[HN Gopher] EPA Takes Action to Protect Scientific Integrity
___________________________________________________________________
EPA Takes Action to Protect Scientific Integrity
Author : samizdis
Score : 156 points
Date : 2021-02-10 09:59 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.epa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.epa.gov)
| jwr wrote:
| I wonder if we'll see a comeback of the EPA. In the last few
| years it was a mockery of the name, doing exactly the opposite.
| refurb wrote:
| Didn't the EPA burst open an old gold mine and poison a huge
| swath of a Colorado River tributary? Not sure they need help in
| making a mockery of their name.
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| Refurb is referring to the EPA personnel created disaster
| near Durango Colorado of the Animas River. I suspect this is
| wrong think so he's being greytexted. There are plugins that
| remove censoring from HN for those that gas.
|
| edit: link for the censors. please read the first sentence.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Gold_King_Mine_waste_wate.
| ..
|
| "The 2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill was an
| environmental disaster that began at the Gold King Mine near
| Silverton, Colorado,[2] when Environmental Protection Agency
| (EPA) personnel, along with workers for Environmental
| Restoration LLC (a Missouri company under EPA contract to
| mitigate pollutants from the closed mine), caused the release
| of toxic waste water into the Animas River watershed."
| rcxdude wrote:
| Reading further than the first few sentances, it looks like
| it was already an environmental disaster and a ticking time
| bomb for getting worse, and the EPA was attempting to
| resolve the issue (under significant constraints due to
| local politics). This seems a bit akin to blaming the bomb
| squad for an explosion.
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| Having worked as a consultant in the area in the past,
| there is much more to the story. I'll summarize for you.
| It was fine until they started to muck around.
| mcguire wrote:
| The perception of a problem is inversely related to the
| amount of income one gets from ignoring the problem.
| klyrs wrote:
| > Prior to the spill, the Upper Animas water basin had
| already become devoid of fish, because of the adverse
| environmental impacts of regional mines such as Gold
| King, when contaminants entered the water system. Other
| plant and animal species were also adversely affected in
| the watershed before the Gold King Mine breach.
|
| This doesn't sound "fine" to me. They mucked about
| because the muck had already devastated the area.
| ohyeshedid wrote:
| > There are plugins that remove censoring from HN for those
| that gas.
|
| You could also set 'showdead' in your hn profile to yes,
| and not need the third party software.
| mcguire wrote:
| And the second paragraph:
|
| " _Contractors accidentally destroyed the plug holding
| water trapped inside the mine, which caused an overflow of
| the pond, spilling three million US gallons (eleven
| thousand cubic metres) of mine waste water and tailings,
| including heavy metals such as cadmium and lead, and other
| toxic elements, such as arsenic,[5] beryllium,[5] zinc,[5]
| iron[5] and copper[5] into Cement Creek, a tributary of the
| Animas River and part of the San Juan River and Colorado
| River watershed._ "
|
| Note the words "contractors" and "accidentally". Also note
| that the EPA has taken responsibility for the accident.[1]
| If you think this reflects poorly on the EPA, you may wish
| to have a word with the United States oil, gas, and
| chemical industries.
|
| [1] Yes, and refused to pay "on grounds of sovereign
| immunity, pending special authorization from Congress or
| re-filing of lawsuits in federal court."
| BigGreenTurtle wrote:
| It sounds like mining companies created a disaster aided by
| shoddy work from the state of Colorado who then asked the
| EPA to bail them out.
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| Mining companies from the 1840's or maybe the rich white
| folk who moved to the area much much later should have
| researched before sticking holes in the ground.
| 1_2__4 wrote:
| This isn't a helpful or constructive comment. It would be
| better suited for a Twitter slap fight thread.
| HonestOp001 wrote:
| It is a government agency, full of politicos at the top.
|
| If you think a presidency has an effect on the agency, then
| please look at the dam burst and the ridiculous Detroit water
| issue.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Another reason you should be using water filters at home.
| zionic wrote:
| I took it a step further, I had been using a large (roughly 1L
| in size) sink-attaching filter (think of a standing filter with
| its on spigot that attaches to your sink with a bypass/selector
| knob). $75 on amazon so not bad.
|
| While that was a great improvement over tap I really worried
| about all the stuff it couldn't get, so I purchased a home
| distiller. I fill the distiller with filtered water for
| maintenance reasons (way less effort to clean out of the
| distiller), and it can make a gallon in about 3 hours. I add
| 1/4 tea spoon of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and a pinch
| of pink salt for minerals to each gallon and shake well. I dump
| each gallon into a borosilicate glass container w/304 stainless
| dispenser nozzle in the fridge that holds 3 gallons.
|
| It is by far the best tasting water I have ever had, no bottled
| water even comes close. You can tweak the baking soda and added
| salt to your personal taste, total cost around $350
| refurb wrote:
| Am I the only one who thinks you can't separate science and
| politics when it comes to deciding policy?
|
| I agree 100% we should not be fudging the science. If the LD50 of
| a chemical is 10mg, we shouldn't be playing with the number to
| make it 20mg to say it's safe.
|
| But translating an LD50 of 10mg to _government policy_ is of
| course fraught with political bias and interference. Scientists
| might say "that pesticide is toxic we should ban it", but they
| know one side of the equation. What's the economic impact? What's
| the impact on jobs? What if there is one industry that has to
| shutdown if it's banned? What if it's need in the defense
| industry?
|
| Anyone who says "just follow the science" is inferring that
| science will give you one answer, and only one answer, and every
| other answer is undeniably wrong. That's rarely the case. It's
| usually probabilities, other theories are likely wrong, but maybe
| not. The world isn't black and white. Even in science.
| iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote:
| 100% agree, science provides information about causal
| relationships, that's all. It doesn't make decisions for you,
| it doesnt reflect the will of people.
|
| The decision making / consensus building should be the job of
| politicians. Saying science tells us we need to do x is a lazy
| shortcut.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is true, but the problem is the government policy may
| consist of (wrongly, without evidence) saying "no, it isn't
| poisonous".
|
| The usual question is "what if the industry in question has
| made campaign or PAC donations? what if it's located in an
| electorally marginal state?"
|
| Or, these days, "what if the government is dependent for its
| support on a weird youtube-based cult that thinks that 5G
| causes viruses?"
| yholio wrote:
| You are right in your intuition that government and science are
| not the same thing. Politics deals with power and subjective
| perception of values. Safety versus liberty is not something
| you can prove one way or the other, different people have
| different expectations from society and we try to develop
| political and leadership systems that account for those
| preferences.
|
| When you go overboard is using politics to decide on issues
| other than values. For example, we have widely decided that
| poisoning people is bad. Some amount of harm is inevitable in
| the real world, and we have set (purely political) limits on
| acceptable risk, say, one in a million that you get cancer.
|
| Once that value decision is made, the job of politics stops, 1
| in a million cancer risk from Asbestos is the same as 1 in a
| million from second hand cigarette smoke. It's irrelevant how
| many people work in the cigarette industry, it's importance to
| the GPD, how well connected politically are the cigarette
| manufacturers etc. The risk becomes a pure scientific fact that
| is not amenable to political negotiations.
| Frost1x wrote:
| From what I understand reading through the memorandum, knowing
| a bit about how these agencies operate, and understanding how
| policy is made, what you want is what is happening here.
| Remember hurricane forecasts where Trump or one of his minions
| literally labeled his own projected path in with a sharpie?
| That's the nonsense we don't want to see.
|
| The point of the memorandum and actions are that in the
| previous administration, in order to influence policy, the
| scientific evidence was ignored, manipulated, cherry picked,
| etc. to match a policy decision that was already made. This is
| trying to protect against that sort of action. They were
| producing false information and labeling it scientific evidence
| undermining trust in government and federally funded scientific
| research.
|
| It's one thing to say: here's the evidence, but unfortunately
| we can't do that for reason X. It's another thing to say:
| outcome X needs to happen, here's some fringe science that
| supports us doing X.
|
| Policy will still be made weighing in other factors going
| forward, it's just nice to know the evidence preceeds the
| decision and you can hopefully better trust the evidence to
| know if there are mistakes, it's not likely due to political
| pressure of say the current POTUS.
| refurb wrote:
| You talk about cherry picking or ignoring data. But that
| happens in science as well. I can remember in graduate school
| there were two senior researchers with competing scientific
| theories. They both just made judgement calls about which
| data could be ignored and which was solid and could be relied
| upon.
|
| So if we extend this to the EPA, it seems like we might be
| getting into the realm where scientific integrity means
| "nobody questions our view of the science".
|
| You see that trend already "we follow the science". Well
| there is not one universal scientific truth all the time. Two
| people could both "follow the science" and make very
| different decisions.
| josephorjoe wrote:
| > What if there is one industry that has to shutdown if it's
| banned?
|
| Then the world is improved and we should all feel relieved.
| Seems pretty straightforward.
|
| Just because someone found a way to profit while damaging
| society doesn't mean they have some right to keep profiting
| once society realizes what is going on.
| rkangel wrote:
| I agree with you - the complexity is that the division between
| 'doing science' and 'making decisions based on science and
| other factors' isn't necessarily clear. The simplest expression
| of this is choosing which of (possibly conflicting) papers to
| listen to. Drug companies have their version of this where they
| cherry pick clinical trials with results they like.
| other_function wrote:
| Not sure why you are being downvoted. This is a correct stance.
| It is also important to note that two different branches of
| science can lead us to opposing outcomes. For instance much of
| the trash that is harmful and damaging to the environment was
| developed by material scientist seeking a cheap, human safe,
| and reliable storage solution for water (water bottles). This
| took a lot of very smart scientist incredible amounts of time.
| Of course environmental scientists rue the day these bottles
| ended up in the ocean. Science doesn't lead us one place, it
| leads us all over the place.
| iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote:
| Comments like yours and its parent get downvoted because
| "science" has become a religion in the eyes of many, and they
| find it heretical to question its teaching. As a scientist I
| find this ironic but also horrifying to see the same behavior
| that we've seen many centuries ago in other religions now
| intruding into science.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Science never tells you "what" to do. But it does tell you
| what is happening (e.g. Drinking water in area X will reduce
| your life expectancy by y% or change your odds of cancer Z by
| v%).
|
| "Politicizing science" happens a lot, is terrible, and is
| stoppable, and must be a goal. Denying global warming is
| "politicizing science," saying "vaccines cause autism [when
| studies show they don't]" is politicizing science. Saying
| "Covid is no worse than a flu" is politicizing science.
|
| This specific case is about EPA not being able to release
| numbers for a chemical that is KNOWN to be toxic (and epa is
| years/decades behind the science already) [1]
|
| Your stance is weirdly reductive/defeatist.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid
| sthnblllII wrote:
| Denying the high heritability of IQ and its effect on
| racial income gaps is another example of non-experts
| denying science for political reasons.
|
| http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-
| content/uploads/PifferIntelli...
| kryogen1c wrote:
| wildly offtopic, but:
|
| > the Biden-Harris Administration
|
| this phrase made me stop in my tracks. its so bizarre that for
| the past 4 years, almost everything has been "the trump
| administration", and now its a pres-VP team.
