![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Stare too long at the Soviet Union
Sep. 17th, 2002 04:43 amand the Soviet Union stares back into you - remind me what it was that we didn't like about Lysenko?
The White House disappears Global Warming
For the first time in six years, the annual federal report on air pollution trends has no section on global warming, though President Bush has said that slowing the growth of emissions linked to warming is a priority for his administration.
The decision to delete the chapter on climate change was made by top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency with White House approval, White House officials said.
"Some people at pretty high levels in my organization were saying, `Take it out,' " said an E.P.A. official outside Washington who helped prepare the report. Others at the agency confirmed his account.
That's cool, though, right? The State Department issued that climate report to the UN and talked about global warming, so at least the information is out there.
Well, it was, anyway.
The president quickly distanced himself from the report, saying it was "put out by the bureaucracy." New copies of the report have been changed to emphasize scientific uncertainty about the effects of global warming. Some officials at the E.P.A. said the handling of that State Department report heightened concern about climate documents, prompting the changes in the new report.
Not concerned enough to hire a good proofreader, clearly, because they missed some stuff.
Global warming is mentioned twice: once in a note in fine print at the bottom of the table of contents, listing agency Web sites with climate data, and once in a paragraph that refers, apparently by mistake, to the omitted section on climate.
"Although the primary focus of this report is on national air pollution," the paragraph says, "global air pollution issues such as destruction of the stratospheric ozone layer and the effect of global warming on the earth's climate are major concerns and are also discussed."
Keep in mind that the invisible CO2 problem is one that the US has some stake in:
Emissions of carbon dioxide from American cars and light trucks nearly match those of all sources in Japan, and exceed those of India and Germany, which rank fifth and sixth among the world's countries in terms of global warming emissions
Oddly, candidate Bush was a little more concerned about this issue than White House incumbent Bush turned out to be:
In a letter to a lawmaker Tuesday, Bush said his administration will not impose mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide on the nation's power plants. On the campaign trail, Bush had promised to do just that. Only a few weeks ago, Christine Whitman, administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, reiterated that pledge.
Now, let's face it. It's pretty darn disturbing when the government ignores the scientific consensus of their own experts in favor of policies that allow industry to do massive, expensive, environmental damage for their own short-term profits.
Luckily we're not going to be faced with that again any time soon.
The headline in the Washington Post says it nicely: HHS Seeks Science Advice to Match Bush Views
The Bush administration has begun a broad restructuring of the scientific advisory committees that guide federal policy in areas such as patients' rights and public health, eliminating some committees that were coming to conclusions at odds with the president's views and in other cases replacing members with handpicked choices.
In the past few weeks, the Department of Health and Human Services has retired two expert committees before their work was complete. One had recommended that the Food and Drug Administration expand its regulation of the increasingly lucrative genetic testing industry, which has so far been free of such oversight. The other committee, which was rethinking federal protections for human research subjects, had drawn the ire of administration supporters on the religious right, according to government sources.
A third committee, which had been assessing the effects of environmental chemicals on human health, has been told that nearly all of its members will be replaced -- in several instances by people with links to the industries that make those chemicals. One new member is a California scientist who helped defend Pacific Gas and Electric Co. against the real-life Erin Brockovich.
Another prominent appointment: a founder of Right to Life is joining the panel that studies Human Research (expect lots of protection for "the unborn" and little or none for the, well, born). The Committee on Environmental Health is going to contain representatives of chemical industry groups and toxicologists who make their living insisting that environmental pollutants don't do damage, including one of the hired guns who defended the "Erin Brockovich" case. The committee on genetic testing is being disbanded altogether.
This is all, of course, a huge coinkydink.
Despite the fact that he defended [Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy] Thompson's prerogative to hear preferentially from experts who share the president's philosophical sensibilities, HHS spokesman William Pierce said the committee remains balanced overall, and no prospective member of any advisory committee is subjected to political screenings.
"It's always a matter of qualifications first and foremost," Pierce said. "There's no quotas on any of this stuff. There's no litmus test of any kind."
At least one nationally renowned academic, who was recently called by an administration official to talk about serving on an HHS advisory committee, disagreed with that assessment. To the candidate's surprise, the official asked for the professor's views on embryo cell research, cloning and physician-assisted suicide. After that, the candidate said, the interviewer told the candidate that the position would have to go to someone else because the candidate's views did not match those of the administration.
Asked to reconcile that experience with his previous assurance, Pierce said of the interview questions: "Those are not litmus tests."
