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Thanks but I'll take the opinion of David Lowell.
Got this off a Canadian chat site: A great read if you can spare a minute.

(From the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum)

Dave Lowell, an outstanding exploration geologist and mine finder, discovered and contributed to the discovery of a number of major producing mines, including La Escondida in Chile, which was developed into the world’s largest copper mine, and the nearby Zaldivar-Escondida Norte orebody. Dave Lowell is recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on porphyry copper deposits. Among more than 50 published articles, the most notable, co-authored with John Guilbert, defines the Lowell and Guilbert Porphyry Copper Model. This article became a standard reference for exploration geologists worldwide. In 2009, Dave Lowell contributed heavily to the endowment for the Lowell Institute of Mineral Resources at the University of Arizona, and in total, his contributions to the University of Arizona are in the range of many millions of dollars.
Dave Lowell became an independent consultant in 1961. Between 1961 and 1990, he worked for 110 companies in 26 countries, largely in porphyry copper exploration. In 1965, his work contributed to two discoveries in Arizona: the Kalamazoo orebody for Quintana Petroleum Co. and the Vekol Hills deposit for Newmont. A similar project for Newmont, Hanna, and Getty found the Casa Grande West deposit in 1975. At about the same time, he made contributions to discoveries of the JA orebody in Canada by Bethlehem Copper, the Dizon deposit in the Philippines by Benguet, and the Far Southeast orebody in the Philippines by Lepanto.
In 1974, Dave Lowell began to focus on Chile and, starting in 1979, he planned and managed a contract grassroots program financed by Utah International and Getty Oil. This work led to the Escondida discovery. In 1987, a small Chilean syndicate managed by Lowell found the 1-million-ounce San Cristobal gold mine. In 1990, the Leonore orebody (now the core of the Luksic Tesoro Mine) was optioned and drilled by Lowell for Niugini Mining Co. In early 1991, Dave Lowell initiated a personally-financed exploration program in Peru. This evolved in 1993 into a Canadian junior company, Arequipa Resources. Late in 1995, Arequipa discovered the 8-million-ounce Pierina gold orebody, which it sold in 1996 to Barrick Gold. Subsequent work by a Lowell company, Peru Copper, developed the Toromocho copper-silver-molybdenum deposit in Peru, which Chinalco purchased for $900 million in 2007 and is now developing as a $2.7-billion project. Another Lowell company, CIC Resources, is currently developing a very large titanium resource in Paraguay.
Dave Lowell received a B.S. degree in mining engineering from the University of Arizona in 1949 and an M.S. in geology from Stanford University in 1957. He obtained a Professional Engineer degree from the University of Arizona in 1959 and received honorary degrees from Universidad Nacional de San Marcos in Peru in 1998 and the University of Arizona in 2000.
Dave Lowell was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1999. He received the SME Daniel C. Jackling and Robert Dreyer Awards, the AIME Earl McConnell Award, the SEG Silver Medal and Penrose Gold Medal, the MMSA Gold Medal, the Australian Academy of Science Haddon Forrester King Silver Medal, and the Chilean Centro de Estudios de Cobre y la Mineria CESCO Award.

