Perverting science for politics

[Troubleshooter]

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by glatt

I think the worst solution would be to do less with more.

No, the worse solution is to apply the same standards to developing countries like China and India to the US. That is pure stupidity.....

[glatt]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

We can reign in when they reign in. Make it a level playing field. It is not.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

No, the worse solution is to apply the same standards to developing countries like China and India to the US. That is pure stupidity.....

?

[TheMercenary]

A bit confusing, I admit. Let me explain.

China and India- They want different and much lower standards for their green house gases; they want the US and developing countries to have higher standards.

"We can reign in when they reign in. Make it a level playing field. It is not."

They need to have the same high standards as us, or we should not have to make any changes at all.

"No, the worse solution is to apply the same standards to developing countries like China and India to the US. That is pure stupidity....."

They need to have the same high standards as us, or we should not have to make any changes at all.

[Happy Monkey]

A somewhat amusing story:

Tom Harkin created the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine to "investigate and validate alternative approaches". Apparently they've only been doing the first part.

The senator went on to lament that, since its inception in 1998, the focus of NCCAM has been "disproving things rather than seeking out and approving things."
Skeptics have complained all along that Harkin and his allies founded this office to promote alternative therapies at public expense, not to test them scientifically. Harkin's statement at the hearing explicitly confirms that hypothesis.

It confirms the hypothesis as to the intent, but in execution it appears to be doing real scientific testing! And Harkin is disappointed in NCCAM, rather than the alternative medicine industry.

[classicman]

Interesting article HM. I found this to be rather teling as well.

Harkin doesn't seem to realize that by publicly pressuring an ostensibly independent research center to produce positive results, he's undermining the credibility of the center he worked so hard to create. If even if NCCAM does come up with positive results, Harkin's giving the scientific community an excuse to discount that research as tainted.

That's a shame, because if we're going to spend public money testing alternative medicines, researchers should be allowed to follow the evidence. Besides, ruling out therapies that don't work can be just as valuable as vindicating therapies that do.

Bold mine - well Hello!!!!

[Happy Monkey]

Whether it is valuable depends on whether your underlying goal is to promote health, or promote alternative medicine.

[TheMercenary]

Sort of preverted science, mildly related thread drift. Interesting never the less.

US nuclear relic found in bottle

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7918618.stm

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

A bit confusing, I admit. Let me explain.

China and India- They want different and much lower standards for their green house gases; they want the US and developing countries to have higher standards.

"We can reign in when they reign in. Make it a level playing field. It is not."

They need to have the same high standards as us, or we should not have to make any changes at all.

"No, the worse solution is to apply the same standards to developing countries like China and India to the US. That is pure stupidity....."

They need to have the same high standards as us, or we should not have to make any changes at all.

Screw changing it at all.

[TheMercenary]

I don't support the double standard.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

I don't support the double standard.

I don't support the future. I hate the future. Rotten bastards will eventually invent a time machine, but do they ever come back and visit their great-great-great-great-great grandaddy TGRR? No. Ungrateful bastards.

Burn the joint down, and leave the disrespectful little turds a used-up cinder.

[classicman]

Bumpity bump.

Panel: Gov't thwarted worst-case scenario on spill

The White House blocked efforts by federal scientists to tell the public just how bad the Gulf oil spill could have been.

That finding comes from a panel appointed by President Barack Obama to investigate the worst offshore oil spill in history.

In documents released Wednesday, the national oil spill commission reveals that in late April or early May the White House budget office denied a request from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to make public the worst-case discharge from the blown-out well.

BP estimated the worse scenario to be a leak of 2.5 million gallons per day. The government, meanwhile, was telling the public the well was releasing 210,000 gallons per day - a figure that later grew closer to BP's figure.

from AP via Yahoo
Apparently the R's aren't the only ones...

[xoxoxoBruce]

What is the point of ballyhooing the worst case scenario?
That's usually used to...
1- promote action by someone to respond to the threat. The threat was already being responded to.

2- some sort of political gain, by distorting reality, while assigning blame. I don't think that's NOAA's game.

2- draw attention to oneself, as in listen to me, I know best. Possible, due to inter-agency rivalry?

It sounds to me like NOAA was playing TV weatherman, it's coming and it could be really bad. Even though worse case almost never happens.

If you have a problem you should do the best you can to solve it, which is what they did, rather than run around pointlessly, like Chicken Little, which does absolutely no good.

[TheMercenary]

It also sounds like the Obamay Administration and their cronies are no different than Bush, they purposefully withheld critical info about the spill to effect public opinion when in fact they knew the info they were telling the public or withholding was BS. Now they have been busted by their own commission.

In effect, they lied. Again.

[classicman]

Its not ballyhooing, its telling the truth. It seems they intentionally didn't. Why block the effort to tell the truth?

In four papers issued by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, commission investigators fault the administration for giving too much credence to initial estimates that just 1,000 barrels of oil a day were flowing from the ruptured BP PLC well, and for later allowing political concerns to drive decisions such as how to deploy people and material—such as oil-containing boom—to contain the spreading oil.

Bold mine