Howard Dean on the War on Science

Oh, how I wish Howard Dean were our candidate today...

if it hasn't been mentioned here already, this Chris Mooney article is relevant.

http://www.chriscmooney.com/blog.asp?Id=937

Mike: I thought you were going to lay off that Ann Coulter stuff. There are way too many things in your manifesto for me to tackle right now, so I'll just make one point relevant to this particular weblog:

Mike S: The threat to teaching of evolution is real enough, but it's obviously not being driven by the Bush administration

"driven"? perhaps not. "Ridden" may be more accurate.

I write this week's column as a physician.

The Bush administration has declared war on science.

When a right-wing theory is contradicted by an inconvenient scientific fact, the science is not refuted; it is simply discarded or ignored.

Egregious examples abound. Over-the-counter morning-after contraceptive sales are banned, despite the recommendation for approval by an independent panel of the Food and Drug Administration review board.

The health risks of mercury were discounted by a White House staffer who simply crossed out the word "confirmed" from a phrase describing mercury as a "confirmed public health risk."

A National Cancer Institute fact sheet was doctored to suggest that abortion increases breast-cancer risk, even though the American Cancer Society concluded that the best study discounts that.

Reports on the status of minority health and the importance of breast feeding are similarly watered down to appease right-wing ideologies.

What about global warming? After withdrawing from the Kyoto Treaty, the Bush administration distanced itself from a climate report the Environmental Protection Agency wrote, because it affirmed the potential worldwide harm of global warming, the existence of which Bush had denied. The global-warming section of the 2003 EPA report on the environment was extensively rewritten, then dropped entirely.

Fighting HIV? Bush's initiative to help fund HIV efforts in Africa was trumpeted by the press, while the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control quietly removed information on the benefits of condoms and safe sex education from domestic HIV Web sites.

Presidential scientific commissions have long enjoyed relative immunity from politics. Presidents of both parties have depended on impartial, rational advice from such groups for decades. Yet under the Bush administration, there has been a concerted effort, led by Karl Rove and other political ideologues based in the White House, to stack these commissions with Republican loyalists, especially those who espouse fundamentalist views on scientific issues. Recently, a scientist and a bioethics professor were dismissed from the blue-ribbon Council on Bioethics when they disagreed with the Bush administration's proposed ban on new stem-cell line development to cure a variety of diseases.

In a similar vein and an unusual move, the nomination of public-health experts to a CDC lead paint advisory panel were rejected by Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson, and replaced with researchers with financial ties to the lead industry.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, with 20 Nobel laureates and several former scientific advisers to Republican presidents, has issued its scathing Report on Scientific Integrity condemning these practices.

Is it any wonder that these outrages have been perpetrated on an unsuspecting public and an enfeebled press? Not when you consider that this is an administration that has put forth deliberately misleading proposals like the Healthy Forests Initiative, which removes barriers to clear-cutting, and the Clear Skies Initiative, which weakens existing safeguards on mercury, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants dumped into the air by power plants.

When the oil industry writes national energy policy and the HMOs and drug companies draft our Medicare legislation, who is looking out for truth, scientific integrity and the public interest?

Will it be long before a prominent panel of fundamentalist theologians, conservative columnists and a few token scientists take up the question of whether the theory of evolution should be banned from the nation's classrooms? Stay tuned. In George Bush's America, ignorance is strength.

"I thought you were going to lay off that Ann Coulter stuff"

Which stuff would that, be, exactly? Just because she says something or agrees with it doesn't automatically make it wrong... (likewise for Bush)

Or do you just mean conservative political viewpoints?

"I'll just make one point relevant to this particular weblog"

The original posting had nothing to do with evolution - it just quoted part of Dean's screed against the administration.

If the Bush administration is making political hay out of the ID/Creationist movement (evidence for which I'd like to see), that is scientifically irresponsible. But that's not the same thing as declaring war on science.

The original posting had nothing to do with evolution

— Mike S.

every issue he touches on is a hot-button political issue, not a scientific one.

