There is a whiff of bullshit and boot polish in the air.
Politics, as opposed to science, does not reward the correction of mistakes, given that correcting a mistake also entails admitting to having made one. Worse, the bigger the mistake, the greater the political urgency of defending it at all costs. – novelist Lionel Shriver
Source:“This is not a natural disaster, but a manmade one,” SPECTATOR magazine issue: 16 May 2020
As mentioned in the previous post, the state of California is hassling Bloomingcamp Ranch (See short video here: https://www.modbee.com/news/business/agriculture/article229379199.html) over its water system being higher than the regulated limit on nitrate in the water (They had 23.9 and the limit is 10). The Darrin Polhemus, deputy director of the state water board, claims the state is vigilant about nitrates because they can cause [note the weasel wording] harm to infants with limited exposure. According to the health authorities, nitrates [Na+NO3-] are a cause of “blue baby” syndrome (methemoglobinemia).
I am skeptical of the science that the bureaucrats of Stanislaus county and now the state of California are citing. As Lionel Shriver notes above, politicians are not eager to be proven wrong. As J. D. Tuccille writes here,
You want a society taxed and regulated toward you
r vision of perfection? It’s going to need enforcers. Those enforcers are going to interact on a daily basis with people who don’t share that vision of perfection, and who resent the constant enforcement attempts.
He adds later, “Government, at its core, is force. The more it does to shape the world around it, the more it needs enforcers to make sure officials’ wills are done.”
Inquisitions were held for the best of intentions. If people disobeyed the rules, society was at risk. Those who disregarded or flaunted society’s rules required punishment.
Pedro Berruguete, Saint Dominic Guzmán presiding over an Auto da fe (c. 1495).[36] Many artistic representations depict torture and burning at the stake during the auto-da-fé (Portuguese for “Act of Faith”).
So the enforcement of the nitrate rule does not need to make sense for the enforcers. Their job is to enforce the rule. What about the worry of nitrates causing “Blue baby syndrome” (methemoglobinemia)? Tht is not as clear cut as the enforcers wish you to believe.
I’ll end with a bit of the science. I’d like to write more but this seems to be about right.
Methemoglobinemia is believed to be caused by bacteria in the mouth and gut converting nitrate into nitrite. Nitrite then reacts with hemoglobin to produce methemoglobin, which can no longer carry oxygen. (Source: The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 90, Issue 1, July 2009, Pages 11–12)
On May 21, 2020, subscribers to the State Water Resources Control Board listserver received a message from the State Water Resources Control Board:
This is a message from the State Water Resources Control Board.
The State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) will accept written comments on the draft Order Denying Petitions for Reconsideration by Bloomingcamp Water System of enforcement actions taken by Stanislaus County as local primacy agency under the California Safe Drinking Water Act.
Comments must be received by noon on June 22, 2020.
More information is available in the attached notice.
Thank you
Ever since receiving this message, I have been detecting the faint whiff of bullshit and boot polish. I’m wrestling with responding to the California State Water Control Board. Their treatment of Bloomingcamp Ranch, a food stand on CA-120 outside of Modesto has been thuggish. (See short video here: https://www.modbee.com/news/business/agriculture/article229379199.html) Bloomingcamp’s water system, which serves, according to state records, “6 residents, 4 employees, and 25 or more customers at least 60 days out of the year,” has tested above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limit on nitrate/nitrite in the water (They had 23.9 and the limit is 10). The Modesto Bee article says the State is concerned for public health reasons, “Darrin Polhemus, deputy director of the state board, said the state is vigilant about nitrates because they can cause harm to infants with limited exposure. Nitrates are a cause of ‘blue baby’ disease by interfering with the process of carrying oxygen in the bloodstream.”
The assertion that nitrates “can cause harm to infants with limited exposure” is speculative. One of the papers I read called it a transformation from a plausible hypothesis to “sacrosanct dogma.” After going through several scientific papers (which I will cite in another post), I’m getting the feeling that the EPA, and both the county of Stanislaus and the state of California, pulled the nitrate/nitrite numbers out of their asses, or more precisely, some bovine asses, hence the whiff of bullshit.
I am working on a response to the “draft Order Denying Petitions for Reconsideration” and I thought that I would share with you my journey to the science. Science, as I wrote here before, is Latin for “knowledge.” It is an evolutionary process and as long as one is will to have one’s own ideas attacked, poked, prodded, scrutinized, and ridiculed, anyone can participated. Science is not a monolithic structure run by scientists; it is the scrum of ideas, where the most adaptable to the evidence eventually win.
So, I think the authorities are completely wrong (yes they have “the rules” on their side). I invite you to do some research and prove me wrong.
California’s Division of Drinking Water of the State Water Resources Control Board wishes to change the Detection Limits for Purposes of Reporting (DLRs) for perchlorate from .004 (4 ?g/l ) to 0.002 (2 ?g/l) .
Here is their announcement:
The Division of Drinking Water (DDW), at a July 5, 2017 public hearing, presented to the State Water Board its findings and recommendations related to DDW’s review of the perchlorate maximum contaminant level (MCL). DDW’s recommendations (see the Perchlorate Review Public Document) were to first establish a lower detection limit for purposes of reporting (DLR) to gather additional occurrence data, and then revise the MCL, if the new data support development of a new standard.
The State Water Board approved DDW’s proposal to investigate, develop, and propose revisions to the perchlorate DLR (see Resolution 2017-0041). DDW is proposing to lower the DLR for perchlorate. Information on the current status of the regulation can be found on the perchlorate regulation webpage.
Further on they note: The current DLR of 4 ?g/l limits DDW’s ability to determine perchlorate in wells at lower concentrations.
Below is my rebuttal to their desire to lower the DLRs for perchlorate from 4 ?g/l to 2 ?g/l.
Division of Drinking Water
State Water Resources Control Board
1001 I Street, 17th Floor
Sacramento, CA 95814
Re: Perchlorate SBDDW-20-001
It’s clear to me the California
State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) cares very much about providing
clean drinking water to the most vulnerable consumers of water, children.
