Perverting science for politics

[HungLikeJesus]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Thanks for the edit info, very interesting. I know they are doing this on some large farms in Vermont, with seed money from the state.

I just talked to someone from NYSERDA and she's going to send me results of a study that they've just completed, but have not yet published. That will cover NY only, so she recommended that I look on the EPA website for national data. Here's a small part of what I found on that site:

How Is CHP Being Used at U.S. WWTFs? As of September 2007, wastewater treatment CHP systems were in place at 79 sites in 24 states, representing 223 MW of electric capacity. Of the existing CHP systems in the wastewater treatment sector, the majority use reciprocating engines. The mix of technologies used for CHP also includes microturbines, fuel cells, and turbine installations.

If the NYSERDA report contains anything interesting, I'll post it.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Cool, that's encouraging. Thanks.

[BigV]

Since '01, Guarding Species Is Harder

Endangered Listings Drop Under Bush

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 23, 2008; Page A01

With little-noticed procedural and policy moves over several years, Bush administration officials have made it substantially more difficult to designate domestic animals and plants for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Controversies have occasionally flared over Interior Department officials who regularly overruled rank-and-file agency scientists' recommendations to list new species, but internal documents also suggest that pervasive bureaucratic obstacles were erected to limit the number of species protected under one of the nation's best-known environmental laws.

The documents show that personnel were barred from using information in agency files that might support new listings, and that senior officials repeatedly dismissed the views of scientific advisers as President Bush's appointees either rejected putting imperiled plants and animals on the list or sought to remove this federal protection.

I particularly like the Machiavellian elegance of this next tactic:

Officials also changed the way species are evaluated under the 35-year-old law -- by considering only where they live now, as opposed to where they used to exist -- and put decisions on other species in limbo by blocking citizen petitions that create legal deadlines.

Brilliant!!

OF COURSE we should only evaluate a species' candidacy for listing on the Endangered Species Act based on where they live now! For pity's sake, we can't go back and change the past, now can we? And if a species' population (BANG!) is decreasing (BANG!) and then is beyond (BANG!) the (BANG!) point (BANG!) of no (BANG!) return, then, gee Wally, I'm so sorry. (See attached graphic. Note, missing from the graphic is the timeframe for GWB's ESA listing legacy--Seven years. His total for seven years is 59. Compared to nearly 59 PER YEAR by his soft hearted soft headed father. Nevermind the fact that this administration has requested none, only been... bullied into listing those 59 at the end of a lawsuit).

So, so, so unfair. Take it all now, leave nothing of value behind. Send the bill and the carcasses and the wreckage to the grandchildren.

[TheMercenary]

BigV you can't actually be surprised by any of this.

[glatt]

Point of this thread is to document in one place instances where the current administration has perverted science for politics. Nobody is surprised by it anymore, but should we yawn and scratch ourselves, or make note of it?

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by glatt

Point of this thread is to document in one place instances where the current administration has perverted science for politics. Nobody is surprised by it anymore, but should we yawn and scratch ourselves, or make note of it?

I think if it makes you feel better scratch the itch. There are plenty of people taking notes. So wrongs may be righted, some may not. Much of the environmental actions by this administration are deplorable.

[TheMercenary]

March 29, 2008
Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More
By DENNIS OVERBYE
More fighting in Iraq. Somalia in chaos. People in this country can’t afford their mortgages and in some places now they can’t even afford rice.

None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page today will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe.

Scientists say that is very unlikely — though they have done some checking just to make sure.

The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.

But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/sc...hp&oref=slogin

[tw]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

When does a machine underground in both France and Switzerland need to conform to American environmental laws? It is not a rhetorical question.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by tw

When does a machine underground in both France and Switzerland need to conform to American environmental laws? It is not a rhetorical question.

I'm guessing because we can kick their asses anytime we want to?

You could probably get every single Republican lawmaker to agree to an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq if you promised to send them to invade France.

[elSicomoro]

Only if the GOP lawmakers actually do the fighting...though they still might kick the French's ass. Hell, we could probably send Jim and some 3rd graders over there, and the Stars and Stripes would fly over Paris within 3 days.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by sycamore

Only if the GOP lawmakers actually do the fighting...though they still might kick the French's ass. Hell, we could probably send Jim and some 3rd graders over there, and the Stars and Stripes would fly over Paris within 3 days.

Yes but the French are winning in the important "our first lady is hotter than your first lady" category.

Why couldn't we have picked Kucinich?



Why is this man smiling?:p

[TheMercenary]

The queen of Jordon use to hold that spot.

[Happy Monkey]

Cheney v. Whales

Another internal document shows that the officials working for the Vice President also raised spurious objections to the science. According to this document, the Vice President's staff "contends that we have no evidence (i.e., hard data) that lowering the speeds of 'large ships' will actually make a difference. NOAA rejected these objections, writing that both a statistical analysis of ship strike records and the peer-reviewed literature justified the final rule. In its response to the objections from the Vice President's staff, NOAA reported that there is "no basis to overturn our previous conclusion that imposing a speed limit on large vessels would be beneficial to whales.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Well give credit where credit is due... the man is consistent.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Associated Press

Cheney reportedly wanted cuts in climate testimony

By H. JOSEF HEBERT – 40 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Dick Cheney's office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences of climate change, fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases, a former EPA officials maintains.

When six pages were cut from testimony on climate change and public health by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last October, the White House insisted the changes were made because of reservations raised by White House advisers about the accuracy of the science.

But Jason K. Burnett, until last month the senior adviser on climate change to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson, says that Cheney's office was deeply involved in getting nearly half of the CDC's original draft testimony removed.

"The Council on Environmental Quality and the office of the vice president were seeking deletions to the CDC testimony (concerning) ... any discussions of the human health consequences of climate change," Burnett has told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Why is Cheney allergic to science?

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h...mn9AgD91PN4N00