Science, it’s the way humans organize facts about our environment into terms we can understand. By environment I don’t mean just the trees, I mean everything around us. The information organized and based on observation and testing and genuine thought. In some cases, there is room for interpretation. The statistics can always be read one way or another.
The current president of the U.S. and his administration seem quite adept at altering these scientific observations to suit their fancy. The New York Times recently reported that Philip Cooney, chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, recently doctored some scientific reports on global warming, admittedly a silly and mundane topic for the White House. In his efforts to maintain that menial quality, he dramatically downplayed the links between emissions and climate change.
During the previous presidential administration, then Vice President Al Gore worked diligently with other nations to hammer out the Kyoto Protocol. Kyoto was a treaty to help reduce emissions and improve the state our environment, particularly with regard to global warming. When the Bush administration took power in 2001, they promptly disavowed the treaty, saying the plan to determine the environmental situation for themselves.
And this they did. All these new regulations are bad for business. They claim it would cost households another $2700 dollars a year. Now, that is quite a bit of money but surely the mega corporations could absorb some of that cost, being the good citizens that they are. Actually, since a number of nations did embrace Kyoto, many corporations, which are multinational, have no choice but to follow those rules anyway. All those nations sure have signed up for fuzzy science.
A statement on the National Academy of Science website from June 7th:
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences joined 10 other national science academies today in calling on world leaders, particularly those of the G8 countries meeting next month in Scotland, to acknowledge that the threat of climate change is clear and increasing, to address its causes, and to prepare for its consequences. Sufficient scientific understanding of climate change exists for all nations to identify cost-effective steps that can be taken now to contribute to substantial and long-term reductions in net global greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. The statement echoes the findings and recommendations of several previous reports by the U.S. National Academies.
The Academies are the preeminent national organization in the U.S. on matters of science. Obviously, they do that fuzzy science too.
The G8 summit is coming next month. Tony Blair is looking to spend some more of that political capital he built up with President Bush with all his support for the Iraq war. First he went after world hunger and forgiving African debts and now he’s going after the global warming. Tony’s a good supporter but he uses fuzzy science too.
Several states are looking to reduce greenhouse emissions and corporations like GE and their project can quite possibly produce better environmental results. I wonder if they’re using that fuzzy science too.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
