Effect Measure

White House “eviscerates” CDC testimony

Posted by revere on October 24, 2007
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CDC Director Julie Gerberding’s draft testimony to be presented before a Senate committee was “eviscerated” by the Office of Management and Budget according to an AP story by Josef Hebert (hat tip MF). The missing pieces related to the potential health impacts of climate change:

Her testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee had much less information on health risks than a much longer draft version Gerberding submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review in advance of her appearance.

“It was eviscerated,” said a CDC official, familiar with both versions, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the review process.

The official said that while it is customary for testimony to be changed in a White House review, these changes were particularly “heavy-handed,” with the document cut from its original 14 pages to four. It was six pages as presented to the Senate committee. (AP)

The original version had been routinely circulated to other health groups. It included estimates on how many people might be adversely affected by climate change, what diseases might be made worse and an indication of the scientific basis and reasoning for the statements. Gerberding was able to make some of the missing points in response to questions but the Senators on the Committee had not seen the earlier draft and weren’t able to bring out everything or have it presented in a coherent and connected manner. Nevertheless CDC spokesthing Tom Skinner brushed off the incident:

“What needed to be said as far we’re concerned was said,” said Skinner in a telephone interview from Atlanta. “She certainly communicated with the committee everything she felt was critical to help them appreciate and understand all the issues surrounding climate change and its potential impact on public health.”

There is nothing surprising about this, so it is hard to know why Gerberding was surprised. This is standard operating procedure for the Bush administration. What is surprising is why Dr. Gerberding keeps taking this. There comes a time when you have to say, “Enough. I am a pubolic health professional. I can’t do my job any more. I quit.”

Apparently that time has not yet come for Dr.Gerberding. One wonders if it will ever come.

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Comments

  1. #1 a
    October 24, 2007

    spelling error: pubolic

  2. #2 M. Randolph Kruger
    October 24, 2007

    As you say Revere the case was made for what “might” happen if climate change occurs to the levels that you or others think it “might”. Climate change is occuring and no there isnt enough science to say that it is indeed us. Info on methane alone is beginning to get my attention as a greenhouse gas to indicate that there arent enough cows, horses or humans to account for that rise. So we get it wrong, we aim our resources at the wrong item and poof we go off into the night anyway.

    Mother Earth will take care of herself. She thinks there are too many of us we will see the Grim Reaper do his thing. Just as it has throughout history. Gerberdings report couldnt be based in maybe, only what they could prove or what they thought. Even Clinton the Klingon didnt sign the Kyoto Accords…Wonder why? Because it couldnt be proven as to what is happening and even now, no one can GORE it into fact. If you believe in Milankovitch, then we are heading into a major cooldown and reducing the Co2 levels would be disastrous. It would lead to a sudden freeze shift.

    But you know, every damned news portal says global warming, global climate change, ice receding and ice increasing. I have seen the latest ozone over the S. Pole and the hole is closing. So how could any of this be because that was the thing that they said was causing global warming in the late 80′s. Then it was CFC’s and we got rid of most of those, then it was Co2. Whats next? How about 2 billion more people on the planet than there should be.

    Nature took 300K in Indonesia. It dunked New Orleans, it burned California, it flooded Europe last year. Its just clearing its throat to really do some killing. I wont say God because you dont believe, so we will keep it as nature. BF is my big thing I think that it will be taking the population down to what “might” be acceptable to Nature. Gerberdinator’s report means nothing. It will only count if what was left out happens according to the lefties.

  3. #3 os
    October 25, 2007

    MRK

    As I understand it, Gerberding’s job isn’t to ascertain whether global warming exists. Her job was to present the potential health impact of global warming. Whether or not global warming is actually occuring is a separate issue. The issue here is that the Bush administration interferred with her ability to provide a thorough, complete and coherent answer to the question of what impact global warming would have on public health.

