North Carolina Outlaws Science, Measurement, and Rising Water

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...

Here’s a link to the circulated Replacement House Bill 819. The key language is in section 2, paragraph e, talking about rates of sea level rise: “These rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time period following the year 1900. Rates of seas-level rise may be extrapolated linearly. …” It goes on, but there’s the core: North Carolina legislators have decided that the way to make exponential increases in sea level rise – caused by those inconvenient feedback loops we keep hearing about from scientists – go away is to make it against the law to extrapolate exponential; we can only extrapolate along a line predicted by previous sea level rises.

Which, yes, is exactly like saying, do not predict tomorrow’s weather based on radar images of a hurricane swirling offshore, moving west towards us with 60-mph winds and ten inches of rain. Predict the weather based on the last two weeks of fair weather with gentle breezes towards the east. Don’t use radar and barometers; use the Farmer’s Almanac and what grandpa remembers.

It's amazing to watch people cheer on a march backward.

So lawyers and businessmen are trying to set laws for how scientists can interpret data? WTF?

As has been pointed out to me elsewhere, stupid as this is, it hasn't passed.. yet.

The same guys who say government shouldn't regulate industry now want to regulate science.

How can anyone with any sort of conscience vote for a bill like this?

Good idea. Also, all medical technology must be based on properly understanding the balance of black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. We've had enough of these doctors with their nonsensical "germ" ideas.

Have you ever seen a germ? I haven't. Poppycock, I say. Poppycock!

Oh, sorry, got taken away there by apparently too much blood. Passions ran awry. Apologies for my foul, foul language.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

Good idea. Also, all medical technology must be based on properly understanding the balance of black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. We've had enough of these doctors with their nonsensical "germ" ideas.

Have you ever seen a germ? I haven't. Poppycock, I say. Poppycock!

Oh, sorry, got taken away there by apparently too much blood. Passions ran awry. Apologies for my foul, foul language.

I've got a jar of leeches I can mail you. They'll see you right.

Tanglebones wrote:

As has been pointed out to me elsewhere, stupid as this is, it hasn't passed.. yet.

I imagine it will get a good round of mockery on the Daily Show and the late night talk shows and then will filter into more mainstream news outlets. North Carolina voters will wake up to the nation's media portraying them as a bunch of ignorant rubes, and the state republican party will quietly table the bill to avoid negative publicity.

Funkenpants wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

As has been pointed out to me elsewhere, stupid as this is, it hasn't passed.. yet.

I imagine it will get a good round of mockery on the Daily Show and the late night talk shows and then will filter into more mainstream news outlets. North Carolina voters will wake up to the nation's media portraying them as a bunch of ignorant rubes, and the state republican party will stubbornly dig in, to further piss off the pansy liberals.

FTF more likely scenario

Wait, so King Cnut is a NC legislator now? Oh, no, he was making a point... this is actually in earnest.

And I thought NC was supposed to be the normal Carolina (relatively—everyone in the US is crazy to us, but if "South" is involved, we assume they're even crazier.)

Guys, this isn't even a bill that was introduced to the legislature. It's some draft that some people passed around. Technically I'm not even sure it can be called a "bill" since it wasn't actually introduced as one.

In the blogger's haste to be engineer on the outrage train, he makes a lot of stupid statements and misconstrues a lot of the content. The state certainly didn't outlaw science or make rising sea levels illegal.

The whole thing's about development dollars to the coastal towns. They're worried that if areas are designated as future flood planes, they won't be able to make as much money off em. They'd rather insurance companies, states, and the feds worry about bailing out homeowners way off in the future.

Yeah, was just coming to post what Quintin did: this was a draft of a bill put together by a lobbying group and circulated among legislators. It wasn't introduced for a vote, and it wasn't passed into law.

That Scientific American article even gets it right:

Okay, cheap shot alert. Actually all they did was say science is crazy. There is virtually universal agreement among scientists that the sea will probably rise a good meter or more before the end of the century, wreaking havoc in low-lying coastal counties. So the members of the developers’ lobbying group NC-20 say the sea will rise only 8 inches, because … because … well, SHUT UP, that’s because why.

