“You’re Fired”: EPA head dismisses half of Science Advisory Board
Interior Dept. also freezes work of over 200 advisory boards and committees
Life at the current Environmental Protection Agency now resembles an episode of “The Apprentice”, the iconic reality show once hosted by President Donald Trump.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt once battled the agency he now leads and argued its scientists often failed to properly assess the fiscal impact relative to actual risk related to implementing new regulations on businesses. As a result of his leadership, half of the Science Advisory Board has been dismissed.
Deborah L. Swackhamer, chairwoman of the Board of Scientific Counselors, confirmed Monday that nine of the 18 outside experts on her panel will not serve a second three-year term. The affected board members’ terms expired April 30.
Experts are limited to serving two terms on the board, and Swackhamer said that in the past those completing their first term would typically have been reappointed. Four other board members just completed their second terms, meaning 13 of the 18 seats on the panel are vacant.
EPA spokesman J.P. Freire said the agency’s new leadership wants to consider a wider array of applicants, potentially including those who may work for chemical and fossil fuel companies.
Neo-necon recently noted that the progressives are now foaming at the mouth because of the passage of the initial phase of Obamacare appeal. I suspect this news will cause enough liberal heartburn that there is the potential for global warming to become a real cause of concern.
And while we can’t see what actually happened, I like to think it went something like this:
That isn’t the only good news from the world of sound science, either. The Interior Department has also frozen the work of more than 200 advisory boards, committees and subcommittees last week.
An agency spokeswoman said about a third of those advisory boards are science-based.
The memo, received by a member of one of the advisory panels, said the department was instituting the freeze to review “the charter and charge of each committee” and that the review required the groups’ meetings be postponed until September at the earliest.
Ryan Zinke heads the Interior Department. During his confirmation hearings, he stated that he thought climate change was real but the level of human contribution was questionable. However, what is not questionable is Zinke’s sensible economic priorities.
Zinke, a Republican former Navy SEAL, said the federal government should keep ownership of its vast land holdings but should heed Western residents’ anger about Washington’s sway over their lives. He defended the need for expanded oil, gas and coal production, saying that “we’re going to need an economy that grows,” but wouldn’t pledge to head off big increases in the royalties that miners must pay. And he talked about natural gas exports as a potential tool to weaken Vladimir Putin, without explicitly opposing Trump’s hopes for warm relations with Russia.
If progressives were fair-and-balanced, they would at least appreciate Zinke’s use of natural resources to get to his Washington DC Offices.
Given the amount of regulatory crap that Washington, D.C. has made Americans live with based on these “science advisory boards” populated with apparent climate alarmists and anti-business activists, Zinke’s arrival on a horse is as appropriate as it is timely.
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Comments
Best news I’ve heard all week.
It is a very very small first step. There is so much damage done and there’s so much work to do here that I would say this barely counts as showing up for work.
I worry about him being a squish as someone else called him. He did a horrible job and his interview with Wallis and showed him self not very serious you’re prepared for that interview.
Republican voters are tired a little symbolic pieces of redmeat I want to make sure he truly transform this agency over the next eight years.
If he has aspirations for higher office he had better remember who’s going to elect him the left is never going to let him and he better not spend any time trying to piece them or get marginal photo ops by pandering are watering down what is needed here
So many Republicans have talked a good game going to Washington I am very much a I will believe it when I see it.
I am expecting these appointees to work hard long hours for years trying to dismantle the problems illuminate the burrowers reverse regulations propose or work with Congress to create new legislation that rolls back or clips the power of unelected bureaucrats. He needs to and the payout was two rackets with environmental lawyers, he needs to push for budget cuts to his own department, he needs to be relentless in dismantling the parts of this department that are strangling liberty, the economy, ordinary Americans as he drives jobs overseas to China and other bad actors
EPA regulations design to make air conditioning for the poorest unaffordable our policies they kill lives not save lives as they claim. He needs to stop in permanently reverse as it tries to raise the price of electricity and power to ordinary and poor Americans which will make more likely things like the Chicago heat wave killing almost 4000 poor inner-city residents because they can’t afford electricity for air-conditioning. If they really cared they would make sure things like this would never happen again by making cheaper more electricity and more affordable for everyone through open and free markets free to exploit are abundant natural resources.
No regulation without representation
Regulation is legislation without representation
Finally some good news from the trenches. It’s going to take more than one man ‘s tenure to reverse the trend towards socialism.
Replacing Alarmists with Scientists I hope.
Morale must be lower than whale poop.
Good.
where is bill ney the fake science guy when u need to freeze something like these useless snowflake boards
Maybe busy checking out his 57 genders with Barry?
potentially including those who may work for chemical and fossil fuel companies.
Jeez, I don’t know … actually having someone who knows something about what they’re trying to regulate is a big step … it could revolutionize federal government.
