Rules Change at EPA: Make Underlying Data Public - Granite Grok

Rules Change at EPA: Make Underlying Data Public

Scott PruittBeleive it or not, for the better part of twenty-plus years the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been issuing regulations with the force of law without having to present any data publicly. Imposing rules, limiting individuals and job creators, driving up the cost of everything, without having to prove the thesis upon which these restrictions are based. The only Environment they’ve been protecting is their own. That’s the one they created that gives them unlimited power.

But not anymore.

Junk science is no longer welcome at the Environmental Protection Agency. Administrator Scott Pruitt has declared war on what he calls “secret science” – the process whereby EPA regulators have been able to craft rules using non-publicly-available science data.

James Delingpole, writing at Breitbart quotes Pruitt (c/o the Daily Caller),

“We need to make sure their data and methodology are published as part of the record. Otherwise, it’s not transparent. It’s not objectively measured, and that’s important.”

This all started when after the first EPA opened its doors and banned DDT in the U.S. despite no real evidence it was harmful to people or animals. Widespread abuse, however, isn’t reported until the 1990’s when the “party of science,” led by armchair gynecologist Bill Clinton, moonlighting as President, allowed the EPA to create a pollution control standard that to this day has no basis in fact.

PM2.5 was not known to cause death, but by 1994 EPA-supported scientists had developed two lines of research purporting to show that it did. When the studies were run past the EPA’s Clean Air Science Advisory Committee, it balked. It believed the studies relied on dubious statistical analysis and asked for the underlying data. The EPA ignored the request.

Delingpole adds that these days the New York Times is the biggest defender of science with secret data,

The New York Times has billed it as “an attack on science” – as if, somehow, scientific experiments conducted in secret for political ends are somehow more representative of “science” than experiments which are both open and independently reproducible.

The New York Times isn’t exactly known for its facts based reporting when ideology is on the line. It isn’t by any stretch of the imagination functioning as a defender of the rights of the people from the overreach of government, Quite the contrary. It is a predictable mouthpiece for an opaque ruling class oligarchy of which scientism is a crucial part.

And thanks to that internet thingy they can’t just control the message like they used to. They have to compete, not just for attention, but for facts.

If they are not happy, the science must be crap.

 

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