— Mike S.

Just because they implement some policies that some people don't like doesn't mean they've declared war on science.

But this never happens with left-wing theories.

The morning-after pill is an abortifacient...

They didn't claim that mercury itself wasn't dangerous, they claimed that mercury levels in fish weren't a confirmed health risk.

We've had information about condoms and safe sex up the wazzoo for the past 20 years - has it had any effect on HIV transmission? Does Howard think that prostitutes in Thailand go to the CDC website to find out how to use condoms? How is this an attack on science?

It doesn't weaken existing standards, it is less strong than an alternative proposal. And air quality indicators are improving anyway, which means that it won't accelerate the rate of improvement as quickly as the alternative proposal.

Maybe it's a hot-button political issue BECAUSE it is science and the truth getting mauled, and not just the stuff of ordinary political disputes about values and opinions.

— Engineer-Poet

When they act as if facts don't matter and act to suppress science which yeilds facts which call their policies into question, exactly what would you call it?  I do not think "war on science" is too strong.

And that gives the Bush administration a free pass?

Meanwhile preventing the research from being done to quantify the risks.  The research money is subject to political vetting, and that research does not get funded.  Civilian research in general has taken a huge hit.

We've got breakthrough technologies (IGCC for SOx, NOx and ash, activated-carbon scrubbing for mercury) on the front burner ready to reduce these emissions by 90%+, and the Bush administration wants to go slow.  As a member of the public, what good does this "less strong" proposal do for me?  Does it actually pass cost-benefit analysis when health and recreation costs from slower reductions are taken into account, or is it just a favor to some well-heeled campaign contributors at my expense?

Mike S., "war on science" may be hyperbole but you aren't going to convince many people that it's "ridiculous" hyperbole.

Politicians are prone to hyperbole. Howard Dean is a politician. You saw Howard Dean use hyperbole to make a point on behalf of scientists who have seen their research and funds targeted by the Bush Administration in an annoyingly partisan fashion. Wow. What a surprise.

Satisfied? I hope so. Because the rest of your screed is mostly a textbook example of how to set up strawmen and knock them down.

I lost count "Mike" but HOW MANY posts did you find necessary? Six?
Two (three, if your "edit" repost is allowed) seem justified.

Whatever. In you, we see another long-winded dumb vain Bu--sh-- weiner "making his voice heard" and heard and heard, etc. --from a safe and undisclosed location.

I've sometimes speculated that the "creationists," in making their dishonest, false-emotional, tireless attacks, have been the whetstone for developing the techniques that we see destroying American politics, and perhaps America, today.

("Mike", you really hate what science is, right? Because you fear it neglects to flatter you position vis-a-vie some "Supreme Being". And it's likely you hate what America is as well, for the same reason: it fails to flatter your self-proclaimed, and hanging-by-a-thread, superiority over your "lessers" in society.)

Whoa, there, Darwinfinch! You may have blown a gasket just then.

I was hoping to see Mike confronted with cold hard facts, unflavored with venom and calumny. It's much more fun to see "oops!" "Oh, I guess I didn't notice that" or "I can't really defend that after all" than "Yeah? well so's your mother!"

I concluded that the gone-but-not- forgotten Jerry Don Bauer was unbalanced when he accused people he disagreed with of "hating [irrelevant groups]".

Besides, I think the Limbaugh and Coulter types have a copyright on that "hating America" shtick.

A technical point:
The op-ed by Howard Dean is not an editorial -- editorials express the insititutional view of the newspaper. Even if our sister paper the Camera has taken a position on Bush's science policy, it might or might not be the same as Dean's. Newspapers publish a broad range of op-eds, often in oppostion to editorial policies.

Second, it is possible but unlikely that Dean wrote this "in the Camera." He says "I write this week's column" but he is not a regular columnist for the Camera, or, as far as I know, for anywhere else except maybe his own Web site. I think he just writes a once-a-week op-ed and makes it available to newspapers, and every now and again one of them gets published somewhere. We get scads of those at the Rocky Mountain News.

