Bush VS Science

Who do you want to win?

Published on August 9, 2004 By psychx In Politics

Disclaimer: The following post is a compilation of a few allegations made by the Union of Concerned Scientists as well as tid bits from other facts that I came across while doing research. This post is meant to inform of the unethical scientific polices within the Bush administration. This is for people seeking facts that are willing to consider both sides. Read at your own discretion.

Copernicus and Galileo, two revolutionary thinkers that pioneered astronomy and had an enormous impact helping pave the way for modern astronomy and our understanding of it. They also had another thing in common, these two modern thinkers self-censored their research and proof that the Earth revolved around the Sun for many decades. The beliefs during the time they lived overshadowed their search for existential truths. Their fear for upsetting the beliefs of the majority probably held them back from possibly doing more. Centuries later it is the year 2004, science as we know it has advanced faster than it ever has before. Galileo’s name is now attached to a space probe that visited Jupiter. This honor was bestowed unto Galileo’s name because we know the impact that his findings and his discovery of Jupiter’s moons meant for science and mankind.

It can be debated that we stand on the crossroads of scientific endeavors both for the prevention of the degradation of our environment and for the advancement of the biological sciences. There is a saying that goes “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. As advanced as we are there has been an issue as of late that many scientists and scholars within the intellectual community are calling unprecedented. It seems that science once again is being suppressed based on beliefs.

Recently a group called the Union of Concerned Scientists made of 62 scientists that are regarded as some of the world’s most intelligent minds are protesting the Bush administrations scientific policies. On February 18^th 2004, they released a statement titled “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making”, which charged the Bush administration with "manipulation of the process through which science enters into its decisions." Since then 4,000 prominent scientists have signed the report “Scientific Integrity and Policy Making”, including 48 Nobel laureates, 62 National Medal of Science recipients, and 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences. Many of these scientists believe their research is being undermined or censored by this administrations pursuit to further their political agenda. A good amount of these scientists have served under multiple administrations and include a mixture of Republicans and Democrats that goes to show that this goes far beyond partisan politics.

"Withholding of vital environmental information is getting to be a bad habit with the Bush administration." -- Republicans for Environmental Protection

The claims of distortion of scientific findings coming from scientists, many leading in different fields of study, are numerous including air pollutants, heat-trapping emissions, reproductive health, endangered species, forest health, and military intelligence. I will try and name a few in this blog so that the urgency and importance of these claims can be seen.

Global warming is slowly becoming more and more of important subject to research on and pay close attention to. One would suggest heeding any scientists advice towards what could increasingly become a global problem. After withdrawing from the Kyoto Treaty, the Bush administration dismissed a climate report that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because it confirmed the potential worldwide harm that global warming may cause. The administration completely denied the existence of global warming, even as increasing scientists warn of its possibility. After coming into office the Bush administration asked the National Academy of Sciences to review a finding confirming the threat of global warming issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Their review issued a strong opinion that confirmed the IPCC’s findings. That review can be found here Link . Other organizations like the American Geophysical Union, the largest group of Earth scientists, also have issued strong statements describing the human caused carbon dioxide emissions disruption of our climate. Their report can be found here Link . Although these statements should bear weight they are dismissed as uncertainties by this administration and are too great to warrant any action to slow down emissions.

Later down the road in May of 2002 a State Department report was issued to the United Nations that pointed out humanity and its role in the emissions of heat trapping gases and gave descriptions of what consequences albeit negative of this impact on our climate. The President called it “a report put out by the bureaucracy.” So far that’s three organizations who have been dismissed. In September of 2002, the EPA released their annual air pollution report Link , the administration promptly removed a section on climate change even though climate change has been discussed on each preceding report during the previous five years. Still skeptical? There’s one more that I will mention because I want to move on. In June 2003 the Bush administration tampered with the integrity of the analysis of a federal agency, when they tried to make a series of changes to the EPA’s report on the environment Link . This broke out in the news on a front-page article by none other than the New York Times which stated White House officials tried to force the EPA to change the section of their report on climate change. This report referenced the National Academy of Sciences review that I spoke about earlier and other studies that claim our production of heat trapping gases is impacting the environment substantially. (A.C. Revkin and K.Q. Seelye, “Report by EPA Leaves Out Data on Climate Change,” New York Times, June 19, 2003). I have so much information about these attempted alterations I could go on for another five paragraphs but I must talk about the other issues.