But then screws it up a couple paragraphs later:

It goes on, but there’s the core: North Carolina legislators have decided that the way to make exponential increases in sea level rise – caused by those inconvenient feedback loops we keep hearing about from scientists – go away is to make it against the law to extrapolate exponential; we can only extrapolate along a line predicted by previous sea level rises.

There's a lot less of a story here than is being presented.

In addition, it's not doing this:

Or making MEASURING it against the law, anyhow

It's simply defining the way the government will officially estimate sea rise. It's a stupid suggestion but it's in no way suggesting the idea that measuring/estimating using proper techniques be illegal.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

But then screws it up a couple paragraphs later:

It goes on, but there’s the core: North Carolina legislators have decided that the way to make exponential increases in sea level rise – caused by those inconvenient feedback loops we keep hearing about from scientists – go away is to make it against the law to extrapolate exponential; we can only extrapolate along a line predicted by previous sea level rises.

There's a lot less of a story here than is being presented.

That bolded part might be a reference to this section of the local Charlotte Observer article linked in that blog post -

Several local governments on the coast have passed resolutions against sea-level rise policies.

When the General Assembly convened this month, Republican legislators went further.

They circulated a bill that authorizes only the coastal commission to calculate how fast the sea is rising. It said the calculations must be based only on historic trends – leaving out the accelerated rise that climate scientists widely expect this century if warming increases and glaciers melt.

The bill, a substitute for an unrelated measure the N.C. House passed last year, has not been introduced. State legislative officials say they can’t predict how it might be changed, or when or whether it will emerge.

While the last sentence does indeed point out that it is a proposal that might die or get hacked away into nothing, it's very certainly not a "non-story".

SixteenBlue wrote:

In addition, it's not doing this:

Or making MEASURING it against the law, anyhow

It's simply defining the way the government will officially estimate sea rise. It's a stupid suggestion but it's in no way suggesting the idea that measuring/estimating using proper techniques be illegal.

Sorry, I imagined that my obviously sarcastic title would convey its obvious sarcasm.

[edit]

Bloo Driver wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

In addition, it's not doing this:

Or making MEASURING it against the law, anyhow

It's simply defining the way the government will officially estimate sea rise. It's a stupid suggestion but it's in no way suggesting the idea that measuring/estimating using proper techniques be illegal.

Sorry, I imagined that my obviously sarcastic title would convey its obvious sarcasm.

I was just referring to the article itself actually.

Until it gets introduced to the legislature, it's a non-story.

"Lobbyists use unprecedented access to craft patently absurd bill proposal, with support of legislators" is not a non-story, alas. Italics change nothing.

That's all lobbyists do.

What access do they have? What makes is unprecedented?

Which legislators are supporting?

I know lobbyists have been writing legislation for a while now, but that's certainly not what they're supposed to do.

You're right, bad word choice by the primary definition. Rather than unprecedented, I should have gone with "all-encompassing and destructive".

And, those who apparently think it's a good enough first draft to work with. These are all issues worth discussing before anything comes to a vote.

And we're at the point before the point before anything comes to a vote. You still haven't described what kind of access they actually have, with whom, or how it's all-encompassing.

Bloo Driver wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

In addition, it's not doing this:

Or making MEASURING it against the law, anyhow

It's simply defining the way the government will officially estimate sea rise. It's a stupid suggestion but it's in no way suggesting the idea that measuring/estimating using proper techniques be illegal.

Sorry, I imagined that my obviously sarcastic title would convey its obvious sarcasm.

The ongoing GOP War on Satire has made casualties of us all.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

And we're at the point before the point before anything comes to a vote. You still haven't described what kind of access they actually have, with whom, or how it's all-encompassing.

I really don't understand who gets to decide for other people when something is interesting or worth discussing, sorry. It's of interest to me that this sort of thing is being taken seriously at this level at all.

