another story of bush editing science

If this guy is so censored how is it the "60 minutes" got this guy to talk? Hey this is the game these pathetic journalistic organizations play. They attempt to sensationalize this type of material for the sake of ratings. That allows the network to charge even more for their advertising. Most likely it is a sham. Most of these media yokels only publish one side of the issue. That should sound a very large alarm!

Been watching Bill O'Rielly? The above sounds a good description of his shows on FOX You wouldnt find the fair and balanced, we report you decide, FOX reporters trying to interview this guy at all.

CNN and the BBC are not left wing. As the right has FOX, Bill O'Rielly & Ruch Limbaugh, the left has Al Franken & Michael Moore and sections of public radio. Though I'll accept that the US menaing of 'left wing' would make our esteemed leader the socialist he claims to be!

What sounds alarms for me is when stories like this come out, that the network is attacked rather than looking into the issues that were raised. In particular when there is a history to the allegations.

On the point of global warming its hard to brush away Scientific Amerian as a left wing political print magazine. And even its editors have criticised the current white house residents. From 2004 www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&a...084-983483414B7F0000

[citing UCS report...]The administration misrepresented the findings of the National Academy of Sciences and other experts on climate change. It meddled with the discussion of climate change in an Environmental Protection Agency report until the EPA eliminated that section. It suppressed another EPA study that showed that the administration's proposed Clear Skies Act would do less than current law to reduce air pollution and mercury contamination of fish. It even dropped independent scientists from advisory committees on lead poisoning and drug abuse in favor of ones with ties to industry.

Cheers,
~Al

You mean the portion in "Independence Day" about Area 51 wasn't true?

Dang!

Dave

Well Al and Bart it is nice of you to offer your comments. Both of your points are well taken.

Personally, the bottom line is that I prefer to carefully weigh in on the subject before taking a position; of course your mileage may vary. And that's perfectly OK with me too.

To my original post there is no way most of us participating in this current society have any idea what is the truth. What I can tell you with great assurance is that neither you nor I have any real evidence to support any position either way. This is what the political strategists (and marketing people too) count on. The more one sees things repeated in print the more the reasonable person begins to accept these things as fact.

Do you drink “Coca Cola”? Millions do…. So what evidence is available to support that this is a good thing?

I have heard a lot of differing opinions on global warming. The ones that garner the most coverage are those that spell out the worst threat! That is what sells.

There is certainly a lot of evidence to support global warming. However I am curios to know whether this is a result of a larger natural cycle that has a period much longer than we have been able to observe. We seem to think there were ice ages and if that were true is it also likely there were periods of extreme tropical temperatures?

Since none of us were involved in the bigger cyclical events like perhaps the mass extinctions about which we have been told, we need to more clearly define if and to what extent is the impact caused by humans.

Al, your comment on Bill O'Rielly is very interesting. So do you have some personal knowledge which supports your comment or is this your opinion? Also, what is the basis of your position on CNN and the BBC ?

Arnie, I believe you are being a little over-pessemistic. Yes, we, the general public, don't know everything there is to know, but that does not mean we don't know anything and cannot form informed opinions.

Your above post seems to somehow imply that myself and Al rushed to someform of hasty opinion on Global Warming and have not actually taken the time to come to our conclusions. I for one find that rather offensive because I can tell you that I have been considering this with a keen interest for many years now and have formed my opinions based on a lot of sources, not just one article here or there.

Secondly, science is not politics and it should not be treated as such which is what I belive you are doing. Science is speciall in that the raw data is there for anyone with a genuine interest to see for themselves. You don't neet to take people's word for things as you so often have to do in politics, you can look at the data yourself and then draw your own conclusions.