It is also mandated to do so by
California Water Code Section 106.3(a) which states:
It is hereby declared to be the established policy of the state that every human being has the right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes.
Section
106.3(b) then says all state agencies are to use this mandate where other state
policies are to be considered.
(b) All
relevant state agencies, including the department, the state board, and the
State Department of Public Health, shall consider this state policy when
revising, adopting, or establishing policies, regulations, and grant criteria
when those policies, regulations, and criteria are pertinent to the uses of
water described in this section.
(c) This
section does not expand any obligation of the state to provide water or to
require the expenditure of additional resources to develop water infrastructure
beyond the obligations that may exist pursuant to subdivision (b).
(d) This
section shall not apply to water supplies for new development.
(e) The
implementation of this section shall not infringe on the rights or
responsibilities of any public water system.
In preparing the proposed
regulations, the SWRCB determined the proposed regulations are consistent with
this statewide policy. Even though the proposed regulations may result in
increased costs to those that are served by PWS (public water systems), it is
the SWRCB’s decision that potential cost is outweighed by the benefits of
knowing the potential human exposure to perchlorate in drinking water supplies
and whether treatment may be needed, and in having an adequate data set to
evaluate the technological and economic feasibility of lowering the perchlorate
MCL (Maximum Contaminant Level).
As a water master for a tiny
rural water company that serves less than 50 households, I too want to provide
safe, clean drinking water to my customers, who, are also my friends and
neighbors. Clean drinking water is my job and my passion. And, in addition to
providing safe drinking water, I am required, by law, to assure that it is as
affordable as I can make it. My friends and neighbors pay the highest rates for
water in our county, in large part because regulations do not scale down well.
So, our key questions for every test, and every tests MCL, ought to be “Is this
test necessary, at what dose does this become a poison, and is this an
appropriate level?”
The SWRCB information page states
that “Perchlorate and its salts are used in solid propellant for rockets,
missiles, and fireworks, and elsewhere (e.g., production of matches, flares,
pyrotechnics, ordnance, and explosives).”
The information ominously adds, “Their use can lead to releases of
perchlorate into the environment.”
Perhaps it was meant to
simplify, but the information is incomplete. It neglects to mention that
perchlorate occurs naturally in the environment, and, in certain desert areas,
in concentrations higher than those quoted as being found in California.
Perchlorate is also a byproduct
of water treatment disinfection with sodium hypochlorite.
SWRCB’s information page does
note that “Perchlorate’s interference with iodide uptake by the thyroid gland can decrease production of thyroid hormone, which is
needed for prenatal and postnatal growth and development, as well as for normal
metabolism and mental function in the adult.” It is exactly for this reason why
perchlorate was used to treat hyperthyroidism due to Graves disease and to
treat thyroid gland disorders resulting from the accumulation of excess iodine.
SWRCB neglects to point out the high dosages needed for these affects. As the American
Council on Science and Health (ACSH) pointed out, “Clinical use of perchlorate
in treating disease involves doses up to 400 milligrams on a daily basis, a
level which is thousands of times greater than potential environmental exposures.”
It is this disregard of even
the most basic toxicology that is disturbing.
In early 2007, 28-year-old Jennifer
Strange, a mother of 3, was found dead Friday in her suburban Rancho Cordova
home hours after taking part in the “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest in which
KDND 107.9 promised a Nintendo Wii video game system to the person who could
drink the most water without urinating. The coroner’s autopsy determined that
Ms. Strange had died of water intoxication after drinking nearly two gallons of
water. Water intoxication is also known as water poisoning,
hyperhydration, overhydration, or water
toxemia.
Water is considered non-toxic.
Every compound no matter how
dangerous, has a level at which it is benign; and every compound, no matter how
benign, has a level at which it is toxic. Or as Paracelsus (1493-1541) put it,
“All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The
right dose differentiates a poison and a remedy.”
Dose determines risk. In a
peer-reviewed paper on perchlorate, the ACSH emphasized, “it is imperative that
this cornerstone principle of toxicology be included in any assessment of
perchlorate. Mere detection of a chemical in the environment cannot be equated
with increased risk, but must be evaluated in terms of the hazard,
dose-response, and human exposure, all steps in the characterization of health
risk.” This, the SWRCB has neglected to do. It relies on the new technology to
detect lower perchlorate levels without justifying the need using the above criteria.
The Dose-Response of the body is
of utmost importance. As Frank Schnell, board-certified, PhD toxicologist
(retired) explains Dose-Response, “Most biological effects, whether adverse or
not, are the consequence of a cascade of biochemical reactions initiated when
chemical agents (referred to by pharmacologists and toxicologists generically
as “effectors,” “agonists” or “ligands”) bind to effect-specific macromolecular
receptors usually distributed on cell surfaces. It is of supreme indifference
to the receptor whether the chemical binding to it is of natural, synthetic,
endogenous, or exogenous origin. As long as the ligand fits into the receptor’s
active site, the former will produce the effect mediated by that receptor.
“This receptor-mediated mechanism
of action accounts for the existence of thresholds of effect and for the
S-shaped Dose-Response (D-R) Curve that typically results when the strength of
the effect (from zero- to 100%-response) is plotted on the ordinate (y-axis)
against the logarithm of the dose on the abscissa (x-axis).”
Figure 1 Dose-Response Sigmoid
Curve
A typical Dose/Response sigmoid curve.
What is interesting is that “A sub-threshold
concentration of the effector will not activate enough receptors to produce in
the cell a significant effect. (If this were not the case, the effective
regulation of normal metabolic processes would not be possible.)” (emphasis
added)
A review of existing research shows SWRCB has overstated a need
for increased monitoring.
In its discussion of health effects
of perchlorates, the Agency for Toxic
Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR)
noted:
“In a study of the general
population, Li et al. (2001) examined the prevalence of thyroid diseases in
Nevada Counties with respect to perchlorate in drinking water. The cohort
consisted of all users of the Nevada Medicaid program during the period of
January 1, 1997 to December 31, 1998. Disease prevalence in residents from
Clark County (Las Vegas), whose drinking water had 4–24 ? g/L of perchlorate
(0.0001–0.0007 mg perchlorate/kg/day), were compared with those from another
urban area of similar size (Reno, Washoe County), but with no perchlorate in
the water, and also with those from all other counties, also with no
perchlorate exposure…. Analysis of the data showed no statistically significant period-prevalence
rate difference between Clark County and Washoe County. For acquired
hypothyroidism, the prevalence was lower in Clark County than in other counties
(opposite to what would be expected).”
