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Montana Legislator Introduces Bills To Give His State His Own Science (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The legislator in question is Republican Joe Read, who represents an area north of Missoula, home of many fine scientists at the University of Montana. Read has eight bills under consideration in the current session of the legislature, and two of those focus on climate change. One of them focuses on his state's role in any greenhouse gas regulatory program that would be instituted under a future president. Read is apparently unaware of past legal precedent indicating that the federal government has the legal ability to regulate pollutants. Instead, the preamble of the bill seemingly argues that Montana's emissions are all due to commerce that takes place within the state, and thus "any federal greenhouse gas regulatory program in the form of law or rule violates the 10th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States."
As a result, the bill would prohibit state agencies, officials, and employees from doing anything to cooperate with federal efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. If passed, the Montana government "may not implement or enforce in any way any federal regulation, rule, or policy implementing a federal greenhouse gas regulatory program." But if you thought Read's grasp of constitutional law was shaky, you should check out his reason for objecting to doing anything about climate change. That's laid out in his second bill, which targets both science education and in-state programs designed to reduce carbon emissions. And it doesn't mince words, suggesting that pretty much all the scientists have it wrong: "the [US] National Climate Assessment makes the same errors as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the National Academy of Sciences is also fundamentally wrong about climate change."
As a result, the bill would prohibit state agencies, officials, and employees from doing anything to cooperate with federal efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. If passed, the Montana government "may not implement or enforce in any way any federal regulation, rule, or policy implementing a federal greenhouse gas regulatory program." But if you thought Read's grasp of constitutional law was shaky, you should check out his reason for objecting to doing anything about climate change. That's laid out in his second bill, which targets both science education and in-state programs designed to reduce carbon emissions. And it doesn't mince words, suggesting that pretty much all the scientists have it wrong: "the [US] National Climate Assessment makes the same errors as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the National Academy of Sciences is also fundamentally wrong about climate change."
And Montana is that extra special breed of republican corruption. Rememeber whitefish energy and Ryan Zinke?
The first person to know everything. Impressive.
The guy is a fucking idiot.
This effort to write into law and enforce bad science through education reminds me of the battles over evolution. Science education should be as agnostic as possible to any viewpoint and should be teaching the lastest widely-held scientific understanding. We don't teach older models of the atom once Bohr's came along, and no other model of DNA beyond the double helix is taught. If our understanding of climate and CO2 changes in the future, we will teach that, but for now, an overwhelming majority (>90%) of the scientific community holds that climate change is real and is human-activity driven.
Consensus is hugely important in science. The idea that "The instant you start rolling out "pretty much all" or "97% of scientists" say, you're INSTANTLY anti-science." would have trouble being less correct. You don't have to personally revalidate the sum of human knowledge to move further afield.
The instant you start rolling out "pretty much all" or "97% of scientists" say, you're INSTANTLY anti-science.
Please explain how lawmakers should use scientific findings, if not going by consensus ?
How do you people do this without brain damage from all the cognitive dissonance?
You are accusing a diverse group of people from having different opinions ? Or are you talking about a person in particular ?
Science is not just about objective facts. It's about theories that explain these facts. Different scientists can, and have, propose different theories for the same facts.
Weed grown in California and consumed in California is constitutionally outside the jurisdiction of the DEA because no matter what Congress says, the butterfly effect does not expand the ICC into a general warrant to regulate anything that might remotely impact interstate commerce.
In Wickard v. Filburn and Gonzales v. Raich, the US Supreme Court reached the opposite conclusion. Even plants grown for personal use theoretically compete in the market with plants sold interstate.
So, is a photon a wave or a particle?
What science does is attempt to provide a model that can be used to understand how reality operates, but the model is not the thing it models.
Its been very successful at creating those models, and they are very useful, but no one who isnt trying to create a strawman is under any illusion that they are in some sense true. Truth is a mathematical concept not a scientific one.
Same with pollution that can be reasonably shown to have either no interstate transmission or its interstate transmission does not meaningful damage to people, property or commerce.
Because it's well known that air pollution is very careful to never cross state borders. Stupid scientists.
First, it doesn't matter what you call it, if you have too much, it's a problem. You can call it peaches and it won't change its effects.
Second, there is no such thing as blasphemy against chemistry or physics, which is what life is. Blasphemy only has meaning in religion.
