Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Monday, July 14, 2008
No, you don’t have to love Oklahoma, in fact it’s one of my least favorite states.
I judge a state by the tenor of the representatives they elect. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) thinks the EPA has hatched an “economically destructive scheme” which he calls “ironic”. That’s the pot calling the kettle black!
Inhofe also said, “Big Brother is alive and well in the career ranks at the EPA.” Apparently irony is one thing the U.S. isn’t running short on.
Irony is a renewable resource.
This coming from the party that never met a wiretap it didn’t like. Big brother is alive and well, but he isn’t living at the EPA. Warrantless wiretaps, and immunity for those engaged in the massive illegal wiretapping for the past 7 years has all the odor of ‘big brother’.
There are actual scientists working at the EPA. Career scientists. Hard to imagine. Inhofe is a career politician who has been running for some kind of office since 1978.
The economic destruction severed up, in heaping portions, isn’t coming from the EPA’s lunch lady’s ladle either. The next president will inherit, at best, a $400 Billion dollar Bush legacy deficit. This administration had to burn through the huge, $127 Billion dollar surplus the Clinton was kind enough to leave. Now there’s a piece of real irony.
The EPA couldn’t spend enough money to clean-up the amount of trace metals lurking in certain portions of the career politicians anatomy. They certainly wouldn’t have to waste any money looking for brass balls.
_____________________________________________________
Meanwhile…
Brad Miller (D-NC) says, “The White House has effectively blocked the EPA from posting new health assessments of hazardous chemicals…” Miller is chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology’s subcommittee on Investigation and Oversight.
The EPA maintains a data base called the IRIS, Integrated Risk Information System. This data base is critical tool for individuals, private companies, local and state authorities to respond quickly to toxic chemicals found in air, water or soil.
The pipe has dried up on the flow of crucial facts that should be flowing into the IRIS. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) are not required to disclose details of meetings that take place with industry lobbyists.
What do they lobby for? Pardon me; for what do they lobby?
The OMB ‘reviews’. The OMB prevents agency rules from ‘going final’ before it has approved them.
Trichloroethylene (TCE) will have been waiting for an assessment some 21 years after the EPA began its assessment. Miller is asking if “getting the science right” has less to do with protecting the public health than “a pretext for obstruction…”.
The Government Accountability Office has testified that the new ‘review process’ revealed by the OMB provides for even more secrecy and delay.
Before 2004 there were 10 steps a chemical needed to pass through before it was entered into the IRIS data base. The new review process would take a toxic chemical on a meandering 25 step path before it might be handed off to the EPA to post the final assessment on the IRIS database. Keep in mind, this step follows the OMB giving it’s ‘REVISED ASSESSMENT’
Miller states the obvious, “People will have been exposed to a known toxic substance for decades, for a generation, while the government engages in study after study…”
IRIS is just the first step in protecting the public. The real work begins after a toxin reaches the IRIS. That would be the same point the culprits using, releasing or dumping the toxins on to the environment and the public would have to ‘regroup’.
Who wants to regroup when the old group is so cozy?
______________________________________________
Since it isn’t economically beneficial for anyone to find a cure for cancer and most of us don’t have the training to even attempt, I propose a radical solution.
How about we the people, the piss ants, the captains of common wisdom, cure what is causing cancer?
Labels: Brad Miller, Bush, EPA, Environment, Speak no Evil, Trichloroethylene
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Ya gotta love Oklahoma. There’s even a musical.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Rep Bart Gordon, chairman Committee on Science and Technology said in his opening statement, “EPA executed a failed process for modernizing their library network.”
Rep Brad Miller, “The most generous interpretation is incompetence – that EPA managers grossly mismanaged their library system.” Miller also said it may take years and a lot of money to set things right again.
When the EPA closed its largest regional library in Chicago it sold all of its fixtures, valued at more than $40,000.00 for less than $350.00. I’m not sure anyone can that is surprising information.
