This seems to be a popular Bush tactic: put good, honorable people in positions of power-- especially if you can use their public image to push your adgenda through. Then, if they don’t agree with you, marginalize them to the point where they resign:AFTER your policies are a done deal. Look at Colin Powell…
Well, I think genetic modification should have been scrutinised much more carefully. These organisms are rather like exotics. 9 out of 10 will simply die out if left to fight it out with other species. But every so often you get something like the rabbit or the cane toad in Australia which simply has devestating effects on the environment. Unlike artificial selective breeding of the traditional kind, this sort of tampering doesn’t allow us to see at each stage where things are going.
Stem cell research is controversial for other reasons. I don’t think it’s dangerous in anything like the same way. Stem cell therapy might be dangerous if performed prematurely.
In the case of tobacco and asbestos, I don’t regard these as mistakes. I regard the failure of governments to act sooner as criminal.
When to act isn’t a function simply of how well-established the science is but also of the dangers of not taking it seriously if it turns out right.
Risk analysis is not a very well-developed area of study. My own studies in this area suggest that we react very differently to different kinds of risk. Collectively, our attitudes don’t look consistent or rational to me, but I can’t pretend I’ve got to teh bottom of it.
Erik and others
here’s EPA’s take on global climate change. Remember this is the Bush administration’s EPA.
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/index.html
About Kyoto. One of the curious things about it is that the agreement was largely negotiated by US manufacturers. The Clinton Administration decided that if US businesses were going to have to live with whatever was in the Kyoto agreement, it would be best they participated in the negotiation. So they were invted to be part of the delgation and they got most of what they wanted. The US delegation played a key role in shaping the agreement in 1997.
Here’s Intel on Kyoto
http://www.intel.com/intel/other/ehs/product_ecology/globalclimate.htm
My only point is the the Administration position may not represent its own environmental professionals or most US business.
Just to clarify, the things you are talking about are hypotheses. Gravitation is a theory; so is electromagnetism and the laws of motion. So is the sun-centered solar system and photosynthesis.
To quote from http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio104/sci_meth.htm
A theory is a generalization based on many observations and experiments; a well-tested, verified hypothesis that fits existing data and explains how processes or events are thought to occur. It is a basis for predicting future events or discoveries. Theories may be modified as new information is gained. This definition of a theory is in sharp contrast to colloquial usage, where people say something is “just a theory,” thereby intending to imply a great deal of uncertainty.
and
Hypothesis:
This is a tentative answer to the question: a testable explanation for what was observed. The scientist tries to explain what caused what was observed.
Just to clarify! Global warming is well on its way to becoming a theory as more and more data are brought forward to support it. Perhaps it’s not quite there yet, but it is getting close. Also, we have to remember that scientific papers which propose to answer a hypothesis have to undergo a very rigorous peer review process. Believe me, scientists are the most strict critics of their peers (and even their compatriots in their own labs–just come and sit in on one of our lab meetings sometime! :roll:) and will nitpick until the cows come home. For a paper to pass peer review in a good scientific journal, it has to have gotten through, usually, three reviewers. These reviewers are often competitors of the author and are motivated to reject if there is any doubt at all about the data.
Robin
Robin - and it often takes up to 2 years to get that paper published, during which time all your competitors are ALSO working on the same thing.
Missy
The asbestos scare is a perfect example of the danger of taking poor science and applying it liberally (or perhaps taking good science and applying it incorrectly). And yet it is clear that you believe that asbestos is particularly dangerous. Even so far as calling it criminal.
First, asbestos is a rock. While there is friable asbestos out there, it represents such a small amount that the billions of dollars spent on abatement has made it the biggest snipe hunt ever. Furthermore, when actually abating legitamately friable asbestos, the airborn particulate count becomes higher than if it had simply been left alone. The truth is that about 90-95% of asbestos works just fine as an in place material. There are dangers in the manufacture and constant exposure to dust during manufacture or maintenance, but there is in the use of all silicates (ie Rocks) once they become airborn.
What the legislation has done is create a wonderful high paying job classifaction (asbestos abatement) that really has little actual results - though it has made a number of people rich. And all because someone cried fire.
You can read more here: http://www.asbestos-institute.ca/presskit/press_5.html
And here: http://www.epa.gov/asbestos/
Erik
In the minds of the general public, Global warming - and most importantly its cause - is WELL past hypotheses stage. And that’s what concerns me.