Third, to pollute is to render harmful through inclusion, and adding more co2 to the atmosphere renders it harmful on multiple levels, so co2 is actually a pollutant by a reasonable definition. But as per point the first, it really doesn't matter if you call it a pollutant. What matters is that we know co2 to be a greenhouse gas, and we know that GHGs promote global warming. We also know that last time co2 was this high, Earth wouldn't have been a nice place for humans. We also know that this rate of co2 rise is unprecedented. We also know that adding energy to a system produces effects, and that climate is a chaotic system. We know that our species has enjoyed a period of climatological stability, and that our actions are perturbing that stability.
Tldr you're arguing about whether we're about to be eaten by alligators or crocodiles, and it's a meaningless argument.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
science isn’t about consensus, it’s about truth
If there’s no consensus then what happens is you have your version of the truth and someone else has their version. For example Newton and Einstein were both right about gravity. Einstein’s version accommodates relativity whereas Newton does not.
Also your assertion is somehow 97% of the people who know, study, and understand a subject will gladly accept a lie. Have you met scientists? These are some of the most anal-retentitive people in the world. They will argue endlessly about whether a hyphen sound belong in the name of a newly discovered thing. Yet according to you, they’ll gladly swallow a lie that everyone is propagating.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
No, they don't. They propose different hypotheses. The set of validated (by measurement, observation, proof, experiment, reasoning picked apart) hypotheses is what constitutes a theory.
Hmmm.
Lets see. Great 'Murica has kept coming down in CO2, until this year, but should continue down in spite of Trump.
OTOH, CHina continues to ADD massive amounts of new coal plants, while America continues to replace ours with AE and Nat Gas.
So, nope.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Either that or else Joe "Fossil-Fuel-Industry-Bitch" Read.
Or just plain dishonest. Which is the case here? You forgot the fifth group: idealogues who NEED a story that helps them support their insanity as rational.
Your group 1 does not exist.
Your group 2 does not exist,
Your group 3 does not exist, because you added a caveat that does not exist to them.
Your group 4 and 5 does.
You invented 1 and 2 so that you could deny AGW while pretending you're in the moderate rational middle. Without them your group 3, those that don't accept that the problem is a real big one with dangerous consequences is still a massive outlier and not in the middle of anything.
"Even w/rising levels, isn't CO2 still only on the order of 0.05% of all atmospheric gases by volume?"
Yes, but so what? If you get near a point, make it.
"Observation vs Concept"
Not watching a video, get real. If you can't make your point in a few sentences, you don't know what you're talking about. We can observe the properties of co2, both atmospherically and in the lab, and conclude that a notable percentage increase will have a significant effect. Get the concept yet?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nobody, yet.
The point is that the lunatics are running the asylum.
No sig today...
isn't CO2 still only on the order of 0.05% of all atmospheric gases by volume?
The only way for Earth to lose heat is to radiate it into space as infrared waves. The CO2 captures part of that energy and sends it back down. The oxygen, nitrogen and argon, which make up nearly all of the atmosphere have no effect on infrared or visible waves.
Looking at the CO2 as a percentage of the total atmosphere makes no sense. You have to look at the absolute numbers. A nice way to do that is to imagine the different gases in the atmosphere are separated into pure layers. If you do that, we would get a layer of about 4 feet of pure CO2. That's the layer that blocks the IR. Now, before the industrial age, that layer would have been about 3 feet.
Yeah, we do this a lot. Specially if there is a latin root for the word.
The argument will be that greenhouse gas regulations (like many air pollution regulations) fall under the Interstate Commerce Clause.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
My gut tells me when I'm being conned; I don't need to be an expert to know when I'm being lied to.
Truth is simple; when the "experts" give you a complicated non-answer it's BS.
I'm fed up with "mathematicians" going on about irrational numbers; they can't even give an exact answer--just a string of digits that seems to keep going on forever.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Actually, the case for CO2 is much stronger than, way, the case for NOx, because NOx has a half-life measured in hours, but CO2 has an effective half-life in the century range (note carefully: an atom of CO2 that dissolves into the ocean tends to displace one that is already there back into the atmosphere).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” - Isaac Asimov
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
For "lawmakers" - a dumb title itself, as though we needed more laws, instead of ones that work and make sense - and are enforced uniformly, instead of on the just-us system. This guy is a moron, true, but he's got plenty of company...after all, we have a bartender in congress now who doesn't know the branches of government...and that's just skimming the obvious surface of idiocy, and not even moving on to the corruption that allows them all to retire eventually rich on what actually isn't that great a paycheck for someone who has to live in DC and commute home as well....
We allow them to exempt themselves from laws they make for us -
Insider trading. (Pelosi comes to mind, but it's really all of 'em.
Health care - they get special, and free. We get plans where the copay is more than I pay without any insurance at all.
Free armed guards - while they want "sensible gun control" for the rest of us.
