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wharfrat
Citizen
Username: Wharfrat
Post Number: 976
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 2:30 pm: |     |
From "scientific reading" to "climate change", it appears the scientific community sees through the BS.
February 18, 2004
Scientists Accuse White House of Distorting Facts
By JAMES GLANZ
The Bush administration has deliberately and systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad, a group of about 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, said in a statement issued today.
The sweeping charges were later discussed in a conference call with some of the scientists that was organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization that focuses on technical issues and has often taken stands at odds with administration policy. The organization also issued a 37-page report today that it said detailed the accusations.
Together, the two documents accuse the administration of repeatedly censoring and suppressing reports by its own scientists, stacking advisory committees with unqualified political appointees, disbanding government panels that provide unwanted advice, and refusing to seek any independent scientific expertise in some cases.
"Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front," the statement from the scientists said, adding that they believed the administration had "misrepresented scientific knowledge and misled the public about the implications of its policies."
The White House had no immediate comment on the statements.
Dr. Kurt Gottfried, an emeritus professor of physics at Cornell University who signed the statement and spoke in the conference call, said the administration had "engaged in practices that are in conflict with the spirit of science and the scientific method." Dr. Gottfried asserted that what he called "the cavalier attitude toward science" could place at risk the basis for the nation's long-term prosperity, health and military prowess.
The scientists denied that they had political motives in releasing the documents as the 2004 presidential race began to take clear shape, a day after Senator John Kerry won the Wisconsin Democratic primary and solidified his position as President Bush's likely opponent in the fall. The organization's report, Dr. Gottfried said, had taken a year to prepare — much longer than originally planned — and had been released as soon as it was ready.
"I don't see it as a partisan issue at all," said Russell Train, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, and who spoke in the conference call in support of the statement. "If it becomes that way I think it's because the White House chooses to make it a partisan issue," Mr. Train said.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 2003
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 4:22 pm: | |
quote:The White House had no immediate comment on the statements.
No, they have to check with the Minister of Ideology first... |
wharfrat
Citizen
Username: Wharfrat
Post Number: 977
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 4:43 pm: | |
And then there is this-
February 18, 2004
Panel Urges Bush to Finance Climate-Change Research
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
P}resident Bush's plan for clarifying the causes and impacts of climate change has been improved over the past year, but can succeed only if the research is shielded from political pressures and if budgets grow, a panel of experts concluded today.
Administration officials, who requested the outside review of the plan, released in revised form last July, welcomed the panel's findings, but said that no significant budget increases were in the offing and that the project would succeed mainly through improved organization of research.
"We can't practically expect short-term massive increases in funding — it's just not in the cards these days," said Dr. James R. Mahoney, an assistant secretary of commerce who directs the administration's Climate Change Science Program. The federal government currently spends about $1.7 billion a year on climate research and there are no significant shifts in spending in the administration's proposed 2005 budget, officials said.
The panel, assembled by the National Research Council of the National Academies, the country's leading scientific advisory group, said there was an "urgent" need to move from planning an expanded push in federal climate research to financing it and moving ahead.
"This is an issue where the science is pretty clearly telling us that the longer we wait to consider some of these issues, the more dramatic the impacts may turn out to be," said Dr. Thomas E. Graedel, a professor of industrial ecology at Yale and chairman of the 17-member panel.
The administration's climate-research plan is available at www.climatescience.gov and the critique is at www.nationalacademies.org.
Mr. Bush first announced plans to intensify climate research in June 2001, shortly after he was criticized by many climate experts for abandoning a campaign pledge to limit power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas that many scientists have linked to global warming.
He said more research was needed before he would consider any measures beyond voluntary programs to slow growth in emissions.
The first version of the plan, issued in November 2002, was criticized by the same panel last February as lacking clear priorities and neglecting to take stock of existing studies pointing to risks posed by rising global temperatures.