Erik
Yes, Erik, I did read the article. I’m offended by your sarcastic question.
I wouldn’t necessarily write off those being cited in the article: One of those quoted, Neal Lane of Rice University, is a former director of the National Science Foundation (an independent federal agency created by Congress). He said “we don’t really have a policy right now to deal with what everybody agrees is a serious problem.” Among scientists, said Lane, “there is quite a consensus in place that the Earth is warming and that humans are responsible for a considerable part of that” through the burning of fossil fuels. And the science is clear, he said, that without action to control fossil fuel use, the warming will get worse and there will be climate events that “our species has not experienced before.”
Budgets: As the article states, budgets for R&D are being cut substantially. “National Science Foundation funds for graduate students and for kindergarten through high school education have been slashed. NASA has gotten a budget boost, but most of the new money will be going to the space shuttle, space station and Bush’s plan to explore the moon and Mars.” Of course nobody wants their budget slashed, but to see education being passed over for exploration of the moon and Mars? Hard to swallow.
Clear Skies: A study/report by the National Academy of Sciences shows that the Clear Skies legislation would actually allow plants to emit more pollution: Under the existing law’s (Clean Air Act) “new source review” requirement, power plants must install modern pollution controls whenever they make changes that otherwise would boost emissions significantly. The administration’s bill would eliminate this requirement and allow any plant to increase its emissions up to a permissively set cap – or even above the cap – provided the plant purchased credits from cleaner facilities. Critics note that communities near the plants that are the dirtiest and cheapest to run would be left without the current protection from massive increases in the pollution that triggers asthma attacks and even more serious illnesses.
I’ve got too much to do this afternoon to find the information I’ve got on the Bush administration’s denial or downplaying that humans are adding to global warming….tonight I’ll do some checking.
Susan
I’m sorry, Susan. I should not have been sarcastic in such a volatile topic.
Erik
Uh…yeah…BTDT!! 
In fact we just recently had a paper that took well over a year in all its various incarnations to get published! What a pain in the proverbial!
Robin
Clear skies from an article published on the Feb 14th ( http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/01/14/MNGEOAQ9311.DTL ):
The academy report, commissioned by Congress in 2003 after Democrats tried to stall the administration’s revision of New Source Review (NSR) regulations, says it is difficult to gauge the effects of that plan because data are scarce.
But the committee, which consists largely of academics, says in its 160- page report that it is “unlikely that Clear Skies would result in emission limits at individual sources that are tighter than those achieved when NSR is triggered at the same sources. … In general, NSR provides more stringent emission limits for new and modified major sources” than Clear Skies. The panel will issue a final report by the end of the year.
I don’t trust sources that use scarce data and call it an informed decision.
Erik
Robin wrote:
" In fact we just recently had a paper that took well over a year in all its various incarnations to get published!"
Hey - if it happens to be in J. of Ag and Food Science we could be in the same issue!!! 
We just had one published that took 2 years!
Missy
From the National Resources Defense Council’s “Rewriting the Rules – The Bush Administration’s First Term Environmental Record” (yes, the NRDC is an environmental group. I give them money and follow their activities closely. I’ve found them to be extremely accurate in trying to let the public know what Bush is up to—mostly by verification from other sources, newspapers, television news stories, etc.).
“The Bush Administration’s approach to global warming can be characterized by irresponsible inaction and studied ignorance in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus.” They call for more research, even as they have consistently turned a blind eye to an overwhelming accumulation of scientific data. “For the majority of Bush’s first term, the administration actively suppressed the growing body of research confirming that the global climate is heating up as a result of human actions. Now the scientific consensus is so strong that the administration can no longer silence the findings. Instead, it ignores them.”
Dr. James Hansen, in a presentation given at the Distinguished Public Lecture Series at the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa, said, “On the topic of global climate change, communication with the public has become seriously hampered during the past few years for employees of government agencies such as NASA, NOAA and EPA. I know that such interference with and misuse of the scientific process is occurring now to a degree unprecedented in my scientific lifetime. I speak from a position of having tried hard to work with and advise the current administration on matters relating to climate change. I find a willingness to listen only to those portions of scientific results that fit predetermined inflexible positions. This, I believe, is a recipe for environmental disasters.”
Susan
(BTW, some of you might find interesting a page on the NRDC website where they show by date, the environmental policies announced intentionally by the Bush administration on Friday afternoons [called “Black Fridays”] in order to escape notice: http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecord/fridays.asp )
I don’t trust sources I don’t agree with either, Erik.