I could go on endlessly, mention their special pension system that can't go broke...and on and on.
I somehow don't think we kept our republic, as was warned by the founders.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Read is apparently unaware of past legal precedent indicating that the federal government has the legal ability to regulate pollutants
California's state legislature regularly passes laws regarding pollutants, so do several others. This "apparently unaware" dig is just a form of ad hominem attack.
No, and also no. You are apparently unaware that California is the only state which is permitted to set atmospheric emissions standards, because we've been doing it for so long and by the time the feds thought about arguing about it, it was too late. Other states are only permitted to choose whether they adopt California's standard, or the federal standard.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What would be the appropriate response from the lawmakers ?
Validate the claim. Get realistic probabilities of floods foretasted against known and understood weather patterns. Do a cost benefit analysis on possible solutions. What if the problem was because of mismanagement at a water reservoir? It's better to address the mismanagement instead of undertaking a huge building project that doesn't solve the actual problem that could be solved with simple correction at a specific facility.
some scientists claim that we need to build a higher levee around a lake to reduce the risk of catastrophic flooding.
The scientists made a mistake. What has been studied? The rates of risk, how to reduce risk, flooding in general, this specific lake and local patterns that change flood patterns? What?
The appropriate statement to lawmakers should be something like: "Studying X and because of Y there are increased chances of flooding in lake by Z % if Y continues to affect X. Our recommendation: because solving X is too hard because A we recommend B. If B cannot be done C and D would help by E%". Each letter should have independent studies (note multiple) verifying each claim.
When I hear "Scientists claim X solution." I hear: a patron of the Big X pushing an agenda. They may not be and they may be correct but I don't know that and lawmakers should be skeptical whenever someone comes selling a bridge.
I don't like hearing about political solutions from scientists. That isn't their job and that isn't part of science.
The argument will be that greenhouse gas regulations (like many air pollution regulations) fall under the Interstate Commerce Clause.
That's probably correct, although one could also cite promotion of the general welfare.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And that criticism has been brought up by physicists. You probably aren't going to get this based off of your post, but for others who are interested, in physics, many of the theories proposed are given weight first by the mathematical symmetries that they reveal, hinting they might be based in reality. That is the current state of string theory. The math looks very compelling. What makes it a theory is not that it hasn't been validated, but that it is TESTABLE. If a test can not be devised, then it is not a theory. In the case of string theory, we think we can test it, if only colliders with high enough energy existed (google string phenomenology).
As an aside, a levee isn't a good idea for a lake flooding. Lakes are fed by rivers and irrigation that are usually heavily controlled by the Feds and local water authorities. I just happened to experience a lake and river flooding recently. For decades local water authorities wanted an additional reservoir to address flooding for heavy snow pack years (was even planned back in the 30/40's but war). Not only would a reservoir help the flooding issue by holding flood water, it would also help local business and farmers with additional water storage (water is gold to farmers). A levee would have been a huge waste of money that would have been a sunk cost. Those years of high risk flooding are rare and if a levee would have been built I would have been a monumental waste of time and money with zero return. An additional reservoir, has low cost of maintenance and would contribute to the local economy.
I suspect the prevailing winds most of the year are South to North. So any pollution they generate goes to Canada.
Wouldn't crossing an international border make it even more clearly a federal issue?
Whereas, the Constitution of the United States has supremacy over any foreign law including but not limited to Shari-ah Law of Gravitation, Law of Thermodynamics, and Laws of Motion,
Whereas, the State Constitution of Montana has supremacy over the US Federal Constitution,
Wheres, this SLOT prevents from Montanans from creating perpetual motion machines, or creating engines with more than 100% thermal efficiency,
It has been resolved that
This law has been repealed in Montana, and no machine or physical process in this state shall obey the aforementioned unconstitutional second law of thermodynamics.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
In science, that's called a theory until proven. AGW is unproven.
There’s multiple things wrong with your statement. An idea is a hypothesis until consensus deems it to be correct. A theory is a set of accepted (by consensus) hypothesis. There also isn’t really “proven” as science isn’t math and there are no “proofs”. Evidence is found for or against hypotheses.
The disagreement over AGW is more fundamental. While pro-AGW scientists may argue about whether a hyphen should be used, anti-AGW scientists argue a hyphen doesn't exist in the alphabet or that pro-AGW scientists fail to recognize extra characters in the alphabet that should be used or considered (metaphorically).
As for pro-AGW vs anti-AGW, the anti-AGW is a very, very tiny minority. The vast majority of those who know and understand the science are pro. They aren’t arguing over a hyphen. They aren’t arguing whether it is true. They’ve moved on as arguing whether it is true is like arguing whether gravity exists.
