Posted on 06/06/2002 6:45:25 AM PDT by PhiKapMom
EPA Issuance of Report Stings the Boss
2002-06-06
SOME folks at the Environmental Protection Agency better get their resumes in order. Showing up your boss is never a good idea -- especially when that boss is president of the United States.
That's what happened when a controversial global-warming assessment, apparently based on some very bad science, hit the agency's Web site late last week.
The U.S. Climate Action Report 2002 seemed to reverse the Bush administration's previous global warming stance. It pointed to a clear human role in the accumulation of atmosphere-warming greenhouse gases.
It also embarrassed President Bush.
The president barely concealed his pique over the report. "I read the report by the bureaucracy," Bush told reporters. As we say, get those resumes ready.
The reason is the people at the U.S. Global Change Research Program, who were primarily responsible for the national assessment in the report, apparently based their conclusions on faulty computer models.
University of Virginia climatologist Patrick Michaels said the bureaucrats, as Bush would call them, knew the models were suspect when they issued the report.
"As it stands, it is the blackest of marks upon U.S. environmental science in recent decades," Michaels wrote in a review of the report for the libertarian Cato Institute. "The historic credibility of our considerable efforts in this science ... (is) at stake."
Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist at the Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said there remains no basis for the claim human activity is causing global warming. "The key layers of air, from one to five miles high, show no human-made global warming," Baliunas told the Washington Times. "Global warming at the surface is largely, if not entirely, natural."
Bush says the administration will stick by its opposition to the Kyoto global warming treaty, which would require crippling restrictions on the U.S. economy. The administration backs voluntary measures that make sense scientifically and economically, not the draconian steps required by Kyoto.
Scientists like Michaels say such measures, even if successful, would barely affect the earth's temperature.
Obviously, some of the hired hands over at EPA disagree and didn't mind breaking with Bush's view. They may be hearing from the big boss pretty soon.
Ol Sparky: If this was put out against Bush's wishes -- and that is hard to believe given all of the other intentional compromises by this Administration -- then Christie Todd Whitman and any other else responsible for the release of the report MUST be fired. Nothing else is acceptable.Here is what Ari Fleischer just said at the press conference. Does this sound like Christie Whitman or anyone else is going to be fired?
MR. FLEISCHER: No. Here's -- the bottom line for the President is, number one, he has made a proposal that he believes is a proposal that not only can reduce the problem of greenhouse gases and global warming, but also protects the American economy, so the American economy can lead the world in technological and scientific advances that also have an effect in reducing pollution. The President has said, citing the National Academy of Sciences, that the increase is due in large part to human activity. The President has also continued, citing both, now this report the EPA has sent to the United Nations, previous evidence from the National Academy of Sciences, that there's uncertainty -- and the recent report notes that there is considerable uncertainty. That's the state of science, and the President agrees with it. I don't think people dispute that.Looks like they want it both ways.
Or if they are in Senior Executive Service (SES) positions they serve at the pleasure of their boss -- Ms Whitman who I would believe is in trouble herself and could can them. I believe that normal Civil Service rules to not apply to SES positions! At least that is how I remember it when these SES positions were created. Some people who were GS-16's chose to stay GS-16's because they didn't want to take a chance on an SES.
The other day I stated that ms. Whitman might want to be looking around as this President NEVER forgets and this one from the EPA is a big foulup!
I may be wrong, but I don't think that this is the first time that Ms. Whitman crossed the President. Maybe it wasn't her doing, but it is her department. Maybe she will clean house instead and prove that she actually is a republican. Maybe....
I don't think so, the EPA has lied many times before..... they seem to be untouchable.
SheLion: Me thinks Christie Todd Whitman wants to be a Bush Lap Dog! Just like she was with Clinton. Why President Bush doesn't dump her arse is beyond me. She is USELESS!!Has the president fired Christie Whitman yet for the report? Or has he fired Ari Fleischer for saying that the president agrees that human activity has caused global warming? Or for Fleischer saying that it was old news, that Bush has believed it for a year since a speech about it last June? Just checking.
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