However, the SWCRB backgrounder worries
that infants may be less tolerant of perchlorate exposure: “Perchlorate’s interference
with iodide uptake by the thyroid gland can
decrease production of thyroid hormone, which is needed for prenatal and
postnatal growth and development, as well as for normal metabolism and mental
function in the adult.”
Again, in its discussion of health
effects of perchlorates, the Agency
for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) found nothing rising to the level of needing more
regulation on perchlorate:
“Several developmental studies of
perchlorate in humans have focused on the evaluation of neonatal thyroid
parameters. Lamm and Doemland (1999) examined rates of congenital
hypothyroidism in seven counties of Nevada and California with perchlorate
contamination in the drinking water (4–16 ?g/L [ppb]) (0.0001–0.0005
mg/kg/day). The investigators analyzed data from the neonatal screening programs
of the two states for any increased incidence of congenital hypothyroidism in
those counties. The rates for the California births were adjusted for Hispanic
ethnicity, which was known to be a risk factor for congenital hypothyroidism.
During 1996 and 1997, nearly 700,000 newborns were screened. The risk ratio in
the seven counties was 1.0 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.9–1.2) (249 cases
observed/243 expected). The risk ratios for the individual counties relative to
statewide expected rates ranged from 0.6 to 1.1. While the results showed no
increase in rates of congenital hypothyroidism, it is known that congenital
hypothyroidism is caused by developmental events that are not suspected of
being affected by perchlorate exposure.
“Kelsh et al. (2003) also found no
relationship between congenital hypothyroidism and exposure to perchlorate
through the drinking water in a study of newborns (n=15,348) whose mothers
resided in the community of Redlands, California, during the period 1983
through 1997 and who were screened by the California Newborn Screening Program.
Perchlorate was detected in the water system serving the community at a
concentration of up to 9 ?g/L (mean, <1 ?g/L).”
“Crump et al. (2000) conducted a
study of school-age children from three cities with different concentrations of
perchlorate in drinking water in northern Chile. The city with the highest
perchlorate concentration was Taltal, 100–120 ?g perchlorate/L (ppb), water
from the city of Chañaral had 5–7 ?g/L, and perchlorate was not detected in
water from the city of Antofagasta. The study comprised 162 children 6–8 years
of age, of which 127 had resided continuously in their respective city since
conception. The children underwent examination of the thyroid gland and a blood
sample was taken for analysis of TSH, T4, FTI, T3, and antiperoxidase antibody.
After adjusting for sex, age, and urinary iodide excretion, the children from
Taltal and Chañaral had slightly lower TSH levels than children from
Antofagasta (opposite to expected), but the differences were not statistically
significant.”
SWRCB’s selection of
information may be charitably viewed as providing a worst-case scenario. While
that may be the intent, SWRCB’s background information is rendered biased
rather than useful or informative. It is pearl-clutching designed to scare
people and thus allow the SWRCB to further ratchet down the already
unreasonable EPA maximum contaminant level (MCL) of six parts per billion (6
ppb) in drinking water to something so low as to be ludicrous.
The ignorance and laziness of
our public officials to accept the word of activists, such as the Environmental
Working Group, over pragmatic scientists hurts people. When we require people
to spend money on the wrong priorities, that money is not available for things
that could truly save lives. As Schnell told me in an email, “In real life,
excess conservatism doesn’t just waste money; it also costs lives… i.e., the ones
that could have been saved had the wasted money been spent more wisely.”
And this is real money. The
Mercatus Center at George Mason University, puts the amount of money lost since
1980 due to added regulation at $4 trillion; a drag of 25 percent on our gross domestic product
(GDP). “If regulation had been held constant at levels observed in 1980, the US
economy would have been about 25 percent larger than it actually was as of
2012….This amounts to a loss of approximately $13,000 per capita, a significant
amount of money for most American workers.”
Of course, economics alone
should not guide us in decision making. But as Bjorn Lomborg reminds us,
“[I]gnoring costs doesn’t make difficult choices disappear; it makes them less
clear.”
It is disturbing to find SWRCB providing a hypothesis without
any data to support it. The people who depend on us for clean and safe drinking
water are ill-served if they are made poorer and not safer with ill-considered
regulations. If this new MCL is adopted one can
only conclude that SWRCB has abandoned basic science for basic fear-mongering.
Hello, ideas. Welcome to the Hunger Games! May the odds be ever in your favor.
Science is under attack. Not breaking news, we can see for ourselves that it is. Right? You have heard, “We don’t have time. The science is settled. We must act now!” yes? If it’s settled, what is it and how does it get ‘settled’?
Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.com
So when we say the “science is settled” what do we mean by ‘science’? Perhaps science is a field of study? After all, we want girls to find careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). It is not, but that may be why science is perceived as a sector, a field, rather than what it partly is: a suite of methods for teasing out how everything around us—and within us—works. So rather than being a field of study, science is a way to study?
Science is not “a field of study”; it’s a suite of methods for studying nature. No scientist that I know is “unconcerned with perfection,” but they realize it’s practically unattainable while trying to achieve it. If facts are wrong, they are not facts; interps may be wrong.
Science really is knowledge: How it is obtained and verified. The word ‘Science‘ comes from the Latin word scientia, meaning ‘knowledge.’ So if we say ‘science is under attack,’ that would mean ‘knowledge‘ is under attack. And it is. Knowledge is constantly under attack, and it’s being attacked for the best of intentions: to protect people from being hurt.
His book is an apologia for free—no holds barred—speech, and against those who want to prevent such speech from hurting people.
“A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. That means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism (no final say); it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will. But we also are not supposed to claim we have knowledge except where belief is checked by no one in particular (no personal authority).”
— Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Expanded Edition by Jonathan Rauch http://a.co/j7cmF6C
Rauch argues that “liberal science”—his term for the process of “What do we know, and how do we know it?”—is at stake if free speech is curtailed, often by well-meaning people. “No social principle in the world is more foolish and dangerous than the rapidly rising notion that hurtful words and ideas are a form of violence or torture (e.g., “harassment”),” Rauch says, “and that their perpetrators should be treated accordingly. That notion leads to the criminalization of criticism and the empowerment of authorities to regulate it. The new sensitivity is the old authoritarianism in disguise, and it is just as noxious.” (emphasis is mine)
While free speech is crucial and the threats to it (fundamentalism, egalitarianism, and humanitarianism) are crucial to liberal science, and would not work without the ability to offend, it was Rauch’s discussion of liberal science itself that I found most intriguing.
Knowledge is a product, like the metals we mine and the cars we build. To be more specific, our knowledge is a set of statements which we are satisfied are true—which have been validated, truth tested, in some satisfactory way….
Liberal science is a big and complicated thing. No one could begin to describe it fully. However, with nullius in verba (take no one’s word) and “order without authority” we have the underpinnings of liberal science.
Bertrand Russell once said that “order without authority” might be taken as the motto both of political liberalism and of science. If you had to pick a three-word motto to define the liberal idea, “order without authority” would be pretty good.
Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Expanded Edition by Jonathan Rauch http://a.co/4BiExtr
Who gets to choose what is knowledge? The answer is literally everyone. The competition to stay alive, though, is between ideas, not people.
Like evolutionary ecologies, liberal systems are centerless and self–regulating and allow no higher appeal than that of each to each in an open-ended, competitive public process (a game)….In biological evolution, no outcome is fixed or final—nor is it in capitalism, democracy, [or] science. There is always another trade, another election, another hypothesis….No matter who you are, you must conduct your business in the currency of dollars, votes, or criticism—no special fiat, no personal authority….
Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Expanded Edition by Jonathan Rauch http://a.co/6XYJ3ee
No one gets a pass. “Who you are doesn’t count; the rules apply to everybody, regardless of identity….no matter how stupid and grubby-minded the critic.” If you want your ideas to be encoded in the current book of knowledge, you must submit them for review.
[The] name of the game is to make knowledge and score credit for it, and you get credit only when your conclusions are checked out by others. Others must be able to rely on your conclusions, confirm your results, trace your logic, get hold of your data. So the game of science forces you to build bridges. You must persuade.
Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Expanded Edition by Jonathan Rauch http://a.co/9SJgG3s
So we find that the science never is “settled.” Our knowledge of the world outside and of ourselves shifts, adapts, and evolves as ideas gain or lose credence by how well those ideas perform against all contenders. Welcome to the games, Ideas. May the odds be ever in your favor.
Welcome to the Hunger Games, ideas! And may the odds be ever in your favor.
Science is under attack. Not breaking news, we can see for ourselves that it is. Right? You have heard, “We don’t have time. The science is settled. We must act now!” yes? If it’s settled, what is it and how does it get ‘settled’?
Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.com
So when we say the “science is settled” what do we mean by ‘science’? Perhaps science is a field of study? After all, we want girls to find careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). It is not, but that may be why science is perceived as a sector, a field, rather than what it partly is: a suite of methods for teasing out how everything around us—and within us—works. So rather than being a field of study, science is a way to study?
Science is not “a field of study”; it’s a suite of methods for studying nature. No scientist that I know is “unconcerned with perfection,” but they realize it’s practically unattainable while trying to achieve it. If facts are wrong, they are not facts; interps may be wrong.
Science really is knowledge: How it is obtained and verified. The word ‘Science‘ comes from the Latin word scientia, meaning ‘knowledge.’ So if we say ‘science is under attack,’ that would mean ‘knowledge‘ is under attack. And it is. Knowledge is constantly under attack, and it’s being attacked for the best of intentions: to protect people from being hurt.
His book is an apologia for free—no holds barred—speech, and against those who want to prevent such speech from hurting people.
“A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. That means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism (no final say); it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will. But we also are not supposed to claim we have knowledge except where belief is checked by no one in particular (no personal authority).”
— Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Expanded Edition by Jonathan Rauch http://a.co/j7cmF6C
Rauch argues that “liberal science”—his term for the process of “What do we know, and how do we know it?”—is at stake if free speech is curtailed, often by well-meaning people. “No social principle in the world is more foolish and dangerous than the rapidly rising notion that hurtful words and ideas are a form of violence or torture (e.g., “harassment”),” Rauch says, “and that their perpetrators should be treated accordingly. That notion leads to the criminalization of criticism and the empowerment of authorities to regulate it. The new sensitivity is the old authoritarianism in disguise, and it is just as noxious.” (emphasis is mine)
While free speech is crucial and the threats to it (fundamentalism, egalitarianism, and humanitarianism) are crucial to liberal science, and would not work without the ability to offend, it was Rauch’s discussion of liberal science itself that I found most intriguing.
Knowledge is a product, like the metals we mine and the cars we build. To be more specific, our knowledge is a set of statements which we are satisfied are true—which have been validated, truth tested, in some satisfactory way….
Liberal science is a big and complicated thing. No one could begin to describe it fully. However, with nullius in verba (take no one’s word) and “order without authority” we have the underpinnings of liberal science.
Bertrand Russell once said that “order without authority” might be taken as the motto both of political liberalism and of science. If you had to pick a three-word motto to define the liberal idea, “order without authority” would be pretty good.
Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Expanded Edition by Jonathan Rauch http://a.co/4BiExtr
Who gets to choose what is knowledge? The answer is literally everyone. The competition to stay alive, though, is between ideas, not people.
Like evolutionary ecologies, liberal systems are centerless and self–regulating and allow no higher appeal than that of each to each in an open-ended, competitive public process (a game)….In biological evolution, no outcome is fixed or final—nor is it in capitalism, democracy, [or] science. There is always another trade, another election, another hypothesis….No matter who you are, you must conduct your business in the currency of dollars, votes, or criticism—no special fiat, no personal authority….
Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Expanded Edition by Jonathan Rauch http://a.co/6XYJ3ee
No one gets a pass. “Who you are doesn’t count; the rules apply to everybody, regardless of identity….no matter how stupid and grubby-minded the critic.” If you want your ideas to be encoded in the current book of knowledge, you must submit them for review.
[The] name of the game is to make knowledge and score credit for it, and you get credit only when your conclusions are checked out by others. Others must be able to rely on your conclusions, confirm your results, trace your logic, get hold of your data. So the game of science forces you to build bridges. You must persuade.
Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Expanded Edition by Jonathan Rauch http://a.co/9SJgG3s
So we find that the science never is “settled.” Our knowledge of the world outside and of ourselves shifts, adapts, and evolves as ideas gain or lose credence by how well those ideas perform against all contenders. Welcome to the games, Ideas. May the odds be ever in your favor.
An interesting review of what maintenance of “natural” habitat requires. It’s almost as if the more ‘natural’ we want a place to be, the more human management it needs.
On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral argument in Weyerhaeuser Co. v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, concerning the agency’s authority to designate land as critical habitat if it isn’t even habitat in its present condition. Recognizing that such a power could easily be abused, the short-handed court spent much of the hour searching for some limit. Weyerhaeuser argued the limit was clear from the statute: “critical habitat” must first be habitat. The government argued for a fuzzier line: such designations can also include lands that could become habitat with “reasonable effort.”
What’s the definition of “reasonable?” — Justice Samuel Alito
At the center of the case is the dusky gopher frog, a critically endangered species that has seen its habitat shrink dramatically due to human development, fire suppression, and the conversion of forests from open-canopied long-leaf pine to dense loblolly pine. Today, there…
This article by Ted Nordhaus was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.
In a recent Nature Sustainability paper, a team of scientists concluded that the Earth can sustain, at most, only 7 billion people at subsistence levels of consumption (and this June saw us at 7.6 billion). Achieving ‘high life satisfaction’ for everyone, however, would transgress the Earth’s biophysical boundaries, leading to ecological collapse.
Despite its seeming scientific precision, the claim is old, not new – the latest iteration of the longstanding assertion that our population and consumption might soon exceed the Earth’s fixed ‘carrying capacity’. The concept, tellingly, owes its origin to 19th-century shipping, referring to the payload capacities of steam ships. It jumped from the inanimate to the terrestrial at the end of the 19th century, describing the maximum number of livestock or wild game that grassland and rangeland ecosystems could sustain.
Applied to ecology, the concept is problematic. Cargo doesn’t multiply of its own volition. Nor can the capacity of an ecosystem be determined from an engineer’s drawings. Nonetheless, environmental scientists have, for decades, applied the concept to human societies with a claimed precision that belies its nebulous nature.
The ecologist William Vogt was the first to do so in the 1940s, predicting that overuse of agricultural land would lead to soil depletion and then catastrophe. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Paul Ehrlich focused on food production, and the Club of Rome on material resources; while latter-day environmental scientists and activists have focused more on the effects that pollution and habitat destruction will have on the ‘Earth systems’ that human wellbeing depends upon.
But all hold the same neo-Malthusian view of human fertility and consumption. From the 18th-century arguments of Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus onwards, prophets of environmental doom have imagined that in response to abundance, humans would respond with more – more children and more consumption. Like protozoa or fruit flies, we keep breeding and keep consuming until the resources that allow continuing growth are exhausted.
In reality, human fertility and consumption work nothing like this. Affluence and modernisation bring falling, not rising fertility rates. As our material circumstances improve, we have fewer children, not more. The explosion of human population over the past 200 years has not been a result of rising fertility rates but rather falling mortality rates. With better public health, nutrition, physical infrastructure and public safety we live much longer.
Today, in the United States, Europe, Japan, much of Latin America, even parts of India, fertility rates are below replacement, ie the average number of children born per woman is below two. Much of the rest of the world will likely follow suit over the next few decades. As a result, most demographers project that the human population will peak, and then begin a slow decline, in some cases before the end of this century.
For this reason, today’s warnings of impending ecological collapse mostly focus on rising consumption, not population growth. As many now acknowledge, our social biology might not function like protozoa, but capitalism does. It cannot survive without endless growth of material consumption.
There is no particularly well-established basis for this claim and plenty of evidence to the contrary. The long-term trend in market economies has been towards slower and less resource-intensive growth. Growth in per-capita consumption rises dramatically as people transition from rural agrarian economies to modern industrial economies. But then it tails off. Today, western Europe and the US struggle to maintain 2 per cent annual growth.
The composition of affluent economies changes as well. Manufacturing once accounted for 20 per cent or more of economic output and employment in most developed economies. Today, it is as low as 10 per cent in some, with the vast majority of economic output coming from knowledge and service sectors with significantly lower material and energy intensities.
For decades, each increment of economic growth in developed economies has brought lower resource and energy use than the last. That’s because demand for material goods and services saturates. Few of us need or want to consume more than 3,000 calories or so a day or live in a 5,000-square-foot house. Many Americans prefer to drive SUVs but there is little interest in hauling the kids to soccer practice in a semi-truck. Our appetites for material goods might be prodigious but there is a limit to them.
Even so, that doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t exceed the planet’s carrying capacity. Some environmental scientists claim that we have already surpassed the Earth’s carrying capacity. But this view is deeply ahistorical, assuming carrying capacity to be static.
In fact, we have been engineering our environments to more productively serve human needs for tens of millennia. We cleared forests for grasslands and agriculture. We selected and bred plants and animals that were more nutritious, fertile and abundant. It took six times as much farmland to feed a single person 9,000 years ago, at the dawn of the Neolithic revolution, than it does today, even as almost all of us eat much richer diets. What the palaeoarcheological record strongly suggests is that carrying capacity is not fixed. It is many orders of magnitude greater than it was when we began our journey on this planet.