Not to mention, it's career suicide for a scientist to come out against AGW in any way at this point. Wouldn't want to be a homeless denier, would they?
Do you know what scientists call other scientists that come up with ground-breaking science that changes the fundamentals of their field? Visionaries and most of the time, Nobel prize winners. The difference between them and deniers is that visionaries have evidence.
Unless you can verify the work of pro-AGW scientists, you could be swallowing a giant lie as well. The burden is on those claiming the sky is falling, not those who present evidence to the contrary.
Me personally or scientists? You understand that’s why scientists publish right? Here’s a fatal flaw to this logic. Just because you can’t understand the science or how to validate it, doesn’t mean it wasn’t validated by people who can understand.
It would go a long way if the pro-AGW crowd divorced the movement from politics and found a way to explain AGW in a way that is verifiable by your lay man. It would also help if the pro-AGW scientists could make some short-term predictions that accurately come true. The track record of predictions to this point isn't very good. The methodology for collecting and manipulating data (especially temperature data) is also a big problem for anti-AGW folks and needs to be standardized in an unbiased way that removes the questions and uncertainty about the data.
You do understand that it isn’t in the realm of science to change the behavior of people and society right? As for the secon part of your post, have you looked at the data because it doesn’t seem that you have.
Otherwise, expect those with a critical eye toward science and politics to dismiss AGW as yet another issue created by politicians for their own gain. Like any political issue, it will have its loyal followers and those who disagree.
Um didn’t you just post that the vast majority of scientists are pro-AGW. That alone makes this sentence nonsense.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Any scientist who proposes a hypothesis that goes against the prevailing ides without evidence is ignored. If they are loud and insistent but still have no evidence, then they are shunned.
What happens to those scientists that have evidence for ground breaking ideas that go against established scientific principles? Accolades, reknown, and sometimes a Nobel prize. See Raymond Davis Jr who devised a way to measure solar neutrinos that were created by the Sun’s nuclear fusion. His results showed that there something fundamental wrong with the Standard Model when it came to neutrinos.
Was he shunned? Was he obstracized? No. Other scientists were skeptical as they should be until his results were verified by Mataoshi Koshiba. For their work, they got 1/2 of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The new name for this is Sanctuary Science. We're accepting all flat-earthers, anti-vaxers, anti-GMOers, no nuke NIMBYs.
Just another day in Paradise
cthon stated:
No, they don't. They propose different hypotheses. The set of validated (by measurement, observation, proof, experiment, reasoning picked apart) hypotheses is what constitutes a theory.
You're so close to being right.
The distinction between hypothesis and theory in science is not a clear, bright line - and, for the most part, scientific theories are always subject to revision in light of new evidence.
That's because the scientific method is not about proving anything other than that a given hypothesis cannot be true, because experimental evidence proves it incorrect. It doesn't matter how many experiments have lent support to a given hypothesis in the past - all it takes is a single one that conclusively demonstrates that it's wrong to invalidate it. It then is discarded in favor of the next-best alternative (regardless of whether that alternative is an older hypothesis that has not yet been proven wrong, a revised version of the same hypothesis, or is a brand-new, minty-fresh one that is consistent with all the evidence to date).
The graduation of a hypothesis to the status of scientific theory is a gradual process, and one that can happen only by (wait for it!) consensus. The greater the number and variety of different experiments that fail to disprove it, the more the scientific community comes to agree that a hypothesis should be considered as reliable enough for practical purposes to deserve to be treated as if it were correct.
The thing is, though, that status is never set in stone. Take Newtonian physics, for example. For three centuries, Newton's theories withstood experimental efforts to disprove them so reliably that they came to be regarded as actual laws. (And, I hasten to add, they're still reliable enough to be treated that way by engineers for quotidian, practical purposes.) But then Einstein proposed his General Theory of Relativity, and Newtonian physics went out the window - at least at astronomical scales. It was an actual revolution in scientific understanding of how physics works in our universe, and general relativity achieved the status of theory in what was pretty much record time, because every experiment that attempted to disprove it at the macro level failed miserably.
But it broke down at the nano scale. There, accumulated observational data poked progressively bigger holes in Einstein's theory, until it became undeniable that Something Else was going on.
Enter quantum mechanics.
Einstein hated it - and it wasn't because it contradicted his own theory. It was because the notion of what he called "spooky action at a distance" offended his sense of order. Uncertainty, superposition of states, entanglement (the "spooky action" to which Einstein's sarcastic comment referred), and the fundamental randomness of the nature of the universe at the smallest scale bothered him so deeply that he famously thundered, "God does not play dice with the universe."