Mercury is a toxin that can cause brain and reproductive damage. Yet coal power plants are the nation’s largest source of mercury air emissions creating 48 tons annually. In May of 2002 the EPA was going to release a report on children’s health and the environment Link but while getting ready to release it the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) decided to review it. Nine months later after a very lengthy delay an EPA official, probably upset with the White House, leaked the report to the Wall Street Journal including the finding in the research that stated 8% percent of women aged 16-49 have mercury levels in their body that can produce reduced IQ and motor skills in their children. The research went against the administrations desire for reducing regulation on coal power plants. The report was finally released officially to the public a few days after it was leaked to the press. The EPA recently established new rules for regulating power plants’ mercury emissions, but the rules contained 12 paragraphs, at times verbatim, from a legal document prepared by coal plant industry lawyers. Most EPA officials are upset and feel that these rules were added “through the interagency process”. Bruce C. Buckheit who was the director of EPA’s Air enforcement division in 2003 and served in major federal environmental posts for 20 years claims “the new mercury rules were hatched at the White House; the Environmental Protection Agency’s experts were simply not consulted at all”. He also has stated that this represents “a degree of politicization of the work of the Environmental Protection Agency that goes beyond anything I have seen in my career in government”. So if these scientists are not being consulted one is given the impression that these decisions are being made for political reasons rather than scientific? I’ll leave that up to the reader to decide.

I saved the best for last I believe since this concerns a heavily debated topic which Bush still enjoys a good amount of support for which is national security. Before the war Bush, Rice, Cheney, and Powell stated that Iraq had tried to acquire over 100,000 aluminum centrifuges that were supposedly going to be used to enrich uranium. President Bush stated this on September 12, 2002, in his address to the United Nations General Assembly and during the State of the Union address in January of 2003. Colin Powell stated in the infamous meeting on February 5^th, 2003 with the U.N. Security Council concerning Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction”.

The collective minds of the intelligence community needed to know whether these tubes were meant to be used as centrifuges for enriching uranium or any other purpose such as the casings for short-range rockets. The CIA pushed the view that they were intended for centrifuges but technical experts from the Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Livermore, and Lost Alamos National Laboratories disagreed with this interpretation because the tube dimensions were less than what was required for this purpose. These dimensions matched those of tubes Iraqis used in the 1980’s. In the past Iraqis have developed and tested tubes more capable for enriching aluminum than the ones discovered. The laboratories’ and Department of Energy claims were backed by the State Department’s intelligence branch and the experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency. The claims by Powell to the U.N. Security Council was after he was briefed by the International Atomic Energy Agency about their disagreement with the CIA analysis and was the central part of his speech to them. Dr. David Albright, a weapons expert and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, DC, had this to say about it “It bespeaks something seriously wrong that a proper technical adjudication of this matter was never conducted. There was certainly plenty of time to accomplish it”. Link Today U.S. officials have finally acknowledged opinions that challenged their initial claim to the U.N. Security Council. Was this a failure in intelligence? I will leave that for the reader to decide.