SixteenBlue wrote:
Bloo Driver wrote:

Sorry, I imagined that my obviously sarcastic title would convey its obvious sarcasm.

I was just referring to the article itself actually.

Hhhderp. Sorry, that's my misunderstanding.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

And we're at the point before the point before anything comes to a vote. You still haven't described what kind of access they actually have, with whom, or how it's all-encompassing.

I think you're smart enough to know exactly what I'm talking about without need of a description, but just in case, go ahead, draft a bill, see how seriously the legislature takes it. Take careful notes. I'm not going to say we'll wait, because as Bloo astutely noted, you're not the arbiter of what's worthy of discussion, so I hope things will continue. The influence of lobbyists concerns me greatly, since local to me, one managed to enshrine the right of landlords to purge tenants with political views they don't agree with.

Bloo Driver wrote:

I really don't understand who gets to decide for other people when something is interesting or worth discussing, sorry. It's of interest to me that this sort of thing is being taken seriously at this level at all.

The discussion was about the blogger's misrepresentation that you quoted in the OP and used to craft your thread title though. Which, I'll note, still hasn't changed.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I think you're smart enough to know exactly what I'm talking about without need of a description, but just in case, go ahead, draft a bill, see how seriously the legislature takes it. Take careful notes. I'm not going to say we'll wait, because as Bloo astutely noted, you're not the arbiter of what's worthy of discussion, so I hope things will continue. The influence of lobbyists concerns me greatly, since local to me, one managed to enshrine the right of landlords to purge tenants with political views they don't agree with.

You're dodging the question because the things that you insist make this a real story haven't actually been mentioned anywhere. Instead you keep moving the goalposts every time I point this out. Like now: how seriously is the legislature taking this NC Coastal Federarion draft? You can't answer that because you don't know. It hasn't been introduced to the state house or senate yet, which would at least mean that some rep took it seriously enough to introduce it and we'd be able to see who was co-sponsoring it.

Yeah, guys, give NC a break. Q's been having a really hard time feeling superior to other redneck states.

My goalposts have always been firmly rooted in the "I find little comfort in this not being up for a vote yet" spot. Buzzwords and accusations aren't going to sway me away from finding this disconcerting.

"Lobbyists draft silly bill proposal; nothing happens" is disconcerting?

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

My goalposts have always been firmly rooted in the "I find little comfort in this not being up for a vote yet" spot. Buzzwords and accusations aren't going to sway me away from finding this disconcerting.

Haha, buzzwords and accusations. It's like you don't even remember what you posted.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Bloo Driver wrote:

I really don't understand who gets to decide for other people when something is interesting or worth discussing, sorry. It's of interest to me that this sort of thing is being taken seriously at this level at all.

The discussion was about the blogger's misrepresentation that you quoted in the OP and used to craft your thread title though. Which, I'll note, still hasn't changed.

And, oddly, won't change even in the face of one person getting weirdly defensive and faux-mod about the whole deal. As I noted before, the title is obvious sarcasm/hyperbole, of which there are many such uses on this forum, so I thought it perfectly acceptable.

So anyway, it still comes back to your decision to let everyone know it was a non-story, based on your own criteria. Which, no matter how you want to wheedle the point, really isn't for you to decide. Sure, its not a looming threat of becoming law today or tomorrow. It was pointed out, twice, correctly, and without argument that the immediacy of this was misrepresented by the blogger, some of us still thing its an interesting story with some implications others might want to examine. If you're not one of them, that's cool.

Now who's being weirdly defensive? I never once said people couldn't discuss it. Talk it about it until you're blue in the face, just for f*ck's sake, don't pretend it's something that it's not. I'm just sick to death of people going on their social justice bandwagon crusades before they even have a clue what their outrage is about.

You and SPP are acting like I said lobbyists are just harmless cuddly bunnies and politicians are all immaculate saints. Hell no! Would this circulated draft pass if it were to be introduced? It's certainly possible, I really couldn't tell you one way or the other.