By Donna Westfall – January 25, 2017 – In addition to the hiring freeze at the federal level (except for military), Trump has placed a ban on Environmental Protection Agency employees sending out press releases, posting on social media, creating new blog posts or posting new content to their website.
Before you get your nickers twisted up, consider this: Myron Ebell, leader of the EPA transition for the Trump administration, confirmed the freeze, telling ProPublica that the actions were not unprecedented. “They’re trying to freeze things to make sure nothing happens they don’t want to have happen, so any regulations going forward, contracts, grants, hires, they want to make sure to look at them first,” said Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market, industry-backed group that has long fought the EPA. “This may be a little wider than some previous administrations, but it’s very similar to what others have done.”
Do you recall the brouhaha a few years back when former Crescent City, two-time Mayor, Kelly Schellong, worked for BiCoastal Media, (KCRE/KPOD radio station)? She and former Mayor Charles Slert, were caught in a scandal for denigrating some downtown merchants by suggested not doing business with them. The problem? Schellong was using her email account at work and was reamed out by management. Within months she no longer worked there. Apparently all has been forgiven because she’s back and now the Sales Manager.
So, is it worrisome for our new President to stop EPA employees from blabbing on social media? We’ll have to wait and see.
Let’s enumerate some of the problems we’re already familiar with at the EPA:
- For 60 years they expounded the virtues of adding fluoride to drinking water until 2011, they finally admitted that children were overexposed to the toxic chemical, it caused fluorosis – the spotting of teeth which is the first sign of fluoride poisoning – and officially reduced the amount put into the water.
- Smoking and second hand smoke. Remember the 1999 movie, The Insider with that famous phrase by Brown & Williamson tobacco company scientist turned whistleblower, Jeffrey Wigand (played by Russell Crowe), “We’re in the nicotine delivery business?” It was known in the 1960’s that smoking was additive and caused cancer. Then try reading through 237 pages of a report on Passive Smoke: The EPA’s Betrayal of Science and Policy.
- Pesticides. Remember the wonder pesticide DDT that was touted to be safe and effective until Rachel Carson enumerated the hazards in her book Silent Spring? President Kennedy convened a committee to review the evidence Carson presented. The committee’s review completely vindicating her findings. One of the new EPA’s first acts was to ban DDT, due to both concerns about harm to the environment and the potential for harm to human health. There was also evidence linking DDT with severe declines in bald eagle populations due to thinning eggshells. Since DDT was banned in the U.S., bald eagles have made a dramatic recovery.A group called The Center for Environmental Health, Beyond Pesticides and Physicians for Social Responsibility sued the EPA twice (2006 and 2014) to reveal and eliminate 300 inert ingredients from approved pesticides.
- Herbicide – Glyphosate – used in Monsanto’s Round-Up product, but it’s killing off the bee population and approved by the EPA. From the EPA website: “Glyphosate products can be safely used by following label directions. Glyphosate is no more than slightly toxic to birds and is practically nontoxic to fish, aquatic invertebrates, and honeybees.”
Finally, something interesting to write about in all the comments that you have made. The EPA shutdown is not quite how you have characterized it, but I’m sure by now no one is exactly surprised. The Trump administration comes into office with certain promises that an “honest” politician should at least try to keep. There have been an enormous amount of complaints about how the Obama EPA conducted its business, which included several high profile mistakes that did not protect the environment. A good administrator is not going to want to continue with an agency that clearly has an agenda and has been found to be incompetent in some ways. The “shutdown” is actually a review of the EPA, its policies, and it personnel in an attempt to avoid any further controversy. Smart practice. The “idea” that “right leaning folks seem to have an idea that removing any mention of climate control or global warming will have it cease to exist” is something only to be found in the fertile minds of many liberals, yours included. Actually the deplorable right would like to take climate control and global warming out of the realm of politics and “soft” science, and put it in the hands of scientists who have some concept of science being some thing other than the narrow realm of speculative science most often found in that produced by today’s climatologists. All of the items that you have described as being “signs of global warming” are first and foremost better defined as phenomena whose explanation can be more accurately described and are repeatable by sciences other than Climatology, and do not involve either global warming or climate change. You might just want to check the accuracy of your assertion that temperatures in the Antarctic are 32 degrees above normal. The real and unexplained problem with climate change and global warming is exactly how much human activity has to do with it. Thus far no one in the climate change or global warming crowd has been able to put any numbers on that issue, and won’t be able to until it reverts to being real science and they acknowledge that they do not know everything that affects weather or climate. Temperature studies by NASA on Mars are a case in point! No people to cause climate change or warming, yet NASA data shows that to be the case on Mars. When you engage studies in the physical sciences, particularly astrophysics, much of global warming (Which has by no means been very supportive of theory) and climate change have tough sledding as to point the finger at human activities. If you look at it from a purely Political stand point it is an ideal vehicle for progressive or any governments to profoundly effect its citizens with regulation for a “problem” that they have little hope of overcoming. It is being used as a control mechanism, something the US Constitution is meant to protect it citizens from….. Furthermore, all of Al Gore’s examples of Global warming in “An Inconvenient Truth” have been shown to be caused by other phenomena, not Global warming. His second stab at warming propaganda will fair no better. As far as your temperature assertion of 32 degree increase in Antarctica, I have on good authority by someone who has actually spent time there recently hunting meteorites that the amount of ice has increased over the last fifteen years, and ice shelves do in fact break off and float away. It is just that it is gravity, not warming that causes it. None of this reeks of the Inquisition from the “Right”. But, how does the “science is settled” stack up with open and free debate about the topic? I won’t go into all the other “ideas” being floated by the closed minds regarding climate change reserved for “deniers”, but if it is a problem that can be solve by forcing human compliance to certain “standards” of behavior, how is it any different from the way that the Inquisition treated those that did not accept the science of the day?
I just love it when you lapse into a time period that had great relevance in my own studies into the History of Science. “The Science Is Settled”! REALLY.
The pesticides that are killing bees in massive numbers {bees now listed as endangered species] are those that are nicotene based. All pesticides, to a greater or lesser degree, have an impact on livings things. The EPA shutdown by Trump has been clarified and altered as of the 26th since it was mainly aimed at erasing scientific study on climate control. Many right leaning folks seem to have an idea that removing any mention of climate control or global warming will have it cease to exist. I do not understand this as it reeks of the Inquisition which tortured and killed persons who had scientific knowledge that was other than contemporary beliefs. The EPA has made mistakes as science and knowledge is always expanding and what was is replaced by this expansion. How many people actually realize the signs of global warming? Large portions of Miami now flood every high tide. Anarctic temp 32 degrees above normal. Ice sheets the size of New Hampshire breaking loose. Events occuring despite Trump.
Great article Donna