I wrote about the abortion/breast cancer study from Fred Hutchinson in Seattle when it came out, and it showed a very strong link but only for a particular subset of women, those under 18 who abort a first pregnancy after 10 weeks. The message for them is not "don't have an abortion,", it is "if you're going to have an abortion eventually, have it sooner than that." It's political pressure from pro-choice advocates that has silenced that message.

Politicians are prone to hyperbole.  Howard Dean is a politician.  You saw Howard Dean use hyperbole to make a point on behalf of scientists who have seen their research and funds targeted by the Bush Administration in an annoyingly partisan fashion.  Wow.  What a surprise.

— GWW

Satisfied?  I hope so.  Because the rest of your screed is mostly a textbook example of how to set up strawmen and knock them down.

I lost count "Mike" but HOW MANY posts did you find necessary?  Six?    Two (three, if your "edit" repost is allowed) seem justified.

— darwinfinch

Whatever.  In you, we see another long-winded dumb vain Bu---sh--- weiner "making his voice heard" and heard and heard, etc. ---from a safe and undisclosed location.

I've sometimes speculated that the "creationists," in making their dishonest, false-emotional, tireless attacks, have been the whetstone for developing the techniques that we see destroying American politics, and perhaps America, today.

("Mike", you really hate what science is, right?  Because you fear it neglects to flatter you position vis-a-vie some "Supreme Being".  And it's likely you hate what America is as well, for the same reason: it fails to flatter your self-proclaimed, and hanging-by-a-thread, superiority over your "lessers" in society.)

"it irritates me when people wail about the Bush administration being anti-science when there's very little evidence to support such a claim (that they're more anti-science than any other administration.)"

Perhaps Mike, if you'd care to point out where, e.g., Clinton used purely political litmus tests to determine which scientists to appoint to particular positions, or if you'd care to point out anything remotely resembling the report found here

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/page.cfm?pageID=1449

directed towards any previous Republican Administrations, there would be more sympathy for your tirades (not much more, but maybe a little more).

Good luck! It shouldn't take you long in your highly agitated, irritated state to respond.

Mike might also want to explain why the UCS report resonates so closely with the account of that left-wing radical, Paul O'Neil. In Ron Suskind's "The Price of Loyalty", O'Neil marvels that whenever there's less than 100.000% unanimity on any scientific issue, the Bush administration policy was to give the benefit of the "doubt" to their boosters, because "the base wants it, and who the hell knows anyway?"

I have to say I am mightily disappointed in this thread. I look forward to coming here and reading about science and the real war against it from creationists and their ilk. I greatly admire a lot of you and your dedication. But this conversation is a sad reminder that even scientists are prone to emotional diatribes when discussing politics.

I thought that Mike S. came in here and calmly made some salient points. I haven't seen much in rebuttal except invective. Is he right? I don't know, but the arguments against him here sure haven't done anything to convince me. And this is coming from someone who despises Bush and his cronies.

Suskind doesn't like Bush and has written many articles attacking him. O'Neil even backed off some of the claims in his own book after it came out. And he was the Treasury secretary. And like I said, the UCS has a liberal political agenda. That doesn't mean none of their charges have merit, but it does mean that they are not an impartial source to judge claims of political interference.

Well, I think it is time to close this thread, since it's obviously not about evolution and only marginally about science in general. I think I've made my point. We've gone from a 'war on science' and 'Mike S. is helping to destroy America' to 'give us evidence that previous administrations used political considerations in dealing with scientific issues'. The originial charge was that the Bush administration was perpetrating a war on science. I rebutted that claim, saying that the evidence for such a charge was lacking in Dean's Op-Ed. Now I'm supposed to waste my time hunting down past instances of politics interfering with science.

Note the parallels with the usual discussions on this blog:

[Dean/the Creationist] says [Bush is perpetrating a war on science/evolution is false].

[I/the evolutionist] says "that's a mischaracterization of the [political process/science]".

