There is an enormous gap between legislative rhetoric that science should guide climate policy and how climate legislation actually functions. It turns out, climate policy in Washington state is based on faith in government bureaucracy, not science and real-world data.

Here’s an example.  Early Sunday morning, the State House debated HB 1770, which would make Washington’s construction code significantly more restrictive purportedly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Our legislative analysis of the bill highlighted several flaws with that argument, including the fact that the bill’s proposed rules duplicate existing climate regulations and rules would impose a very high cost for small environmental benefits.

During the debate, there were several claims that demonstrated how poor the legislation is, and a couple of comments by lawmakers that were truly remarkable.

Perhaps the most jaw-dropping claim came from Rep. Gerry Pollet. Defending the bill, he argued it was necessary because “climate change is going to dramatically alter the environment and make … 106 degrees in the summer to be something that happens weekly.” This is nowhere close to accurate.

Although Rep. Pollet didn’t say where he was talking about, as a legislator from Seattle, I assume he was referring to last summer’s heatwave, claiming it would become a “weekly” occurrence. No science says anything close to that.

Even the rapid attribution report cited by many environmental activists, says this claim is completely inaccurate. Even their worst-case scenario says such a heatwave might happen once every five years after the end of this century. That is the most extreme scenario. In fact, we would have to see a temperature increase of more than seven degrees F (4 degrees C) above the current records in July and August to reach 106. That is far above the current projection from the U.N.’s IPCC, which says the most likely scenario is 2.5 degrees C average increase by 2100. The claim of weekly 106-degree heatwaves 80 years from now is completely unsubstantiated.

For a topic where people throw around the word “science” frequently, it is notable how often claims about climate change from legislators and activists are completely invented and wholly unscientific.

Another proposed amendment would have put a $10,000 cap on the cost of meeting requirements per housing unit. Rep. Alex Ramel responded by warning that he cautioned legislators “about putting arbitrary numbers into our statute.”

HB 1770 requires a “reduction of at least 70 percent in annual net energy consumption,” and that new buildings must achieve “a reduction of at least 80 percent in annual net energy consumption.” What study recommended the 70 and 80 percent targets? None. They are arbitrary.

There was also a discussion of the life-cycle impact of rooftop solar panels. The bill requires homes to be wired for rooftop solar energy, so an amendment was offered to require that “at least 60 percent of the solar equipment” could be recycled. It was rejected. Rep. Pollet presented the argument against it, noting that “the underlying bill does not require installation of photovoltaics.”

In other words, the bill would require homes to be wired for equipment that will likely never be installed. The additional wiring cost would provide zero benefit but would increase housing prices. Additionally, homebuyers most likely to install solar panels are more wealthy, so the requirement to wire houses for solar in advance would most likely benefit rich families while low-income families are least likely to have the resources to make use of the requirement.

Another amendment proposed a study to determine the impact of moving from gas heating to all-electric heating on the stability of the electric grid as demand for energy increases. Opposing the amendment, Rep. Ramel argued that the bill would actually reduce the risk of grid instability. Although he did not elaborate, the argument is likely that requiring homes to be more energy efficient would reduce the electricity required by those homes. That would be true if the bill didn’t also increase overall demand for electricity. Whatever savings offered by the energy efficiency requirements are more than offset by the increased demand from replacing natural gas heat with electricity.

Finally, legislators argued that these requirements would save money in the long run by reducing energy costs. As we noted in our analysis of the bill, this is unlikely because electric heating is much more expensive than heating with natural gas. Homeowners are likely to spend more for homes and then spend more money to heat their homes with electricity.

Promises that tighter construction mandates will save money over time routinely turn out to be wrong. Most recently, a study of “green” buildings that meet the standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council found they fell far short of the promised savings. The USGBC seems to know their buildings aren’t delivering the promised results, and the study noted that although they have collected performance data for green buildings, “a decade and thousands of certifications later, the USGBC has neither made these data public nor published any scientific analysis of these data.”

Fundamentally, the proposed legislation is about faith, not evidence. The Left has faith that planners can accurately predict the state of technology 15 years from now and accurately predict the costs of those plans. To that end, the sponsors arguments are less about reality than the belief that it is necessary, no matter the cost. Whether that turns out to be true or not, it makes clear that support for the arbitrary goals in the bill are not based on science.