  4. #4 Andrew Plemmons Pratt
    October 25, 2007

    At ScienceProgress.org, we prepared a web version of the testimony that highlights the cuts. The first sentence to go? “Scientific evidence supports the view that the earth’s climate is changing.”

  5. #5 M. Randolph Kruger
    October 25, 2007

    And the scientific evidence that they scuttled Andrew was that part that was unprovable….. As did the High Court of England with Inconvenient Truth. Listen, I dont discount we are on a eco ride here. Everything is caused by global warming, global this or that. Or that Bush causes hurricanes. Okay, we get it and that is that the media is bias hyped to the point now that they are piling on and people cant make rational decisions. The last thing I accept is the media bent on ANYTHING now. The dont report the news, they create it. But each and every time the eco-nuts have come down the pike with something else and it aint all wrong, we have knee jerked good and bad. Mostly detrimental to economies and at the expense of the US and not the world.

    The high priestess of Global Warming is Al (I took MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS from the Chinese government to get elected) Gore. He couldnt even carry our state in the election of 2000. He rides around in big jets with a carbon footprint the size of Texas and much more than you or me would ever likely in our lifetimes. They are totally compromised including Leonerdo Caprio and others. Global Warming? Didnt seem to slow him down on that private jet last week to California.

    Do as I tell you, not as I do kind of thing. Dems/Libs are good at that. They politicize everything and if they are wrong, we could really set some things into motion that would damage the country economically. Green? Good. My record here is tremendous on actually doing something such as poring thru records with the USARMY and proving that there was a former weapons plant just down the road.. Had more stuff on it than Aberdeen Maryland. 100 yards from a wellfield. Yeah and I took on the local Republican party as a result. Too damned bad folks, its only 100 yards to a school and they have mustard gas bombs buried in the ground. Nice.

    But I personally require PROOF of anything that Revere, the USgovernment, GWB and ESPECIALLY Al Gore produce. Global Climate Change…. Okay I’ll buy it. It is WARMER. But it the cause(s) and health problems are ambiguous as they come and frankly if its as bad as they say it is and we add another 1.5 billion (or try to) in the next 30 years…then dont worry about it. Those unnatural causes of pollution and other causes will merge into some natural cause of death or multiples of them for hundreds of millions of people. We keep saving the world, the world keeps whacking them in wars, natural disasters or recurrences of old diseases. H5N1 is a new kid on the block. As an eliminator it might just be one of many that are in our future. It will be indeed survival of the fittest. That might mean richest, prepared, or it only takes old fat people, young kids and stops the increase in populations. This is a MARVEL of a disease and it might be a result of just flat overpopulation. And Gerberding or the next talking head would say what? The idea behind GREEN is that it will preserve human lives. Okay, but if we preserve more human lives they will by nature destroy more non human habitat for all of the other species on this planet and swallow like a virus itself all of the available resources. Now that is something that is purely accepted science. Arent the effects of what we do creating pressure on the entire ecosystem? It will surely collapse even if we do something or even if we do nothing. We do something and it has a reverse effect. 1.5 billion polluters make it onto the face of this planet and we all suffer as a result. Do they have the right to produce those people, do we have the right to say no? Do WE have the right to go Green? Sure, but whats the backside to it? Gee Al, what does it take to REALLY just say that it might not just be Co2 emissions and that changing what we do could be actually worse? Why cant we say that MAYBE plankton is dying because of fresh water intrusion and not removing the Co2…. or the methane. Or that dimming reduces the ability of the plankton to grow. Now why cant they say they could be wrong rather than everything from Milankovitch to dimming sun, to plankton levels could be causing it. Face it, 2 or 3 degrees in EITHER direction means that we and other species die. We have had a relatively good run across the last 50,000 years. Might be time for a change. Oh shit, here comes NATURAL SELECTION! That was a term coined many years ago….. Before the EPA, and before Congress had committees who were more concerned with what might happen than what has.