[Dean defenders/the Creationist] says, "well, why don't you prove to me that [Bush isn't perpetrating a war on science/evolution is true]"

You know, the usual trick of switching the burden of proof from the person making the original charge to the person defending against it.

I thought that Mike S. came in here and calmly made some salient points.

I guess it's all a matter of perception. What you perceived as "calmly making salient points", I perceived as an inarticulate screed. (Yeeeaaargghh!)

What I perceived as a reasonable response ("Engineer-poet's") you perceived as invective.

Don't exactly know why.

Perhaps if these "salient points" were summarized more concisely it would stimulate a less "disappointing thread".

The originial charge was that the Bush administration was perpetrating a war on science. I rebutted that claim, saying that the evidence for such a charge was lacking in Dean's Op-Ed. Now I'm supposed to waste my time hunting down past instances of politics interfering with science.

The connections between political ideology and science are not straightforward. May libertarians are hyper-selectionists, for example, because they have a fervent belief in self-organizing markets---they like Stuart Kauffman a lot. This sort of thing is ultimately irrelevant to deciding what's true or false; but it is a mighty common rhetorical move to associate some theoretical or policy stance with evolution as if objections to your favorite hobby horse (the obvious awfulness of the minimum wage, the grandure of free trade, the apocalyptic version of global warming, etc.) were as baseless as the usual Creationist or ID blather. I've done it myself, but I shouldn't.

The behavior of the White House on these issues is part of a pattern that has led Russell Train, the EPA administrator under Presidents Nixon and Ford, to observe, "How radically we have moved away from regulation based on independent findings and professional analysis of scientific, health and economic data by the responsible agency to regulation controlled by the White House and driven primarily by political considerations."

Here's a fact in support of Dean's op-ed: the conduct of the Administration with regard to setting a public health goal for drinking water in perchlorate.

Healthy people can tolerate pretty high doses of perchlorate without any adverse impact. People with thyroid problems (or are otherwise iodide deficient) cannot. Since most people in this country want federal guidelines for drinking water that won't make anyone sick, you'd think that EPA would be able to get through the regulatory process quickly.

But a low PHG for perchlorate will cost DoD billions of dollars, as it is forced to pay for perchlorate removal from groundwater. Since DoD would rather spend the money on things that go bang, the Administration imposed a gag order on EPA, and set up a national review panel on perchlorate that (a) is moving very slowly and (b) has on the panel scientists with tight ties to major polluters.

[declaration of bias: i am an attorney representing a municipality which has sued the DOD based on perchlorate contamination. but the description of the administration conduct in this post is accurate.]

Francis

But a low PHG for perchlorate will cost DoD billions of dollars, as it is forced to pay for perchlorate removal from groundwater. Since DoD would rather spend the money on things that go bang,

Meanwhile preventing the research from being done to quantify the risks. The research money is subject to political vetting, and that research does not get funded. Civilian research in general has taken a huge hit. This is the kind of myopic viewpoint that one always hears from scientists - the idea that federal research money is theirs by default, and any restrictions on it are an outrage. There is always research that doesn't get funded. Sometimes this is a serious problem, but the federal government spends huge amounts of money on research. Just because some worthy research doesn't get funded does not mean that the administration has declared war on science.

— Mike S.

The Democrats, of course, characterized this as "Bush wants to poison your children!"

Nice strawman and ad-hominems; "myopic viewpoint", etc.  Perhaps it did not occur to you that making policy on any basis other than dogma/politics requires information

— GWW

As I said, Dean may have been engaging in hyperbole, but I have no reason to believe that he is making a baseless charge.  On the contrary, based on a lot of the other unbelievable things Bush and his buddies have done, why would I expect the Bush Administration to grant scientists a pass?  You make it sound as if Bush and Co. are god's gift to rational nuanced discourse about the environment and medicine and women's health and Dean's charges have come completely out of the blue.  Ridiculous. So, yes, Mike S: the burden is on you to show that Howard Dean's Op-Ed is completely full of shit.

