A Dumb Law in Utah

I almost missed this, as it received little coverage in the press. Apparently the legislature of Utah has passed HJR 12, a bill that disputes the science of global warming and condemns what the bill calls “climate alarmists.”

            So I guess the law makers in Utah feel that they can pass laws when they don’t like the laws of nature. Maybe Utah might even consider repealing the second law of thermodynamics because it makes everything fall apart.

            Though the measure carries no weight, it urges the EPA to end its carbon dioxide reduction policies until “climate data and global warming science is substantiated.” The rest of the bill is just as frighteningly unsound, making claims that climate scientists manipulate data, manipulate peer reviewed journals, and claiming that some of the scientific findings of the climate scientists have been discredited. At least some of the more inflammatory rhetoric was stricken from the bill, that climate scientists were riding a “gravy train” and incorporating “tricks” into their work.

            Interestingly, nowhere in the bill do they address the real science of climate change: that CO2 is a greenhouse gas; that we are pumping more and more of it into the atmosphere; that the levels of CO2 are increasing in the atmosphere: and that world temperatures are getting warmer.

            Sometimes those inconvenient truths are both inconvenient and inconveniently true.

            There has always been a certain amount of Big Crazy in American politics. There have been Jim Crow and segregation laws, McCarthyism, and laws requiring that a six pack of beer leave a store in a bag. Big Crazy continues in Utah.

OK, Kids, Sarah Palin Is Going To Give You a Lesson On Global Warming and Stuff

The Tennessee Senate just passed SB 893, a bill that would allow the debate of “some scientific subjects, including, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning” in the science curricula of their schoolchildren.

            As portrayed in the local press, the flashpoint of this bill is the subject of evolution. And the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Center for Science Education, and the American Civil Liberties Union are probably correct when they characterize the main thrust of the legislation as giving teachers the ability to promulgate creationism and intelligent design in their classrooms.

I’m unsurprised that the largely fundamentalist Protestant populace of the Volunteer State still has a problem with their children learning about evolution, a subject that has flitted in and out of Tennessee’s educational history ever since the Scopes trial in 1925. I’m just ever so slightly surprised that the bill includes global warming as one of the scientific subjects for which some wiggle room is given to teachers and their lesson plans. Although I haven’t read anything about the legislative process for this bill, I’m suspicious that energy companies or their allies, such as the Heartland Institute, made a few phone calls and visited a few legislative offices to ensure that global warming was included in the bill. After all, the Heartland Institute has announced that they are advancing K-12 curricula that deny global warming. Certainly folks like these would be pleased to have a law like this on the books in Tennessee, not to mention the other 49 states.

A good number of states continually try to, and sometimes succeed in, passing legislation that allows for the teaching of creationism or intelligent design in science classes. It seems unlikely that a bill that would target the science behind our understanding of global warming would, by itself, make its way through a state legislature and receive the signature of a governor. But along with the guess I made above, I’m willing to speculate that as states try to open the doors of the science classroom to biblical beliefs, they will include global warming as a subject to receive a dubious treatment in the classroom.

What is particularly telling is the wording of the bill. The law says that its intention is to have school administrators create an environment that encourages students to respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion on controversial issues. Respecting differences of opinion is to be encouraged, but by placing opinion in the same realm as science, the legislators reveal the bill’s intent, to advance what I like to call the Pailinification of thought.

If anything was apparent during her run for the vice presidency, Sarah Palin embraced a disregard for expertise, studious learning, and experience. She dismissed credentialed and learned professionals as “elites.” The ability to see the easternmost shores of Russia made her qualified to interact with their diplomatic corps. In Palin’s worldview facts and opinion commingle, and she allows herself to choose the fact or opinion that gives an advantage, is easier to achieve, or is more pleasant to consider. Anointing herself knowledgeable about Russia because she can see it makes diplomacy pretty easy. Denouncing the learned elites gives a good feeling to someone living in a self-satisfied world.

Allowing children the same intellectual freedom to pick and choose what they want to believe is a disastrous approach to teaching any subject, particularly a difficult subject like science. That the children of Tennessee may not have a full grasp of global warming and what we might have to do to address it can seriously impede the progress we need to make in this area as these individuals graduate, choose careers, and become voters.

Just think, when it comes to your children and their education, do you want them to have Sarah Palin as a role model?

Orwell and Fracking

In Pennsylvania the state legislature passed and the governor just signed into law HB 1950, a law regulating fracking. Fracking is the high-pressure injection of fluids into rock formations to free up fossil fuel for drilling. Besides water, there are a number of other fluids used in fracking. Lots of different chemicals are in these fluids, many of which raise health concerns.