    The Gerberdinator I think what Revere was trying to say should have stood up and said I am as mad as hell and I wont take it anymore. Yeah, okay but to stand up and say that THESE are the effects of Global Warming and Climate Change is a no brainer. Just as it was in 1100 A.C.E. when suddenly the climate took a header and it got cold. But guess what? Prior to that it was warm enough to farm in Greenland. So for Aunt Julie to stand up and say “this will happen” based upon what “might happen” is a crock. Neither is based in science and if you read both closely you will see that they cut what couldnt be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Why? Because its based upon what is available as information today. That today changes come tommorow.

  6. #6 Richard Simons
    October 25, 2007

    Mr. Kruger: I found your posts to be largely incoherent but I saw a number of things that are wrong or unsupported, for example:

    “Info on methane alone is beginning to get my attention as a greenhouse gas to indicate that there arent enough cows, horses or humans to account for that rise.” A large fraction is produced by rice paddies.

    “If you believe in Milankovitch, then we are heading into a major cooldown” in possibly 10,000 years, possibly 120,000 years.

    “I have seen the latest ozone over the S. Pole and the hole is closing. So how could any of this be because that was the thing that they said was causing global warming in the late 80′s.” I challenge you to find one climatologist who has claimed that the hole in the ozone layer was a cause of global warming.

    “Then it was CFC’s and we got rid of most of those, then it was Co2.” You realize it was the CFCs that were a major cause of the hole in the ozone layer?

    “And the scientific evidence that they scuttled Andrew was that part that was unprovable….. As did the High Court of England with Inconvenient Truth.” The judge rejected the request to restrict the showing of the film and agreed that “Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate”.

    And after that I decided your post became too garbled.

  7. #7 HatTrick
    October 26, 2007

    Richard:

    What isn’t garbled or specious in MRKs post(s) is that he if frothing at the mouth to go mano y mono with H5N1; his last battle. But, with his presumption that the Earth is being overwhelmed with humans, and that she will eventually “burn” us off like smothering underbrush, I wonder why he wants this fight?

    Consider this comment by MRK: “…Do they have the right to produce those people, do we have the right to say no?”

    Us vs Them, again. And again.

    One can only infer that humanity starts and stops at the U.S. border for MRK, if not his own bloodline.

    My heart breaks because MRK’s point of view isn’t a rarity.

  8. #8 M. Randolph Kruger
    October 26, 2007

    Hat-I would say it also stops at the Indonesian border and I know you are up on current events on that. I would do whatever it takes to make sure that family, friends and the country made it….all the way up to taking the hit myself. Doesnt seem like a real love in going on right now on the planet either. I think that everyone is sharpening their knives. Our biggest single needed resource beyond food and air is oil and the current price reflects that. They are getting ready to fight for it yet again.

    Richard-ramble? Yes I do a bit. But its in defense against the unending eco attack thats underway on the administration that I support mostly. The homalie is that WE are the big polluters, WE are the big consumers, WE are the problem and thats simply not true. China and others pollute ten times over what we do and we get GORE’d to death along with our jobs, economy because we have to comply with all of this shit and they dont. Even signing Kyoto would give them a pass for 40 years. In 40 years there would be another 1.5 billion and change and they would start their little carbon footprint trail and I dont think the Earth can stand that assault. We have gotten into a quantiy/quality of life endless loop here. One or the other is about to change and in hitting many of the points above it might appear to ramble. Hard to hit the left and not kill all of the bandwidth available. There were some 350 news stories yesterday about the environment, fires, global warming, climate change. Oh and Bush is now responsible for the California fires. Hey, cant report that things are going much better in Iraq. Grab that canned climate change gush off the shelf and play it again will ya?