(From Interview)
David Lowell is one of the greatest geologists of all time. He discovered the Escondida project, which became the world’s biggest copper mine. He’s discovered more than a dozen world-class economic mineral deposits as well. It’s an incredible achievement when you consider that the top tier geologists are lucky to discover one world class deposit in their career. David’s discoveries have given him the title of “world’s greatest mineral exploration geologist.” He’s forgotten more about finding deposits and building mines than most people will ever know.
David is also a mining engineer, which gives him unique insight on the costs involved in building a mine. I got to know David a lot better when he traveled to the Pebble project with me last year. As the debate over Northern Dynasty got louder and louder, I knew David would be a great source of insight on the topic.
The transcript of our discussion is below.
________________________________________
MK: David it’s a pleasure to sit here with you. I’d like to get your professional opinion about Pebble on the record.
Today there is a lot of controversy going on in the market between the shorts and the longs and I thought it would be an incredible resource tool for the whole market to get the opinion of the greatest porphyry geologist that I know of which is David Lowell and ask his opinion.
What are your thoughts on the Pebble project after actually walking on site, looking at the core samples, looking all the publicly available information on the Pebble deposit which is owned by Northern Dynasty?
DL: Well it was a unique opportunity, all the work that has been done to date is a very large amount of diamond drilling, which all we know about the ore body are the cores obtained by the diamond drill operation, and I examined some of these, hopefully a representative sample of the core and looked around at the surface and read the very comprehensive reports on engineering and geology that had been made, including long-term environmental studies which include a fisheries study which suggested in almost all cases I am aware of, the habitat increases. And I read the engineering reports recommending the project be carried out.
A kind of a horrible statistic is that because of interference by environmental clubs, and a wealthy fisherman that has a cabin within 100km radius of the project and by the American EPA bureau, the project has never been possible to move into the next stage. But something on the order of $700 million dollars has been spent thanks to interference by environmentalists and government agencies.
MK: Majors such as Anglo have invested a significant amount of dollars into it. How would you rank the Pebble project relative to other porphyry copper projects in the world that you are familiar with?
DL: It is the biggest deposit that I know of, that is ready to be put into production at this time and when it is in production, eventually, it will very likely be become the largest copper-gold mine in the world.
MK: So you do believe this is an economic deposit and the Pebble project will be in production one day?
DL: I am certain of that. And it’s possible to design a pit and concentrator assuming average grade which includes the higher grade and the lower grade, which will produce an optimum tonnage from the mine.
MK: And you believe there will be an open pit and underground portion to the project?
DL: Yes. And I believe there will be 2 or 3 different open pits. In the mining business, it’s common to begin to build the mill and begin on a high grade near surface part of the ore body.
MK: Wasn’t that how Escondida was originally started?
DL: Yes. Escondida and probably 20 other large scale mining operations.
MK: For open disclosure David, are you a shareholder of Northern
Dynasty?
DL: Yes I am.
MK: What would you say to all of the critics and shorts out there and all of the so called geologic ”experts” who are saying the project is worthless? I’ve read and heard some people state including professional geologists, claim that the project is not economically viable or there’s nothing of value at Pebble What would you say to those individuals?
DL: I would say try to get back in a mining college and learn more.
MK: That’s exactly the response another Mining Hall of Famer, Bob Dickinson said on stage at my investment conference in Vancouver in January when I asked the same question.
DL: I totally agree, I think that it’s such a ridiculous statement it hardly bears arguing with, but I don’t know all the background of what they stated.
MK: Other than cyclicality of our business or the commodity price do you see any other fatal flaws to the Pebble project?
DL: No.
MK: I want to discuss the social aspects of a mine such as Pebble being brought into production and the effects to the community. We drove around the communities around the Pebble project such as Iliamna and other areas in the region where a gallon of milk is $15, a case of beer is $60 because everything is chartered in.
I truly believe that not only will there be 15,000 jobs created by the development of the Pebble deposit, but the community will benefit as a whole. Schools, hospitals the municipalities will have more money from the wealth generated from the mine and that will improve the standards of living for all. You’ve seen the social effects of mining more than anyone, what is your opinion?
DL: Well there almost all helpful, productive, higher standards of living, increased security, especially a mine like Pebble, which will probably span several generations. And in Alaska, the Alaskan government is in favor of the development, the district government is in favor of the development and most of the indigenous communities are in favor of development. So it’s surprising that they have been able to stop this development. Money from mines is new wealth. The money that comes out of a large high-grade mine benefits all.
MK: What do you see as the final outcome with respect to the Pebble project? You’ve worked with many majors, developing the deposits, finding deposits, selling them to the majors, what do you see as a shareholder yourself in Northern Dynasty as the eventual outcome for Northern Dynasty shareholders?
DL: I think the best outcome would be for a large company already experienced in producing copper and gold or a consortium of producers to take the project over.
MK: Like what took place with Escondida for example?
DL: Escondida was a consortium. A lot of additional money will have to be put into the development
MK: So you believe this project will warrant and attract billions of dollars in capital for infrastructure?
DL: Absolutely, I have, no question whatsoever. Pebble’s published ore grade of the deposit is higher than the ore grade in many of the Arizona, New Mexico mines, and higher than the number of big mines in production today like Highland Valley.
MK: And it will also be a clean concentrate?
DL: Yes
MK: Whereas Escondida is more of a dirty concentrate now
DL: Yes, that’s right.
MK: Do you want to explain why clean concentrate is so important to my subscribers?
DL: Well there a number of minerals that typically occur with the copper minerals, and minerals that contain gold and some of these minerals like enargite, which contains arsenic, and minerals that contain mercury produce a dirty concentrate.
MK: And Mother Nature blessed Pebble because none of those ‘nasties’ are an issue in the Pebble concentrate?
DL: That’s right.
MK: So to conclude this Q&A; I just want to make sure we’re absolutely clear here, you’re a shareholder and you believe this is a world class deposit, you believe its economically viable, you believe it will be developed and put into production and it will be a multi-generational asset, am I correct on all fronts there?
DL: You are.

