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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.'"
Say it ain't so! Please tell me environmental extremists aren't exaggerating their claims in order to push their agenda!
Next thing you know, I'll find out global warming is being overblown by a bunch of humanity-is-horrible loons...
A few scientists who do something unscientific means that all of research you don't like is automatically refuted?
Let's just say from this point forward it's our fault. Darwin would never say "Survival of the fittest"
Except that Darwin would probably recognize that if we want to continue to be the fittest, we're going to have to do something to tame the planet. We're not going to get very far once corn crops start withering. If our meat stock dies off, we're getting into even deeper shit. But that's ok, it'll be a problem for our grandkids to solve, and we all know kids suck and are therefore unfit to live.
We need to legalize the culling of lobbyist. If they can cull baby seals and alligators the culling of lobbyist is long overdue. Their explosive breeding is threatening the Washington political ecosystem. Tag and release is no longer a viable option. The overpopulation is similar to the Australian rabbit plagues only far more destructive.
The problem isn't that Republicans are at war with science, or the Democrats. The problem is that we have put politicians in charge of science! As long as some government official, bureaucrat or politician can gain a bit of power by manipulating science, they will. The separation of church and state has proven to be a great success. Let's take it one step further and have a separation of science and state.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
Perhaps I shouldn't snub those that are fighting the 'good fight'.
I agree we shouldn't snub the good guys, but at the same time, it wouldn't be the 'good fight' if we didn't subject everyone to criticism equally.
But you are certainly right, though. Having a bunch of scientifically-uneducated lawyers (which most Congresscritters are) set science policy is, shall we say, not exactly the best of ideas. I think this whole attitude goes back to the ancient stupidity which basically said that the king knows all.
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
Nobody cares what you believe. We're trying to keep coastal areas habitable. You need to shut the fuck up; you don't know what you're talking about, and you're fueling men who will cause major problems in the future. I'm aware that the evidence for global warming isn't as conclusive as some rabid environmentalists would have you believe, but to assume that means everything is peachy and you should keep as many lights as you can on at night is flat-out retarded. Also, the predictions of global cooling was based on a flawed model, one whose errors have been found, explained, and fixed. If you can find the same sort of errors in the current models, great, otherwise learn to judge the maturity of a science before commenting on it.
ResidntGeek
This topic is a red herring, a debate which is DELIBERATELY furthered by commercial interests so as to avoid the real problem, which is pollution of the air in general.
Look, we all know polluting the air is wrong. The earth is enveloped by the thinnest egg-shell layer of an atmosphere. Whether filling that thin memrane causes warming, cooling, or stasis for thousands of years, it doesn't matter. In the long run, it is objectively, undeniably stupid to fill the balloon with pollutants. So whether some sort of rapid onset of "global warming" is going to happen or not doesn't matter. What really matters is stopping the pollution of the air, which is undeniably a wrongful, stupid act.
Your are correct in that environmentsalists also fake things. People that do not understand how science works are everywhere. Science does not start out with a result. Science produces results and it is completely mercyless when done right, insofar as the results will be nothing that can be changed and still be science.
As a side-note: Global warming is not something environmentalists discoverd. It was discoverd by mererologists that are scientists, meaning they did their best to get accurate results, no matter what these results are! They do not have an agenda to find something specific and that, and only that, makes them scientists.
People that try to demontrate their prconceptions in a scientific fashion are incompetents and should not be believed under any circumstances. Many of them seem to believe that changing scientific reports changes reality. It does not. Reality is mercyless. Those that ignore it, will be killed by it eventually.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Do you have any references for your claims besides an unsourced article published in a right-wing conservative (sorry, "Libertarian") think-tank's unabashedly anti-environmentalist publication? You really think the Heartland Institute constitutes a neutral, unbiased source on anything? You don't suppose maybe they have an axe or two to grind?
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
I wouldn't put too much stock in any "science" from anyone at the Dept. of the Interior.
Are you saying you would rather put your "stock" in a political appointee that's been caught numerous times altering government reports, in one case because she didn't want the habitat to intrude on her husbands's ranch!? The nice thing about science is you must publish your results and data for peer review. If you try to fabricate your results, somebody will eventually catch you and your career is over. But every time a Bush appointee is caught altering data, they quit and go to work for Exxon. What we need are some real criminal consequences for altering government reports. It's a criminal offense for a company to alter its books or for me to lie on my taxes. People like this lady should be going to jail.
I read Mooney's book, and I read several of his articles. It was consistent with what I had been reading in Science, New Scientist, Scientific American, and Henry Waxman's documentation (which is where a lot of this comes from).
