By Peter Campion
We Aussie climate sceptics are watching on in awe as the new US President begins systematically driving a stake a into the vampire heart of the climate-alarm industry. It can be a challenge for the casual Antipodean observer to follow the nuances of US congressional processes and party politics, however, so it’s not uncommon for us to look to the articles and comments on WUWT for insight. It is that insight from commenters that is needed on the matter at hand.
A recent National Public Radio program re-broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (or Alinsky Brainwashing Committee, depending on your level of scepticism) discussed the Trump Administrations’ new HONEST Act, or Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act of 2017. The climate alarmists interviewed by NPR were railing near-hysterically against this proposed new law, desperately twisting reality to find some illusory moral high ground from which to condemn it. The torment evident in their voices sent this sceptic straight to the internet to find out why they’re so frightened.
Congress.gov tells us well-known sceptical Republican congressman and Head of the House Science Committee, Lamar Smith, is the sponsor and that the HONEST Act has passed the House of Representatives. So far, so good. As at March 30, 2017 it had been received in the Senate, read twice and referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. The summary reads as follows;
This bill amends the Environmental Research, Development, and Demonstration Authorization Act of 1978 to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from proposing, finalizing, or disseminating a covered action unless all scientific and technical information relied on to support such action is the best available science, specifically identified, and publicly available in a manner sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of research results. A covered action includes a risk, exposure, or hazard assessment, criteria document, standard, limitation, regulation, regulatory impact analysis, or guidance. Personally identifiable information, trade secrets, or commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential must be redacted prior to public availability.
The Act itself is surprisingly short by Aussie standards and most of the action is in the second of its two sections.
SEC. 2. DATA TRANSPARENCY.
Section 6(b) of the Environmental Research, Development, and Demonstration Authorization Act of 1978 (42 U.S.C. 4363 note) is amended to read as follows:
“(b)(1) The Administrator shall not propose, finalize, or disseminate a covered action unless all scientific and technical information relied on to support such covered action is—
“(A) the best available science;
“(B) specifically identified; and
“(C) publicly available online in a manner that is sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of research results, except that any personally identifiable information, trade secrets, or commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential, shall be redacted prior to public availability.
“(2) The redacted information described in paragraph (1)(C) shall be disclosed to a person only after such person signs a written confidentiality agreement with the Administrator, subject to guidance to be developed by the Administrator.
“(3) Nothing in the subsection shall be construed as—
“(A) requiring the Administrator to disseminate scientific and technical information;
“(B) superseding any nondiscretionary statutory requirement; or
“(C) requiring the Administrator to repeal, reissue, or modify a regulation in effect on the date of enactment of the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act of 2017.
“(4) In this subsection—
“(A) the term ‘covered action’ means a risk, exposure, or hazard assessment, criteria document, standard, limitation, regulation, regulatory impact analysis, or guidance; and
“(B) the term ‘scientific and technical information’ includes—
“(i) materials, data, and associated protocols necessary to understand, assess, and extend conclusions;
“(ii) computer codes and models involved in the creation and analysis of such information;
“(iii) recorded factual materials; and
“(iv) detailed descriptions of how to access and use such information.
“(5) The Administrator shall carry out this subsection in a manner that does not exceed $1,000,000 per fiscal year, to be derived from amounts otherwise authorized to be appropriated.”.
NPR’s article from July, 20, 2017 can be found here and is headlined, “GOP Effort To Make Environmental Science ‘Transparent’ Worries Scientists”. A worried Professor Thomas Burke, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said, “To say that every study needs to have the data out there — this is code for ‘We are going challenge it — to raise issues of uncertainty and play the delay game’ that was so successfully played, unfortunately, with things like tobacco.”
Even from 5000 kilometres away we can smell the fear. Isn’t science all about challenging the ‘known’ and extending the boundaries of knowledge?
Sean Gallagher, a government relations officer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science said, “Defining terms, or setting in stone, terms like ‘reproducible’ or ‘independent analysis’ may sound good when you read it and it may look simple, but they have serious unintended consequences that may manifest down the line.”
Gallagher doesn’t seem to want definitions set in stone, yet surely good communication and quality science are both based on clearly defined terms? How could agreeing on basic terminology be of hindrance to the ‘advancement of science’? What could the “unintended consequences” be if the alarmist climate science community had to show their homework?
The informed views of WUWT commenters are sought to help those of us from other countries to better understand the prospects for the HONEST Act making it through the legislative process and having a useful impact in this very dodgy political/scientific field.