|
| i cant help but think its reflective of the open secret that
| biden was elected in failing health and is basically just a
| gateway for kamala. its probably also an appeal to the fact that
| shes a woman so its the PR win that just keeps winning. a darker
| part of me worries its a foreshadowing of hierarchy-less woke
| culture (see kamala's videos on equity and enforced equal
| outcome[1]).
|
| i dont really have a thesis, but boy american politics is sure in
| a weird place. bettin money says its about to get way weirder.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4kowE_YIVw
| fock wrote:
| 3M and DuPont knew 30 years ago about the PFAS-dangers, yet here
| we are still using it and the "replacement" GenX is not a bit
| less problematic (try to Google that. Apparently someone doesn't
| want you to find that...)
| minikites wrote:
| It can't actually be that bad because if it was, the free
| market would punish Du Pont, right?
| spodek wrote:
| A lot longer than 30 years.
|
| I'm reading _Exposure_ by the lawyer who helped blow the case
| open, Robert Bilott, portrayed in the movie _Dark Waters_ ,
| which I recommend -- the book and movie.
|
| What DuPont knowingly did, sacrificing our health for their
| profit, would be unbelievable except that it happened.
|
| Over 99 percent of us have these known carcinogens and causers
| of birth defect in our blood. As they knew, our bodies don't
| know how to get rid of them nor process them into anything
| benign.
|
| And that's just one class of known-to-be-dangerous but
| profitable chemicals they create and dump. If they had to pay
| the externalities, Teflon would cost . . . well, what price do
| you put on testicular cancer, or a baby born with half a nose
| or eyes in the wrong place?
| staticautomatic wrote:
| In case you were wondering, the term for "causer of birth
| defect" is teratogen.
| refurb wrote:
| Teflon? Teflon the polymer isn't toxic. The monomer is a gas.
| Teflon is used in medical implants. It's a massive
| technological gain, massive positive externalities.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The _resulting product_ is fine, yes (assuming proper
| filtering at the end to remove contaminants). The nasty
| things happen along the production process, similar to why
| an _awful lot_ of the US Superfund sites are in the
| "Silicon Valley" - the production process leached chemicals
| in the landscape:
| https://cleanair.camfil.us/2017/11/21/toxic-danger-
| silicon-v...
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >What DuPont knowingly did, sacrificing our health for their
| profit, would be unbelievable except that it happened.
|
| Why would that seem unbelievable to you? Aren't there
| countless examples of corporations harming humanity for
| profit?
| linuxftw wrote:
| Wait until you hear about pharmaceutical companies.
| klyrs wrote:
| First hit for "teflon alternative genx"
|
| https://www.nrdc.org/experts/anna-reade/epa-finds-replacemen...
| zepto wrote:
| > GenX is not a bit less problematic
|
| Do you mean Generation X, or is this a reference to some
| chemical?
| fock wrote:
| it's a chemical, but of course every reference is
| conveniently painted over by this
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| It's not exactly hard to find by just searching "GenX
| chemical"
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I think the EPA, and most executive agencies should not be
| allowed to write policy. They should be broken up into an
| independent advisory group, and an enforcement group which would
| be part of the FBI. The advisory group would advise congress on
| environmental concerns, and congress should write laws
| accordingly, balancing all other concerns. Before you come at me
| for being for deregulation, I think punishments should be extreme
| for breaking environmental laws. In my world C-Level/Board
| members of a company willfully polluting to save money would be
| executed. I just don't think its ok to have bureaucrats writing
| detailed policies that have the same power as law.
| acover wrote:
| Why can't congress delegate implementation to an agency?
|
| Congress can always override the agency if needed. If you think
| congress is incapable of oversight then you are just for
| complete deregulation.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| It's much harder to change a law, because there are many more
| chefs in the kitchen. The president can put pressure on any
| of the executive agencies to make any policy they want. One
| person should not have that much power over ~400,000,000
| people, even if i agree with that person.
|
| Federal laws should be simple and straight forward enough
| that most people agree with them. The only way to achieve
| that is to have some accountability to those people.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I think the inherent complexity of, e.g. environmental
| regulation is such that it's impossible to write them in a
| way that is both effective and straightforward enough to be
| widely understood, much less widely agreed on.
| Inflexibility also works against effectiveness in cases
| where the law must adjust rapidly to changing conditions.
| While the US hasn't implemented it terribly well, I think
| the executive agency model is potentially a good one.
| cheschire wrote:
| Most people cannot agree on even simple and straightforward
| issues due to any number of reasons ranging from capacity
| for change, political alignment, or what their favorite
| news anchor told them to do.
|
| And that seems obvious enough that it really does just
| sound like you're wanting deregulation.
|
| And if not, then it sounds like you want to have your cake
| and eat it too.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _Most people cannot agree on even simple and
| straightforward issues due to any number of reasons
| ranging from capacity for change, political alignment, or
| what their favorite news anchor told them to do_
|
| This is not true, most people don't really care. They
| might have a team they root for, but even those seemingly
| braindead people that are posting on the internet towing
| their party line are just looking for a way to fit in.
| They are all capable of thinking for themselves, and most
| of them will have a reasonable conversation with you if
| you run into them in the real world.
|
| Seriously all I am saying is that regulation should be
| slow to change, and be approved by elected officials. I
| also think there should be way more congressional
| districts, and senators. Currently there is way too small
| of a sample size to be representative of the population.
| Basically I'm in favor of more democracy not less.
| Honestly if it wasn't such a waste of time I would be ok
| with replacing congress with open voting on every issue.
| cheschire wrote:
| I do agree that it's an interesting thought experiment to
| consider if federal law were decided entirely by popular
| voting. I think it would need to be compulsory, however,
| to ensure enough people voted on niche issues.
