THEM, not the EPA, because it will be THEM and not the EPA that puts your data online when they are legally prohibited from doing so. If they do that, you sue THEM, not the EPA. And it won't have anything to do with this law, so claiming that this law is at fault is just another lie.
There's so much hypocrisy and double talk in this that I refuse to deal with it all. Its like a Gordian knot of stupid.
Here are our options... you can either start over and keep the argument simple so you're not tempted to horrible cloud the issue with more bullshit.
Or we can finish right here.
Your choice. I read through about half of your post before I just started laughing at nonsense.
Seriously... I'm happy to discuss this with you but I'm not interested in playing a lot of silly rhetorical games with you. Either discuss this straight up or don't waste my time.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I provided an example about an oyster farm in california. So... suck it.
here it is again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You want to go back to my original reply to you then?
What theyre saying is due process is being used to conceal the true intention and effect of the law.
They can't come right out and say this is the Let Polluters Rule the Country bill.
They can, however, call it something else while advancing their real agenda.
Seems simple enough to me, namely that your assertions regarding what other people are saying about "due process" are missing the point of what other people are actually saying regarding this bill, namely that they don't trust Congress.
Do you understand what people were really saying now? You don't have to agree, just comprehend their position.
there's no substanciation for that position and it is effectively little more than an ad hominem attack where you assume X is bad because Y supports it.
That is illogical. Whomever supports a bill is not relevant.
Talk about X and why it is bad. I don't give a flying fuck who Y is or what you think of Y.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You can assert that there is no substantiation for the position, that's why I said you don't have to agree, just comprehend it. I'm not at the point of arguing their position, just getting you on the same page.
Though I left out the specific "who" you may note, as in this instance, it is a matter of not trusting Congress, though really, I could say that about any legislature, so perhaps I might have chosen a more neutral term than even Congress. It would not even be out of place to say the same about any individual person acting, what they represent it to be, does not have to be what it is.
I didn't think to abstract it that far though, should I have done so?
Would that have helped you to recognize the distinction I was making to you about the difference between what you were saying about due process, and what people were actually saying, which was based on their finding the "due process" justification to be a disguise for a real agenda?
If so, I can phrase it as such, if you're still having a problem getting to the same page on the subject.
I'm still waiting for you to make a non-fallacious argument.
Let me just explain the way I read pretty much anything that isn't fiction.
I look at every thing as a collection of argument.
It turn it all into symbolic logic effectively. I do this unconsciously, effortlessly, and instantly.
When I see a statement that says 1+1=hamburger I ignore it because it isn't rational.
I will note your opinions. But I classify opinions AS opinions. Opinions are not arguments.
And just for clarification, an argument is not someone shouting at someone in this context. It is a logical statement with supporting reasoning or evidence to support a given conclusion or course of action.
Absent the logic or evidence... I don't see an argument.
I do see a lot of opinions.
I see people saying "X was proposed by Y and I don't like Y so I don't trust that X is going to be good."
I see that. But that is an opinion. That isn't an argument. You can logically defend a position that X is bad because Y proposed it. That is logically fallacious. It is ad hominem.
Now you can play all the rhetorical games and spin all the sophistry you like... but given that I am going to turn everything you say into logical equations... and follow each out to its logical conclusion... such rhetorical games will not work on me.
I don't say this because I'm superior or because I'm so amazing. I say it because the way I process information is inherently immune to that sort of manipulation.
I am what the marketing people call a "stable independent thinker"... I am unmoved by peer opinion. I am unmoved by bling. I an unmoved by allusions to status. I am unmoved by anything but the data.
To trick someone like me... you have to lie to me. Half truths don't work on me because they get classified as such as they are assimilated.
All of this likely sounds like bragging to you. I regret that. I don't know how else to explain myself without it sounding like I'm thumping my chest and telling you how amazing I am.
I have many weaknesses. But really, I am just different. And in being different I am immune from a great many of the common tricks people like to try in arguments.
I would ask that you waste neither of our time going forward by not attempting them anymore. They mean as much to me as a chimp beating its chest is impressive to either of us. To his peers, the chest beating is impressive. It is a statement of power and dominance. But to a human being, the gesture has no significance even if we understand what the chimp would like us to believe.
If I have offended you anywhere in this... that is unfortunate. I am honestly trying to communicate with you. But I am not quite neurotypical. The way my brain works is not the way your brain works.
Our only hope of common understanding is logic. Logic is universal.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I'm still waiting for you to make a non-fallacious argument.