But he was wrong about that. At the quantum scale, as an ever-increasing body of experimental evidence has established, randomness and uncertainty are inescapable - to the point where, at the Planck scale, the current model of quantum theory holds that "virtual particles" actually blink into and out of existence in such profusion that the fabric of reality itself consists of a so-called "quantum foam." (That bit has not yet been tested by experiment, mostly because we simply don't yet have the tools to conduct direct observation of such incredibly tiny phenomena. In fact, given the ever-increasing effects of quantum uncertainty as we approach the Planck scale, it may be physically impossible for us ever to directly observe and measure those virtual particles. The best evidence of their existence in the real world may forever remain indirect - which doesn't mean the model is wrong, or that won't earn the status of theory, however.)
There's an ever-growing mountain of evidence that both general relativity and quantum mechanics accurately model
Check out my novel.
Every now and then there's an idea floated to drain a foot of the Great Lakes to send water to California. But the SC has ruled such a plan needs the permission of every state touching the Great Lakes, and Canada, too.
Good luck with that.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The half-life of an individual CO2 molecule is about 5 years, and the place where that CO2 molecule will almost certainly go is the sea. For the first half of the 20th Century it was believed that atmospheric CO2 was in equilibrium with ocean CO2, until Roger Revelle proved in the 1950s that ocean concentrations of CO2 could not increase fast enough to maintain an equilibrium with the atmosphere. Thus the effective half-life of CO2 is closer to 100 years, which means *mathematically speaking* almost all the CO2 entering the ocean is balanced by a near equal amount coming out.
Obviously the speed at which the oceans absorb CO2 will impact the rate of climate change, but we've known for over 70 years that that rate is not very high, and if it were that would present other problems.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No, they don't. They propose different hypotheses. The set of validated (by measurement, observation, proof, experiment, reasoning picked apart) hypotheses is what constitutes a theory.
No theory is ever completely proven. Not only is it always possible to get new observations that will contradict a given theory, it's also possible to posit a different theory that predicts contradictory observations which have not yet been made. This means that consensus is always what defines our current notion of scientific "truth" (which is never absolute, so "truth" is really not a good word). For any given broadly-accepted theory there are often individual scientists who take issue with some element of the theory, or even that propose something quite different. That's not just okay, it's a fundamental element of scientific progress -- even though those who fight the consensus are usually wrong.
No one individual has the ability to independently research and verify all of scientific knowledge, so the rational choice is to accept the consensus unless you have invested in becoming sufficiently expert in a field to be able to intelligently challenge that consensus. That doesn't mean you have to challenge the consensus as a whole, either. If you can identify one part of the consensus that isn't correct and you can provide compelling evidence to support your point, that's completely valid, and a valuable contribution which can update and correct the consensus. But note that identifying one error rarely invalidates the entirety of the consensus view; more often it just points out that an adjustment is needed.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
50-60 million civilians died in WW2 with many of them Germans even after conflict was supposed to be over. Communism in the 20th century, 61 million in the Soviet Union, 78 million in China, and roughly 200 million worldwide.
Plants need it. People exhale it. I would say its pretty damn needed to exist. Why would you call it a polluntant?
The same can be said about shit. Plants need it and we excrete it, so why would you call shit a pollutant?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Nazis were generally right wing in outlook. Learn history from somewhere other than Infowars. Don't forget the newpaper editorial last week from Alabama suggesting that the KKK go and lynch Democrats in DC. Of course, if right wingers suggest this then it's just a joke, but if left wingers suggest it they must be serious about it.
So, what would you consider to be compelling evidence for AGW? In other words, if you are open minded, what kind of evidence would it take to change your mind?
A fair retort is to ask what I would need to hear to stop believing in AGW. As far as I'm concerned, there are two parts to this question - the warming and the human cause. The evidence of warming is widespread, from glacier patterns to ice coverage dates to rainfall pattern changes to animal and biosphere changes. I find it hard to imagine that this wide-ranging set of observations that all point to the same thing are all wrong, but go ahead and dispute all of them.
The other component of my AGW support is that the above warming is human caused. For this, we point to CO2 concentrations, basic physics, and a ruling out of all other causes. If you can show another cause for the above observations, then we can dismiss AGW.
A state cannot set regulations that are less strict
Two words: "sanctuary state".
If you're talking about enforcing immigration law, that isn't an issue of setting regulations, but an issue of local and state law enforcement being required to enforce federal law, which the US Supreme Court has already ruled is unconstitutional.