When you start to look into the data and not the personalities and presentations you get on 'news' shorts you can see for yourself that it is beyond doubt that our climate is shifting dramatically at the moment. This is not a wobble or a short term thing but a sustained shift that starts at the same time we started pumping massice amounts of CO2 into our atmosphere. We can see past climate changes via many techniques and when we look back in the past we do indeed see many changes and fluctuations, what we do not see is any examples of changes that are as alarmningly rappid as what we are seeing today. The data tells us that
a) There is a change
b) The change is more rapidly than anything that has been seen before
c) The timeframe of this change corelates with industrialization

That does not tell us what will happen next, that is far from certain and that is the bit climatologists dissagree on. What the politicians like to do is spin the dissagreement on exactly how the changes wil pan out into the future into dissagreements over the very existence of the problem which is not an accurate reflection of the scientific realities of the situation.

Further, as we begin to understand the eco-system in more detail it is becoming more and more obvious that it is a very tighly coupled system that is sensative to changes. Massivly altering the composition of our atmosphere just cannot have no effect. Considering the climate is an inherently chaotic system we can never accurately predict exactly what changes will occour because of global warming, only that there will be changes. We shouldn't be changing nature on a planet wide scale when we know we cannot predict what the results will be. Hence, reducing our emissions is a sensible policy. We know we don't know the results of what we are doing so just carrying on and hopping for the best is hardly a sensible option!

The objetion I raised at the start of this thread was that policians should not be stiffeling scientific debate. There is strong evidence that Bush is doing just that and no one from the Bush administration has presented any evidence to counter that.

Leave science to the scientists and condem all politicians who try to politicise science, that's what I say.

Secondly, science is not politics and it should not be treated as such which is what I belive you are doing. Science is speciall in that the raw data is there for anyone with a genuine interest to see for themselves. You don't neet to take people's word for things as you so often have to do in politics, you can look at the data yourself and then draw your own conclusions.

Sorry Bart, gonna have to pull you on that one... Science is littered with political decisions, motives, agendas and so on. By way of some examples, scientists have provided extensive evidence for all kinds of harmful activities (smoking, diet, asbestos) yet people blindly go on smoking, SuperSizing themselves, and tearing down asbeston laden builidngs. Here in Ireland, the scientists have long been expressing serious concerns of the A&E situation - and, um, look what's happened...

We see political spin, smoke and mirrors day in and day out. Even with the scientists data, there's still a lot of harm going on to the human race and our environment. Remember the fuss about illegal waste dumps? Shell? So what's happened about those issues? Nothing.

The problem is people in general don't care - they're more concerned about the humdrum of getting through the traffic, watching the latest soap and so on. I bet if there was 100m asteroid headed our way, a lot of folks would simply sit and watch it coming in Live on Sky.

And as for the 'scientists' - all too often we consider them as pure, moral and driven by the search for truth and knowledge. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Most scientists are paid by an employer - be it private industry or academia or through a research grant. A lot of times, their judgements are made on the basis of 'don't bite the hand that feeds you'. And then of course, there are those scientists who blatantly falsify data, break ethical codes and so either to further their career or make money.

So, what's the truth? Certainly what you see on TV and in the daily papers is a sanitised biased version of the truth. If that's what we base our opinion on, then its de facto a biased opinion.

And as for the politicians themselves, whilst some are distasteful and odious, they're (mostly) human too. You'd have to have a heart of stone not to car - politician or Joe Public. But the politicians have to take account of all public (and private) opinion - not just mine or yours. And public opinion includes the old woman in number 37 as well as the multinational billion dollar companies...

As a final example, how much direct evidence do you think there is in support of closing down Sellafield? Do you think the East coast of Ireland is now home to bizarrely malformed animals and plants? Is the land and sea glowing in the dark? Do you think that the threat of Sellafield going up in smoke up is any different from a nuclear power plant in the North East of France going up in smoke and polluting Ireland? Did you know that Ireland still pumps raw, untreated sewage into the sea off the Donegal and Connemara coasts? And not 10 miles out, right on the shoreline...

Politics - that's the name of the game for both politicians and scientists alike. A shocking indictment of the 21st Century in my opinion, but reality nontheless.

snip