Many environmentalists and local communities denounce the law because it removes from local communities their ability to restrict fracking in their communities. Besides the concerns of local communities, the law goes beyond the realm of oil and natural gas and into regulating the practice of medicine, and in so doing becomes truly Orwellian. If a doctor or other health professional determines that chemicals that entered the water supply due to fracking poisoned someone, that physician or other professional cannot alert others to the danger posed by the well water. As the law says, the health professional “shall maintain the information as confidential.” The companies doing the fracking can also get a written statement of confidentiality from the health professional or doctor.

Despite the dangers to others, the doctor can’t call the newspaper or local broadcast stations; he can’t alert other physicians; he can’t even let other persons living in the poisoned person’s household know about the poison. This runs counter to all of our traditions of public health and modern medicine. What if John Snow had been restricted from alerting nineteenth century Londoners to the dangers of that one cholera infected well? What if cigarette companies managed to get similar legislation passed in the 1950s just as the medical community was finding more connections between smoking and heart disease, cancer, and emphysema?

Among a government’s most essential functions is public health. The Romans had public health laws. Public health is in the bible, too*. If our governments abrogate responsibility for one of their essential functions to help the energy industries, what are they good for?

*Deuteronomy 23: 12-13: Designate a place outside your camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement.

The Endangered Species Act is Endangered

Last year the Obama administration proposed a serious curtailment of the Endangered Species Act. Currently a species is listed as endangered if its survival is “in danger of extinction in all or a significant portion of its range."

The administration wants to deemphasize the “significant portion” part of the law. To be listed for protection a species would need to be threatened with total extinction, not just extirpation of that species from an area where it now lives. An example of what this change to the law would mean is best given by Noah Greenwald of the Center For Biological Diversity. He says, “If this policy had been in place when the Endangered Species Act was passed, the bald eagle would never have been protected in any of the lower 48 states, because there were still a lot of eagles up in Alaska.”

            But there is a good development. A group of scientists and 87 conservation groups have petitioned the administration to maintain the current approach to protecting wildlife.

            Wildlife protection plummeted under George W. Bush. Under his administration only 60 species were listed for protection under the ESA. (His father’s administration listed 231.)
After such a poor performance, one would hope that the current administration would be much more committed to making a difference for the natural world. It is disappointing to find that Obama has not done so.

Though the Sea Is Rising, the Tide May Be Turning

A recent poll* conducted by the University of Michigan indicated that among the American public, the number of people who believe that humans are causing climate change has rebounded after declining in 2009. This is encouraging news.

            The survey found that 62% of respondents believed global warming was occurring, while only 26% held an opposing view. This 62% is the highest level since 2009, when 65% of respondents said they believed that climate change was occurring, the highest level of positive responses since this survey on climate change began several years ago.

            Curiously, almost 80% of Democrats believe in climate change, while less than half of GOP members said they believed in global warming. This is most likely because of organizations such as the Heartland Institute, which work to cast doubt on the science of global warming. Besides being aligned with large industries, professing a conservatism that maintains capitalism as a core of its ideology, and denying the existence of global warming, these groups are closely aligned with the GOP.

Also, for those who doubt that climate change is occurring, the fingerprints of the rhetoric used by the Heartland Institute and other organizations like them can be found in the responses of those who said they doubt the existence of climate change. With scientific work in global warming going back to the 1800s and the greater part of the science of climate change being quite solid, these organizations know that they cannot cast doubt on the science of global warming, nor can the deny the occurrence of earlier springs, melting glaciers, and the first frosts coming later in the fall. Rather, they attack and try to besmirch the reputations of the scientists investigating global warming. As Christopher Borick and Barry Rabe, authors of the report that summarizes the results of the poll say:

           

While Americans who think the planet is warming largely disagree with the premise that the media and climate scientists are overstating evidence about global warming, most citizens who do not see evidence of increasing temperatures on Earth believe that scientists and the press are distorting evidence on the matter. In terms of scientists, more than 8 out of 10 Americans who don’t think global warming is occurring believe that scientists are overstating evidence about global warming for their own interest.

After hundreds of years of scientific tradition, with its admitted setbacks and occasional instances of fraud, the group of scientists who investigate the workings of our atmosphere is overrun with dishonest investigators who distort evidence for selfish interests. That is what the Heartland Institute would have us believe. This is silly, but the survey shows that people believe it.

Other findings of the poll are interesting. More women than men believe that we are living in a warmer world, and though his name is bandied about when it comes time to discuss climate change, Al Gore has had very little influence on anyone believing or disbelieving in global warming.

The results of the survey are encouraging. With a greater percentage of Americans cognizant of the phenomenon of global warming, despite the efforts of the Heartland Institute and organizations like them, effecting policy changes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may be a possibility. Still, much work needs to be done to raise awareness. The industry that impugns the reputation of climate scientists will continue with its assaults, and they have big money on their side. After that the greatest obstacle to mitigating climate change is institutional and societal inertia. That will be the big challenge.

*http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2012/02_climate_change_rabe_borick/02_climate_change_rabe_borick.pdf