With all the research and reading I did to write this article, I only covered maybe 5% of the total allegations that are being made against this administration and their apparent mistrust of science. The United States has an outstanding history of investing into science and later welcoming the benefits. It’s one of the reasons why today we are the richest country in the world. We’ve invented many things that helped shape the world as we know it today. This administration’s disregard for science is the worst seen in at least 100 years. It’s like the inquisition all over again. These right wing idealists have disregarded and failed to consider the advice and consent of scientists. Scientists that fail the Bush administrations political litmus test fail to get appointed to agencies, boards, and White House offices. In a perfect world without flaws we could consider a purely idealistic society based on morals and infallibility. Sadly the world is far from perfect and statistics speak volumes. Ignoring scientific advice will only put the American public at risk. It’s nice to think that by preaching abstinence only and ending education on protecting oneself against std’s, that will cause young adults to have less intercourse, less pregnancies, and disease transmission. The reality is that statistics don’t lie and Bush has paid for this before, during Bush’s reign as governor in Texas during 1995-2000 he established abstinence only programs only to push the state into being ranked last in the nation in the decline of teen birth rates among 15-17 year old females Link . What a nice way to think huh? During his tenure Houston has become one of the worst polluted cities in the nation as well as the most obese. How are these things happening? Easily, with distorting facts and misrepresenting information to the public it is easy to get support for anything.

Unless the public gets wise to the game, these unethical practices within this administration will continue. Bush is making conservatives look like fundamentalists.. For some time I doubted my position on all things political. Where I stood was not clearly defined and I lingered and flirted with the notion of being a moderate because of my belief in Christianity and science. I now am on the left as long as the definition of this administration is blurred with an idealic disregard for any real facts. This unprecedented and ill-advised disregard for science has 4000 scientists protesting against this administration. These are some of our nations best and brightest, and their opinion should be worth something, if anything at least a consultation but it seems this administration rarely does that. The way that things are going it’s possible that Bush gets re-elected, then maybe we can all go back to thinking the Earth is flat and science is a religion. When ideals trample over logic, common sense, and ethics that can be perceived as corruption. I will leave of with a quote from the ucsusa website.

Science, like any field of endeavor, relies on freedom of inquiry;
and one of the hallmarks of that freedom is objectivity. Now
more than ever, on issues ranging from climate change to AIDS
research to genetic engineering to food additives, government
relies on the impartial perspective of science for guidance.
-- PRESIDENT GEORGE H. W. BUSH, 1990

I urge anyone who finds this article as interesting to please look on the Union of Concerned Scientists website to see even more reports and allegations. Link

Comments (Page 2)

psychx

on Aug 10, 2004

I am not saying follow the words of scientists exactly, but we must include their view point and informed opinion when making policy in their field. Common sense would have us listening to the opinions of the experts in the field you are making a decision on. That is called an informed decision.

So, in that light, I think you are using the "Bush" part to serve your own bias

His policy decisions are biased, he doesn't appoint scientists who are not loyal to his party, that's bias.

This is also on their website "William E. Howard III, an engineer from McLean, VA, reported in a letter to Science that he was told by a member of the Army Science Board (ASB) staff that his nomination to the ASB, a Defense Department advisory panel, was rejected because he had contributed to the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain (R-AZ).³⁶ Howard says he never made such a contribution; instead, as it turns out, someone with a similar name (William S. Howard) had contributed the money.

The mix up only compounds the administration’s ill-considered practice. As Howard puts it, “The country is not being well-served by any administration’s policy of seeking advice only from a group of scientists and engineers who have passed the administration’s political litmus test.”³⁷

That is just ridiculous. "

WiseFawn

on Aug 11, 2004

So, in that light, I think you are using the "Bush" part to serve your own bias

How about the fact that it has been "documented that senior Bush officials suppressed and sought to manipulate government information about mercury contained in an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report on children’s health and the environment"

Gideon MacLeish

on Aug 11, 2004

So I guess we can assume you guys are all big supporters of nuclear power right?

I'm a supporter of nuclear power IF it doesn't require building a hole in the mountain that has so far received or been promised over a TRILLION dollars in federal funds (the newest appropriations bill gives it $880 billion, putting it over that mark) to dispose of the waste, while the genuine safety and security of the stored nuclear waste remains in question by credible scientists.

In short, the search for efficient usage of nuclear power should be paired with the search for efficient waste storage.

psychx

on Aug 11, 2004

Nuclear waste storage has to be the largest drawback currently for that energy source. Currently, most of the waste is housed at either cooling pools near the reactor or in casks that protect from the radiation. Even if the waste is buried there are always risks involved with geological activity causing waste to leak. So with what we have to work with today there will be risks involved...