| mcguire wrote:
| Quick, without looking it up---or rather, doing the
| necessary experiments---what is the proper limits for the
| amount of cadmium in drinking water? :-)
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Isn't the proposal that any evidence of the toxicity of
| cadmium be given to the legislators? Presumably with
| information about the cost of regulating cadmium in
| drinking water so that they can weigh the tradeoffs?
| wonder_er wrote:
| > If you think congress is incapable of oversight ...
|
| I think the burden of proof is on you to show why you think
| congress is capable of oversight.
|
| Selection bias, etc, but when I reflect on this I can think
| (and quickly find) dozens of instances, large and small,
| where congress has demonstrated "oversight incompetence".
| acover wrote:
| I disagree. They are for congress writing detailed laws for
| every environmental issue.
|
| They need to show that congress is capable of that.
| coliveira wrote:
| The problem is not that bureaucrats are writing these laws (at
| some level this needs to happen), but the immoral relationship
| between these agencies and private interests. Everyone knows
| about the revolving doors between industry and government. This
| needs to be stopped by congress.
| ip26 wrote:
| I agree it needs fixing but allegedly it's pretty hard to
| solve. The ideal regulator knows the industry inside & out.
| Best place to find these people? From the industry. But the
| appointment is only a few years long, and these people still
| need a job after their appointment ends.
| coliveira wrote:
| That not correct. It is similar to saying that the ideal
| person to write criminal laws must be a criminal. One
| possible place to find people with deep knowledge about a
| particular area is academia, just to give an example.
| rmah wrote:
| For some industries, it's not just correct, but very
| correct :-).
|
| I have a bit of experience in working with a financial
| industry group that coordinated with regulators in
| different nations (US, EU, UK, Japan, Brazil, Singapore,
| etc.) in finalizing the details of rules for a fairly
| esoteric area of finance. None of this stuff is taught in
| schools except in the most general/theoretical terms.
| It's very complex and tough to understand without being
| well versed in: financial markets, stochastic calculus,
| derivatives, risk models, monte-carlo simulations, trade
| execution, inter-institution asset liabilities, etc, etc,
| etc. It's literally impossible to even know half this
| stuff the regulations covered exists without having
| worked in the industry for an extended period of time.
| Much less understand the implications of rules changes.
|
| From the various calls I sat in on, a few things that
| became clear to me was that:
|
| 1) while industry did have a significant say in how the
| rules were eventually setup, the overriding goal was a)
| clarity and b) uniformity across jurisdictions. the exact
| details were (usually) not quite as important.
|
| 2) while regulators (i.e. government) left much of the
| details to the industry group, they a) set the broad
| goals and guidelines and b) did sometimes make decisions
| that nearly everyone on the industry side did not like.
| But those decisions were always accepted in the end
| (often with lots of offline complaining) -- industry
| didn't really have a choice.
|
| 3) regulators clearly had authority over industry even
| though the people there were ex-industry. They knew it
| and everyone in industry clearly knew it.
|
| Essentially, it was regulators off-loading a bunch of
| work on industry. If they had to pay for it themselves,
| it would have cost a silly amount of money to set the
| rules for an sub-industry 99% of people have never even
| heard of.
|
| Where corruption comes into play is what those "broad
| goals and guidelines" are. And that's decided at the
| legislative level, not at the bureaucratic level. Perhaps
| things are different for the EPA and manufacturing. I
| can't say as I don't have any experience interacting with
| the EPA.
| coliveira wrote:
| That's just a bunch of nonsense. Every single topic you
| mention (derivatives, stochastic calculus, risk models,
| etc.) is well known and studied in universities before it
| even entered the radar of financial institutions. What
| universities don't know is the insidious combination of
| rules they're trying to come up with in industry, because
| that is the "secret sauce" they want to conceal. This is
| exactly why regulation needs to be done outside the
| industry circle that will benefit from it: society needs
| to have clarity about what kinds of deals Wall Street and
| other industries are trying to work on. Without this
| transparency, the work of specialists in Wall Street
| payroll will always be seen, with reason, as suspicious.
| zepto wrote:
| It's a nice idea but if you have scientists as just advisors,
| separate from policymaking, the science will simply be muted
| altogether.
| analog31 wrote:
| Going further, if enforcement is separate, I predict hearing
| from the FBI, "we have enough money to catch polluters or
| murderers, which do you prefer?" My state (Wisconsin) has
| largely de-funded enforcement of environmental laws, with
| predictable effect.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _we have enough money to catch polluters or murderers_
|
| Mass marginal murderers versus highly concentrated
| murderers. ;)
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >"we have enough money to catch polluters or murderers,
| which do you prefer?"
|
| If the rest of law enforcement is any indication then this
| should work out quite well and align the enforcers with
| what people actually want.
|
| Look at poor city police departments. This is basically
| what they do. They prioritize the crimes that get their
| bosses yelled at by the politicians. It certainly isn't
| great for the officers who have to work in it but it's a
| great way to ensure resource allocation at least kinda
| sorta reflects the will of the people.
|
| The FBI and EPA have no shortage of "you spent your
| resources doing what?" themed missteps. There needs to be
| some way to get them to do what people actually want them
| to do.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _...what people actually want them to do._ "
|
| Which is ... nothing, in regards to regulatory matters,
| at least. Until it begins to affect them, in which case
| it becomes a crisis requiring immediate and massive
| changes, if the people in question have enough political
| clout.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Didn't we just have a significant amount of protesting
| against city police departments that would strongly
| indicate a massive disconnect between policing and the
| community?