A Supreme Court Ruling May Make It Harder for Government Agencies to Use Good Science

The Supreme Court overturned Chevron deference, a 40-year legal principle that has shaped the role of government agencies. The outcome could affect medication approval, pollution regulation, and more

By Meghan Bartels
June 25, 2024

Editor’s Note (6/28/24): On Friday the Supreme Court overruled the 1984 case that had established Chevron deference. “Agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities,” the new opinion read. “Courts do.”

The Supreme Court is set to rule as soon as Wednesday on a seemingly tedious pair of cases that question who should pay for congressionally mandated observers on fishing boats: the owners of the boats or a federal agency. But far from being small fish, the opinions may rejigger the balance of power among the branches of government and weaken the role of science in policymaking.

These cases target a long-standing precedent called Chevron deference, which determines how courts evaluate a given federal agency’s interpretation of congressional statutes that guide that agency’s actions. These statutes often contain accidental or intentional ambiguities. And for the past 40 years, agencies have had the leeway to interpret those ambiguities because courts have recognized that these offices are staffed by people with special training and scientific expertise.

But legal experts say that Chevron deference will almost certainly change—the only question now is whether the Supreme Court will completely overturn the principle or merely narrow it. And the Court’s decision will ripple far beyond the fishing community. The ruling could affect how medication is approved and what pollutants are regulated; it challenges the authority of a host of agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, where Chevron deference began.

“Rolling back Chevron is going to create a huge paradigm shift in how the government works and even how Congress legislates,” says Andrew Twinamatsiko, director of the Health Policy and the Law Initiative at Georgetown University.

Chevron deference gets its name from a 1984 Supreme Court case that hinged on how the EPA chose to interpret Congress’s Clean Air Act. Under the administration of President Ronald Reagan, the EPA had decided to define the term “source” in a way that would allow a host of new industrial projects to evade pollution emission regulation, says David Doniger, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), who argued—and lost—that case.

In its original opinion for the 1984 case, the Court established two principles for evaluating an agency’s actions when it fulfills instructions from Congress. If the relevant statute was clear, the case determined, the agency would have to abide by it. If the statute was ambiguous, a court would have to defer to the agency’s reasonable interpretation of what it might mean—otherwise the judicial branch would risk overstepping its mandate and entering the realm of policymaking. In the situation Doniger and the NRDC had objected to, the court decided, the Clean Air Act was ambiguous, and the EPA had made a reasonable interpretation. So the agency’s relevant projects were not subject to the regulations.

At the time, it was an unremarkable reminder of judicial restraint that had been the norm for a century, Doniger says. “It really wasn’t breaking new ground,” he says. “But it became a very concise restatement of that approach.” In the decades since the decision, the Chevron opinion has been cited more than 16,000 times in courts across the country.

Even Doniger has come to appreciate the policy. A particularly important feature of Chevron deference, he says, is its nonpartisan nature. “It is a neutral principle,” Doniger says. “It lets conservative administrations cut back on the scope of these laws, and it lets liberal administrations do more with them.”

