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Wildlife Deputy Changed Science For Lobbyists
fistfullast33l writes "In another case of a government official creating a 'unique' interpretation of science, TPM Muckraker reports on Julie MacDonald, deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks in the Department of the Interior in Washington. The Department's Inspector General issued a report today documenting evidence that MacDonald not only overrode opinions of department scientists to benefit lobbyists, and political interests, but also that she shared internal documents with said lobbyists and a friend in an unnamed online roleplaying game. My favorite episode: 'At one point, according to Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, MacDonald tangled with field personnel over designating habitat for the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird whose range is from Arizona to New Mexico and Southern California. When scientists wrote that the bird had a nesting range of 2.1 miles, MacDonald told field personnel to change the number to 1.8 miles. Hall, a wildlife biologist who told the IG he had had a running battle with MacDonald, said she did not want the range to extend to California because her husband had a family ranch there.'"
Suggested reading for everyone: The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. Chapter 11 (documenting the ID movement) is available online, but the site is not responding (quite possibly something to do with this story breaking).
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
There's mention of it here.
If it weren't for lavishly funded free-market think tanks the truth might have never come out and anti-endangered species activists in the 109th Congress such as Richard Pombo would have been put in the awkward position of having to make up politically convenient but dubious anecdotes on their own. It's a relief they didn't have to do that.
Clearly this all fits into the larger pattern of career EPA employees purging all political operatives from sensitive policy positions and having them replaced with more nonpolitical people.
yeah! Cuz we all know right wing Republicans are against the EPA since the very beginning. Why, if that left wing loony Nixon handn't of signed it into law, we wouldn't have to do stuff like this!
3 1/0218245, reports a testable theory about violations of Newton's second law! The debate is NEVER over, it can always be opened if you have good science to prove your case. This guy doesn't have proof of his theory yet, and may never have it. But if he does get the proof people will have to re-open our understanding of that "Law".
Please, bad science is bi-partisan. All you have to do is hear Gore (as a recent, glaring example) state the "debate is over" on global warming. Any time you hear an absolute from a politician of any ilk you can be assured it is no longer science, but retoric.
Heck, the story right after this one, http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
From the second page of that article:
The point to remember, says Connolley, is that predictions of global cooling never approached the kind of widespread scientific consensus that supports the greenhouse effect today. And for good reason: the tools scientists have at their disposal now--vastly more data, incomparably faster computers and infinitely more sophisticated mathematical models--render any forecasts from 1975 as inoperative as the predictions being made around the same time about the inevitable triumph of communism.
Think of it like this: How good will your economy be when people take days off from work for bronchial infections, asthme, and are dropping like flies from cancer? Have a look at the heavy industrial cities of Russia and China, where life expectancy is falling by the year, and the economies are tanking because no one wants to live or invest there?
Worst polluted cites
DZERZINSK, RUSSIA
In Dzerzhinsk, a significant center of the Russian chemical manufacturing, the average life expectancy is 42 years for men and 47 for women. Despite the heavy toll on the populations health, a quarter of the city's 300,000 residents are still employed in factories that turn out toxic chemicals. According to a 2003 BBC report it is the young who are most vulnerable. In the local cemetery, there are a shocking number of graves of people below the age of 40. In 2003 it was reported that the death rate exceeded the birth rate by 2.6 times and it is easy to see why. The dioxins that get into the water as a by-product of chlorine production are reported to cause cancer even in minute doses.
LINFEN, SHANXI PROVINCE, CHINA
Shanxi Province is considered to be the heart of Chinas enormous and expanding coal industry, providing about two thirds of the nations energy. Within it, Linfen has been identified as one of Shanxis most polluted cities with residents claiming that they literally choke on coal dust in the evenings, according to a BBC report. Local clinics are seeing growing cases of bronchitis, pneumonia, and lung cancer. Lead poisoning was also seen at very high rates in Chinese children in the Shanxi Province.
LA OROYA, PERU
Since 1922, adults and children in La Oroya, Peru - a mining town in the Peruvian Andes and the site of a poly-metallic smelter - have been exposed to the toxic emissions from the plant. Currently owned by the Missouri-based Doe Run Corporation, the plant is largely responsible for the dangerously high blood lead levels found in the children of this community. Ninety-nine percent of children living in and around La Oroya have blood lead levels that exceed acceptable amounts. Sulfur dioxide concentrations also exceed the World Health Organization emissions standards by ten fold. The vegetation in the surrounding area has been destroyed by acid rain due to high sulfur dioxide emissions.