More from the Governmental-Scientific Complex Ike warned us about...

[4est_4est_Gump]

April 10, 2012
Is the EPA Just Sloppy, or Cooking the Books?
By Jeffrey Folks, The American Thinker

After issuing a hastily compiled report last year claiming a direct link between groundwater contamination and hydraulic fracturing at Pavillion, Wyoming, the EPA now admits that it may be wrong. Or, it may be, it was intentionally cooking the books. The only question now is whether the findings in the draft report were purposefully falsified so as to form the basis for national regulation of fracking, or whether they were just incredibly sloppy. Either way, the EPA needs to be held to account.

Admitting that there are grounds for doubt concerning its earlier report, EPA director Lisa Jackson has agreed to retest groundwater around Pavillion, Wyoming. The agency had planned to rush the report through the peer review stage, apparently as part of an effort to justify national regulation of hydraulic fracking. Now, that peer review has been stalled by assertions that the EPA's own test drilling was the source of the contamination.

Regardless of how the EPA's retesting pans out, the agency's admission of doubts concerning its initial report should ring alarm bells. Consider that the EPA is now admitting that its initial report, which formed the basis of a nationwide media indictment of hydraulic fracturing, was based on inconclusive data. The agency itself deployed and continues to deploy the findings as the basis for extending its regulatory grasp. Yet it appears that the suggestion of a definite cause-and-effect relationship between natural gas drilling and well-water pollution at Pavillion is based on nothing more substantial than wishful thinking.

This is a truly astounding admission. An agency that seeks to regulate an entire industry, if not the entire national economy, can't get it right even when analyzing a single natural gas well. And yet it rushes out to publicize the results of its initial testing -- an action that biases public opinion against drilling.

This is not the kind of behavior that one expects of a scientific agency in a democracy. It is closer to Stalin's Lysenkoism or the "science" behind Hitler's delusional thinking on eugenics. In both cases, political ends were allowed to pervert scientific findings, with horrific results. The EPA's crusade to regulate and restrict fossil fuel development in America will have disastrous results as well. In a nation without reliable fuel sources, how many persons will be reduced to poverty of Weimar-like proportions? And how many will starve to death, as they did under Lysenko's false science -- or freeze to death without affordable heat?

Significantly, it is oil and gas companies that are calling for more rigorous and thorough testing at Pavillion and other fracking sites, while it is the EPA that has resisted a thoroughly objective scientific review. Incredibly, EPA's draft report on Pavillion claiming that fracking was the "likely" source of contamination of nearby water wells also admitted that no definitive link exists between drilling and groundwater pollution. Nor, it seems, was there a match between chemical constituents used in fracking and groundwater pollution. State authorities have charged that the EPA is withholding important information that would potentially rule out contamination as a result of drilling.

Yet when the EPA issued its draft report in December 2011, it was the finding of a "likely" connection between fracking and groundwater pollution that garnered all the media attention, and it appears that EPA director Jackson did little if anything to correct this false impression. Indeed, by including in its report the charge of a "likely" connection, unproven in its findings, the EPA knowingly stoked a media frenzy in the case. Speculative charges, unproven allegations issued by an unelected agency head -- is this the way the nation's energy policy should be shaped?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Again in this case, the EPA's hasty action in issuing an emergency order generated ungrounded opposition to fracking in the media and among the public. Their subsequent "study" -- apparently their emergency order was based on something less -- received practically no media attention. If this was their intention, and if it is part of a pattern of conspiracy to generate misinformation, that would seem to be grounds for removal of Ms. Jackson as agency director and prosecution of all involved in the conspiracy.

There are many who believe that the EPA is out of control and that its unaccountable actions are subverting democracy. That is the point of Jonah Goldberg's astute discussion of radical environmentalism in his book Liberal Fascism. Goldberg is surely correct in his assertion that environmentalism "offers a number of eerie parallels to fascist practices."

The most dangerous of these practices is the perversion of science in the service of a "higher" political end. The EPA is a dangerously out-of-control federal agency that needs to be reined in, if not eliminated, before it does further damage to our economy and future security. A series of hasty and unreliable if not falsified findings coming out of the EPA have already damaged a vital sector of American industry, costing jobs and threatening overall economic growth. The EPA should be held to account, and those who are guilty of deliberate falsification or cover-up should be prosecuted.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/is_the_epa_just_sloppy_or_cooking_the_books.html

 

[Saint Peter]

Fracking is going to fuck up our water.

