Get those damn scientists out of here
Scott Pruitt cut the EPA off at the knees yesterday.
Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, stripped a half-dozen scientists and academics of advisory positions Tuesday and issued new rules barring anyone who receives E.P.A. grant money from serving on panels that counsel the agency on scientific decisions.
The move will effectively bar a large number of academic researchers, many of them experts in fields ranging from toxicology to epidemiology, from advising the E.P.A. on scientific matters, since the agency is one of the largest funders of environmental research.
They get the grants because they know the subject – so Pruitt throws them out. Let’s not have any experts on environmental science in the EPA, because who needs the environment, right? It’s there to be used until it’s worn out and useless, and then we’ll
uh
What is it we’ll do then? I forget.
Mr. Pruitt was expected to appoint several industry representatives to the panels. He did not impose any new restrictions to prevent them from offering advice on environmental regulations that may affect their businesses.
Industry reps have the right kind of vested interest – profit. The wrong kind is evidence about harm to the environment that we all depend on for survival.
In an announcement at agency headquarters surrounded by conservative activists and Republican lawmakers who have long called for an overhaul of the advisory boards, Mr. Pruitt said he made the decision to ensure the agency would receive data and advice free from conflicts of interest or any appearance of a conflict. He said that people currently serving on E.P.A. advisory boards had received $77 million in grant money over the past three years as they were issuing advice on policy.
The industry people on the other hand have no conflict of interest, or appearance of same. Also, chocolate makes you immortal.
Mr. Pruitt is expected to ask about two dozen people to replace advisers whose terms have ended or were removed under the new rules, according to a list provided by several people close to the process. Among the expected appointees, several are state regulators and private consultants; one is a senior director at the American Chemistry Council, a trade association; another is the chief environmental officer for Southern Company, an electric utility; and one is the vice president of technology for Phillips 66 Research Center in Oklahoma, and previously worked for ConocoPhillips.
The E.P.A. did not confirm the full list of new appointees, but did announce that Michael E. Honeycutt, the top toxicologist at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, would chair the E.P.A.’s Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Honeycutt has sparred with the E.P.A. over ozone standards, and was a co-author of a study in an air and waste management magazine arguing that the agency has inflated the health benefits of more stringent air quality standards.
Yeah, pollution is good for you.
Let’s see if I can remember it all….
(1) No problem. Human ingenuity will solve everything.
(2) No problem. We can create synthetic substitutes for everything important. After all, we managed to create synthetic aspirin, right?
(3) No problem. There isn’t going to be a problem, because the environmental experts are all full of beans and on the take for the rich pile of money that their opponents in industry can’t possibly match. They are Cassandras.
(4) No problems. We will go to the moon and Mars, and build super technological wonderful colonies so we won’t need to worry about stripping this planet of resources; we’ll just pick up and move to planets that don’t have any.
(5) No problem. This is all hysteria designed to cripple capitalism, and if we let the Free Market ® work unfettered they will solve all the problems, and we will live in a utopian paradise that lefties don’t understand, where the market fixes everything for a price.
(6) WITCH HUNT!
Does that recall it to your mind? Glad to help.
Which will be achieved by getting rid of all the ingenious humans (like those darned scientist with their open bias in favor of facts and logic and against made up crap)
What is it we’ll do then? I forget.
(7) Go to heaven (which a frightening number of people seem to actually believe).
Not all of us, of course. Only the best people.
7. God will provide
Sillies. The earth is bountiful and endlessly giving, like a Good Mother. We can take what we please and she will continue to provide for and shelter us.
Anyone here see Aronofsky’s Mother!?
Lady M, I went to a natural history museum in the midwest a few years ago, and there was an exhibit on global warming. The museum had a place for people to leave comment cards about their trip to the museum; most of them were negative and critical of that exhibit (some preferred to scream at the exhibit on evolution). One of the stupidest suggestions I saw in the suggestion box about how to deal with global warming was a card that just said “God’s got it”. Well, whatever he’s got, I hope he gets over it soon and starts fixing things, because he appears to have been sick for a very long time!
The museum diligently hung up all the cards on the bulletin board, although many, perhaps most, of them were hateful – toward the museum, toward science, toward “liberals” (undefined), toward Jews…just plain hate pouring out through their pen. Can people not even relax from their hate long enough to just enjoy a bit of natural history?
“Can people not even relax from their hate long enough to just enjoy a bit of natural history?”
Not when the natural history contradicts their Holy Book and makes suggestions that would cause them to question ingrained belief. These people already know it all and have all the answers, and only certain questions are allowed. The hatred is simply loving correction so those scientists don’t go to hell, or worse, lure the unsuspecting there. Lots more people would not set foot into such a museum in the first place, so this is a smaller sample of the total potential hate.