Draginol

on Aug 11, 2004

That's the thing - every energy source has its pros and cons.

I don't take global warming seriously. The environmentalists are the boy who cried wolf. Ever read Silent Spring? Or the predictions that by 1990 we would have exhausted the supplies of copper, zinc, and other metals? Or the claims of global cooling in the 80s? Or the claims that by 2000 we would have exhausted the world's oil supplies? People's memory in debates like these tend to be short. In each of the previous debate, the "scientific community (whatever that is) had concluded that these things were true." And they weren't.

I just spent my vacation up at the cabin where the temperature in August was 10 degrees cooler. Perhaps the soot China is cranking into the air is causing global cooling.

The problem I have with environmentalists is that they're not serious people in general. They just want a political issue. Not a solution. Look at the Kyoto accords. They excluded China and India from any sort of requirements. How idiotic is that? China is the world's largest polluter in terms of REAL pollution. The brown haze they crank out now can be seen in satellite imagery. But Kyoto would have left them totally untouched. These aren't serious proposals.

And while some people here are in favor of nuclear power, try getting one built, the protesters (the same ones who object to fossil fuels) would line up to stop it. If you build wind farms, they complain about the bird deaths or how they're an eye sore (And wind farms are a joke anyway, the amount of energy it takes to bulid them takes years to be made up by the wind farm).

You're basically looking at either a fossil fuel or nuclear energy. And both of them have problems. Poison the earth or allegedly heat up the atmosphere. Take your pick. I don't care either way. I just want cheap energy and clean air and water. And we seem to have that pretty well right now.

vincible

on Aug 12, 2004

claims of global cooling in the 80s

There was never any scientific consensus at the time. Some people believed in cooling due to aerosols, some people believed in warming due to CO2, and everyone agreed they wanted more data. This led to a few scare stories in the popular media. The American Institute of Physics web page--not a wacko environmental group, not anti-technology, and credible within the scientific community--notes that "the most common scientific viewpoint was summed up by a scientist who explained that the rise in dust pollution worked in the opposite direction from the rise in CO2, so nobody could say whether there would be cooling or warming. In any case, `We are entering an era when man's effects on his climate will become dominant.' " This comes from this very nice, but long, history of perceptions of climate change:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Public.htm

And, "in early 1978 the New York Times reported that a poll of climate scientists found them evenly divided on whether there would be warming, cooling, or no particular change." By the 1980s, opinion had shifted to favoring warming, and that conensus has gotten stronger ever since. The only talk of ice ages in the 1980s related to nuclear winters. And by 2000, a Nature editorial--as credible as it gets--wrote that "The focus of the climate change debate is shifting from the question of 'will there be climate changes?' to 'what are the potential consequences of climate change?'" I've seen other such articles, though I'm not going to spend the time to dig them up right now.

I don't know much about the copper shortages, or zinc shortages, that you cite--certainly I'm willing to believe that *some* people believed it, though I question how many. But the difference between between global warming debates and the scarcity debates that you cite is that economics works for you in scarcity debates, and against you in global warming and other pollution debates. If a resource becomes scarce, prices go up, and people invest in finding new ways to extract it, making more available. Economics works for you. In pollution debates, you have individual actors who are exploiting a common resource, our atmosphere. The benefits of polluting are limited to the individual polluter, and the costs are spread out among everyone in the world, so you get the classic "tragedy of the commons" situation that you've probably read about.

psychx

on Aug 12, 2004

I agree with you there Brad and they will only increase it as the economy strengthens and levels out. For instance Ford unveiled a 1 billion dollar expansion in China. They also are ingesting a large amount of resources. Analysts predict that by 2015 China's metal imports will be 50% greater than America's and it is already more than Japan and the U.S. combined. I think as far as global warming there is some guesswork involved like with many other fields of science. Science has improved quite a bit since the 80's though and now Nasa has 3 satellites orbiting the Earth designed to analyze our atmosphere, climate, air quality, the ozone layer, and radiation. I think one of them is called Aura, but I don't remember the other 2. Most scientists do agree that we are contributing greenhouse gases to the environment and thanks to their continued push we are finally getting around to getting a definitive answer. All it would take is an increase of a few degrees for their to be a significant problem.