There is no particular reason to think that we won’t be able to continue to raise carrying capacity further. Nuclear and solar energy are both clearly capable of providing large quantities of energy for large numbers of people without producing much carbon emissions. Modern, intensive agricultural systems are similarly capable of meeting the dietary needs of many more people. A planet with a lot more chickens, corn and nuclear power might not be the idyll that many wish for, but it would clearly be one that would be capable of supporting a lot more people consuming a lot more stuff for a very long time.
Such a future, however, is anathema to many proponents of planetary limits, suggesting hubris of the highest order. But if it is, it is at least born of optimism, of the conviction that with wisdom and ingenuity humans can continue to thrive. Demands to restrict human societies to planetary limits, which environmental scientists and advocates claim to know prospectively, suggest something much darker.
Viewing humans in the same way that we view single-celled organisms or insects risks treating them that way. Malthus argued against Poor Laws, in the belief that they only incentivised the poor to reproduce. Ehrlich argued against food aid for poor countries for similar reasons, and inspired population-control measures of enormous cruelty. Today, demands to impose planetary boundaries globally are couched in redistributive and egalitarian rhetoric, so as to avoid any suggestion that doing so might condemn billions to deep agrarian poverty. But they say little, specifically, about how social engineering of such extraordinary scale would be imposed in a democratic or equitable fashion.
Ultimately, one need not advocate the imposition of pseudo-scientific limits on human societies to believe that many of us would be better off consuming less. Nor must one posit the collapse of human societies to worry deeply that growing human consumption might have terrible consequences for the rest of creation.
But threats of societal collapse, claims that carrying capacity is fixed, and demands for sweeping restrictions on human aspiration are neither scientific nor just. We are not fruit flies, programmed to reproduce until our population collapses. Nor are we cattle, whose numbers must be managed. To understand the human experience on the planet is to understand that we have remade the planet again and again to serve our needs and our dreams. Today, the aspirations of billions depend upon continuing to do just that. May it be so.
Ted Nordhaus is an author, environmental policy expert, and the co-founder and executive director of the Breakthrough Institute in California. He is a co-author of An Eco-Modernist Manifesto (2015). He lives in Oakland.
We know from the last Green Chain post, that Jerry Brown (aka Governor Moonbeam) is a Prophet. Fewer folks know that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth–son of Edmund G. “Pat” Brown–and a stick up his butt. As a prophet (a Jesuit one, at that), he believes that people ought to turn back (i.e., repent) and give up their evil profligate ways. We, the great unwashed, simply use too much water, fuel, land, air, everything.
Welcome to California. A land where coffee the state warns you that they’re sure it endangers your health. Photo by the author.
What does this have to do with me pouring hot coffee on my balls? I’m getting to that.
And being a progressive, he advocates for the improvement of society by reform. In his ideal world, the well-being of the state is more important than the well-being of any individual, and the individual should be damn glad that he (or she) can contribute to that noble goal. Sit down, shut up, and row, plebe.
Progressives believe that they are: experts serving the public good, identifying the public good, and knowing how to achieve the public good. As progressives, Brown and the California legislature are confident in their ability to diagnose a problem and dictate the cure.
“…I see the day in our own lifetime that reverence for the natural systems–the oceans, the rainforests, the soil, the grasslands, and all other living things–will be so strong that no narrow ideology based upon politics or economics will overcome it”. — Jerry Brown, 1979, Governor of California.
“We can’t fight nature. We have to learn how to get along with her.”–Jerry Brown, 2018, Governor of California.
The latest progressive effort by California to color inside the lines and get along with nature is telling its citizens to cut back on their use of municipal drinking water. The stick up his ass must be a divining rod, always pointing toward proper policy. Bend over citizen and take your “medicine.”
Here is part of what California’s legislature and its governor prescribed:
Use no more than 55 gallons per capita daily for Indoor residential use.
Outdoor residential use – To be deternmined
The standards shall incorporate the principles of the model water efficient landscape ordinance adopted by the department pursuant to the Water Conservation in Landscaping Act (Article 10.8 (commencing with Section 65591) of Chapter 3 of Division 1 of Title 7 of the Government Code)..
Commercial water uses – To be determined
The department, in coordination with the board, shall conduct necessary studies and investigations and recommend, no later than October 1, 2021, standards for outdoor irrigation of landscape areas with dedicated irrigation meters or other means of calculating outdoor irrigation use in connection with CII water use for adoption by the board in accordance with this chapter.
Find ways to stop water losses – To be determined.
Identify water management objectives based on the water budget to improve water system efficiency or to meet other water management objectives. The agricultural water supplier shall identify, prioritize, and implement actions to reduce water loss, improve water system management, and meet other water management objectives identified in the plan.
Establishes a method to calculate each urban water use objective – To be determined.
Requires the department (of Water Resources) to provide or otherwise identify data regarding the unique local conditions to support the calculation of an urban water use objective. – To be determined.
Requires annual reporting of the previous year’s water use with the urban water use objective.
Requires the department and the board to solicit broad public participation from stakeholders and other interested persons in the development of the standards and the adoption of regulations pursuant to this chapter.
The studies, investigations, and report…shall include collaboration with, and input from, a broad group of stakeholders, including, but not limited to, environmental groups, experts in indoor plumbing, and water, wastewater, and recycled water agencies.
Provides one-time-only authority to the department and board to adopt water use efficiency standards
Is there a better way to allocate a scarce resource than having legislators solicit help from special interest groups, such as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, the Environmental Working Group, et alia?
Yes. Markets are extremely good at allocating scarce resources. It’s what markets do. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner,” wrote Adam Smith, “but from their regard to their own interest.”
“The primary benefit of water markets is that it encourages people to put their money where their mouth is. In political arguments, it’s too easy to say you value more fish, streams, healthcare, or any other good above all else, if you know someone else will have to pay for it. Everything is assigned infinite value in the world of political rhetoric but, in the real world, we all constantly recognize and make tradeoffs.
“Water markets encourage people with conflicting interests to work together to make those tradeoffs. If environmentalists value an extra acre foot of water in a stream more than a farmer could profit by using it to grow crops, there’s an opportunity for a beneficial exchange. If they don’t, there isn’t—and the water will go to farms where its most valued, as it should.”