Reels the mind to ponder who would be on the committee to define litmus tests.
The White House disappears Global Warming
For the first time in six years, the annual federal report on air pollution trends has no section on global warming, though President Bush has said that slowing the growth of emissions linked to warming is a priority for his administration.
The decision to delete the chapter on climate change was made by top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency with White House approval, White House officials said.
"Some people at pretty high levels in my organization were saying, `Take it out,' " said an E.P.A. official outside Washington who helped prepare the report. Others at the agency confirmed his account.
That's cool, though, right? The State Department issued that climate report to the UN and talked about global warming, so at least the information is out there.
Well, it was, anyway.
The president quickly distanced himself from the report, saying it was "put out by the bureaucracy." New copies of the report have been changed to emphasize scientific uncertainty about the effects of global warming. Some officials at the E.P.A. said the handling of that State Department report heightened concern about climate documents, prompting the changes in the new report.
Not concerned enough to hire a good proofreader, clearly, because they missed some stuff.
Global warming is mentioned twice: once in a note in fine print at the bottom of the table of contents, listing agency Web sites with climate data, and once in a paragraph that refers, apparently by mistake, to the omitted section on climate.
"Although the primary focus of this report is on national air pollution," the paragraph says, "global air pollution issues such as destruction of the stratospheric ozone layer and the effect of global warming on the earth's climate are major concerns and are also discussed."
Keep in mind that the invisible CO2 problem is one that the US has some stake in:
Emissions of carbon dioxide from American cars and light trucks nearly match those of all sources in Japan, and exceed those of India and Germany, which rank fifth and sixth among the world's countries in terms of global warming emissions
Oddly, candidate Bush was a little more concerned about this issue than White House incumbent Bush turned out to be:
In a letter to a lawmaker Tuesday, Bush said his administration will not impose mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide on the nation's power plants. On the campaign trail, Bush had promised to do just that. Only a few weeks ago, Christine Whitman, administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, reiterated that pledge.
Now, let's face it. It's pretty darn disturbing when the government ignores the scientific consensus of their own experts in favor of policies that allow industry to do massive, expensive, environmental damage for their own short-term profits.
Luckily we're not going to be faced with that again any time soon.
The headline in the Washington Post says it nicely: HHS Seeks Science Advice to Match Bush Views
The Bush administration has begun a broad restructuring of the scientific advisory committees that guide federal policy in areas such as patients' rights and public health, eliminating some committees that were coming to conclusions at odds with the president's views and in other cases replacing members with handpicked choices.
In the past few weeks, the Department of Health and Human Services has retired two expert committees before their work was complete. One had recommended that the Food and Drug Administration expand its regulation of the increasingly lucrative genetic testing industry, which has so far been free of such oversight. The other committee, which was rethinking federal protections for human research subjects, had drawn the ire of administration supporters on the religious right, according to government sources.
A third committee, which had been assessing the effects of environmental chemicals on human health, has been told that nearly all of its members will be replaced -- in several instances by people with links to the industries that make those chemicals. One new member is a California scientist who helped defend Pacific Gas and Electric Co. against the real-life Erin Brockovich.
Another prominent appointment: a founder of Right to Life is joining the panel that studies Human Research (expect lots of protection for "the unborn" and little or none for the, well, born). The Committee on Environmental Health is going to contain representatives of chemical industry groups and toxicologists who make their living insisting that environmental pollutants don't do damage, including one of the hired guns who defended the "Erin Brockovich" case. The committee on genetic testing is being disbanded altogether.
This is all, of course, a huge coinkydink.
Despite the fact that he defended [Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy] Thompson's prerogative to hear preferentially from experts who share the president's philosophical sensibilities, HHS spokesman William Pierce said the committee remains balanced overall, and no prospective member of any advisory committee is subjected to political screenings.
"It's always a matter of qualifications first and foremost," Pierce said. "There's no quotas on any of this stuff. There's no litmus test of any kind."
At least one nationally renowned academic, who was recently called by an administration official to talk about serving on an HHS advisory committee, disagreed with that assessment. To the candidate's surprise, the official asked for the professor's views on embryo cell research, cloning and physician-assisted suicide. After that, the candidate said, the interviewer told the candidate that the position would have to go to someone else because the candidate's views did not match those of the administration.
Asked to reconcile that experience with his previous assurance, Pierce said of the interview questions: "Those are not litmus tests."
Reels the mind to ponder who would be on the committee to define litmus tests.
