magzteel - Slashdot User

Submission + - US Court of Appeals upends 50 years of Environmental Law (yalejreg.com) 3

Submitted by magzteel on Wednesday November 13, 2024 @09:26AM

magzteel writes: In "D.C. Circuit Upends CEQ’s NEPA Rule", the Yale Journal on Regulation writes on the Marin Audubon v FAA decision:

This holding upends almost 5 decades of administrative practice, as CEQ has been issuing regulations since the 1970s. The problem is that NEPA does not provide express rulemaking authority, and the court did not find it to be implied, either (slip. op. at 16). The court looked beyond NEPA to the other statutes listed in EO 11,991, which refer to CEQ but do not confer rulemaking authority beyond those rules “related to a fund used to finance the Office’s projects and research studies” (slip. op. at 17).
As reported in RedState: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Fstreiff%2F2...
This decision throws the entire environmental regulation scheme governing the federal government into chaos. I suspect that many of the CEQs regulations will be reissued by other agencies, but after Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (see The Supreme Court Firebombs the Administrative State and Tells Congress to Get Off Its Butt and Work) that slew the medusa called "Chevron deference," the survival of those replacement regulations is not assured."

Submission + - The Big Bang didn't happen (iai.tv) 1

Submitted by magzteel on Wednesday August 17, 2022 @01:19PM

magzteel writes: To everyone who sees them, the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images of the cosmos are beautifully awe-inspiring. But to most professional astronomers and cosmologists, they are also extremely surprising—not at all what was predicted by theory. In the flood of technical astronomical papers published online since July 12, the authors report again and again that the images show surprisingly many galaxies, galaxies that are surprisingly smooth, surprisingly small and surprisingly old. Lots of surprises, and not necessarily pleasant ones. One paper’s title begins with the candid exclamation: “Panic!”

Why do the JWST’s images inspire panic among cosmologists? And what theory’s predictions are they contradicting? The papers don’t actually say. The truth that these papers don’t report is that the hypothesis that the JWST’s images are blatantly and repeatedly contradicting is the Big Bang Hypothesis that the universe began 14 billion years ago in an incredibly hot, dense state and has been expanding ever since. Since that hypothesis has been defended for decades as unquestionable truth by the vast majority of cosmological theorists, the new data is causing these theorists to panic. “Right now I find myself lying awake at three in the morning,” says Alison Kirkpatrick, an astronomer at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, “and wondering if everything I’ve done is wrong.”

Submission + - Climate Scientists Encounter Limits of Computer Models, Bedeviling Policy (wsj.com)

Submitted by magzteel on Monday February 07, 2022 @02:05PM

magzteel writes: From the Wall Street Journal:
As world leaders consider how to limit greenhouse gases, they depend heavily on what computer climate models predict. But as algorithms and the computer they run on become more powerful—able to crunch far more data and do better simulations—that very complexity has left climate scientists grappling with mismatches among competing computer models.

While vital to calculating ways to survive a warming world, climate models are hitting a wall. They are running up against the complexity of the physics involved; the limits of scientific computing; uncertainties around the nuances of climate behavior; and the challenge of keeping pace with rising levels of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases. Despite significant improvements, the new models are still too imprecise to be taken at face value, which means climate-change projections still require judgment calls.

“We have a situation where the models are behaving strangely,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences, a leading center for climate modeling. “We have a conundrum.”

Submission + - Why the electric-car revolution may take a lot longer than expected (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by magzteel on Friday November 22, 2019 @03:57PM

magzteel writes: A new report from the MIT Energy Initiative warns that EVs may never reach the same sticker price so long as they rely on lithium-ion batteries, the energy storage technology that powers most of today’s consumer electronics. In fact, it’s likely to take another decade just to eliminate the difference in the lifetime costs between the vehicle categories, which factors in the higher fuel and maintenance expenses of standard cars and trucks.

The findings sharply contradict those of other research groups, which have concluded that electric vehicles could achieve price parity with gas-powered ones in the next five years. The lingering price difference predicted by the MIT report could stunt the transition to lower-emission vehicles, requiring governments to extend subsides or enact stricter mandates to achieve the same adoption of EVs and cuts in climate pollution.

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