The Office of Enforcement and Compliance (OECA), will be left holding perhaps nothing more than thin and polluted air when it’s time to prosecute Eco-felons. 1. Information access; especially to original documents. 2. Worry that the centralized system EPA is espousing may not meet tight court-imposed deadlines. 3. Cost. And, how it will be funded?
One of the more interesting notes of irony is that apparently the agency did not anticipate copyright restrictions as they apply to making digitized copies of some material.
In February a federal arbitrator found the EPA guilty of unfair labor practices and acting in bad faith in its national series of library closures. The EPA was ordered to bargain with affected public employee unions before making any further changes in its library network. On more slice of irony, the EPA acted without benefit of any employee input regarding the actions it has taken.
The GAO, Government Accountability Office found the decision to close the libraries wasn’t justified and it deprived the public, EPA staff, state and local agencies and academics of valuable environmental data.
Labels: Brad Miller, EPA, EPA libraries, GAO
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
EPA Library GAO report
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
When you care enough to give the very best, don’t call on Hallmark, call Willie Soon.
Senators John D. Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe have written a scathing letter to Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil. Reading Tillerson the riot act, Rockefeller and Snowe are point blank accusing ExxonMobil of ‘longstanding support of a small cadre of global climate change skeptics’.
Hot words to be sure the letter goes on to say, …’ExxonMobil has helped foster the perception that the United States is insensitive to a matter of great urgency for all of mankind…’
The Senators call ExxonMobil’s support of the global warming ‘deniers’, dangerous.
Clearly the old saying, if you can dazzle them with your brilliance baffle them with your bullsh**, requires more than one astrophysicist ‘in pocket’.
So where is this all leading? It’s leading straight to the Hudson Bay in Canada and the Polar Bears that are skating on thin ice.
Congressman Brad Miller (D-NC) has sent a letter to ExxonMobil requesting ‘all records since 2002 related to their support for scientists working on polar bears and other Arctic animals.’
Miller, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and oversight is demanding that ExxonMobil explain just how it came to be that ExxonMobil funded an astrophysicist to research on polar bears!
“The subcommittee wants to understand how ExxonMobil decided to fund an astrophysicist to do research on polar bears,”
In 2006 Interior Secretary, Dirk Kempthorne announced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would begin gathering information and undertaking analyses before making a decision whether to add polar bears to the list of endangered species. In his announcement, Kempthorne, used the words ‘melting’, ‘receding sea ice’, loss of ice, decline of ice, thinning ice, reduction of ice and reduced ice. He pointed out analysis of what may be causing melting,receding, thinning etc. beyond the scope of the Endangered Species Act review process, and these things are discussed in ‘other’ analyses undertaken by the Bush Administration.
Kempthorne stated “our goal ultimately is to combine the best science available with the power of working hand in hand with states, tribes, foreign countries, industry, and other partners to minimize the threats to polar bears and conserve this great icon of the Arctic for future generations”.
The best science available, or in any case the best science ExxonMobil can buy from an astrophysicist.
In Miller’s letter to Tillerson, ExxonMobil CEO he points out that Willie Soon’s articles published in Ecological Complexity is a ‘viewpoint’ not a peer-reviewed scientific article. “To the lay person, this “viewpoint” is indistinguishable from a peer-reviewed journal article.
Miller asserts ExxonMobil should come clean, “If the Governor of Alaska and the Commissioner of the Department of Fish and Game cannot tell whether this paper is science or an elaborate editorial, what would a less sophisticated audience think?” “This essay, funded in part with ExxonMobil money is now a key exhibit for those who oppose a listing of the polar bear as threatened and deny that climate change is eroding the Bear’s habitat.”
Miller’s request has a due date of November 6, 2007…
Read the entire letter written by Sens. Snowe and Rockefeller to Tillerson at http://snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=9acba744-802a-23ad-47be-2683985c724e
Read the Department of the interior’s Dec.27,2006 press release at http://www.doi.gov/news/06_News_Releases/061227.html
Read Congressman Miller’s letter to Tillerson at http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/File/ForReleases/miller_exxonmobil_response_01jun07.pdf
Photo Thanks pb-scott-schilebe-usfws.