In its review of the revised plan the panel found clearer goals, but saw few signs that sufficient money would be allocated for new initiatives like improving satellite observations and computer simulations of the changing atmosphere and oceans.
"There is no evidence in the plan or elsewhere of a commitment to provide the necessary funds for these newer or expanded program elements," the panel said.
The panel also recommended that the administration ensure the credibility of government climate research by establishing a standing review committee of outside parties with a wide variety of viewpoints.
Many environmentalists and political opponents of Mr. Bush, and some scientists at government agencies, have expressed strong concern about the potential for political interference in climate science.
They have cited a string of instances in which the White House has edited climate-related documents in ways that amplified uncertainties and eliminated references to studies pointing to significant risks.
Just before the final version of the research plan was released last summer, for example, senior Commerce Department officials shaping the document threatened to resign over last-minute efforts by senior administration officials to adjust wording, according to several scientists and officials involved in the dispute.
Dr. Mahoney said a firm boundary would be maintained between science and policy. "We've got a very clear vision," he said. "Let's get the science right and the policy gets debated in its own right."
The review panel said the plan's strongest element was the architecture it laid out for organizing the dispersed efforts of 13 agencies to focus on a few central goals, including improving knowledge of past and current climate shifts and the influences — both natural and human — that shape them and reducing uncertainties in projections of how Earth's climate may shift in coming decades.
"Although the plan was developed for a 10-year time frame, it could effectively guide climate change research for decades," provided it is revised every three to five years to reflect advances in the science, the panel said in a printed statement.
One of the biggest weaknesses in the plan, the panel said, was the absence of any significant reference to existing research examining the potential impacts of climate change around the United States.
Particularly notable, it said, was the omission of any reference to the National Assessment on the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, a 2001 report that took years to prepare.
White House officials have been continually pressed by industry lobbyists and anti-regulatory groups to expunge references to that study, which was mainly undertaken in the Clinton administration.
That assessment provides "important contributions" and the independent peer review it went through was "exemplary," the panel said.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
Ukealalio
Citizen
Username: Ukealalio
Post Number: 466
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 4:47 pm: | |
How dare you insinuate that the current administration is involved in foul play when it come to science. Don't you realize Dumbya has to talk to god on these matters?.
Vote this maniac out !!!!!!. |
themp
Citizen
Username: Themp
Post Number: 528
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, February 19, 2004 - 10:07 pm: | |
The difference between bad science and good science should be determined by poiliticians, not scientists using peer review. duh. |
tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 2014
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, February 19, 2004 - 10:13 pm: | |
the important thing is to decide what you want to do, then cook up the evidence to support it. |
notehead
Citizen
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 935
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 20, 2004 - 1:43 pm: | |
Hmmm... no sign of Cowboy... |
wharfrat
Citizen
Username: Wharfrat
Post Number: 984
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Monday, February 23, 2004 - 5:46 am: | |
One of today's editorials from the Times-
Maybe, Cowboy, you will finally give it a rest.
February 23, 2004
Uses and Abuses of Science
Although the Bush administration is hardly the first to politicize science, no administration in recent memory has so shamelessly distorted scientific findings for policy reasons or suppressed them when they conflict with political goals. This is the nub of an indictment delivered last week by more than 60 prominent scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates. Their statement was accompanied by a report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, listing cases where the administration has manipulated science on environmental and other issues.
President Bush's supporters promptly denounced the statement and the report as an overdrawn and politically motivated work issued in an election year by an advocacy group known for its liberal disposition. Tellingly, however, neither Mr. Bush's friends nor the White House denied that any of the incidents listed in the report — all had been reported before in newspapers, trade magazines and scientific journals — had occurred. The best they could muster was a lame rejoinder from Dr. John Marburger III, Mr. Bush's science adviser, who said that these were disconnected episodes reflecting normal bureaucratic disagreements, none of them adding up to a "a pattern" of distortion or disrespect for science.