I guess it's all a matter of perception. What you perceived as "calmly making salient points", I perceived as an inarticulate screed. (Yeeeaaargghh!)

— Russell

Ms. EmmaPeel,

how many people are you willing to kill each year as a result of drinking tap water? what is your appropriate regulatory standard? EPA uses (more or less) one death per million people per 70-year lifespan. In a country of 280 million people, that starts to add up, given the number of regulated contaminants.

and since the vast majority of perchlorate is (and was) used for military purposes, the number of small communities that would need to clean perchlorate out of their groundwater without DOD assistance would be quite small (if a federal standard were set).

but since states are starting to set perchlorate standards in lieu of the feds doing so, small communities NOW find themselves needing to clean up perchlorate contamination without DoD / military contractor help.

In sum, the delay in setting an enforceable perchlorate standard works to the benefit of DOD and military contractors (oddly enough, large contributors to Republican campaign coffers) at the expense of usually small and poor communities located near military bases.

and that is an anti-science approach.

Francis

Do you really expect me to believe that if Kerry is elected and is overly ideological in his science policy & appointments that you'll be just as outraged?

And the burden is not on me to show that his Op-Ed is completely full of shit. It is to show that his charges don't add up to a war on science.

It is to show that his charges don't add up to a war on science.

Oh, well, heck! Is that all? I really didn't think Ashcroft had been consulted as to whether captured researchers were going to be held as enemy combatants or anything like that. I thought you were defending the notion that this administration has not shown an unprecedented lack of respect for science when it's politically inconvenient.

In my experience scientists aren't very eager to get involved in partisan politics. The fact that so many of them are raising their voices against Bush this go around is a significant departure from tradition. There wouldn't be so many angry voices or so much anger absent a very good reason to get mad.

Do you really expect me to believe that if Kerry is elected and is overly ideological in his science policy & appointments that you'll be just as outraged?

— Mike S.

(EmmaPeel:) The Democrats, of course, characterized this as "Bush wants to poison your children!" Who are these "Democrats", Emma? Please show me where that statement was made.

— Larry Lord

When last we left the controversy over the Bush administration's spring 2001 revision of the standards for arsenic in drinking water, the Democratic National Committee was running television commercials featuring a little girl asking, "May I please have some more arsenic in my water, mommy?"

More than two years later, the Democrats are still trying to convince us that President Bush tried to poison America by toughening the regulatory standards for arsenic in drinking water. Amid new arm-waving over the administration's plan to reduce mercury emissions from power plants, Democrat presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Lieberman recently said, "First arsenic, then mercury, what poison will the Bush administration seek to permit into our environment next?" We can expect many more such comments during the 2004 campaign season from Democrats as they rant and rave about the president's record on the environment. Their fearmongering about arsenic, however, will lack a factual basis. A new study reports no increased rates of cancer in the two largest U.S. populations consuming drinking water containing relatively high levels of arsenic. University of California-Berkeley researchers examined the populations of six counties in California and western Nevada. These residents consumed drinking water with arsenic levels near 100 micrograms per liter (μg/l) -- a level that is about twice the pre-Bush standard for arsenic in drinking water (50 μg/l) and about 10 times the revised standard (10μg/l). "Overall, no clear association was identified between bladder cancer risk and the exposures found in our study," reported the researchers. There was no association between arsenic in drinking water and bladder cancer even among study subjects with 40 years of exposure to the relatively high levels of arsenic. ... And, no, the study was not paid for by the "arsenic industry." First, arsenic occurs naturally in drinking water. Next, the study was funded by the federal government and conducted by Cal-Berkeley's Allan H. Smith -- a strong proponent of more stringent arsenic regulations.

how many people are you willing to kill each year as a result of drinking tap water?

— fdl

and since the vast majority of perchlorate is (and was) used for military purposes, the number of small communities that would need to clean perchlorate out of their groundwater without DOD assistance would be quite small (if a federal standard were set). but since states are starting to set perchlorate standards in lieu of the feds doing so, small communities NOW find themselves needing to clean up perchlorate contamination without DoD / military contractor help.