Labels: Brad Miller, DOI, ExxonMobil, Global Warming, John D. Rockefeller, Olympia Snowe, Polar Bear, Polar Bear Memo, Willie Soon
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Global Warming and Polar Bear Reports: You get what you pay for after all!
Monday, November 5, 2007
When you care enough to give the very best, don’t call on Hallmark, call Willie Soon.
Senators John D. Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe have written a scathing letter to Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil. Reading Tillerson the riot act, Rockefeller and Snowe are point blank accusing ExxonMobil of ‘longstanding support of a small cadre of global climate change skeptics’.
Hot words to be sure the letter goes on to say, …’ExxonMobil has helped foster the perception that the United States is insensitive to a matter of great urgency for all of mankind…’
The Senators call ExxonMobil’s support of the global warming ‘deniers’, dangerous.
Clearly the old saying, if you can dazzle them with your brilliance baffle them with your bullsh**, requires more than one astrophysicist ‘in pocket’.
So where is this all leading? It’s leading straight to the Hudson Bay in Canada and the Polar Bears that are skating on thin ice.
Congressman Brad Miller (D-NC) has sent a letter to ExxonMobil requesting ‘all records since 2002 related to their support for scientists working on polar bears and other Arctic animals.’
Miller, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and oversight is demanding that ExxonMobil explain just how it came to be that ExxonMobil funded an astrophysicist to research on polar bears!
“The subcommittee wants to understand how ExxonMobil decided to fund an astrophysicist to do research on polar bears,”
In 2006 Interior Secretary, Dirk Kempthorne announced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would begin gathering information and undertaking analyses before making a decision whether to add polar bears to the list of endangered species. In his announcement, Kempthorne, used the words ‘melting’, ‘receding sea ice’, loss of ice, decline of ice, thinning ice, reduction of ice and reduced ice. He pointed out analysis of what may be causing melting,receding, thinning etc. beyond the scope of the Endangered Species Act review process, and these things are discussed in ‘other’ analyses undertaken by the Bush Administration.
Kempthorne stated “our goal ultimately is to combine the best science available with the power of working hand in hand with states, tribes, foreign countries, industry, and other partners to minimize the threats to polar bears and conserve this great icon of the Arctic for future generations”.
The best science available, or in any case the best science ExxonMobil can buy from an astrophysicist.
In Miller’s letter to Tillerson, ExxonMobil CEO he points out that Willie Soon’s articles published in Ecological Complexity is a ‘viewpoint’ not a peer-reviewed scientific article. “To the lay person, this “viewpoint” is indistinguishable from a peer-reviewed journal article.
Miller asserts ExxonMobil should come clean, “If the Governor of Alaska and the Commissioner of the Department of Fish and Game cannot tell whether this paper is science or an elaborate editorial, what would a less sophisticated audience think?” “This essay, funded in part with ExxonMobil money is now a key exhibit for those who oppose a listing of the polar bear as threatened and deny that climate change is eroding the Bear’s habitat.”
Miller’s request has a due date of November 6, 2007…
Read the entire letter written by Sens. Snowe and Rockefeller to Tillerson at http://snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=9acba744-802a-23ad-47be-2683985c724e
Read the Department of the interior’s Dec.27,2006 press release at http://www.doi.gov/news/06_News_Releases/061227.html
Read Congressman Miller’s letter to Tillerson at http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/File/ForReleases/miller_exxonmobil_response_01jun07.pdf
Photo Thanks pb-scott-schilebe-usfws
Labels: Brad Miller, ExxonMobil, Global Warming, John D. Rockefeller, Olympia Snowe, Polar Bear, Polar Bear Memo, Polar Bears, Willie Soon
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Polar Bears and ExxonMobil:You Get What You Pay For After All