We respectfully urge Dr. Marburger to look again. On global warming alone, the administration belittled, misrepresented, altered or quashed multiple reports suggesting a clear link between greenhouse gas emissions and the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil. A study detailing the impact of mercury emissions from power plants was sanitized to industry specifications. Another study suggesting that a Congressional clean-air bill would achieve greater pollution reductions than Mr. Bush's own plan, at approximately the same cost, was withheld. It does not take much effort to find a pattern of suppressing inconvenient facts that might force Mr. Bush's friends in the oil, gas and coal industries to spend more on pollution control.
The report details similar shenanigans involving other agencies, including Agriculture, Interior and even, on reproductive health issues, the Centers for Disease Control. It also criticizes the administration for stacking advisory committees with industry representatives and disbanding panels that provided unwanted advice. Collected in one place, this material gives a portrait of governmentwide insensitivity to scientific standards that, unless corrected, will further undermine the administration's credibility and the morale of its scientists.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
GOP STRAW
Citizen
Username: Strawberry
Post Number: 2000
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Monday, February 23, 2004 - 8:10 am: | |
Wharfie,
The sooner you realize these op-ed pieces you throw at us are nothing more then opinion, the sooner you'll stop using them as some type of conclusive evidence.
The Times, is hardly the rule of law. I mean, all you have to do is read a few of Harpo's opinions to figure this one out.
Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation .. And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003
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wharfrat
Citizen
Username: Wharfrat
Post Number: 985
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Monday, February 23, 2004 - 12:00 pm: | |
Straw-
I know you read this in another thread, but I'll re-post it so you can refresh your feeble memory.
Cowboy-
Your discussion/hypothesis that increased plant life will stabilize Earth's climate/reduce the levels of CO2 in the attmosphere is unsustained by current research.
Currently increasing levels of greenhouse gases like CO2 and sulfuric acid, and rapid deforestation in the Amazon Basin, and other places are contributing to what you euphemistically call "climate change."
You started another thread with a similar topic, not too long ago in the old soapbox, and I wrote this response to your postulation.
Evidence that global warming is real and human activity is the cause-
1-Atmospheric concentration of CO2 from fossil fuel use is up 30% since the beginning of the industrial revolution. This is the highest concentration in 450,000 years, preceding the last ice age-the Peistocene Era.
2-Greenhouse gas methane has increased 145% in the same period.
3-Nitrous oxide up 15% (bring back dorm life ;-)
4-As notehead shows with his graph, the 1990’s are the warmest in recorded history.
Consequently, the arctic ice pack has thinned 40% in last 20 years, the Alps have lost 1/2 glacial mass since 19th century, the snow peak on Mt. Kilamanjaro is receding and will be gone in 15 yrs. In addition, shrubs are growing on Arctic tundra, mosquitos which thrive in tropic climates are carrying diseases to temperate climate zones, both north and south of the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.
The damage this is causing to the eco-system will eventually impact our way of life. According to the International Panel on Climate Control, computer models are predicting a rise in avg. temps up to 6 degrees C, shifting climate zones towards each of the poles, disrupting agriculture, watersheds, snowpack.
Ultimately, the danger from global warming is not to the Earth itself, it's the dominant species on the planet, us.
In addition, evidence that global warming is real is found in the geologic record in the following ways.
Earth's climate cyclically gets warmer and colder. The geologic record tells scientists that Earth regularly goes through an ice age, about every 20,000 years.
The last one was about 10,000 years ago. Long term climate records, again measured by testing the amount of oxygen atoms bonded to the atomic structure of rocks and minerals shows that over the last 2 millenia Earth's temperature has been getting increasingly cooler.
This mirrors the rate of temperature decrease that preceded previous ice ages.
Never before in a cooling cycle has Earth seen a significantly measured spike in global temperatures. This is clearly attributed to the increase in greenhouse gases, directly attributable to the rapid industrialization of modern societies through out the world.
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tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 2042
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, February 23, 2004 - 12:50 pm: | |
note to straw: address the facts, not the source. |
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