get donkey!

The Spheres are in Commotion

The Washington Post has an article detailing the Bush Administration’s use of selective science to pursue its damaging environmental policy.

For example:
…after environmentalists and world leaders condemned the president’s decision to disavow an international global warming treaty, the White House last May asked the National Academy of Sciences to assess climate science and identify any weaknesses. The subsequent report largely confirmed previous studies, showing that global warming was a serious threat to civilization and that it was at least partly the result of industrial greenhouse gas emissions. But the White House highlighted sections raising uncertainties in climate science to bolster its argument against a treaty calling for mandatory emission reductions.

In March, the administration played down National Academy of Sciences findings that improvements in fuel economy standards for automobiles would decrease U.S. dependence on oil imports, save consumers money and reduce global warming. The administration, joined by the auto industry in opposing the higher standards, instead cited government and insurance industry findings that a switch to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars might lead to more traffic deaths — and required further study.

Again we have more hypocrisy from the Bush gang. As the article points out, Bush claims he uses “sound science” to craft his policies (”When we make decisions, we want to make sure we do so on sound science,” Bush said recently. “Not what sounds good, but what is real.”), but the term seems to translate into “science approved by my corporate benefactors”.

Of course this tactic is nothing new. Corporations and politicians have been of manipulating scientific findings to indicate desired results and/or deriding any contrary findings as “junk science” for decades. The practice reached its apogee during the Clinton Administration. To wit:

[W]hen conservative Republicans in control of Congress waged war on the Clinton administration’s environmental programs. Democrats and environmental leaders fought back with a flurry of studies purporting to show how the Republicans were wreaking havoc on the environment. Republicans, conservative think tanks and industry groups dismissed the analyses as “junk science.”

For more on this topic, I highly recommend Trust Us We’re Experts by Stauber and Rampton (of PRWatch). It made me angry, and it just might make you angry too. (Plus the cover was drawn by Tom Tomorrow)

May 2nd, 2002 Posted by Rob | Science! | one comment