And I'm still waiting for you to demonstrate that you understand what I'm saying. Well, actually, I'm not waiting , I'm still endeavoring to get my point across, while you keep responding with responses that don't seem to address my words at all, but, well, I'll refrain from characterizing your post. I simply don't find you to be actually responding to me. It's been rather futile.
Sound familiar yet? Because that's why I got into this discussion. You were saying things about due process being good, when what other people were saying is that this does not represent due process.
It's futile to hold a discussion where two parties aren't on the same page.
I see people saying "X was proposed by Y and I don't like Y so I don't trust that X is going to be good."
And since you've gone to this level of abstraction, I will use expressions similar to yours, I see your response to which I originally replied as saying "X is good, because it does Y which is good because of Z, so if you oppose X, then you must hate Z" while what people are saying is that "X is bad, as it does not do Y, but does Y', which gets us something that is not Z" so you're not responding to them on the same page. Nor to me, for that matter. And do note, I am not saying why X is bad, but what X is perceived to be doing. That is deliberate, as I noted, I am operating at a level of abstraction here, as I am endeavoring to get us on the same page, not to advance an argument, since that would be futile if we're not on the same page.
Are you following this? Do you see how the "equations" we each are using are different? Or would you need me to explain why we need to use the same "equations" here? Or at least similar terms.
Um... If you can't prove it, then you don't really -know- it.
I can't prove that the big corporations are pushing the idea of human-caused global warming because they think they could sell more fossile fuel in an ice age. But, how would you like laws and regulations to be made on that basis, anyway???
look at it this way... if the repubs are pushing a bill, then it must be for a nefarious purpose even if it seems logical on its face. once you realize this and start looking at people's motivations, you'll understand. follow the money!
And the same for the Dems, of course...
... Even if published research checks all the boxes they're demanding, they can grind it to a halt by forcing everyone involved to verify the case. ...
All of that happens now...
And if there is only one report on a subject, then it is too early to make laws.
Keeping in mind, that the US government is designed to -prevent- laws being made too fast or too often.
As to the EPA not acting using valid science or having its information open for court audit in the event that there is a discovery phase for their study in a court case... that is due process.
The EPA is already directed to use science and all the stipulation for repeatable science is... is a requirement that the science be science.
And as to having the data... if I can't get access to it or it is difficult to get it in a court case then your lack of evidence frustrates the due process of a court case.
What you need to understand is that from my perspective, these attributes are required for due process in this situation.
If I sue a corporation, then I need to be able to subpoena information from that corporation to help prove my case. I don't want to file a bunch of FoIA requests to get something that should just be there.
You said something contradictory. You said "as it does not do Y, but does Y'" Y cannot both equal 1 and not equal 1 at the same time.
This is the sort of logical confusion I've been seeing in these posts the entire time. I see a lot of ad hominem, a lot of self contradiction, and a lot of logical confusion.
From my perspective this just looks like an error in reasoning. A mistake of thought... not solving the equation properly. And as a result... I don't see these things as opinions so much as "wrong". That might appear arrogant to you but I don't hold that position because I think I'm better than you. I hold it because if someone says 1+1=5 they're just wrong. That's not an opinion. Its logic and math.
So.
Please define your variables and proofread them a bit. I'm sure you made some typo or something when you said Y was something and not something at the same time. I don't really know what you're talking about unless you define your variables.
I'll show you what I mean:
What I see is people saying this law X is bad because Republicans Y want to do it. I am seeing no Z variable in anything people are talking about. The logic is extremely simplistic from what I've seen and textbook fallacious.
As to seeing your equations... stating X, Y, and Z doesn't do anything if you don't define them. I inherently define them if you just present the argument. But if you don't present your argument and just drop letters then all I see are letters.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
What you need to understand is that from my perspective, these attributes are required for due process in this situation.
The attributes as you've represented them. That doesn't mean that you are accurately describing the law and its attributes and characteristics.
You said something contradictory. You said "as it does not do Y, but does Y'" Y cannot both equal 1 and not equal 1 at the same time.
Pardon me, but what you are saying does not reflect what I actually said. Did you miss the ' ? I used that to differentiate Y' from Y? Or did you not understand the purpose behind it?
This is the sort of logical confusion I've been seeing in these posts the entire time. I see a lot of ad hominem, a lot of self contradiction, and a lot of logical confusion.
Nope. That's wrong, as I made a deliberate choice of expression and did differentiate among them. It's just that you didn't recognize it. So instead of "logical confusion" it's a communications issue. Now I can understand how you might have overlooked it, or not understood my meaning even if you did see the ' but now I've pointed it out, so I hope you understand why what you just said has a flawed perspective, and looks to be an error in observation or a mistake in communication, rather than how you've represented it.