Author bio
Peter Campion is a retired fire officer and a founder of the ‘Relaxivism’ movement. Relaxivism is the use of reason and logic to calm a fellow citizen who has become alarmed or agitated by prophecies put forward by special interest groups. Relaxivism strives to remove hysteria and emotion from debates and to replace it with rationality and scepticism.
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Beautiful. I will definitely be contacting my representatives about this one.
Great work Peter Campion. I’ll buy you a beer next time I see you.
Not only are you breath of fresh air (CO2 included), to the Swamp, but also to WUWT readers.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if NPR would do an honest story on the HONEST Act?
I think this is fabulous news! I think honest but ‘mainstream’ scientists will really struggle to find compelling reasons to oppose it. There are people who post here who are not even trying…
“Peter Campion July 23, 2017 at 5:16 pm
Steven, are you supportive of the HONEST Act?”
–
Honestly, Peter, did you expect an answer? Rhetorical, I know.
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He is not here in support of the act.
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Replication of temperature is not his strong suit.
“Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009
Phil,Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip
So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean – but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.
Removing ENSO does not affect this.
It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”.
Let me go further. If you look at NH vs SH and the aerosol effect (qualitatively or with MAGICC) then with a reduced ocean blip we get continuous warming in the SH, and a cooling in the NH — just as one would expect with mainly NH aerosols.
The other interesting thing is (as Foukal et al. note – from MAGICC) that the 1910-40 warming cannot be solar. The Sun can get at most 10% of this with Wang et al solar, less with Foukal solar. So this may well be NADW, as Sarah and I noted in 1987 (and also Schlesinger later). A reduced SST blip in the 1940s makes the 1910-40 warming larger than the SH (which it currently is not) — but not really enough”
Mosher explaining why sea surface temps are adjusted opposite to land temps, if you cool the past in one you have to balance the books by warming the other (passim).
angech, thanks for that Climategate reminder of why we need something like the HONEST act.
I would suggest we also vote on an HONEST RICO act, too.
nice
Relaxivism seems a very compelling idea and one urgently needed.
On that subject, today the death was reported of a French philosopher, Ann Dufourmantelle. She drowned trying to rescue a couple of kids. I hadn’t heard of her before but it turns out she advocated ideas that are highly relevant to environmental alarmism and its link to political repression, and may be connected to the philosophy of Relaxivism.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40703606
French philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle, 53, said that “life begins with risk”
She drowned after attempting to save two children. Anne Dufourmantelle entered the water after the children got into difficulty in strong winds at Pampelonne beach, near St Tropez, on Friday. The two children were later rescued by lifeguards and were unharmed.
The French culture minister, Françoise Nyssen, said Dufourmantelle was a “great philosopher who helped us live”.
Witnesses said Dufourmantelle, 53, was bathing 50m (164 ft) from the two children when an orange warning flag at the beach was changed to red, indicating that bathing was prohibited due to dangerous conditions.
She immediately tried to reach them but was carried away in a strong current. Attempts to resuscitate her after she was recovered failed, France 3 reported (in French).
It was unclear if she knew the children involved in the incident. Her funeral is due to be held in Ramatuelle, southern France, on Tuesday.
Dufourmantelle wrote numerous essays on the importance of taking risks and the need to accept that exposure to any number of possible threats is a part of everyday life, including the book Praise of Risk, published in 2011.
“A great philosopher, a psychoanalyst, she helped us to live and think about the world today,” Ms Nyssen wrote on Twitter.
Fellow French philosopher Raphaël Enthoven tweeted that he was “sad to learn of the death” of Dufourmantelle, adding that she “spoke so well of dreams”.
Dufourmantelle said that the idea of ”absolute security – like ‘zero risk’ – is a fantasy”.
“When there really is a danger that must be faced in order to survive, as for example during the Blitz in London, there is a strong incentive for action, dedication, and surpassing oneself,” she said.
‘Life begins with risk’
“It is said: ‘to risk one’s life’, but perhaps one should say ‘to risk life’, [because] being alive is a risk,” Dufourmantelle added.
“Life is metamorphosis,” she said, adding: “It begins with this risk.”
Dufourmantelle had argued that fear can be – and is – used “as a political weapon for the control of freedoms”. She said that any offer to the public of increased protection and security can act to reinforce control and diminish life’s freedoms.
Security in any visual sense, such as armed officers on streets during heightened terror alerts or threats, she said, can also generate or increase fear.