| [deleted]
| cgriswald wrote:
| I think that's a far lesser problem than having un-elected
| individuals making and enforcing the same laws. Congress
| hasn't just abdicated a _power_ , they've abdicated a
| _responsibility_. You 're worried about bad lawmakers, but
| that's a problem orthogonal to the issue and how we ended up
| with such a structure in the first place.
| jxramos wrote:
| How can they be making and enforcing laws? Doesn't that
| violate the separation of powers? Where do they get their
| authority to enforce laws precisely and by what means?
| mcguire wrote:
| Think of it as a separation of powers issue itself.
|
| Assuming agencies only have advisory capabilities and
| that regulation itself is handled by lawmakers directly.
| The determination of what is safe or not becomes a matter
| of who has the best lobbyists; any actual damages will
| occur years down the line, will be visible only in
| statistical terms (i.e. a higher rate of leukemia), and
| will only affect people without significant political
| power. This is a textbook description of an issue which
| democratic institutions are _spectacularly_ bad at
| handling: expert knowledge is required to understand the
| issue, there is no immediacy, and the consequences are
| delayed while the costs are up-front. Consider climate
| change---it will cost a shit-ton of money, cause a crap-
| load of damage, and yet humanity has collectively done
| essentially nothing to prevent it in something like 40
| years.
|
| Now, it's possible that legislative regulation could
| work, if the legislators essentially rubber-stamp the
| advisories from the agency, but still allows political
| influence in the issues. Consider PVC and cigarettes.
|
| The approach, then, is for the legislature to delegate
| authority for regulation, within specific parameters, to
| an executive agency. The agency then sets the
| regulations, which the legislature can override with
| exactly the same ease as they would regulate them in the
| parent's model.
|
| I am unaware of any country that relies on legislative
| regulation and is regarded in any sense as successful. In
| fact, political interference in regulations is almost
| universally regarded as a bad thing.
|
| Anybody have a specific example of regulatory excesses?
|
| [At one point I got trapped in a conversation with a
| cousin's husband, who had recently gotten fined by OSHA
| or the state equivalent because he had diesel stored in
| the correctly color-coded container, but it did not have
| "diesel" written on it. I thought about mentioning people
| who didn't know the color codes (Red = gasoline, yellow =
| diesel, blue = kerosene, and green = oils) or about the
| color-blind, but I prefer to avoid arguments.]
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Yes, but how much pollution to accommodate is a decidedly
| political question. Science cannot answer how much is too
| much. If your answer is that no pollution is acceptable,
| that's not science either (frankly, it's more akin to an
| ideological position). But presuming you're willing to
| admit that the benefits of certain activities outweigh
| their impacts to the environment or human health,
| particularly when our information is imperfect, then the
| question becomes how much is too much. And every human
| has their own utility curve and risk preferences. Science
| cannot answer those questions. Like the parent, I agree
| that this is decidedly a question for policy makers
| (preferably accountable to the electorate) informed by
| science.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _How can they be making and enforcing laws?_
|
| The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Procedure_
| Act...
| Retric wrote:
| It's more obvious with a specific example.
|
| Write a law that makes penalties for speeding without
| directly defining the speed limit on every road. Then
| write a law giving the department of motor vehicles the
| ability to define a different speed limit for each
| stretch of road.
|
| As such government agencies aren't actually creating
| laws, but the laws are written to give their choices
| legal weight.
| hertzrat wrote:
| Science (besides political science) is not about politics or
| policy making. Science is about earnestly seeking reliable
| knowledge. By placing scientists in political roles where
| they may need to "play the game" to get results, it makes the
| advice they give less reliable due to compromises or
| political pressure, and makes people trust science less as a
| side effect. Not that scientists shouldn't be in office, just
| that acting in both roles at once is complicated
| ethbr0 wrote:
| "Science" as a pursuit of knowledge is.
|
| Technically, in the US, executive branch agencies do two
| things: (1) sponsor actual science (either directly by
| employees, or by grant to third parties), (2) decide on how
| to apply scientific results.
|
| "The EPA" is more of a body concerned with "What do we do
| about scientific results?" than "What is scientific truth?"
|
| It often conducts research, usually in areas where private
| industry has no incentive to do so, but that's not _why_ it
| exists.
|
| And historically the dichotomy between science and policy
| has been reflected in the organization: scientists were
| highly discouraged from advocating policy positions in
| their research results, and policymakers were highly
| discouraged from influencing science.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Both norms are rapidly changing.
| zepto wrote:
| > Science (besides political science) is not about politics
| or policy making. Science is about earnestly seeking
| reliable knowledge.
|
| You are talking about the scientific method.
|
| Science is generally used as a broader term that includes
| how practice of the scientific method relates to society.
| vkou wrote:
| Congress has been deadlocked for the past two decades, where
| even the least contentious pieces of legislature can't make it
| through the senate filibuster.
|
| If your goal is to freeze all environmental law at where it is
| today, I agree, neutering the EPA is the best way to accomplish
| that.
|
| If your goal is to have democratic oversight over the EPA, you
| already have that - by virtue of voting for the executive.
| You're essentially grousing that the executive has more power
| than you'd like them to have in a scenario where their main
| check-and-balance - the legislature - is busy playing golf and
| arguing over suit colors. Okay, sure, that's definitely an
| argument you can make, but that's not going to change as long
| as the legislature remains deadlocked, and unwilling to
| _legislate_.
|
| If the legislature wanted to, it could trivially overturn
| policies, by passing new laws. It doesn't, though. Your
| democratic oversight is already here - its just that the
| representatives you voted for disagree with you on whether or
| not they should do anything.
