Bad Science Isn't Free Speech

On May 18th, "13 Science, Space, and Technology Committee Republicans sent letters to 17 state attorneys general and eight environmental activist organizations. The letters request documents related to the groups’ coordinated efforts to deprive companies, nonprofit organizations, scientists and scholars of their First Amendment rights and their ability to fund and conduct scientific research free from intimidation and threats of prosecution." (from a press release from the same committee)

The letter accuses the "Green 20", a group of environmentally minded legislators and activists, of restricting first amendment rights in order to push a political agenda coping with climate change.

Honestly, I think my title covers most of the point I want to make. Yes, Americans have the right to say whatever they want without fear of persecution from the government, and I would not want to live in a country without that inalienable right. However, purposefully using wrong and misleading information under the guise of free speech to exploit the people is morally untenable and a laughable charade.

If there wasn't a scientific consensus, or if the data was not so conclusive that quite nearly all the scientists in the world agreed, I would welcome a hearty debate on the subject based in fact and research efforts. However, the science is in on climate change. 98 percent of climate scientists agree that anthropogenic forcing is causing the shifts in the climate that we are observing. There is no longer a debate to be had. From this point on, any law or policy maker denying climate change might as well be trying to say the sky is not blue, but rather pink, and the scientific community is just trying to push its blue agenda to destroy American jobs.

I do not think you should be able to cite freedom of speech as a reason to use false information to allow policy makers to maintain the status quo. It's cherry picking at its finest and that practice should be beneath the policy makers of this country.

I have a thought experiment to help show why cherry picking information can have disastrous consequences.

Let's say there is an ageing bridge crossing a river. It looks structurally sound, but you want to be sure before your drive your new Lexus on it. You call up one hundred engineers and ask them to inspect the bridge. All but two of the engineers say the bridge will collapse if you drive across it. Who would you listen to with your life and your car in the balance?

To be more pointed, would you rather trust three or four scientific studies paid for by oil and petroleum companies with dubious methods and results, or the thousands of studies run by the leading climatologists in the world that have been corroborated over and over again by the scientific method that tell us that greenhouse gasses released by humans are causing global climate change?

Even beyond that, what are the consequences of shifting our energy sources to renewable and green technologies? Would it be so bad to have a cleaner environment, without smog and oil spills, just for that fact alone? Yes in the short run it will be painful. People will lose jobs in the oil industry, and prices of energy will go up, but we will create new jobs in the renewable energy industry, jobs that can be created in the US not in Saudi Arabia or Iraq. Technological innovation driven by competition will drive down prices again just as they do with the oil industry.

It will not be easy, but to paraphrase JFK, we do not do things because they are easy, but because they are hard. We have a chance to work towards a better, cleaner future but we must stop letting bad science and misinformation cloud our judgement. Bad science isn't free speech, it is misinformation told to keep you complacent with the status quo.

Bathrooms and Bigots

I wanted to continue my thoughts from The Fallacy of an Equality Compromise and get a little more specific now that the arguments against transgender bathroom use have become more solid.

First, let's start with some of the opposition arguments that I have heard. The most common by far is that people are worried about the safety of bathrooms without strict gender separation. More specifically, people are worried about the safety of women if "men" can enter female bathrooms. (I used quotations around men because transgender women are not men.) The second, more bigoted opposition is that allowing transgender people to use whatever restroom they identify with "legitimizes" a lifestyle choice that goes against some religious teachings.

The first argument seems legitimate but I would disagree wholeheartedly for the following reasons.
First, no one has made sexual assault inside a bathroom legal. If we believe that punishments are prohibitive, as many opponents of bathroom ordinances do, then why would having all people of the same gender, whether chosen or biological, increase the assault rate? I argue that it wouldn't. Assault still carries the same punishment, and therefore still has the same prohibitive effect regardless of where the crime occurs.

Second, trans-gender people that have completely transitioned to their chosen gender have used the bathroom of their choosing for years now. It was not forbidden until recently, and for the most part you can't outright identify a transgender person from their appearance so they can freely do whatever they want. These bathroom ordinances are "fixing" a problem that doesn't exist. There has been no increase in sexual assaults since transgender men and women have been using their respective bathrooms, in fact both rape and sexual assaults have declined markedly in the last few decades (U.S. Department of Justice. National Crime Victimization Survey. 1993-2013).

So, if there is no increased danger from transgender men and women using whatever bathroom they want, why are we enacting discriminatory laws that mitigate this danger?

The rest of the arguments against the bathroom ordinances are all religious in nature. They vary from opposition to "legitimizing transgender lifestyle choices" to "'God is being eroded, eclipsed, liquidated' (Cardinal Robert Sarah) in reference to homosexual and transgender equality laws". I cannot understand how giving human beings the right to live the lives they want with no deleterious effect on anyone else can be wrong. We have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as well as the freedom of and from religion in this country. We are not a christian nation even if a majority of the population is. We have a secular government that is separate from religion, or should be according to the constitution. Religious arguments should hold no sway in this environment as legitimate means to discriminate against non-traditional gender identities or sexual attractions.

While I cannot abide restricting transgender access to bathroom facilities, I find that locker room situations are much more complex and require more nuanced policy than bathrooms, and I would be remiss if I didn't cover the subject. The distinction between the two is the access to privacy. Privacy is common to bathrooms, but much less common in locker rooms. In any public restroom structures exist to maintain privacy during urination and defecation. However, locker rooms seldom have private changing areas and this could lead to unwanted exposure from both parties. I would say that I have nothing against transgender persons using either locker room and would only encourage the use of private changing stalls if the persons genitalia do not yet match their identity.

I think these bathroom laws are a sham that serve only to bring attention to a non-issue. Transgender people have, and will continue to use the restroom that suits them and it hasn't been an issue up till now. The arguments against equality are facades designed to rouse a religious political base.