Politics attempting to rewrite scientific findings

There's a move afoot in the politics of this country to oppose any science that doesn't agree with certain political standards.  Although not yet at the same level of abuse of power that caused Galileo to be convicted by the Roman Inquisition in the early 17th Century for stating his finding that the Earth orbits the Sun, this 21st Century American political attempt at mass mind-control through factual obfuscation is nonetheless dangerous.  If this cynical attempt to rewrite the validity of the scientific method by denying its reality is to win, then the country loses. 

Here are the profiles of two complicit misadventures that contribute to this pattern of denial. The first is  bureaucratic stonewalling and obstructionism on the part of national politicians; the second is an outlandish collaboration between monied interests and a state legislature in an attempt to use self-serving lawmaking to deny reality.

Misadventure #1 - Curb the EPA

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does good, scientifically-sound work; count me as a fan.  Its efforts helps us to have a healthy living environment by confronting the sources of a full spectrum of pollutants in the nation's air, water and land.  The EPA has been doing this for over forty years, ever since late 1970 when William Ruckelshaus was sworn in as the first EPA Administrator during the Administration of Richard Nixon.

                                  

President Nixon--a stalwart of the Republican Party--did good work, too, by supporting the creation of the EPA and encouraging its science-based activism in the causes of the nation's environmental health.  But that was then, and this is now, and Mr. Nixon's ideological descendants no longer seem eager to maintain his legacy.

Senator James Inhofe (Republican, Oklahoma) introduced and advocated a measure--Senate Joint Resolution 37--that would have prevented the EPA from carrying out its responsibilities to reduce mercury and other toxic air emissions from certain of the country's power plants.  Fortunately, that bill was defeated last week in a Senate vote.  However, the EPA is constantly under attack by Senator Inhofe and others of similar beliefs, so expect more of the same behavior until these politicians are convinced that the EPA's fan club counts the majority of Americans in its membership.

I wrote (sort of) to my Congressman on this subject, and received his written (sort of) reply.  My communication was enabled by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) which provided me with one of those web-based forms that made it easy to send a business-like letter to Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (Republican, California, representing my district) in which I stated my desire that this legislative attempt to restrict the EPA's authority and actions should be defeated.

Congressman Rohrabacher's reply was an email back to me whose substance was in the vein of "curb the EPA."  That was no surprise.  What was revealing, though--and this is no surprise, either--is that the heart of his justification for severely restricting the EPA is that "Local and state agencies are better situated to control pollution and maintain a clean environment."

That is an ideological statement that is beside the point and ignores--or at least minimizes--the science of the EPA's work.  Pollution is complicated.  The efforts needed to study and analyze it require specialized skill and tools; this is a complex, laborious and expensive undertaking.  Few, if any, local or state agencies are funded or equipped to do this on the scale that is needed.  Replicating the EPA's activities across 50 states and an unknown number of local jurisdictions would be a waste of money and would not yield results that can be applied in a strategic manner on a national scale.

Depending upon local and state agencies in this way would also be a political and legal nightmare.  Pollution flows without respect to local and state boundaries.  Pollution might be created in one local jurisdiction, but end up having its most dangerous results in an entirely different state.  Cities and states can make laws and take actions only within their own borders.  Any kind of environmental pollution that is created in a certain local jurisdiction can potentially cross legal boundaries and affect people living in other cities and even in other states.

Local and state agencies have their parts to play in environmental protection, but they need a robust EPA to lead the way.

The EPA provides a national strategy to build and maintain a clean and healthy national environment.  It deserves strong bipartisan support, just like it enjoyed when it was started in 1970.

Misadventure #2:  Legally deny scientific reality when it's bad for business

Perhaps by now you have already heard about the recent attempts by the North Carolina legislature to rewrite scientific methodology as it applies to projections of increased sea levels through the use of State statute.  This news has been in lots of places.  One that I have seen that is particularly informative is a Scientific American article; another one--more entertaining, perhaps not so informative--is The Colbert Report on June 4. 

The Los Angeles Times has a good article, too.

This seemed to be so far out that I browsed over to the North Carolina legislature's web site to see if the legislation was as described in the various news and commentary sources.  I used my very own eyes to read through the language of the bill, and, yes, it is as portrayed; maybe even worse.

This is a passage lifted directly out of House Bill 819 of the General Assembly of North Carolina, dated June 12 of this year (the latest one available):  "Historic rates of  sea-level rise may be extrapolated to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise unless such rates are from statistically significant, peer-reviewed data and are consistent with historic trends."  (The emphasis is mine.)  The bill's versions and its legislative history are currently available on the North Carolina General Assembly's web site by clicking here.

To put this a little more plainly:  this statute would redefine the scientific method such that only historic trends can be used for predicting future rates of change, thereby ignoring any scientific evidence showing that the future could be different from the past.

This proposed law is the product of a locally-powerful and wealthy business group co-opting a pliable legislature.  The State of North Carolina directed that a scientific study be conducted to determine the potential effects on the state's coastlines of the likely increase in the level of the sea during the rest of the century.  When the report showed that much of the state's coastline will eventually become inundated because of an increasing rate of sea level rise, the local land developers teamed up with coastal county government representatives to form a lobbying organization called NC-20. 

NC-20 went to the legislature with the message that such a scientific projection as this would be bad for business, probably because it might interfere with plans to build and sell new houses, condos, resorts, shopping malls, and other such things within the potentially afflicted geography.  They also have mentioned that if this news gets out then it might be expensive for homeowners, too, what with insurance premiums going up, and maybe other higher expenses, too.  That's so considerate of them.

I almost forgot to mention that the North Carolina legislature is dominated by the Republican Party.

Similar, although not quite so egregious, actions have been underway in the States of Texas and Virginia.  The impetus for these actions comes again from GOP legislators.

Respect the scientific method

Here's a little graphic that says a lot:                            

                                                                              

It's inevitable that any government body or anything commissioned by legislative action will be inherently political.  Different people with different frames of reference will look at the same set of facts and might come up with entirely different conclusions.  That's natural.

What is unnatural, as well as potentially harmful and a waste of time and resources is to try to insert political interference into into meaningful, well-founded work that is apolitical.  The EPA is fair game as a political target in many ways, but not when somebody is targeting it by trying to misrepresent environmental issues that have already been scientifically-established.  Toxins and pollutants, whether they are sourced from power plants or from something else, have harmful effects that do not respect arbitrary boundaries established by humans and their laws, the knowledge of which is based in decades of authoritative research and analysis.  The same is true for climatological phenomena such as increasing rates of sea level rise.

These things are obvious.  If certain politicians and the ideologies that they embody are not able to understand this, then it has to make you wonder what else they don't understand.