Just watch.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Fracking is going to fuck up our water.

Just watch.

Fracking occurs thousands of feet under the water table.

Get back to us when you have some facts.

Not just EPAisms...

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Its important to understand that government exists to nurture its own and to buy time from its enemies.

In the end Lenin needed American farmers to feed his starving socialist masses, and FDR needed tycoons to quartermaster and commissary his military. When Henry Wallace beat the New Deal drum to hang Detroit FDR got rid of Wallace.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Peregrinator]

Hellbaby's thread on it contains stacks of science. You can demonize the EPA all you want in your pursuit of cheap energy, but that don't change the facts.

 

[Peregrinator]

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=781407&highlight=fracking

 

[Ishmael]

Hellbaby's thread on it contains stacks of science. You can demonize the EPA all you want in your pursuit of cheap energy, but that don't change the facts.

That thread contains a whole pot load of conflicting science.

Ishmael

 

[Peregrinator]

That thread contains a whole pot load of conflicting science.

Ishmael

How are your llamas, Ish?

 

[unregistered]

 

[Peregrinator]

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.

~Ike



http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5407.htm

 

[RobDownSouth]

Ike actually warned us about the "Military-Industrial Complex" but Dances with Falsehoods needed an authority figure to promote his mythical "Governmental-Scientific Complex".

 

[Liar]

Ike actually warned us about the "Military-Industrial Complex" but Dances with Falsehoods needed an authority figure to promote his mythical "Governmental-Scientific Complex".

I think it might be an attempt at satire in a weird and not all that succesful meta way.

 

[Peregrinator]

Ike actually warned us about the "Military-Industrial Complex" but Dances with Falsehoods needed an authority figure to promote his mythical "Governmental-Scientific Complex".

I think it might be an attempt at satire in a weird and not all that succesful meta way.

I think he was all right with it. This is from the actual speech:

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

So Gump's exact words are not a direct quote, but he's accurate with concept.

 

[RobDownSouth]

I think he was all right with it. This is from the actual speech:

So Gump's exact words are not a direct quote, but he's accurate with concept.

Well alright, I'd never seen the entire speech.

Unlike the 4est_4est_Gump and Byron In Exiles of this board, I am man enough to admit when I am mistaken.

This is one of those rare moments when I am mistaken, so I apologize to 4est_4est_Gump.

 

[Peregrinator]

Well alright, I'd never seen the entire speech.

Unlike the 4est_4est_Gump and Byron In Exiles of this board, I am man enough to admit when I am mistaken.

This is one of those rare moments when I am mistaken, so I apologize to 4est_4est_Gump.

An honorable post. The speech is really worth reading. Interesting to see how it's been cherry-picked over the years.

 

[phrodeau]

Fracking occurs thousands of feet under the water table.

Get back to us when you have some facts.

Not just EPAisms...

"Under the water table" is where the water is, dumbass.

 

[Liar]

I think he was all right with it. This is from the actual speech:



So Gump's exact words are not a direct quote, but he's accurate with concept.

I'll be damned.

 

[off2bed]

I had a window guy come prepare a quote to install four new windows in our old detached garage, which is nothing but brick, concrete, and wood. He told me if he did everything by the book, he'd have to hand me a stack of EPA forms to sign pertaining to lead paint. In a bare structure that's never had a lick of paint in it. There's no common sense there. The fine for violating the regulation was something like $38,000 to his company.

And people wonder why construction has ground to a halt. Who wants to deal with that kind of shit?

 

[Wrong Element]

Admitting that there are grounds for doubt concerning its earlier report, EPA director Lisa Jackson has agreed to retest groundwater around Pavillion, Wyoming.

And then, in the next post:


If this was their intention, and if it is part of a pattern of conspiracy to generate misinformation, that would seem to be grounds for removal of Ms. Jackson as agency director and prosecution of all involved in the conspiracy.


Some "conspiracy."

Is AJ just sloppy, or cooking the books?