Which goes back to my original point, if you're not accurately observing what someone is saying, you're effectively not replying to them.
I don't really know what you're talking about unless you define your variables.
I'm refraining from doing that until you have read what I said properly.
To quote myself again:
"And do note, I am not saying why X is bad, but what X is perceived to be doing. That is deliberate, as I noted, I am operating at a level of abstraction here, as I am endeavoring to get us on the same page, not to advance an argument, since that would be futile if we're not on the same page."
This still applies, and yes, it's to the other variables as well. I'm getting us on the same page. So do you now understand that Y and Y' are not the same?
Is that clearer to you? Or should I use some other way to represent it, like A?
If so, I can, but I hope you understand now, so I can work it in.
Or is this example enough? It's really quite illustrative on its own, I think.
In what way is my characterization of the law inaccurate?
You can make a clear statement with defined variables or continue to fail to make a coherent argument.
The choice has always been yours.
Whether Y = Y' or not you did not define either Y or Y' so it isn't useful. I can't evaluate anything you're saying.
You're not making falsifiable arguments. And absent that you're not making logical arguments.
A logical argument must be falsifiable or it is fallacious.
I don't understand why you think playing these rhetorical games is constructive?
Please... present your position... plainly and without pretense.
Explicitly define your variables if you use them. If not, then at the very least make a rational falsifiable argument for your position.
Absent that, common ground is literally impossible. I cannot reason with you if you refuse to reason.
Rhetoric is not reasoning. You're hitting me with a lot of crap that basically looks like this to me:
((Y*X)/X)*M +R = ((Y/M+R)*X)/X
And if you solve that... you get Y=Y
You've got all this shit attached that doesn't actually do or meaning anything to the central argument. Its just there. And if you solve for anything... it just falls away into irrelevance.
Now please... don't again use my final statement as an excuse to not answer my core challenge to you at this point. I will restate it three times now so it is rhetorically impossible for you to ignore it.
1.Please... present your position... plainly and without pretense.
Explicitly define your variables if you use them. If not, then at the very least make a rational falsifiable argument for your position.
2.Please... present your position... plainly and without pretense.
Explicitly define your variables if you use them. If not, then at the very least make a rational falsifiable argument for your position.
3.Please... present your position... plainly and without pretense.
Explicitly define your variables if you use them. If not, then at the very least make a rational falsifiable argument for your position.
I'm trying to find some common ground with you. But absent anything that appears rational... there is nothing I can do here.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I'm trying to find some common ground with you.
Well, it seems you're failing. Consistently.
That's been my point from the start. You're not on common ground with me. And you weren't on common ground with the people to whom you were replying when I replied to you.
It's actually self-illustrating with the current discussion regarding the "logical equation" I used, as the problem was a failure to see the distinction made by the use of ' so that Y' was not Y. At all. Communication problem, as I deliberately made a distinction between two different things, and it was not noted by you.
But assuming now you see the problem, I can proceed. Common ground established.
You were taking it on faith that this "law"(X) does "due process"(Y), and you were arguing "due process(Y) was good"(Z) against other people who were arguing that what this bill does is actually "not due process" (Y'). Perhaps I should call their argument Z' as I see that distinction does need to be made. So we have "X does Y, Y is good so Z, thus you hate Z" versus "X does not do Y, but does Y' and Y' is not good, so Z', which does not equal Z' which is why you endeavoring to prove Z is not useful, when they don't agree with Y being due process, but instead say it is Y' which is "not due process" which means result is not good(Z' as already noted).
The only point you have in common is the X. Not Y and Y' so Z and Z' aren't the same.
Shouldn't be too hard for you to process.
I should hope you don't need me to establish what X is (it is in the article heading after all), but do you want me to show you where you did Z? Or can you read your own posts without my input?
Or do you want me to show you where people said what this law does is Y' and you didn't see it? You did already miss their point, so I can understand how you may need that highlighted further, but my problem has been with you doing Z.
That's been to get us on common ground, so we're talking about the same thing.
But if you're not going to dispute my point about Z, then we're now on common ground, and I can begin with the Y and Y' now.
Or should I express the logic again? "X does Y, Y is Z" is not the same as
"X does Y', Y' is Z' ". X being the law, Y being what you are saying the law does, Z being what you say Y does, while Y' being what others are saying the law does, and Y' does Z' meaning Z' can be quite different from Z.
Tell me if you can parse it yet.