Emma

You said, in quotes, "Bush wants to poison your children!"

Where have multiple Democrats said that? You accused Democrats of alleging that Bush wants to poison the children of American citizens. Where did a Democrat say that?

The statements by Dems in the articles you cited seem to me to be technically supportable. So please, try again. Or retract your accusation.

Also, let's be clear about the french fries cuz it goes right to the heart of another favorite rant of conservatives: activist judges. A Judge recently upheld the USDA's finding that batter coated frozen french fries are "fresh vegetables." Read the sentence again. You want judicial activism? You got it. I'm sure the Republicans will be foaming at the mouth over this one. Right? Or will they will be strangely quiet because, oh, I don't know, frozen fries are cheaper to serve than fresh vegetables ...?

"Mike," I just wish I could see in your posts the slightest spark of either humor or hone...

...oh, never mind.

I'll just roll past future posts of yours, knowing there is nothing hon...

...there I go again!

Enough.

Where have multiple Democrats said that? You accused Democrats of alleging that Bush wants to poison the children of American citizens. Where did a Democrat say that? The statements by Dems in the articles you cited seem to me to be technically supportable. So please, try again. Or retract your accusation.

A third contender, Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., noted the administration once had considered rolling back arsenic rules for drinking water, though it eventually did not. "First arsenic, then mercury ... what poison will the Bush administration seek to permit into our environment next?" he asked.

Ms Peel: I'm not an expert on this stuff, but from what I've read, I think you're about right on the arsenic story.

Unfortunately, I think it's harder to generalize from arsenic to mercury to irradiated beef to salmonella than it is to pre-conclude that anything you read from the Institute of Creation "Research" is going to be nonsense.

A close relative of mine came very very close to death as a result of a tainted taco from a prominent fast food source that shall remain nameless. There was no lawsuit or anything, so I'm not defending litigiousness per se, but I don't see salmonella in the same light as 10 ppm arsenic.

Ms Peel: I'm not an expert on this stuff, but from what I've read, I think you're about right on the arsenic story.

— Russell

Unfortunately, I think it's harder to generalize from arsenic to mercury to irradiated beef to salmonella than it is to pre-conclude that anything you read from the Institute of Creation "Research" is going to be nonsense.

For some pollutants, setting a cap on total emissions, while letting polluters buy and sell emission rights, is a cost-efficient way to reduce pollution. The cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain, has been a big success. But the science clearly shows that cap-and-trade is inappropriate for mercury. Sulfur dioxide is light, and travels long distances: power plants in the Midwest can cause acid rain in Maine. So a cap on total national emissions makes sense. Mercury is heavy: much of it precipitates to the ground near the source. As a result, coal-fired power plants in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan create "hot spots" chemical Chernobyls where the risks of mercury poisoning are severe. Under a cap-and-trade system, these plants are likely to purchase pollution rights rather than cut emissions. In other words, the administration proposal would perpetuate mercury pollution where it does the most harm.

Mercury in California rainwater traced to industrial emissions in Asia Industrial emissions in Asia are a major source of mercury in rainwater that falls along the California coast, according to a new study by researchers at [UC-Santa Cruz]. ... Interestingly, it is not just the mercury itself but a whole cocktail of atmospheric pollutants that contribute to the deposition of mercury in rainfall. Elemental mercury behaves as a gas in the atmosphere and is not washed out in rain until it has been oxidized into a charged ionic form that can be captured by water droplets, said Douglas Steding, the paper's lead author. Ozone, a major component of urban and industrial smog, plays a key role in this oxidation process, said Steding. ... "There is a local influence of urban smog on the mercury oxidation rate. We see a background signal of mercury blowing off the Pacific, then a local enrichment that's probably due to urban smog," he said. "If we want to reduce mercury deposition, it's not enough to shut down local emissions of mercury, because other pollutants influence how much of the mercury in the atmosphere ends up in rainwater."