“To imagine an enemy ready to attack from time to time induces a state of paralysis, a feeling of helplessness which calls for a maternal response – supposedly all protective. Today, we desire this overprotection,” she told Liberation.
Dufourmantelle earned a doctoral degree in philosophy from Paris-Sorbonne in 1994, but later went on to practise psychoanalysis. She was awarded the Raymond de Boyer Prize of Sainte-Suzanne for philosophy in 1998.
Map shows the location of Pampelonne beach near St Tropez, southern France.”
Peter Campion, it stands a very good chance of getting passed by the Senate. The real issue is timing. They won’t take it up before dealing with healthcare, and I doubt they take it up before dealing with a revision of the tax code, which is dependent on what they do with healthcare. Since these two issues appear to be insurmountable thanks to the esteemed Senators from Alaska and Maine the real question here is whether or not the Senate will get serious about other bills even if they are in utter deadlock over the two issues that matter the most.
If they are willing to pass the bill while in the midst of dealing with the two issues, we might see it pass before the end of the year. On the other hand, if they don’t want to distract from the healthcare debate and the revision of the tax code in this session, it may not be till next year.
In short, once taken up it has a good chance of passing. There’s just no telling as to exact timing.
The most disturbing part of this is that we have to craft a law that mandates the use of research critique acumen to the extent that only gold standard research is allowed to help craft policy. This is akin to mandating the washing of hands before handling food. I used to tell my children, “Do I have to state that frying basketballs on the stove is forbidden?” whenever they did something that was obviously done without brain involvment. That we have to tell adults this will forever shock me!
We the sheeple let the EPA sink to low hanging fruit standards that have led to this now needed law. Bottom line, in all things research combined with policy making, buyer beware because the status quo in policy making governing bodies is to fry basketballs.
This is why we need a “like” button.
Absolutely right Pamela. It does make you wonder if it makes get just be better to tear everything down and start again. Actually, and his is beyond frying basketballs. It’s more akin to having to tell people that they have to open their eyes if they want to stop walking into things.
Common sense is not common.
Jane Lubcheno, who may still be biggest liar in modern science, created the “Scientific Integrity Policy that among other things forbids distortion, manipulation, suppression or cherry-picking of science, and allows scientists to speak freely to the media about their findings. The Policy has been labeled ‘the platinum standard’ for agency scientific policies”
At the same time under her leadership NOAA “budgets rose substantially……
…. to save taxpayers time and money”?
https://ib.oregonstate.edu/files/ib/Lubchenco_CV_2014_04_13.pdf
During her tenure, NOAA employed around 12,800 federal employees and had a budget that went from $3.9B (the year before Lubchenco became Administrator) to $5.3B (the last budget she led, enacted for FY2014).
under Lubchenco’s leadership NOAA’s budgets rose substantially,
….Management: Under Lubchenco’s leadership, NOAA streamlined regulations to save taxpayers time and money and improve efficiency; increased effectiveness and decreased costs of corporate services …..”such as acquisitions and IT, for example by migrating communications systems to the cloud to enhance functionality, strengthen security and reduce costs.
The reasons that many science organizations are worried by the HONEST Act are clear to those familiar with the work of John P. A. Ioannidis, Dan Sarewitz, and Science on the Verge.
This act will do very little. When people are committed to a belief system they selectively report and interpret the data anyway. What needs to be done is a further psychological exposure of the religious nature of climate doomsayers…exposing their apocalyptic cult behavior automatically undermines their scientific credibility. The “science” needed here is psychology not law or physics.
No, the “science” needed here is ridicule and derision. Laugh in their faces.[snip] They are enemies of the human race, time to treat them as what they are.
Reply: Swearing bad, no makum curse writing~ctm
Reproducible Science … Whatever will they think of next?
Science once used for a practical purpose is engineering so quality control should be handed over to only engineers once climate science is used for any practical purpose. Apologies to Poundland if they do not wish to be used as an example but when climate data acquisition is subjected to the same tests used to assess a product supplied to them they come out in the worst category of what unofficially is “never bother with this supplier EVER”. This when they claim that climate change is life or death so they should be passing with flying colours the tests for life critical applications which are far more demanding.
Changes to refrigerator coolants to a more flammable one to preserve the ozone layer and use of more flammable insulations because they perform better as insulators are both effect that have caused many deaths and can reasonably be attributed dominantly to climate scientist’s errors. Neither would have happened without the ozone hole doom mongering or the “we have a hundred month’s to end climate change” prediction causing a knee jerk adoption of excessive panic measures.