More convincing than their arguments is the Bush Administration's inability to give a convincing rebuttal. I also read the Wall Street Journal editorial page every day to get the other side, and I don't think they gave a coherent answer. Most significantly, when they got someone to rebut the scientists, they usually got an economist, not a scientist, and their economists seemed to make obvious logical and scientific fallicies. For that matter, the Wall Street Journal news stories pretty much took Mooney's perspective. (Science and New Scientist made a reasonable effort to give the opposing views too, and at least they got scientists.)
There was an editorial in Science signed by science advisors to presidents over 30 years denouncing the Bush Administration -- including many Republicans. Even Republican scientists said that they've never seen political pressure like this (and I saw political pressure on scientists under the Carter and Clinton Administration). The unanimity among scientists really is striking, bipartisan and unprecedented. It's always possible that they could all be wrong, but it's better than the evidence we usually have for other policy decisions (like Star Wars), and given the risks, you can't just say, "Let's put off action for 10 years while we get more evidence," like George W. Bush does.
So as a journalist, much of what Mooney does is merely summing up what highly-credentialed PhD-level scientists are saying, giving the arguments on both sides, coming to conclusions, and giving it a context. The scientists say that he's reporting their views accurately. Furthermore much of what he does is reporting on politics, and it's nice, but not necessary, to be a scientist to do that. (Gerard Piel, the publisher of Scientific American, was a history major.)
Lots of people do that, and still turn out to be wrong. But Mooney got generally good reviews in the scientific journals. He took a lot of stuff I read and made it easier for me to understand the context. In my reading, he does seem to have a good grasp of the subject. He wouldn't be qualified to do the hard science, like look at temperature data in ice cores and make a scientific judgment about it, but he doesn't make hard scientific decisions, he just talks to other people who do.
That's what qualifies him to write a book and report on this. He could be wrong, but he's at least as qualified as any journalist, columnist, or economist. Of course you have a perfect right to be skeptical, and you provide a useful service when you are skeptical. But I think there are good answers to your objections.
I don't suppose anyone would argue that the President of the United States has a fundamental grasp of these concepts.:)
Bravo to you for putting it so clearly. In a representative democracy, the senators, representatives, and various presidential subordinates, are not leaders. They are not even - in the ideal form of democracy - role models. Whenever I see them referred to as "leaders" (usually in glurge-for-kids, see: The Mini Page), I want to puke. The way I see it, politicians are actors - glorified lawyers, if you will. Their job is to say what you and I say, but say it in such a way that it's clean, precise, to the point, and doesn't contain so many bad Soviet Russia jokes. This is why I'll never vote Democratic or Republican - even if I knew it would come down to a single vote between the two, I would still vote for my ideals, not for "my favorite candidate on the island".
But enough off-topic ramblings. The trouble here is: What happens if 85% of the population believes that the Earth is flat? That the Sun revolves around us? What if 51% of the population decides it would be a lot nicer if the George Dubya forces demolished the World Trade Center with dynamite or miniature truckbombs or nanotermites or whatever?
We don't want politicians in "charge" of science, definitely - but it's even more dangerous to place "the People" in charge of science. We, as nerds, all get irritated when TIME or the New York Times completely botches the simple facts of a computing principle - and most of us harbor a distaste for "sensationalistic science" - such as that case a few months back about the "mysterious black bugs that lived under your skin and sucked your neurons". Can you imagine what would happen if science was put to a vote of the People? We'd have Intelligently Designed second gunmen on the Grassy Knoll, pi would be 3.14, and bodies in motion would remain in motion until they stopped, because Grandma Nitwit refuses to have it any other way, and the majority of people feel very sorry for Grandma Nitwit because she is such a nice person.
Scientists should be in control of science. Science should be placed in a category all its own - the "real world" - the world that determines whether Jimmy Twoshoes is going to live or die after ramming into an 18-wheeler on his bicycle. The world of Christ and myth and what's "nice" and "convenient" and "easy to have faith on" can either be separate, or non-existant - but to place it as an equal is moral relativism at its absolute worst. And to look at science - or the voice of science - as just another checkbox alongside "Christian", "Jew", "Islam", "other" (or "the Christian view", the "Jew view", etc) is to take a dangerously literal view towards "science as a belief system", or whatever the current head-up-the-ass in-vogue philosophical outlook is.
That's not really true. Republicans are no more "anti-science" than Democrats, they just tend to suppress and pursue different sciences. Republicans pursue applied, practical research, especially when it involves things like weapons, vehicles, power generation and industry. They suppress stem cell research, biological studies in general, and are generally quite opposed to evolutionary theory. Democrats on the other hand tend to be much less supportive of applied sciences, especially nuclear research and new industrial technologies. Meanwhile they have no problem supporting research into all the things that Republicans oppose.
It's just a matter of differing priorities. The typical left-wing opposition to nuclear power and incineration technology is no less "anti-science" than the right-wing opposition to evolutionary theory and stem cell research. Each side of the political spectrum has it's Sacred Cows, and they can both be equally ignorant when it comes to science. The GPP had it absolutely right - the solution isn't just excluding republicans from making scientific decisions, but rather keeping politics and science entirely separate.