"This looks like an early Christmas for industry," said Michael Bender of the Mercury Policy Project. "President Bush's EPA is today proposing to weaken limits for mercury, a potent poison, from coal burning. It presents the appearance, if not the reality, of allowing kids and the unborn to be poisoned in exchange for campaign contributions."

"This latest decision is part of a pattern where faced with a choice of protecting kids, protecting the public, or protecting polluters, they choose to protect polluters."

The proposal, an early Christmas gift to the Bush administration's friends in the energy industry, speaks volumes about the administration's unspoken policy toward America's children.

I didn't mean, by the way, to imply that all the items in my list had equal validity. The point, as you acknowledge, is that the validity of each is hard to assess just from their being bunched by some individuals, causes, or political affinities.

(I agree with you also, for instance, about the bogosity of the irradiated food issue).

This is different from the various arguments about evolution maintained by creationists (of all descriptions).

Irradiation exacerbates the problems faced by family farms because it opens the floodgates to imported food. Irradiation contributes to the consolidation of the food industry because it extends shelf life allowing agribusiness to move their operations outside the U.S., where costs are cheaper, but labor and environmental standards are weaker.

"First, it's arsenic in water. Now it's salmonella in school lunches. Where will this end?"

I'm glad EmmaPeel was willing to do more work than I was - nice job!

Here's another piece of evidence that global warming is not as simple as it's made out, and that the Kyoto protocols are too strong in that a) we know they will have significant negative effects on the economy, and b) we don't know what their ultimate effects on the climate will be.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html

(registration required, I believe)

I will add that one thing that is bothersome about the Bush administration, and which fits more comfortably with the 'war on science' meme, is the intrusion of political considerations into advisory board appointments (and I don't count the Bioethics Council situation as an example of this). But there doesn't seem to be any evidence that this is a systematic problem, and as I said above some cases of heavyhandedness by the administration don't add up to a war. There's also the possibility that a couple of staffers at HHS were responsible for many of the innappropriate political querying of potential nominees, and these people are no longer at HHS (I don't have the link right now where I saw this claim made).

Mike S: Here's another piece of evidence that global warming is not as simple as it's made out...

Anyone who thinks global warming is "simple" hasn't done much reading about it.

Anyone who thinks we don't need to worry about it hasn't done much thinking about it.

Bush's move on salmonella in lunch meat sounds just as reasonable as the others, where reasonable people can disagree, and the left's characterization of as him being anti-child and anti-science is just as phony as ...

"George Bush = anti-science, anti-child, anti-family, and anti-atheist.  Nothing you have said changes my opinion of George Bush.  He was and is the worst president this country has ever had."

You forgot anti-science, GWW!

The point isn't to change your mind about him, it's to suggest that your ( I use the term loosely, since you didn't write the Op-Ed or post it to PT ) rhetorical charges have some basis in fact. Nobody said you had to agree with Bush's policies, or like him personally. We were just saying that you can't say he's launched a war on science when he hasn't.

---
"Anyone who thinks global warming is "simple" hasn't done much reading about it."

Well, guess what - most policy makers haven't, and a large number of environmental activists haven't, either.

"Anyone who thinks we don't need to worry about it hasn't done much thinking about it."

Well, there's a lot of ambiguity in that word, 'worry'. And there is a huge chasm between worrying about it and doing anything politically about it. I'd prefer that the government not go about instituting huge regulatory schemes in an attempt to affect something as complex, large in scope, and poorly understood as global climate.

We were just saying that you can't say he's launched a war on science when he hasn't.

I'd prefer that the government not go about instituting huge regulatory schemes in an attempt to affect something as complex, large in scope, and poorly understood as global climate.

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - The head of the Environmental Protection Agency for two Republican presidents criticized President Bush's record on Monday, calling it a "polluter protection" policy. Russell E. Train, who headed the EPA from September 1973 to January 1977 - part of the Nixon and Ford administrations - said Bush's record on the environment was so dismal that he would cast his vote for Democrat John Kerry. "It's almost as if the motto of the administration in power today in Washington is not environmental protection, but polluter protection," Train said. "I find this deeply disturbing." In 1988, Train was co-chairman of Conservationists for Bush, an organization that backed the candidacy of George W. Bush's father.

