Pollution Engineering - March 2009 - (Page 7)

EDITOR'SDESK Science and Law to Take Over EPA Lisa Jackson takes the reigns of the Environmental Protection Agency with a promise to let good science dictate decisions, not the other way around. But we’ve heard promises like that before, only to ﬁnd politics deciding which science is “good.” n January we welcomed the newest administrator at EPA, Lisa Jackson. In her testimony to Congress, and reiterated in her letter to her staff, Jackson said that science and law will dictate her agency’s direction. Many people take this statement to mean that science and law are terms that define a rigid set of rules and produce specific outcomes given certain data. Expectations are that by adhering to science and law, our environmental problems can be solved; 2+2 will always equal 4, not 5. The problem comes in the interpretation of the science. As it turns out, when the details of scientific data are examined, the answers are not always clear; particularly when perspective is allowed to cloud one’s vision. I can recall my teachers stressing to my classmates and me that building a theory is the easy part, but the proofs must be as complete as possible. I don’t think that is always done today. Absolutes are too often freely claimed and then the proofs are flashed in front of the audience and the speaker quickly moves on. Let’s use a famous graph used in the debate on global warming known as the Hockey Stick. This oft-referenced graph shows world temperatures over the last 1,000 years taking a sharp increase over the last 10 years. However, extend the shaft of the stick a few more millennia, and it looks more like a hockey player’s jagged (and occasionally missing) teeth than his equipment! There are many dissenting papers to read but they are not picked up by the media or government as part of the arguments. People from both sides of the argument claim that many of these papers are biased and industry uide controlled. at Air Liq Team SCOTT tem velenim doloThis Air Idunt au OTT atim illaor t Team SC min ’s larges rightfully ad ld ae bor eridesent e wor at, vel eus, Liqu is th at ut ol gase induces pr m ipit, qu otoc sum iurer of EPA sequat EM or ipit supplie etuer for C ulla s skeptise zzri ex faccumlizinlg in gadolorperen,tal mmod at co specia di and en mon onum vironm consorte cism (just te ec aliqlibrati ca ua u feugiat diam lick ations. C ianc fe eugiametuee applic ametue feu feugiat as you compl mixed m od eugitalog of perat, cooum2009 ca call for r wouldn’t d lty gases an diamconsecte ia .com and pure specsite trust a wwui.yourweb eqw pment. tobacco 88 or (800) 217-26 manuas.com www.scottg facturer’s I The Hockey Stick Millennial Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature reconstruction (blue) and instrumental data (red) from AD 1000 to 1999, adapted from Mann et al. (1999). Smoother version of NH series (black), linear trend from AD 1000 to 1850 (purple-dashed) and two standard error limits (grey shaded) are shown. The graph above is from Chapter 2 of the Climate Change 2001 report by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. ny Name Your Compa report that says cigarettes don’t cause lung cancer). But the problem comes when it is assumed that because of the report’s source (or worse, because of its conclusion) it can’t possibly have any merit. Adhering to scientific principals is a wonderful goal. But a conclusion reached based on incomplete information, and a pre-conceived notion is in all probability likely to be wrong. All sides must be heard and published. PE Ro Roy Bigham is E Editor of Pollution Engineering. He can be contacted at roy roy@pollutionengineering.com Visit www.pollutionengineering.com and electronically forward a copy of this article to a colleague or customer. MARCH2009 www.pollutionengineering.com 7 http://www.pollutionengineering.com http://www.pollutionengineering.com http://www.pollutionengineering.com

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Pollution Engineering - March 2009 Contents The Editor’s Desk EnviroNews PE Events Legal Lookout Green Connections Get Ready to Count Carbon Getting Rid of Foreign Oil Green Goes Underground Thermal Oxidizers Ocean-Front Remediation Pumps, Pipes and Valve Products Air Monitoring Equipment PE Products Classified Marketplace Advertisers Index State Rules

Pollution Engineering - March 2009

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