Michigan Liberal::: ICYMI: State Senate defines Pi as 3.14

What happens when a bunch of scientific illiterates are given legislative powers to make decisions involving science: They define Pi. Or, in the case of that most august of law making bodies, the Michigan State Senate, they decide that people aren't the cause of species loss and erase 100 years of evolution in conservation thought by voting along party lines to prohibit the DNR from using biodiversity as a goal in decision making. In other words, they voted to outlaw reality.

This is the stupidest piece of legislation to get a legislative chamber to sign off on it since Tom McMillin's lightbulb freedom bill. The thinking behind it isn't just primitive, it's downright counterproductive. Biodiversity is at the core of healthy ecosystems, which means every enterprise that requires a healthy ecosystem -- in human terms, this would be from sport fishing to general outdoor recreation like hiking and camping -- suffers as a result. This is trading the illusion of short term economic benefit for long term sustainability. It's binge resource squandering ... from people who call themselves conservatives.

Update! ... The bill's sponsor, Tom Casperson, speaks.

"We're not going to blame humans for this," Casperson said, suggesting a lack of human activity contributed to last year's massive Duck Lake fire that hurt biodiversity in the Upper Peninsula. "Humans can be the solution."

May I quote Neil DeGrasse Tyson here? ?The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."

A quick primer on forest fires. First off, wildfires are part of a natural cycle, but people who come from the logging industry -- like Casperson -- hate them because they burn up raw products (keep in mind that the logging industry gets wealthy removing trees from public lands as well as private). Back in the day, the policy was to aggressively suppress all wildfires to prevent losses to the logging industry (this is now again Forest Service policy). This led, in a lot of areas, to a build up of ground detritus that is normally burned up in fires. When things are left to their own devices, because fires tend to blow through forests every so often, the dead wood doesn't build up and the fires are typically fairly mild and adult trees are usually naturally wet enough to survive them. With lots of garbage on the ground to burn, the fires are historically worse and more costly because they are hot enough to kill even the healthy, adult trees.

In other words, Casperson is probably exactly wrong on last year's Duck Lake fire. The fire was part of the natural cycle in the area. If anything made it worse, it was the kind of thinking embodied in the piece of legislation he's championed.

As for the idea that people aren't responsible for loss of biodiversity, which is written into the legislation's language ... it's purely wishful delusion. Naturally, it was adopted by the state senate on a party-line vote.

Source: http://www.michiganliberal.com/diary/20148/icymi-state-senate-defines-pi-as-314

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