Once more about Climate Change..

[Dill]

(07-01-2017, 09:52 AM)SunsetBengal Wrote: EPA forced her to change her testimony from what, to what? 

She hasn't been "forced" to do anything yet. 

She wants to say that the refusal to reappoint 9 members to the EPA Advisory Committee which she heads has crippled their ability to function.
Ryan Jackson, representing Trump's EPA appointee Pruit, does not want her to say that.

Swackhamer's concern is that the kind of environmental research needed for policy decisions cannot now be properly vetted.

[GMDino]

(07-01-2017, 09:52 AM)SunsetBengal Wrote: EPA forced her to change her testimony from what, to what? 

Quote:Democrats on the panel invited Swackhamer to testify at a May 23 hearing. She chairs the EPA's Board of Scientific Counselors, but stressed that she was speaking solely as a science and policy expert, not on behalf of the EPA.


In her testimony, she noted that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt did not renew half of the board's 18 executive committee members for second terms, and that an agency spokesman cited a need for more representation from industry. She said that decision "may lead to the perception that science is being politicized and marginalized within EPA." Any appointees "from the regulated community must be esteemed scientists with no conflict of interest," she added.

Jackson sent Swackhamer two emails the day before the hearing — after she had already submitted her embargoed testimony — with a page of official talking points meant to counter "stories in the newspapers" about the appointments. He said that decision "has not yet been made," underlining that phrase for emphasis.

Swackhamer did not immediately reply to a request for comment from The Associated Press on Wednesday. But she told the New York Times she felt "stunned" and "bullied" by Jackson's effort to get her to change her testimony. And she told Minnesota Public Radio on Wednesday that she's been speaking out because the appointments are a symptom of "the erosion of the value of science at EPA and throughout the rest of the federal government."
Justin Merriman/Getty Images
Board members typically are top academic experts tasked with helping to ensure that the agency's scientists follow
established best practices for the integrity of its science. Experts are limited to two terms, but Swackhamer has said members finishing their first terms typically got reappointed before.

http://www.businessinsider.com/minnesota-scientist-epa-congress-deborah-swackhamer-2017-6

[SunsetBengal]

(07-01-2017, 12:46 PM)Dill Wrote: She hasn't been "forced" to do anything yet. 

She wants to say that the refusal to reappoint 9 members to the EPA Advisory Committee which she heads has crippled their ability to function.
Ryan Jackson, representing Trump's EPA appointee Pruit, does not want her to say that.

Swackhamer's concern is that the kind of environmental research needed for policy decisions cannot now be properly vetted.

Bad choice of words, on my part.  Somehow, from the article in the post, to which I was responding, I got the feeling that we were talking in past tense.  Perhaps, I should have just read the article more slowly.

[Dill]

(07-01-2017, 03:26 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Bad choice of words, on my part.  Somehow, from the article in the post, to which I was responding, I got the feeling that we were talking in past tense.  Perhaps, I should have just read the article more slowly.

You are correct that the article is unclear. My info comes from Rachel Maddow's interview with Swackhamer yesterday, not from the posted article. We are talking in past tense. Her testimony was in May. She refused to kow tow to Jackson, and so she has not been forced to do anything, though the battle is clearly not over.

[Vlad]

(06-13-2017, 08:58 PM)Beaker Wrote: My take based upon logic and evidence provided by longer term info such as ice cores that give very accurate info going back hundreds of thousands of years, and fossilized stomata evidence that can go back millions of years is the following:

The earth has natural climate/temperature cycles.

Temperatures have been shown to have a very close correlation to CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

The normal cycling of CO2 levels has hardly ever exceeded 300 ppm in the Earth's atmosphere, and when they did, they just barely exceeded it. This was even during massive volcanic eruption times and other natural events that disperse large volumes of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

Since humans began burning fossil fuels, the levels of free CO2 in the atmosphere have been steadily increasing...the Earth can't recapture it at the rate we are emitting it.

CO2 levels in the atmosphere are now exceeding 400 ppm...a level which the Earth has never seen before as far as we can tell from all our methods of evidence.

With newer industrialized and high population nations coming online such as China and India, those levels will do nothing but rise due to the lack of regulations for emissions in those countries.

I don't believe humans are the sole cause of climate change, but the evidence shows that we are definitely contributing to a faster rate of change....and possibly a higher amount of temperature change than would occur naturally.

If we say man is the most intelligent creature on Earth, then that in effect means we should be stewards of the Earth for all other living things. The Earth is sending us clear cut signals that things are not healthy, yet we continue to debate it at the political level, instead of the common sense level.

Humans are contributing to climate change....there is no way we cannot be doing so.

No, not really. The 400ppm level is one that WE have never seen before. The earth certainly has seen in its history Co2 levels much higher. Ppm levels in the thousands.

This scant 120+ppm (.00012%) human caused increase of CO2 in the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution...from 280ppm to 400,  is as someone put it "amounts to nothing more than fart in a hurricane".

When you have IPCC leaders clearly state that climate change policy is by which the global redistribution of wealth can be achieved, then it should cause eyebrows to raise even from good intentioned folks like you.

[Vlad]

Meanwhile...Germany bows to Trump.

http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/06/29/germany-massively-weakened-draft-g20-climate-action-plan-appease-trump/

[JustWinBaby]

There is science..and then there is what you are told you should believe is science.

I only hope future generations can learn the difference.