June 20, 2003 by lonbud

Science? What Science?

The Administration of Smoke and Mirrors released this week the newest hit song in its long-running dance of deception, “We Have God On Our Side,” a lullaby produced by the Environmental Protection Agency, with a half share of songwriting credit to the White House Dept. of Information Management.

The sunny, hopeful tune, “Draft Report on the State of the Environment,” features a stripped down chorus of “It’s all right now,” mixed with a contrapuntal, “Science? What science?”

Ignoring and suppressing evidence of measurable anomalies in the rate of climactic change, refusing to permit even notes of the human impact on the fundamental theme of global warming, the Administration has foisted upon us a light-rock, summer trifle, with hooks and beats promising “good information” (think Beach Boys) about things that can “hurt my family or make it bad for the birds, bees, and fish out there,” according to one author of the report, who humbly refrained from seeking named credit for the work.

Apparently, White House producers felt the dark struggle and ominous overtones sounded in arias featuring “conclusions about the likely human contribution to warming” from a 2001 report on climate authored by the National Research Council -a report the White House had commissioned and which President Bush had endorsed in speeches last year- struck too dissonant a chord with another study, partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute, that sings of “half-baked” notions dismissing the idea that warming is “at least partly caused by rising concentrations of smokestack and tail-pipe emissions.”

Faced with the choice of either witholding the report in its entirety or acknowledging that the White House’s proposed language addressing climate change “no longer accurately reflects scientific consensus” on the matter, EPA Director Christie Whitman made the decision to excise entirely any discussion of climate change in the report. Director Whitman said she is “perfectly comfortable” with the report as it stands, a position which may or may not have anything to do with the fact of her resignation from the directorship, effective June 27.

The basic facts and quoted material in this notice were taken from an article entitled, “Report by the EPA Leaves Out Data on Climate Change,” by Andrew C. Revkin and Catherine Q. Seelye, which appeared in the June 19, 2003 edition of The New York Times.

The government headed by George W. Bush routinely lies to the American people about a whole host of things, although sometimes, as in the case of the EPA report described herein, it simply refuses to address certain uncomfortable facts at odds with the interests and desires of its primary benefactors.

And yet poll numbers indicate the public’s willingness to accept the deception.

It’s strange; I always thought Americans were smarter than that. But I guess three generations of people who have subsumed their educational priorities to the insatiable demands of a National Security State will produce such a result.