Shaping Reality Through Law

Past sea lev­els and future pro­jec­tions. (Source: EPA)

North Car­olina may decide to deny global warm­ing sci­ence in a big way.

A new state law in the works would require esti­mates of com­ing sea level change to be based on his­tor­i­cal changes from the past, ignor­ing sci­en­tific stud­ies which indi­cate how lev­els are actu­ally likely to rise in the future.

A state-​​appointed sci­ence panel pro­jected that the sea level off the coast of North Car­olina may rise as much as a meter by the year 2100. The state leg­is­la­ture appar­ently didn’t like this idea, because it would affect coastal com­mu­ni­ties, tourism, most of the big cities in North Car­olina, and much of the state’s indus­try. Plus, it is con­trary to con­ser­v­a­tive ide­ol­ogy, which holds that global warm­ing doesn’t exist — but things wouldn’t be incon­ve­nient if it did — and it shouldn’t elicit any action on the part of humans in any case.

In order to be cer­tain that global warm­ing doesn’t affect North Car­olina, the pro­posed law states, in part,

These rates shall only be deter­mined using his­tor­i­cal data, and these data shall be lim­ited to the time period fol­low­ing the year 1900. Rates of seas-​​level rise may be extrap­o­lated linearly …

In other words, the sea off the coast of North Car­olina will not be per­mit­ted to rise at a faster rate than it has in the past. We can assume the Earth is lis­ten­ing to the North Car­olina legislature.

Scott Huler at Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can has a mar­velous rant on the topic:

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

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

This isn’t the first time a U.S. state has attempted to con­trol real­ity by the force of law. In 1897, House Bill 246 was intro­duced in the Indi­ana House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive T. I. Record of Posen county. This bill offi­cially defined the math­e­mat­i­cal con­stant π — the ratio of a circle’s cir­cum­fer­ence to its diam­e­ter — as being one of three pos­si­ble val­ues (appar­ently a cit­i­zen of Indi­ana would have a choice):

(1) The ratio of the diam­e­ter of a cir­cle to its cir­cum­fer­ence is ⁵⁄₄ to 4. In other words, pi equals ¹⁶⁄₅ or 3.2

(2) The area of a cir­cle equals the area of a square whose side is ¹⁄₄ the cir­cum­fer­ence of the cir­cle. Work­ing this out alge­braically, we see that pi must be equal to 4.

(3) The ratio of the length of a 90 degree arc to the length of a seg­ment con­nect­ing the arc’s two end­points is 8 to 7. This gives us pi equal to the square root of 2 x 16/​7, or about 3.23.

In point of fact, of course, π is approx­i­mately equal to 3.1415926535897932… It is an infi­nite non-​​repeating dec­i­mal. The idea of an irra­tional num­ber appears to be offen­sive to some. The bill unan­i­mously passed in the Indi­ana House, but died in the Senate.

Nor is this the sum of state’s power over real­ity. The State of Ten­nessee used to have a law — the 1925 “But­ler Act” — which made it ille­gal to teach the sci­ence behind evo­lu­tion in pub­lic schools. A famous trial — the so-​​called Scopes Mon­key Trial — put that law to the test. A per­ma­nent injunc­tion pre­vent­ing enforce­ment of the Act was finally issued in 1967. Undaunted, a new “Mon­key Bill” came before the Ten­nessee leg­is­la­ture this year, a bill designed to encour­age pub­lic school teach­ers to “ques­tion” both evo­lu­tion and cli­mate science.

One inter­est­ing part of all this, as far as global warm­ing, is that the deniers seem to pay more atten­tion to research results than do those who accept the sci­ence. The main­stream media pretty much ignores cli­mate research. Doubters anx­iously pore over new reports with hack­saws. This is, per­haps, under­stand­able. Deniers have a case to make, a call­ing to pur­sue. They have to con­vince the rest of us that the sci­en­tific method — the same prin­ci­ples that brought you peni­cillin and PCs, tele­vi­sion and Ter­minex, movies and motor­cy­cles, astro­nauts and aci­dophilus — the sci­en­tific method has, in this one case, utterly failed us.

This is pol­i­tics in its most naked form. To deny global warm­ing, one must selec­tively ignore real­ity. But only selec­tively — we would know about nei­ther global warm­ing, nor about the argu­ments against it, were it not for the exis­tence of tech­nol­ogy cre­ated through the same sci­en­tific method that brings us cli­mate sci­ence. The tech­nol­ogy through which we com­mu­ni­cate today — radio, tele­vi­sion, the Inter­net, even news­pa­pers and the trans­porta­tion tech that brings them to you — these things would not exist if mod­ern sci­ence didn’t work. If you’re read­ing these words — more, if you hear or read the words of cli­mate sci­ence deniers — you are engag­ing in activ­i­ties that would not be pos­si­ble if cli­mate sci­ence can’t be trusted.

Float that boat in North Carolina.

Related arti­cles

• North Car­olina tries to wish away sea-​​level rise(guardian​.co​.uk)

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• North Car­olina Bill Would Require Coastal Com­mu­ni­ties To Ignore Global Warm­ing Sci­ence(thinkprogress​.org)

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• Another stu­pid piece of anti­sci­en­tific leg­is­la­tion: sea-​​level rise(whyevo​lu​tion​istrue​.word​press​.com)

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• North Car­olina To Out­law Rise in Sea Level(neatorama​.com)

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