Mike S: Well, guess what - most policy makers haven't [read enough about global warming], and a large number of environmental activists haven't, either.

That's distressing. How did you find that out? Is someone who thinks that government needs to take an active role, by definition, someone who hasn't read enough?

Just curious.

Is someone who thinks that government needs to take an active role, by definition, someone who hasn't read enough?

GWW, you're a little late on the Train reference - Russell posted it at #5155 (By the way, I've never heard of Train and don't know what his political views are. But serving as a) the head of the EPA and b) in the Nixon and Ford administrations don't automatically make him a conservative - in fact they argue that he's more liberal. Several of Bush's father's appointees have criticized his administration, too, but that doesn't automatically mean they are correct.)

And you're more than a little disingenuous claiming that you never said Bush was perpetrating a war on science. First of all, the argument was over whether Dean was correct or not, and second of all, you've essentially been defending Dean's point, even if you say 'overall suckiness' (which I kind of like, by the way - it has a nice ring to it ; ) ) intead of 'war on science'.

I'd love to sit here and debate political philosophy with you guys, but as GWW already pointed out, nobody is going to change anyone's mind on that score in this venue, so I think I'll save my breath.

I didn't 'find out' that a large number of environmental activists don't read much about global warming (by what, doing a survey? interviewing them?), it's an observation based on the fact that a) they make many ridiculous claims about it and other environmental issues and b) they have an ideology that says that nature is good, most human activities that affect the environment are bad, government regulation is the best way to take care of the environment, corporations are evil, and the Bush administration doesn't care about the environment. Much like Creationists, anything that supports that ideology they accept, and anything that contradicts it they ignore or attack. It's a simple fact that we think global temperatures are rising, but there's a lot of uncertainty about a) how much/fast, b) how this compares to historical temperature fluctuations, and most importantly c) how much the changes are due to human activities. I don't know whether the article I linked to is correct or not in its suggestion that part of the rise in temperatures is due to changes in the sun's activity. But it certainly seems plausible, and we still don't understand the sun's dynamics very well, nor how those dynamics affect the earth's climate. Let's just suppose that half the warming over the last 200 years is due to greenhouse gases and half is due to the sun. It would require major, major money and changes in the economies of the developed world to cut our greenhouse gas emissions in half. (And this doesn't account for developing countries like Brazil, China, or India.) Does anybody know whether a 25% reduction in the rate of warming is going to make any difference over the next 100 or 200 years? I don't, and I'm not in favor of radically changing our economy in order to try and find out. Nobody even knows what the effects of global warming will be. We know it will change things, but if those changes happen slowly enough we'll be able to adapt to them as they happen. The only reason people call for drastic actions now is because of their ideology. And less than drastic actions are not going to have a major effect one way or the other, so implementing them or not is not the life-and-death decision people make it out to be.

Geez, Mike. You really do have to wean yourself off of Rush & co.

It's these sweeping generalizations about "they" and "their" [purely ideological, of course] motivations that make you sound like a ditto-head.

The environmental activists I know are plenty well-read, believe me. If you want any credibility, you're going to have to (1) get specific: who are these idealogs and specifically what "ridiculous claims" are you referring to? and (2) if you can answer the "who" and "what" of part (1), do they represent the bulk, or the most important, of environmental activists' issues?

Just to focus things a little bit more finely than your cartoon view of environmentalists, have you read, say, the recent Scientific American article by James Hansen? Would that be an example of the ridiculous claims of ideologically driven Bush-bashers you're talking about?

Does anybody know whether a 25% reduction in the rate of warming is going to make any difference over the next 100 or 200 years? I don't, and I'm not in favor of radically changing our economy in order to try and find out.

It would much better to completely drain the Colorado River of water and destroy all the remaining wetlands in the country than it would be to become like France.

— GWW

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