Manufacturing Uncertainty
sb admin | January 12, 2007By David Michaels
âRisk assessment data can be like a captured spy: if you torture it long enough, it will tell you anything you want to know.â
- William Ruckelshaus, first EPA Administrator,
Risk assessment, explicit and implicit, is the motor that drives regulation. It can be a valuable tool for assisting regulatory agencies in selecting priorities and setting standards. It is also a means through which opponents of regulation can manufacture uncertainty and impede implementation of appropriate public health and environmental protection programs.
The failed White House proposal to…
sb admin | January 11, 2007By David Michaels
In todayâs Wall Street Journal (sub required), Jeffrey Ball reports that ExxonMobil has decided to stop funding several of the groups that have been in the forefront of attacking the scientific evidence on global warming.
The campaign to shame ExxonMobil appears to be working. Earlier this week, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a damning report describing how the oil giant funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science:
In an effort to deceive the public about the…
sb admin | December 1, 2006By David Michaels
The Bush Administration is manufacturing uncertainty about global warming, even as its allies in the carbon producing industries are abandoning it.
Last week, the Washington Postâs Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin reported that âtop executives at many of the nation's largest energy companies have accepted the scientific consensus about climate change and see federal regulation to cut greenhouse gas emissions as inevitable.â John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co, said
We have to deal with greenhouse gases. From Shell's point of view, the debate is over. When 90-plus…