|
| In a battle between regulatory policy and regulatory law, law
| will win nine times out of ten. Your lawmakers aren't fighting
| that battle, though. This is not a problem with your system,
| this is a problem with your lawmakers. Democracy is giving us
| exactly what we've asked for.
| boh wrote:
| Policies don't have the same power of law, they do however
| include incentives for compliance.
|
| My cable company doesn't have to go through Congress to pass
| legislation to have me comply in paying my bill. They can
| choose to give me late fees and ultimately cut my service,
| incentivizing me to comply. Does that mean that corporate
| middle managers, who were not democratically appointed, are
| regulating my behavior on par with the governing body of the
| US? This may seem like a dissimilar comparison, but corporate
| entities establish policies that effect consumer behavior all
| the time. Most decisions in general aren't made democratically,
| given the need for specialized knowledge and effective/time-
| sensitive execution for many decisions. Congress still makes
| the laws, agencies, and pretty much every private/public
| organizations, make policy. The assumption Congress would be
| better because they'd "balance all other concerns" has no
| bearing on reality.
| mlyle wrote:
| Policies totally have the same power as law. The DEA & FDA
| can decide something belongs on a schedule, and then the DEA
| can arrest you and have you put in prison for possessing
| something on that schedule.
| black6 wrote:
| It's the difference between the "legacy" government (your
| traditionally elected public officials), and the "efficiency"
| government of bureaucracy. The legislature in the US has
| offloaded the power to make law to a multitude of bureaucratic
| agencies through the use of administrative law, as distinct
| from legislative law. Through the acts that establish these
| agencies, they are granted the power to create and enforce
| these administrative laws, which often leave the law-breaker
| with little recourse other than capitulation. The book
| _National Security and Double Government_ by Michael Glennon is
| a fantastic resource for those interested in learning more.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Delegating a task to congress is how lobbyists ensure that it
| will not be done. It is a highly effective tactic.
| garmaine wrote:
| > In my world C-Level/Board members of a company willfully
| polluting to save money would be executed.
|
| I... what? I'm glad I don't live in that dystopia.
| jackpirate wrote:
| It shocked me at first too, but on thinking about it the
| policy a bit more I think it's actually quite reasonable.
|
| Environmental pollution directly results in increased human
| death (due to cancers/etc), and GP wants the people
| responsible to be liable for those deaths. Under this scheme,
| accidental pollution would then be the equivalent of
| manslaughter, and intentional pollution would be the
| equivalent of murder. I'm personally not a fan of executing
| murderers, but many states in the US execute them.
| garmaine wrote:
| Most of the civilized world has gotten rid of the death
| penalty, even in murder cases. Even those that still do
| have capital punishment generally do NOT apply it to
| manslaughter cases. Your jump from manslaughter to murder
| is not legally justified, unless the polluter caused
| environmental damage _explicitly for the purpose of killing
| people_ , which I'm pretty sure is not what you are
| describing.
|
| But even setting that aside, we are talking about capital
| punishment for a crime, the evidence for which is
| statistical and divorced from the actual crime itself. The
| managers who make the decision to pollute aren't on the
| scene leaving their fingerprints. As this is not something
| for which there is a smoking gun proof of culpability,
| which makes it ripe for abuse. Do you really think the
| people who called the shots are going to be the one on the
| executioner's block, or will it be some mid-level fall guy?
| And what about manufactured controversy? How difficult
| would it be to make a spurious connection between some
| unlikeable business and an environmental disaster, getting
| a jury to give that business' managers the death penalty?
| What an upgrade to cancel culture: now you can get your
| opponents legally _murdered_.
|
| Finally, the actual suggestion here is that C-level
| leadership and board members be executed for crimes their
| company commits. Note this means that someone lower down in
| the organization could commit a crime which causes the CEO
| or board members to be executed. So we're talking about
| killing people who might not even have been involved in the
| decision at all!
|
| I stand by my prior description of this proposed society as
| dystopia.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Agreed. The problem is that many of these decisions are not
| exclusively "science." They involve policy-making, and agenda-
| driven organizations are masking their preferred policy choices
| as "science." Toxic risk assessments are a perfect example.
| Toxicity assessments are famously arbitrary (e.g., adjusting
| acceptable dosages by orders of magnitude on the basis of
| uncertainty when one could argue for any other uncertainty
| factor).
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| This.
|
| Not many people are anti-science. It's just when opinion gets
| passed for science that we should be worried because opinions
| are instructed by agenda. And if there is a funding motive
| behind that agenda, well, your gonna have problems with
| corruption.
| mcguire wrote:
| I dunno.
|
| From what I've seen, most people are pro-sciencism, not
| science. Science is difficult and rarely provides easy
| answers. If it does not affect them, sure---nobody really
| cares about the big bang, dark matter, etc., and astronomy
| provides pretty pictures---but if the question interacts
| with their jobs, cultures, or lifestyles then they are very
| happy picking the result that agrees with them and ignoring
| any nuance or counter-evidence.
|
| Would you or the parent have any specific examples? The
| only thing I can think of is the different values assigned
| to human life by different agencies.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| That's one. And as I mentioned above, the uncertainty
| factors are pretty wild. Because some individuals within
| a species may more vulnerable to a toxic than those
| tested, the standard practice is to move the decimal
| point for the lowest/no observed effect dosage one place
| to the left. And when you're using animal studies, it's
| standard practice to account for inter-species
| variability by moving the decimal point to the left
| another digit. If your data was at all suspect, they will
| apply another uncertainty factor (though usually less
| than a full order of magnitude). And always, the
| adjustment is in the direction of being more
| conservative, notwithstanding the fact that humans are
| frequently more resilient to toxic exposures than small
| animals, not less. An order of magnitude is a big deal
| when dealing with very small exposures. Two orders of
| magnitude starts to become completely unmoored from
| reality. How conservative we are in the face of that
| intra/inter-species uncertainty is couched as "science,"
| but it is TOTALLY a policy call. And it has real world
| impacts. For large manufacturers, an adjustment factor of
| half that much frequently means the difference between no
| pollution controls and tens (if not hundreds) of millions
| of dollars in pollution controls. I find that where you
| land on that uncertainty has nearly perfect correlation
| with your politics.