Touche. However, I do trust sources that I don’t agree with as long as they substantiate their claims and present rational arguements. Dr. Hansen is certainly a learned man and even recently received a Heinz Award ( http://www.heinzawards.net/recipients.asp?action=detail&recipientID=9 and this interesting one on Global Warming: http://www.heinzawards.net/achievementSubDetail.asp?recipientID=9&AchievementID=44 ) but the fact that Bush has not acted upon his advice is not the same thing as Bush not listening to his advice.
The theory that industrial pollution continues to create an atmospheric “greenhouse effect” or warming has pitted scientist against scientist and politician against politician. In the eye of the storm that swirls around this issue is Dr. Hansen. He calmly pursues his research while scrupulously maintaining his scientific credibility and modifying his views as new data and techniques have become available, all the while acting as a messenger from the esoteric world of computer climate models to the public and policymakers alike.
Hmm. Scientist against scientist? (Edited to remove some sarcasm because I didn’t learn from my first mistake - thanks Bloomie for pointing that out)
Edited to add this particularly honest appraisal of the situation from the Heinz Foundation folks. Read here if you like http://www.heinzawards.net/achievementSubDetail.asp?recipientID=9&AchievementID=44:
Conservatives always say that researchers disagree about global warming. That’s true, but the disagreements concern the causes and the extent of potential climate change.
On the basic question of whether the artificial greenhouse effect constitutes a serious issue, there is no scientific controversy whatsoever. The world has been getting slightly warmer, by about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last century. The National Academy of Sciences recently concluded that it is “likely” that artificially released greenhouse gases have caused at least some of that warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), comprising most of the world’s top greenhouse researchers, uses the word “likely” as well. And, in the past six months, the science academies of China, France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom have issued statements of greenhouse concern.
Whether global warming will become dangerous is totally unknown. Increasingly complex scientific formulas have widened, not shrunk, the range of uncertainty in computer-generated climate models; over the last decade the IPCC has both raised and lowered its “best estimate” of how much the world may warm. Still, if you take the IPCC’s current best estimate – that the world will warm by 5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the 21st century, a number the National Academy has also endorsed – there’s reason to worry. A 5-degree increase would be extreme by natural standards. Cities would not disappear under seawater – that’s a silly Hollywood fixation – but serious warming could disrupt agricultural production and spread vector-borne equatorial diseases such as malaria and dengue fever over a wider geographic range. The mild global warming we have witnessed so far has harmed no one; a 5-degree warming could be calamitous.
I think that I’ll graciously (or not) pull out of this discussion. I’ve posted way too much for something that I really don’t care to argue about. I feel like I’ve been trying to yell, MODERATE, which is a strange thing for a moderate. I agree that we need to have limits on pollution. I believe that America needs to do its part in the world to control our emissions. I agree that the administration needs to be hearing from experts in the fields in which they create policy. I agree.
I don’t necessarily agree in the means nor do I agree that the administration is simply not listening. I’ll let everyone else have the floor to figure it all out.
Erik
One last note… “Every Friday is Friday the 13th”. That’s pretty remarkable and somewhat funny in a macabre sort of way. 
Erik
A very highly respected environmental activist, Laurie David, wrote an article called, “Snubbing Kyoto: Our Monumental Shame – As the world celebrates the global warming pact’s debut, Bush continues to pander to the energy industry.” I think this article addresses what you’ve been talking about on this thread very succinctly. Here’s her website where you can easily find the article.
Here’s an excerpt:
Few people bother to deny the problem anymore. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, for instance, noted the “emerging consensus” on climate change at the Davos conference last month.
But the U.S. energy industry continues to spend millions on lobbyists and propagandists in an effort to spread doubt and confusion on the subject. The industry, instead of putting money into research and development to come up with the renewable energy technologies desperately needed to secure both our national security and its own economic future, has mounted a relentless campaign to discredit the truth.
Of course, corporate America would not have the power to torpedo common-sense solutions to an imminent threat were it not for the complicity of our elected officials. Take Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. He has been so hypnotized by enormous campaign contributions from the energy industry that he actually had the chutzpah to say that “global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
Keep in mind that for every theory, even well-established ones, there is always a vocal minority of people who oppose it. This is especially true when politics is involved.
This, and the fact that individual scientists make mistakes (think cold fusion) is the reason that we put our trust in the consensus view of scientists.
