Here's a picture: You work at the EPA. You just finished a four-year long, incredibly detailed analysis of Product X. The work is comprehensive, thorough, world-class - and no one is actually going to read it.
But it doesn't matter, the science is there, part of the public record. It's a source of pride.
Then, a new administration takes over the White House. The National Resources Defense Council puts out a press release about Product X, the New York Times dutifully rehashes it, and suddenly a brand new bureaucrat walks into the building and declares you are going to look into Product X again.
What's more annoying to you, as a scientist; the implication that you didn't know what you were doing last time or the promise of four more years of doing the exact same work you just finished?
Why does the White House or someone in Congress think science policy is created by NRDC press releases?
Are there, basically, two EPAs?
I went looking and I couldn't find anyone to go on the record saying any such thing. 'On the record' in hushed conspiratorial tones means 'they are afraid to speak publicly, right?
Well, no, I couldn't find anyone to say anything bad at all, including people who were retired after decades there and had no reason not to give up any scoop. Not only not for the record, not even deep background anecdotes.
To EPA scientists, presidents come and go - but science will still be there.
Lisa Jackson was certainly no friend to science - and Gina McCarthy scheduled a week's worth of plane trips to talk about Earth Day so she is delightfully batty. The bureaucrats are too clueless to be manipulating science.
Now, are there secret deals? I don't see how there can't be. When a group of canoeing activists sue the EPA over water levels in a creek and the EPA settles. demanding that a county pay to do exactly what the canoe group wants to them to (they declared water a pollutant, basically) that certainly looks suspicious. And when a Federal court has to tell the EPA to stop blaming fracking for everything that happens unless they at least do a study, that looks bad also.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/29/epa-chief-slams-secret-scienc...
It's our health and welfare at stake. Should the EPA be making decisions without disclosing what studies and data were used?
The onus of the hearing was emissions but before you reflexively side against Republicans and say global warming is important, look at it from the other side - if the EPA can do that about emissions decisions, are you okay if they do it about pesticides or anything else?