    Only a few right wingers here to head off all of the lefties and in some cases-their rants. Some make damned fine points and I always say when you are right, you are right. We are warming, but I doubt that it will kill us off. It was much warmer than it is now in the past and we made it. We worry about Co2 and we should be, but we dont do shit about Co or Methane. Both of those will stunt your life expectancy. Co is at levels in Asia now that would be considered non-life sustaining at times and they dump it via the jet stream on us.

    I dont ascribe to the Gods Great Plan for all of us thing. I think he gave the world to us to do what we would with it and we have been screwing it up for some 50,000 years, so whats around the corner except population reduction? Its never been this high before so its reasonable to assume that the Earth is about to take care of that bug problem again.

    Rice paddies? How about termites? Milankovitch cycle-And the oscillation. Dont forget the oscillation. Heating leading to cooling via the Ozone depletion?

    http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/the-science-of-ozone-depletion.html

    The loss of the ozone is an annual chemical process that occurs. They couldnt and still havent PROVEN that reduction of the CFC’s by man made process is the culprit. It sure looked good on paper though and I also agree it needs to be studied. They reduced them as a precaution and now we have HUGE air conditioner compressors and coils that when they fail, leak even more stuff than when we had the R-12 in them. But shit that aint science either, its engineering. Cant possibly be right to just leave it alone and demand better anti-leak protection.

    My point Richard is that we are basing all of this shit on only a maximum of 300 years of really spotty worse shit information. The ice cap is melting in Greenland. 40% of that ice wasnt there until the beginning of the 1100′s. Its growing in Antartica. So what gives? What is the effect on the climate if the spin of the earth is affected by several hundred billion gallons of new water at the equator rather than the pole? What if all of these factors regarding the einvironment are really nothing more than human generated? If thats the case than that 1.5 billion more will be more than enough to tip it over the edge. My bet is that we dont have to worry about it and we will never see that 1.5 billion on the deck. Something will happen and soon to correct the problem. Hmmm…..It happened before. It will happen again.

    The Gerberdinator was reeled in because the points werent based in what would happen, its a could happen. Any Administration worth its salt doesnt let crap out that you dont have to. Soylent Green?

  9. #9 M. Randolph Kruger
    October 26, 2007

    http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/25/europe/environ.php

    An echo in the wind……Seems that someone else believes that I do that a collapse is about to happen.

  10. #10 tardigrade
    December 5, 2007

    Well, all I can say is that when I present Climate Change talks I find there is a particular type of person who MUST stand up and say ‘HE’ has the goods on Gore, and that XXX from XXX says that it’s all hog wash. This person is usually a white male about 56 and up maybe max. 68 years old, and has a lot of frothing to do. To talk to him about the atmospheric chemistry or the differences between the planets earth, mars, and venus and their respective atmospheres and temperatures is a waste of time. I find that if I tell him (though there may be two men of this persuasion) that if he takes a moment to calculate the amount of money he wastes on the oil economy as opposed to the green economy and if he switched, he would save lots and lots of money – this seems to calm him down and he listens… This I find find very interesting.

    I often wonder why these men are frothing so (mad at Gore) and why they must say all of this stuff and all at once (why it comes out garbled) on how horrible Gore and the science is (which they really do not grasp). You know, I think it really isn’t a matter of the science, though it could be something about the MAN Gore, and perhaps, what these men have against Gore as a man, and what they have absorbed from the media (who exude all this animosity toward Gore, too) is that he can grasp the science. And Gore cares about understanding the science. I guess that is very threatening.

    Watching Gore do his presentation in Nashville in January, was wonderful. I was already familiar with the science, but the passion that Gore exuded about the subject was compelling. For us, his ‘students’ he put his ALL into what he taught and with him came experts in Climatology to correct him and to answer questions he could not. Gore hunted for the correct way to get at the truth of the problem which is very large and complex. I have gone to Caltech recently to hear professors there and they, too say much that Gore did.

    Caltech is putting in one of the largest Solar panel arrays in Pasadena, where I live. This is big. They are a very conservative institution and chock full of scientists who make a living of skepticism.