| gotstad wrote:
| I had this very discussion just a few days ago. Agencies like
| the EPA cannot satisfy their objectives by advising alone.
| Administration and case-handling is the bread and butter of
| executing any strategy, and laws alone won't cut it.
|
| It is inevitable to have some sort of policy-making involved,
| even for an agency, because the very strategy they choose to
| reach a certain goal (set by politicians) or enforce a law (set
| by politicians) may itself be a choice between political
| alternatives.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I agree with you regarding punishments for polluters (although
| I do find execution a bit on the harsh edge).
|
| However, your idea of agencies not writing policies... is not
| gonna last long. Congress is already ineffective and broken and
| there is not much on the horizon to change the reasons behind
| its dysfunctionality. There's a sad reason for the steady
| expansion of executive rights, and as long as this isn't fixed
| it is foolish IMO to force the executive to rein these in.
|
| Edit: not to mention that, unlike government agencies, Congress
| is extremely corrupt. What is to prevent polluters from simply
| buying off Congress?
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _Edit: not to mention that, unlike government agencies,
| Congress is extremely corrupt. What is to prevent polluters
| from simply buying off Congress?_
|
| Why would they be any less corrupt? What is the DEA's stance
| on cannabis again? No person or group is above being paid
| off, or acting in their own interests over those of the
| country. Which is why power should be spread out as much as
| possible, to mitigate the risk.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Why would they be any less corrupt?
|
| Government agencies have historically proven themselves to
| be largely immune to the wild flip-flop at the political
| top. This is the kernel of truth behind the Trumpists'
| claim of the "deep state" conspiracy.
|
| > What is the DEA's stance on cannabis again?
|
| The same unfounded-in-science crap it was many decades ago,
| which further proves my point: it is incredibly hard to
| change the course of a government agency away from its
| mandate.
| mcguire wrote:
| It's called the Civil Service system and it was put into
| place for a reason.
| nexthash wrote:
| The context to this is the EPA's toxicity assessment on PFAS
| chemicals ("forever chemicals"), which are a family of chemicals
| shown to stay in the environment and human body for extremely
| long periods of time. Under the Trump administration, the EPA's
| toxicity assessment on PFAS essentially provided polluters
| leniency on how much they could release.
|
| Consequently, these chemicals are showing up in significant
| numbers in drinking water & food. Since they are proven to have
| damaging effects on human health, this assessment is now being
| reevaluated. The lesson from all this is that depending on where
| you are and how you use tap water, the regulations might not line
| up with what's good for you. Use a water filter.
| jinkyu wrote:
| the definition of science has gotten pretty shady over the last
| decade. just sayin.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Only if you listen to Fox news types who believe or want you to
| believe there is any real debate over climate change.
| brink wrote:
| I think that OP is saying that science has become exceedingly
| politicized over the last decade. In which case they're
| right. Politically tainted science has emerged from the
| entire political spectrum, and it's enough to make you not
| want to trust what anyone claims to be science.
| 24gttghh wrote:
| That's the thing... science is a method. If you have
| _actual_ evidence, and reproducible results, then they
| speak for themselves. The problem is the wholesale, willful
| ignorance of this method.
| CivBase wrote:
| > That's the thing... science is a method.
|
| Exactly. Politicians and media outlets want us to believe
| science is just the opinions of people with credentials,
| regardless of evidence or consensus from others with
| similar credentials.
|
| Once those opinions are shared by enough political
| supporters, those same politicians and media outlets will
| do everything they can to amass evidence which supports
| them. It often comes in the form of quasi-scientific
| studies with unmentioned flaws and limitations. If you're
| lucky, the studies will even be peer reviewed; but once
| the opinions which the study seeks to verified have been
| so heavily politicized, it's much harder to trust the
| effectiveness of peer reviews.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Like what? Climate change for example has been
| independently confirmed so many times now - where is a
| list of papers that you are sure have been manipulated to
| suit political aims
| samizdis wrote:
| For some context, see _EPA alleges Trump officials interfered in
| toxic chemical assessment_ (Axios, Feb 9):
|
| https://www.axios.com/epa-trump-political-intereference-toxi...
| driverdan wrote:
| That doesn't clarify or add anything else, it just rewords the
| PR. What, exactly, was wrong? Who interfered? What does the
| science say?
| eqdw wrote:
| Weird... their name is EPA not SPA
| arthurcolle wrote:
| The last four years have been some Twilight Zone-level
| regressions in the simulation
|
| Glad to see the core maintainers are reviewing pull requests
| again
| meddlepal wrote:
| Temporarily reviewing until 2024 or 2028.
| mlindner wrote:
| Trump was historically unusual in this respect. So unless
| Trump comes back for re-election and wins, I don't think you
| need to worry.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Trump's environmental regulatory bonfire is something
| Republican presidents have sought to do since Nixon.
| refurb wrote:
| Nixon created the EPA.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > So unless Trump comes back for re-election and wins, I
| don't think you need to worry.
|
| There will always be someone similar to his thinking, but
| more competent in execution and networking. The world was
| _incredibly_ lucky that Trump had a short attention span
| and was pretty much seen as disgusting by most of the
| political establishment of both parties - they saw him as
| an useful tool for their own purposes (tax cuts,
| immigration /environment/anti-LGBT/anti-abortion policy),
| but didn't let Trump accomplish much else.