What does the above have to do with me pouring hot coffee on my balls? Let me tell you…
This week Anthony Bourdain took his life while on location in Paris. As of this writing, there is no indication why, though many are guessing at severe depression. In an interview with Baylen Linnekin, he said, “This notion that the government owes you food absolutely free of any risk or dirt is an unreasonable one,” he tells me, calling it a “worldview that seems to be shared by Republicans and Democrats . . . I think a reasonably intelligent person doesn’t need a warning label to tell them not to pour hot coffee on their balls.”
Is it too much to hope for that our governments acted as though their citizens were reasonably intelligent and allow them to live their lives without being told how to live it and that hot coffee might scald their genitals.
Apparently it is in these United States, and especially in progressive California.
Kiss taking showers and doing laundry at home goodbye and say hello to the world of regulations designed to micromanaging your life. If you own a business, you already know. If you don’t live in California, you should not think it won’t happen to you, especially if you live in a “blue” state.
New Orleans, Louisiana, 1943. Line at Rationing Board during World War II. Location is the 500 block of Gravier Street. Photograph by John Vachon, via Library of Congress website. Public Domain.
The Progressive majority in California’s legislature and Progressive Governor Jerry Brown know what is best for California. They are sure the state is running out of water and they have the sure-fired cure:
(drum roll)
….rationing.
Senate Bill No. 606, Hertzberg, Water management planning requires the State Water Resources Control Board to adopt long-term standards for the efficient use of water and would establish specified standards for per capita daily indoor urban residential water use.
Assembly Bill 1668 establishes a 55-gallon limits on urban area indoor water use for every urban person in California.
The bill, until January 1, 2025, would establish 55 gallons per capita daily as the standard for indoor residential water use, beginning January 1, 2025, would establish the greater of 52.5 gallons per capita daily or a standard recommended by the department and the board as the standard for indoor residential water use, and beginning January 1, 2030, would establish the greater of 50 gallons per capita daily or a standard recommended by the department and the board as the standard for indoor residential water use. The bill would impose civil liability for a violation of an order or regulation issued pursuant to these provisions, as specified.
Keep in mind an average person uses an average of 90 gallons per day. If you are poor and have older water appliances, you will be hit the hardest by this act. For example, older washers will use 40 gallons per load; one load of clothes in the old washing machine and a three-minute shower and you’ve reached your legal limit for water use for the day. Flushing the toilet will have to wait until tomorrow.
So why is Jerry Brown a prophet (or anyone in the majority in the California legislature, for that matter)? I have been reading (off and on) The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World by Charles C. Mann. In the book he talks of two very different men: Norman Borlaug (The Wizard) and Carl Vogt (The Prophet). In the Atlantic magazine Mann writes, “Both men thought of themselves as using new scientific knowledge to face a planetary crisis. But that is where the similarity ends. For Borlaug, human ingenuity was the solution to our problems….Vogt’s views were the opposite: The solution, he said, was to use ecological knowledge to get smaller….we may be able to grow enough food, but at the cost of wrecking the world’s ecosystems.”
Wizards see opportunities for using technology to improve humanity’s lot. Prophets see limits to what the planet can sustain and view technology with suspicion.
Prophet Jerry Brown sees California’s Mediterranean climate as limiting. Perhaps we could supply water for people and agriculture but only at the cost of wrecking California’s ecosystems. So if you disobey the almighty God state, thou shalt be smote but good…daily.
(1) If the violation occurs in a critically dry year immediately preceded by two or more consecutive below normal, dry, or critically dry years or during a period for which the Governor has issued a proclamation of a state of emergency under the California Emergency Services Act (Chapter 7 (commencing with Section 8550) of Division 1 of Title 2 of the Government Code) based on drought conditions, ten thousand dollars ($10,000) for each day in which the violation occurs.
(2) For all violations other than those described in paragraph (1), one thousand dollars ($1,000) for each day in which the violation occurs.
The poor will be hit hardest by this boondoggle. There are better ways to meet California’s water needs other than punishing people.
But then,I am a Wizard living in the land of Prophets.
The California Energy Commission (CEC) said, “Eureka, we have a refulgently brilliant idea! Let’s require installation of solar panels on new home and low-rise apartment building construction.” Assuming the California Building Standards Commission ratifies the CEC’s proposal (a purported slam-dunk) it will take affect starting January 1, 2020. Less than two years from now.
”The case for this was extremely strong,” [1] CEC commissioner Andrew McAllister said. “[In] California, we do believe in climate change, we do believe in facts … It’s become clear to all of us it’s the right thing to do and that the marketplace is ready.”[2] the UPI reported.
In light of their actions, what the CEC doesn’t believe in are: 1) carbon-free nuclear power plants, 2) consumer choice, or 3) free markets. California has bent to activist pressure and already closed the San Onofre nuclear power plant. Diablo Canyon’s nuclear power plants will close in 2024 and 2025. When the Commish said, ”[T]the marketplace is ready” he didn’t mean a marketplace where you get to choose what you want. He meant a marketplace where you get to pay for what he wants. He meant delicious gooey Crony Capitalism[3], where well-healed, well-connected lobbyists convince bureaucrats to employ the lobby’s preferred remedy.
According to NPR, “Representatives from construction groups, public utilities and solar manufacturers all spoke in support of the plan, which they’ve helped the commission develop for years,” the AP reports. “No industry groups spoke in opposition.” Of course, no groups spoke in opposition: the benefits are concentrated in a few industries and the harm is dispersed among many lower income people and potential homeowners.
The result is Crony Capitalist Pork. Keeping with the meat metaphor, I have no beef with these groups representing their constituents, but I don’t have to like the result. I like markets to sort out such things. Government’s role is to enforce contracts between individuals and protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. Beyond that, government’s top-down approach hampers market-driven, bottom-up solutions.
And the bottom line to everyone–but especially the people on the bottom economic rung–is it effectively takes money from their pockets to pay for this scheme. Under this program, everything is going to cost more, especially housing. And not just newly constructed housing. All housing will cost more, including rentals. Look for an upturn in people looking for existing homes because they’ve been priced out of building new. This will force prices up. It is obvious that the CEC does not understand supply and demand curves, incentives, or anything from a basic economics course.
