Slashdot Mirror
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
After reading and re-reading all 3 linked articles, I see no specific or generic reference to an MMOG. Am I blind (if so, I blame it on MMOG-induced sleep deprivation)? Is the article summary just making that part up? Or is there another article that wasn't linked? Inquiring minds want to know.
"Ms. MacDonald, if you read the report you will see that the white-tailed prairie dog is clearly in need of protec-"
"NO!! I NEED TEN MORE HIDES TO COMPLETE MY CLOAK!!"
Like all endangered species, their [the yellow whatever] extension can be directly attributed to the rise of mankind. Even the brontosaurus was driven away because of small ground dwelling mammals. Let's just say from this point forward it's our fault. Darwin would never say "Survival of the fittest"
A few scientists who do something unscientific means that all of research you don't like is automatically refuted?
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.
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.
How many times have we seen perpetual motion reported as straight news?
For a journalist to be able to think critically about scientific subjects they should be reasonably well grounded in the subject (which is asking a lot for a journalist).
Otherwise all they do is pick a side in the argument, dumb it down till they think they understand it, then report it as undisputed fact.
So while you do have a point about presenting information to non-scientists the journalist should be somewhere in the middle. What we've gotten is regurgitated press releases being passed off as news by idiot reporters who can't ask the any intelligent questions.
I went to a University with a very well respected J-school. They took the same amount of math and science as the education majors (basically they were required to re-take the material they should have learned in middle school).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
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.
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"
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.
should this Julie MacDonald be thrown in jail for doing the opposite of her job?
They're using their grammar skills there.
'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.
The demarcation is only for which statements are scientific and which are not. As I think you were trying to point out, falsifiable statements are scientific statements, so stating that the evidence cannot be questioned is removing the theory from criticism. Technically, this is a correct statement, but it is completely missing the point of the parent. Using demarcation against Gore like that, to try and trap him on a technical question to hide from the larger criticisms he argues is quite disingenuous and slanderous to Critical Rationalism for you to wield scientific demarcation like that while claiming to uphold Popper's assertions. Popper and his student Bartley didn't stop at demarcation.
What we are really discussing is a "should" statement. The question is "What should be done, if anything, about environmental changes?" There can be no rationally justified answer to this question, just as there can be no rationally justified answer to any "should" statement. There are no good reasons, rationally speaking, for taking any action for the simple fact that predicting the future is impossible. When it comes to "should" statements we must rely on the probabilities produced by models of the problem.
So, for climate change, there are a number of parameters that our model needs to understand in order to calculate the probable success of any proposal to not cause or even prevent harm to society. If the climate changes will cause harm, can we alter them? Is human action contributing to the harmful climate changes? What human actions will reduce harm the most?
What I believe the parent was communicating and the point Gore was trying to make, was that the scientific statements that have survived falsification thus far best fit the explanation that the earth is getting warmer due to increased carbon levels that are currently best explained by fossil fuel burning, that this is harmful and that we should do something about it. What Gore and a large part of the scientific community are trying to say, is that further attempts at falsification before action is taken is self-defeating at best and suicidal at worst. Will we ever know for sure? Nope. Can't be sure the sun is going to come up tomorrow until tomorrow either. I'm not real inclined to quit taking any action today that has to do with tomorrow because I can't be sure the sun is going to come up. Especially given the really huge probability that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. Just as the scientific facts which have survived falsification point to the sun coming up tomorrow, they point to human assisted global climate changes.
Either falsify the science that leads to these calculations of probabilities or start arguing for a course of action that deals with the changes. Anything else has no information content that is meaningful to the discussion. Oh, and go read David Miller's "Out of Error". It will bring you up to speed on what's happened with Popper's ideas since the 30's.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
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.
The predictions about "global cooling" eventually leading to the next continental glaciation ("ice age") are real ... on a thousand-year timescale ... and relate to orbital cycles (Milankovitch cycles). Though there is still plenty of debate about the details, the generalities haven't changed -- an ice age is expected someday, assuming the system behaves as it did in the past, and we are "due" for one in the next several thousand years. So, he's right that people talked about that general concern (a new ice age) back in the 1960s and 1970s, as geologists and climatologists started to understand some aspects of the glacial/interglacial cycles the Earth has been experiencing over the last few million years.
The problem is, worrying about eventual global cooling of this type is kind of like worrying about what to do as you glide down a long and gently wavering ski slope (i.e. "global cooling"), while ignoring the trees pointing the other way that are in your path (i.e. "global warming"), and for which are a much more immediate concern. It doesn't mean scientists were or are wrong about the eventual expectation that a new ice age will occur, they just realized there was a shorter-term and more alarming climate trend the other way. Scientists haven't changed their minds or been "wrong" so much as realized there was a more pressing concern than the long-term trend.
One thing that realization suggests is that sequestration of CO2 might be useful -- we might want it back in a few centuries or thousands of years to stave off an ice age (kind of like terraforming our own planet).
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"