|
| To make it worse: the Republican Party is so overrun with
| rabid Trumpists and so dependent on his voter base (because
| moderates have fled to the Democrats) that they cannot even
| sanction someone like MT Greene, who openly spouts QAnon
| conspiracies. What once began with the Tea Party and had
| its culmination with the Trump Presidency will not be
| vanished easily... to gain back the moderate side of
| voters, the Republicans would have to commit to a cleaning
| so deep that it may reduce them to opposition for many
| years - in a time where lots of the population are going to
| shift left as an after-effect of the coronavirus shocks and
| the "old" Republican voter class gets demographically
| eliminated.
|
| They are caught between a rock (demographics) and a hard
| place (essentially, call them what they are, Nazis and
| fascists), and are running out of time. It is very well
| possible that they double down on the right-wing train in
| 2022 / 2024 for one last shot at success.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Trump's presidency was a blueprint for the nationalistic
| authoritarian overthrow of democracy. The only reason it
| failed is that Trump is an utter fool who surrounded
| himself with fools. The fascists who run in 2024 will learn
| from this. They'll have triple-digit IQs and they'll have a
| much better chance of succeeding.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > They'll have triple-digit IQs
|
| Not sure where they would find a Republican politico with
| this quality in such a short time.
|
| Might be something that happens after a 12 year D
| presidency if Biden ends up stepping down Jan 21st
| leaving the presidency to Harris and her running for 2
| terms as a minority woman that didn't have to deal with
| questions of inefficacy from a traditional election
| cycle.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If Biden steps down on January 21st (why that specific
| date?), then Harris can only run for one term, since she
| would be president for more than half of this one.
|
| [Edit: Presuming you meant January 21st of this year. It
| would still be true if he stepped down next year,
| though.]
| minikites wrote:
| I agree, and it really shines a light on how vile the
| Republican calls for "unity" are.
| zzzeek wrote:
| by all indications he _is_ going to run again, and after
| four years of a boring competent government that fails to
| inspire people to come out and vote like crazy he may very
| well win. this whole next two years (until 2022 when D 's
| will have a very low chance of retaining the house) might
| be pretty much a solitary oasis before we dive right back
| into authoritariansim v2.0.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Does competent to you mean marching the military back
| into Syria on the first day in office?
| mcguire wrote:
| I thought that was Trump
| (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/most-u-s-troops-
| withdr...)
| minikites wrote:
| In what way is Trump unusual? He picked up the torch from
| Ronald Reagan and Trump currently has many people in both
| branches of Congress who support him and his ideas.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I think Trump is unusual in that he is genuinely a stupid
| man who is incredibly easily manipulated - e.g. See Rex
| Tillerson's comments on it wrt. having to use pretty
| graphs and no words for the president, and Bob Woodwards
| calls. Nixon was a tortured soul, but he was no fool.
|
| Beyond that he's not too unique as a president - at least
| in the abstract: No one else has dared to be so bold in
| their disregard for the constitution, and yet so inept in
| executing it.
| mhh__ wrote:
| If you're going to downvote please counterargue. If you
| can find me some evidence of Donald Trump being a genius
| then go right ahead...
| fitzie wrote:
| I rather the stupid man who approves a pipeline that
| keeps jobs and money in this country than the smart guy
| who kills the jobs, sends the money away for oil that
| will come over in railcars at higher cost, and no benefit
| for the environment at all, at least according to the
| scientists.
| peytn wrote:
| I just think some of the concerns about Trump veer
| towards the aesthetic. Some people react to him like they
| react to a bad painting. The rest is just
| rationalization.
|
| For your specific example, polishing graphs and
| communicating visually sounds totally valid in the
| context of any other executive.
| mhh__ wrote:
| The point is that he physically cannot read the papers
| they give him unless they have absolutely enormous middle
| school graphs
| pontifier wrote:
| I'm still not sure if he can read or not.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I'd bet even odds he's dyslexic, that condition is over
| represented among people in his line of work and would
| explain a lot of his behaviour.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I'm not sure what skills you consider necessary to win
| both a contested primary election and a national
| election, but I'd consider many of them intellectual
| skills and the competition to be of a high level.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Savvy, but not intelligent. His brain is heavily
| optimized to be skilled at the particular American
| environment of celebrity worship, mixed with perceived
| business success. He is able to capitalize right now on
| that, but I'm not sure there is an adaptive intelligence
| in there.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Presumably you've never heard of the Idiot Savant?
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| Money. Money is what's necessary to win an election in
| America.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Money and name recognition. If it wasn't for the TV show
| 'Apprentice', it is doubtful that people would have known
| who he was. That show is what established his (completely
| fabricated) reputation as a successful, skillful
| businessman, and he was able to ride that wave all the
| way to the White House.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That show is what established his (completely
| fabricated) reputation as a successful, skillful
| businessman
|
| Uh, no, _The Apprentice_ traded on that reputation, which
| had already been established decades earlier.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| I meant in the public perception. Most people in America
| didn't know who Trump was before that show aired.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Most people in America didn't know who Trump was before
| that show aired.
|
| Maybe most people who were quite young when it aired;
| Trump was a constant media presence from something like
| the late 1970s well into the 1990s, and sort of a pop
| culture touchstone for conspicuous excess as well as
| having a reputation as a successful NYC developer and
| prolific womanizer.
| DuskStar wrote:
| Bloomberg's presidential run would perhaps be a
| counterexample there.
| zzzeek wrote:
| hundreds of congresspeople and a handful of senators have
| gleefully supported his attempt at a violent overthrow of
| the US.
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