Draginol

on Aug 12, 2004

It would only take an increase of a few degrees for there to be a significant CHANGE. Not necessarily problem.

The first step environmentalists have to take is convince everyone that global warming is happening. They haven't made that case yet (I'm not convinced -- I do agree the temperature went up 1 degree in the past century). I'm not some yokel or some SUV owner. I am just not convinced.

The second step they have to take is convince people that humans are the cause of global warming which I don't think they're even close to. I don't care if some poll of politically motivated group of scientists thinks something. I've looked at the data. I have a scientific degree so have a background in looking at raw technical data and I'm unconvinced and so are millions fo others. You're convinced. Yippee for you. But millions of others aren't yet.

The third and final step is to convince people that a raise in temperature would be bad. As someone whose summer vacation was screwed a bit becasuse it was too cold, I would love to see the temperatures increased by a degree or two. We don't know if another degree or two would affect the coast lines or not btw. There are lots of things that could happen. We just don't know.

The point really is, the environemntalists have a pretty awful track record on their predictions. So I find it pretty smug for someone to say "Bush vs. Science". Psychix, feel free to post YOUR scientific credentials.

psychx

on Aug 12, 2004

I don't care if some poll of politically motivated group of scientists thinks something.

The scientists in this article are bi-partisan, a mixture of Republicans and Democrats who are all protesting his policies.

You're convinced. Yippee for you. But millions of others aren't yet.

This article was written moreto show light onto this administrations scientific polices which many people see as unfit and terrible.

I'm not going stoop to the level of making it a personal issue, again. I'm merely communicating their views. If everyone that reports something in a specific field needs to be an expert in that field then reporters shouldn't even exist. My actual area of study is psychology which I am working on currently, if you really want to know. I wrote this article to show the opinions of these scientists and my opinon on them. Everything I have said of course is opinion based on the fact that I agree with their (Union of Concerned Scientists) view. I titled it Bush vs. Science to attract a healthy amount of debate and to draw people's attention, which so far is somewhat succesfull. I don't completely disagree with you on the global warming bit, but I think more can be done on something that people that make climate change their field of study agree on, I mean doesn't that make sense to you? Dismissing it like this administration has done is just ridiculous in my point of view. Oh and pardon if it seems smug because in reality it does sort of involve some passion because I wholeheartedly disagree with the way this administration handles scientific policies.

psychx

on Aug 12, 2004

Maybe it's because I come from a family where my father is a doctor and my mother was a nurse, but I have been brought up to respect science and religion. I have the ability to incorporate both worlds into my life, something that Bush lacks apparently. I am not President, Bush is yet he was a mediocre student who didn't even leave the country until he became President. You would figure out of some intellectual curiosity he would want to see the rest of the world. I'm also pointing at blatant realistic facts, like the ones I went over about his record in Texas. These are undeniable statistics that I shouldn't have to defend...

messybuu

on Aug 12, 2004

I think these scientists would be taken more seriously if they acknowledge that Bush and Republicans aren't the only ones not doing the best things for the environment. Sure, Bush might be biased in whom he appoints, but if that's the justification for their biases, then they are no better than Bush and should not be taken any more seriously than he.

psychx

on Aug 12, 2004

I see your point Messy buu, but I think the reason that they are protesting is the severity of how many instances of scientists being undermined. The reason for protesting is because they are the U.S. gov't who yields the greatest amount of influence, not because they are Republicans. If Democrats where in the office and making the same decisions they should be protested as well. It's not a hate for Republicans but an unprecedented failure of this specific administration to rely on science. He believes in the end of times, he is a born again Christian who is relying on his ideals to shape his policies again in my "point of view".

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