A Threat to Scientific Expertise

Judicial deference to agencies’ expertise is crucial to how U.S. medical and environmental regulation, in particular, currently works. For example, the FDA currently uses its discretion to loosen approval requirements for treatments of rare diseases, such as by permitting historical records to substitute for a control group in a clinical trial, says Reshma Ramachandran, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Medicine, who has a background in public policy. And the agency’s ability to regulate new products—such as vaping systems and genetic tests marketed directly to consumers—can rely on the ambiguity in terms such as “medical devices” in legislation from Congress.

Ramachandran worries that if Chevron deference falls, the FDA will become more cautious out of fear of being taken to court and losing. “I think the government agencies are just going to be much more hesitant to follow the science and instead might make decisions based on the political and legal landscape,” she says. New treatments might take longer to be approved, and on the other end of the spectrum, people could be exposed to dangerous or misleading products that were able to evade regulation, she worries.

Doniger cites the EPA’s regulation of carbon emissions as pollutants and OSHA regulations that targeted the spread of COVID in workplaces early in the pandemic as examples of the sort of situation in which Chevron deference can allow agencies to take the lead on topics that are firmly within their territory but about which Congress has yet to create detailed legislation.

Since the development of Chevron deference, Congress and federal agencies have settled into a pattern that works, experts say. Congress writes legislation—which sometimes remains in place for decades—with ambiguities, and the agencies that know the relevant topics better turn that legislation into meaningful and practical policies.

“Congress doesn’t have the time or expertise to fill in the details for thousands of regulations, and it’s hard to anticipate the twists and turns of the future and exactly what [lawmakers] need to spell out specifically,” says Dena Adler, a senior attorney at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. Agencies use their expertise to turn broad-brush statutes into nitty-gritty policies, and the courts intervene only in extreme circumstances.

Of course, that’s assuming Congress passes legislation in the first place, which is becoming increasingly difficult amid deep partisanship. “Since Congress is so gridlocked, we’re often using existing laws to meet novel challenges,” Adler says. Without Chevron deference, she fears courts may reject agencies’ attempts to fit new issues or technologies into the scope of existing laws. “I think this decision could have real implications for agencies’ ability to tackle the problems of the day like climate change,” she says. The Clean Air Act specifically directed the EPA to incorporate chemicals that would later be determined to be air pollutants, but not all legislation includes this kind of future-proofed language.

Blurring the Lines of Agencies’ Authority

Chevron precedent isn’t the only source of agencies’ authority, particularly on technical matters. In some situations, legislation does explicitly order a given agency to make certain evaluations, and agencies’ actions in these circumstances should be respected even without Chevron deference, Adler says. And other legal principles exist that support reasonable scientific judgements made by agencies, she notes. But Adler worries these principles may come under fire anyway as small-government advocates seek to blur the lines between such situations and those covered by Chevron deference, which applies exclusively to interpretations of congressional statutes.

Regardless of whether Chevron is overturned or weakened, federal agencies will likely face a spike in lawsuits as adversaries feel out the boundaries of the Supreme Court’s decision, experts say. Challenges that succeed will force agencies to start fresh on a given issue after federal workers already spent years developing its related rule. Even unsuccessful challenges pull agency resources from other work, says Emily Hammond, a professor of law at the George Washington University. “It’s a huge distraction, and it’s also years and years of work,” they say. “It is a big disruption to have a rule overturned.”

The less deference agencies expect to have in court—and the more often they expect to end up there—the more limited policies are likely to be, experts agree. Rather than using the full powers of the statutes Congress has written, agencies will likely err on the side of caution.

Cultivating hesitancy within federal agencies isn’t necessarily antiscience, but it’s hardly proscience either. “Certainly that weakens the capacity of the government to respond when science reveals a threat to people’s health or people’s lives,” Doniger says.

Weakening Chevron deference “doesn’t actually deny that COVID is transmitted in the workplace or that air pollution is causing cancer or causing climate change; it just makes it much harder for the government to do anything about it,” he says. “It comes down to whether the government can protect you.”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/supreme-courts-chevron-deference-decision-could-make-science-based/

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