Bad Science......Government Style.
 

As this article is pretty big, I will refrain from posting it....and insted submit the link.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i...&c=1&s=kennedy

In essence, it seems to show a deliberate attempt (successfully implemented) to forgo the scientific method, in regard to public policy. I find this somewhat blatant disregard for public safety to be bordering on illegal, if indeed not over that line.
As long as this piece is....it is a very thought provoking read, and some may find it worth the effort. After reading several such papers , by prominent organizations and scientists, I felt it deserved more attention.

Any comments ?

Holy crap! 1 in 12 US women has enough mercury poisoning to permanently lower the IQ of a child she carries? That is fucked right up.

I too have read other articles of this type, and they appall me. It seems that when making the choice between corporations and the environment, the Bush administration knows where its campaign funding is coming from.

And the Bush administration want to allow those mercury levels to rise for the next twenty years.

Under Bush's ironically named Clear Skies initiative, power plants can cough up 3 times as much neurotoxic mercury, 50 percent more acid rain causing sulfur dioxide, and hundreds of thousands of tons of good old smog creating nitrogen oxides.

Additionally Bush wants to free up the dirtiest powerplants in america, the infamous grandfathered** ones in the midwest which account for the MAJORITY of air pollution in the midatlantic and much of New England. He wants to gut the New Source Review law so that they can replace up to a third of their equipment ever year, and not have to improve their emission standards whatsoever.
It completely flies in the face of what NSR was meant to do. He is creating the most dangerous environmental loophole ever.

Environment is my #1 election issue, and the issue that Bush is absolutely evil on. It's a shame more americans don't cast their vote on environment. It's the presidential issue that really ends up effecting us all the most.

**Grandfathered powerplants are the ones who were around before the Clean Air Act. They are not required to conform to CAA act. This makes them huge moneymakers for their owners because they don't have to put any of the expensive cleanup technologies on their plants.

The owners of these plants deserve lynchings.

I too am surprised that the environment doesn't get more play... it was a relatively small blip during the Canadian agenda (if not for the Greens and the NDP it would have been a non-issue).

You really can't be surprised at that if you've talked to any of the newer generations :) I'm not saying the IQ is dropping but...well, yeah, I am...

While I found that the article has an obvious bias to it, the facts are the facts. I would suggest the Reports by the Union of Concerned Scientists as an interesting read. The reports and executive summaries are at the bottom of the link. The four main conclusions from the panel are:

1. There is a well-established pattern of suppression and distortion of scientific finding by high-ranking Bush administration political appointees across numerous federal agencies. These actions have consequences for human health, public safety, and community well-being.

2. There is strong documentation of a wide-ranging effort to manipulate the government's scientific advisory system to prevent the appearance of advice that might run counter to the administration's political agenda.

3. There is evidence that the administration often imposes restrictions on what government scientists can say or write about "sensitive" topics.

4. There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression, and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration are unprecedented.

Environmental policy is a big issue for me as well, and one of the reasons I have long supported John Kerry.

This administration is horribly short sighted when it comes to environmental issues. The Clean Air act is anything but and his Healthy Forrest Initiative has some good things in it, but he never asked for funding and now even more of Arizona and other western states is buring away.

The administrations "free-market" solution to mercury emmissions is assinine. I respect industries right to make a living, but not at the expense of the environment and my health.

You can't trust the free market to regulate itself regarding environmental issues. There are too many dangers for the general public to be well educated about and codes are way to difficult for most people to be able to interpret. Most of the public either doesn't know or doesn't care about mercury. They sure as hell should.

I actually work in the Air Quality Permitting business. Our clients are industrial corporations and we prepare their permit application and deal with most regulatory affairs for them.

When I started at my current job, I deeply mistrusted the large corporations. I've come to realize that most companies try to do their best to comply with regulations and I've never thought that a company was trying to get us to fudge things for them (and we never would). This sounds good, but the only reason why they try so hard is because they know the agency that overlooks them has the authority to levy large fines and shut them down if needed.

However, they will only comply with exactly what is on the permit. They aren't going to spend a dime more than what is absolutely required of them and if they have the resources they will fight a permit condition if they think they can have it taken off.

I totally agree with you on that. I was disgusted to see the CAA raped like that. The worst thing is that these companies are so willing to spend millions on legal fees and get bad press if the net result is that they will save 10's of millions. As a power plant, the consumers are not in the position to say "I'll just get my power elsewhere" so the public has no way to stick it back to them.

These plants are over 50 years old and made back their capital investments decades ago. They have the money to purchase add-on control equpiments and if you look at the capital invested in the improvements they made the cost of pollution control devices aren't that crazy.

Right wingers like to paint the picture that compliance with environmental codes could destroy the economy. Similar to national security issues, those who don't agree are ridiculed by the republican machine. Intead of being called traitors, we are labled treehuggers. Nothing could be further from the truth for me.

Grandfathering clauses are fine with me. It is unfair to force a company to comply with a standard that was issued after their plant was up and running. However, if you are going to make changes, they need to incorporate new technologies. The power plant example is just one of many cases where the codes broke down.

actually, i'm very surprised... i would have expected it to be higher. :)

About the IQ, sorry to threadjack

but honestly, schools have been dumbing down the curriculum and such and trying to specialize it to the degree that this generation is not as well rounded as hte one before which isn't as well rounded as hte ones before, etc. it's not that people are not as intelligent, just that they aren't being taught as much in as many fields. Literature, history, the classics, for instance...and now it seems as if a lot of the science/evolution core is being removed as well and it keeps just going downward. As an example, in most liberal arts areas right now, college grads are not doing as well as highschool grads of 1950...

As for the actual IQ..totally different matter, but i dont' think we, as a current generation, are forced to use our minds as much. How many people jump to a calculator when asked anything dealing with math. I mean, if you want to have fun, go to a mcdonald's and buy something for $14.07 and give them 20.00, then after they ring in 20 to get the change amount, say, oh, here's 7 cents and watch their head explode trying to figure out how much to give you now...

Indeed, our educational system was designed to keep us uneducated and docile.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/edu/school-mission.htm

It's a lot more fun to give them a quarter than the 7 cents. Then they actually have to do some subtraction in their head.

The isuue is not the failure of the public school system (which is bad enough) but the outright disreguard for public health, and the failure to listen to the advice of those who can help. After reading this (and several other documents) I had no choice but to draw the conclusion that we are being lied to, and manipulated for the benefit of Bush economic policy.
This has to stop.....They are now putting my kids at risk, and that pisses me off to no end.