You call for moderation; I would respecfully suggest that going with the scientific consensus is far more cautious and moderate than believing its doubters. The consensus is wrong far less often.
Again, I’m not saying that this person is 100% correct, but I do sense some correctness. I think that probably the truth is somewhere in the middle.
But then, this is precisely the goal of a vocal opposition—to get you to think that the truth is somewhere in between. Or to get you to think that there is a contraversy or lack of agreement or otherwise hold off on accepting an idea.
In the case of global warming (or previously, ozone depletion), critics don’t need to convince you to reject the idea. All they need is to convince everyone to indefinitely adopt a wait-and-see attitude.
Caj
I’m not talking about the relative risks of leaving asbestos in place and removing it; I’m talking about the life terminating conditions contracted by those who worked with it and which courts all over the world are recognising to have been the result of employer negligence. These conditions are well-documented.
http://www.vthc.org.au/campaigns/20040910_jameshardie.html
Are you going to argue that the fuss about tobacco and lung cancer is a furphy?
BTW, I could have chosen any one of dozens of links on asbestos. Apart from the James Hardie company itself, there isn’t a single person in Australia that I know of standing up publically and saying the company doesn’t have a moral obligation to pay compensation and even the company seems to have conceded this recently.
I don’t know whether anybody really wants to revive this discussion, but I just want to report that I seem to misinterpret Erik in my last post. (He thinks I did and I’m inclined to agree with him.) He clearly isn’t denying that asbestos posed a danger to those who worked with it which was not recognised by employers or governments at the time. Nor is he denying that compensation is appropriate in these cases.
Whilst I regret any misinterpretation, I think that mine was a rather natural one to make in the context of the overall discussion. It looked to me as though Erik were trying to play down the relative importance of misleading many thousands of workers who continued to work in unsafe environments as against spending money unnecessarily on asbestos removal. (I accept of course that this was not his intention.)
Perhaps the asbestos business presents two quite different aspects, one which supports my claims about government tardiness and one Erik’s about public jumpiness in the face of scientific discovery.
I mentioned earlier that risk assessment is something that we do not do very rationally, or if we do, the principles are not well-known. If there is a one in a billion chance that blackmailers have contaminated some particular tin of baby food with poison, we would withdraw all items of the kind in question from teh shelves, even though the probablility of our actually buying the contaminated tin is vanishingly small. On the other hand, we continue to eat seafood in full knowledge that we will likely poison ourselves sooner or later if we do so often enough. You might argue that risk assessment is not just a function of probablilities but also of the consequences of being wrong. I agree. But bungee jumping, speeding, drink driving and hang gliding would all be just as lethal as poisoned baby food and the probablility of dying would be considerably greater than in buying a single tin at random. Of course, people who undertake those activities might be thought to be consenting, which a baby wouldn’t be, but the victims of speeding and drunk driving are often innocent third parties who did not consent. Yet we tolerate countless deaths every year without making much fuss about them. On the other hand, we frisk people at airports even though your chances of being killed on the roads are much greater than your chances of being killed by a terrorist.
Wombat wrote:
“I don’t know whether anybody really wants to revive this discussion”
Sure - I’ll bite!!!
You bring up some really valid points on “risk management”. Besides working in the lab, I’m also safety coordinator for the lab. One of our policies before any new piece of equipment or chemical is brought on site is a “risk assessment”.
There’s a form of questions to fill out, but basically you look at the absolute worst case scenerio. Next, you see if there is an alternative piece of equipment or chemical if the risk is “high”. If there’s not, or you still need this, you next look at engineering capabilities to lesson the risk (in the case of a chemical, for instance, working with it in a fume hood). If you can’t totally engineer out the risks, then you look at PPE (i.e. nitrile gloves) that will lesson risks. You also have to look at how to dispose of the chemical, etc.
Then, from all that you write a Safe Practice / Safe Operating Proceedure for the equipment or chemical.
When goverments go off “half cocked” and ban things - it’s like us stopping at step #1. It’s dangerous, so we aren’t going to use it. But sometimes you have to use dangerous things. If there’s an alternative, sure - use that. If not, see if there’s a way to use it with the least amount of harm. If you can’t “engineer” it out, then try to find ways to lesson the risks to humans and the environment. And don’t forget to look at how you are going to dispose of the thing when it’s no longer needed.
Very simple principles, really. I don’t understand why it gets so difficult, but we ARE talking politicians here.
Missy