Unlike Classical Liberals, Progressives within government are sure they know not only how to diagnose a market problem, but how to “fix” it with a sure fire prescription. It’s like your nosy neighbor telling you what’s wrong with your life and has the answer to help you. Now imagine she has the power to force you to do it. That is what the CEC has done. As Veronique de Rugy writes on Reason.com, “These members of the ‘government within the government,’ produce one freedom-restricting, economy-hindering rule after another without much oversight. These rules take many forms, and few even realize they’re in the making—until, that is, they hit you square in the face.”
Photo Credit: Libertarianism.org
The progressive Los Angeles Times editorial boardis all for punching you square in the face. “Of course California should require solar panels on new homes,” An LA Timesopinion piece gushed.
The opening paragraph says, getting punched in the face is good for you.
The benefits of solar power are well established. Photovoltaics harness the sun to create electricity, reducing the need for dirtier forms of energy. And residents generate their own power, cutting their utility bills.[4]
There is so much wrong with this paragraph. It begs the question with “The benefits of solar power are well established.” No, the benefits of solar power are not well established. As Michael Shellenberger, President of Environmental Progress notes, If Solar And Wind Are So Cheap, Why Are They Making Electricity So Expensive?“Electricity prices increased 24 percent in California during its solar energy build-out from 2011 to 2017.” And from 2011 to 2017, California, a state whose progressive leadership is committed to renewable energy, saw electricity rates rise to five times higher than the national average. And California is not a one-off in the rate hike department. Germany, Denmark, and Spain already blazed that trail.
The Times editorial goes on to say, The energy commission’s new building standards, which require both solar panels and upgraded insulation, air filters and other efficiency measures, are expected to raise the cost of a new home by $9,500. That’s about half the cost of installing solar systems on existing homes (although tax breaks and other financial incentives can lower the bill). And homes built to the new standards are expected to use 50% as much energy as homes built in 2016 without solar panels….
Yes, the new standards will increase the cost to build homes and apartment complexes. That’s a concern in California, which is in the midst of a housing crisis because it failed for years to build enough homes to keep up with population demand. However, energy-efficiency investments save money over time. The energy commission estimated the new standards will add $40 per month to the average new home mortgage payment, but save $80 per month on heating, cooling and lighting.
The installation cost appears correct though it may turn out to be higher. It is the anticipated savings in energy that they expect that should trouble you. Federal and state governments continue to press for efficiency as a way to save fuel (in order to lower greenhouse gas emissions). And they are usually dead wrong. Too often, government officials do not consider The Energy Efficiency Paradox. Basically, if you save money on one thing, you have money for more of that thing or of something else. If your house is better insulated you might opt to make it cooler or warmer to be more comfortable. You might take a drive to the beach with your savings or buy a bigger car.
And the mandate will be a tax on other rate payers. According to Severin Borenstein, E.T. Grether Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy at the Haas School of Business writing to Commissioner Weisenmiller, “The savings calculated for the households are based on residential electricity rates that are far above the actual cost of providing incremental energy, so embody a large cross subsidy from other ratepayers. This would be a very expensive way to expand renewables and would not be a cost effective practice…” In a nutshell, the LA Times editorial board and the CEC cooked the numbers.
The state is spurring innovation and job creation in the clean-energy sector. (California is ranked first in the nation for solar industry jobs at 86,000 — seven times more than the second-ranked state.)
Whenever you hear about government “spurring innovation and job creation”it is to cover the noise of cash being sucked from your bank account. Pork rarely innovates anything. And, the number of jobs is not a good thing. It is the opposite of a good thing for the majority of us—the people paying for electricity and for stuff made with that electricity. The electricity made with solar costs more because it takes forty people in solar to produce the same amount of electricity produced using natural gas. Lots of Jobs per KWH is Bad, not Good. [5]
The Times board sums up their argument with, At the moment, there’s simply no better way to reduce the power demand and greenhouse gas emissions from new residential developments than combining solar power with more energy-efficient designs. The long-term savings, both to homeowners and to the environment, are well worth the up-front cost.
I can think of several reasons for the editorial board lobbing this insane whopper. The possibility that I favor is they have their heads so far up their asses they can’t see more obvious possibilities, such as nuclear.[6] Robert Bryce said in a talk he gave, “There has been a continuing pursuit of density, and, more particularly, power density. And yet now when it comes to energy production, we are told we should go the other way. Toward low power density….This makes no sense. I’d call it insane but it would be an insult to crazy people.”
In an insult to crazy people, California is requiring a hella-expensive feel good virtue signal and shutting down its power-dense, carbon-free nuclear power plants and replacing them with natural gas and coal (forget the solar panels—they all make power at the same time—driving down the value of the electricity they produce.)
Insane.
California already has too much solar, top economist argues.
No. He lies like a cheap rug. Cardboard suitcases are stronger than this case’s raison d’être. The case isn’t very strong at all.
Translation: “The fix is in.”
Also known as cronyism, venture socialism, corporatism, mercantilism, or just plain horse droppings. “Unlike in a free market capitalist system, under crony capitalism it is often more profitable for businesses to spend resources lobbying legislators for handouts in the form of grants, loans, or tax advantages, and protections against competition in order to increase their profits.In turn, the government’s willingness to hand out special privileges promotes the politically well-connected rather than those who seek to earn the preference of investors and consumers based on merit. The gains of such activities usually accrue to the businesses and politicians involved at the expense of consumers and taxpayers.” http://library.intellectualtakeout.org/library/business-and-economics/free-market-capitalism-vs-crony-capitalism
See Footnote 1
Imagine going to Burger King for dinner and, by law, each BK must employ 40 times the people it would normally at $15 per hour to make your meal. The result is one hellaciously expensive burger.
“Of all ignorance, the ignorance of the educated is the most dangerous. Not only are educated people likely to have more influence, they are the last people to suspect that they don’t know what they are talking about when they go outside their narrow fields.”- Thomas Sowell
On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States heard 
Nullius in Verba 