Whoa there, there is a huge difference between having different priorities and wholesale distortion of scientific evidence which is what the Republican's are continuously being caught doing.
Can you think of any situations where a Democrat blatantly misrepresented scientific evidence in order to advance a partisan agenda? I've never heard of any. I'm sure it's happened at some point, but certainly not to the extend that this Administration is guilty of such things.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
The problem is people who don't believe in objective reality.
Such people are dangerous everywhere but are outright toxic when allowed to tamper with the results of fieldwork.
People who substitute goodfact for realfact and own propaganda machines are inimical to democracy.
My point is that the various claims of decades past don't come near the broad consensus and quantities of data we have today. The fact that some scientists have been wrong in the past doesn't mean that most scientists are wrong now.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
The difference is that when democrats are opposed to research, they just don't fund it. They don't say to scientists "we don't like nuclear weapons, so change epsilon in the equations so that they won't work any more". Whereas republicans seem to tell scientists to change their data to fit the facts that they want to be true, like telling scientists to change the nesting range so that california isn't included in the range of this bird. The former is a funding issue. That's political, it's ledgit. The later is data manipulation. In the world of science, that's sacriledge.
'I remember being taught in highschool that "we are overdue for another ice age'
Yes, since then the scientific ideas on these topics have changed (why do people think that's strange?). However, there is still a LOT of uncertainty on how ice ages happen.
"we started learning about holes in the ozone layer, and my first thought was "wait, if this stops the next ice age, isn't it a good thing?"
The holes in the ozone layer have nothing to do with the climate, and everything with CFK's and harmful ultraviolet light. Ask Australians, they'll know.
"When a single volcanic eruption has the potential to put out more CO2 than all human production over the last decade, I think it's fair to say that we're a pretty insignificant factor."
Let's turn this argument around (for fun and education). Did you know that big volcanos (as in, happens every couple of years) can produce the same amount for carbondioxide as all human production over the last decade? You don't have to strain to realize this doesn't help the global warming problem at all!
Keep in mind that these volcano's have been partaking in the earth CO2 cycle for as long as humans remember, and really are an integral part of it. CO2 is absorbed by the ocean (at a certain rate), volcanos and animals contribute to it (at certain rates), and now also humans contribute heavily to it. Of course, this isn't to say that one really big volcano cannot ruin the earth climate for a couple of years to come.
But, think of this: if one reasonably big volcano can dominate earth climate for years (as we have seen a couple of times now), why then is it so strange that humans contribute to the effects of the CO2 when the human production is slowly getting comparable with what volcanos can do. And we do it every day, every year, and it is increasing fast.
As a side note, of course we humans have hardly seen what volcanos can REALLY DO. And volcanos don't just produce CO2 but also a lot of ashes (blocks sun) and SO2 (ozone dissolving(?) and other problems), so don't just pull volcanos out of your hat when talking about global warming, unless you know a bit more.
...being corrupt lying and hateful retards means that all religious people are fucking assholes who deserve a bullet to the face.
I like the cut of you jib!
Blar.
Try learning actual science for a change instead of mindlessly quoting ignorant bufoons like Rush Limbaugh. Sorry, but given a choice between (1) a great body of scientific work and research, along with the overwhealming scientific consensus, and (2) a guy who can't even get through his first year of college and has spent the last 20-30 years sitting on his butt behind a microphone blathering ideology out his cakehole, I think even someone as clearly ignorant as you are could see why I would choose option 1 (well, that and personally having a good understanding of actual physics).
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
So the "Gaia crowd" who, by and large, don't seem to be able to get anything done politically have managed to get the majority of the world's climate scientists the to engage in a conspiracy with them because they hate coal and oil? That seems a lot more likely than the fact that there is significant evidence to support the position. It's almost as sensible as the claim that the environmentalist crazies don't actually support the environment--they just hate money and want a communist world government!
That's certainly true, but that fact by itself doesn't mean that global warming is bad science. Again, the fact that scientists have been wrong in the past doesn't immediately invalidate modern theory. Doctors used to think that tomatoes would kill you, so they must be full of garbage when they say that smoking is dangerous? Not so much. My problem isn't with skepticism per se. It's more an issue with armchair scientists who think that their "common sense" along with a few minutes on the web and fuzzy memories of Time magazine from a generation ago somehow makes it easy for them to see how literally thousands of of climate experts are completely wrong in their field of expertise. It's like the creationist video on YouTube that claims that evolution can't be possible because they weren't able to spontaneously create life in a jar of peanut butter. It's folksy and cute, and it makes you sound like a no-nonsense decisive type of guy who hates all that egghead stuff, but it's ultimately still just crap.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"