This is nice, but it’s just nibbling around the edges. I want to see at least two entire federal agencies completely eliminated.
Oh gee, only 2 when there are so many deserving candidates?
My latest EPA pet peeve is aircraft paint. Twenty years ago you could buy top-quality polyurethane paint like Dupont Imron or PPG Durathane for a reasonable price. That stuff was basically bulletproof and would last for decades in a harsh environment. These days, you can’t buy those paints for ANY price – too many VOCs. The closest thing you can find costs $250 per quart and isn’t nearly as good.
Two points
1) The EPA is hugely stupid with the VOC’s and paint. The drop in VOC’s from 320ish to 250ish is only a 25% reduction. Yet, the life expectancy of the paint jobs drops in half. The reality is 70% increase in VOC’s instead of a reduction. Add to that, the extra solid waste from the increase in number of paint jobs.
2) The reason the EPA forced the reduction in VOC’s was to reduce ground level ozone, which several studies showed increased premature deaths due to the ground level ozone. However, there were obvious flaws in those studies that are very obvious to any layman.
I’m making a one time exception. It’s wrong to use “EPA” and “science” in the same document let alone in the same sentence.
“EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt once battled the agency he now leads and argued its scientists often failed to properly assess the fiscal impact relative to actual risk related to implementing new regulations on businesses.”
There’s a reason for that. To justify the enormous cost of the regulations the “Environmental Politics Agency” would simply fake the numbers to get to a benefits number that they could claim justified the cost.
http://dailysignal.com/2014/09/05/epa-fakes-regulatory-cost-benefit-calculations/
“…In Charting Federal Costs and Benefits, Chamber researchers analyzed the benefits calculations of the Environmental Protection Agency, which is responsible for the largest portion of the most costly regulations in recent years. What they found obliterates the president’s claims that sky-high regulatory costs are justified.
Specifically, the researchers reviewed the 45 rules for which the agency calculated benefits between 2000 and 2013. (The fact that the EPA failed to calculate benefits for any of the other 7,570 rules imposed by the agency in that period is another serious problem.) Although the regulations were crafted to address a variety of emissions, including carbon dioxide, lead, mercury and sulfur dioxide, a whopping 97 percent of the benefits actually were derived from the reduction of a single element—fine particulate matter—that was incidental to the pollutant targeted by the regulation…”
This next part highlights another game the EPA plays with their analysis.
“…This analytic fraud is made worse by the fact the current level of particulate matter already is 30 percent below what the EPA claims is needed to protect health (with a margin of safety), according to the Chamber…”
The EPA simply assumes that once a pollutant is below the level needed to protect health reducing it still further will have additional health benefits. This is simply not true. Once you get below a certain level there are no additional health benefits to reducing them still further. But as EPA demands industries and farms reduce particulate matter by adding ever more expensive control equipment the costs of chasing those last few percentage points of particulates shoots way up. Again, with no detectable health benefits.
Then there’s voodoo they use to put a dollar amount to the non-existent health benefits, so they can fabricate a number that’s greater than the very real cost number. A union pension fund manager, pretending that if he assumes a return of 20% per year then he can claim the fund is solvent, would be embarrassed by the EPA’s accounting tricks.
Best thing would be to not hire any replacements. Fire more.
Two HUNDRED agencies?
Why are there that many? If they are frozen, are these people still being paid for doing nothing? Presumably, they were ostensibly pushing pencils before they were frozen?
To committed progressives, everything is just a tool to be used in pushing the progressive agenda. Sadly, this includes science. I will never trust a “scientist” who is also a progressive, unless their work involves something with no political connotations whatsoever. Of course, for progressives, everything is political, so ….
No one can seriously think that the government – especially the EPA – has not been misusing “science” to push a decidedly left-wing agenda. Every “scientist” involved should not only be removed, but should have to wear a scarlet letter forever. Sigh, dream on.
If you want to destroy a “progressive” who thinks “science!!!” is the answer, just ask them what Science has to say about gender – is gender determined by your genetic structure, or is it just a choice depending on someone’s whims?
Progressives only support “science” if they can see a way to use it as a vehicle for them to gain power. If it looks like it may inhibit their drive to power, they hate it and seek to destroy it.
I notice Secretary Zinke has good taste in firearms. A Browning BPS with engraved receiver.
Just like mine. 🙂
Good start. Any reason the board has to have 18 members? Whittle that number down. And lets have some people that actually know the subject please.
I know many want more but no giant steps are going to be taken. Politicians simply don’t have the guts. So lets be happy with small steps because enough of them can get us where we want to go.
Let’s be realistic.
All the hot air being expelled and the gnashing of teeth by liberals is certainly leading to an increase in CO2 and hot air levels.
I do not know if the science advisory board was the place to start, or not.
I do know that the EPA, after participating in the reduction of major pollutants in this country, went looking for a new mission. In the process of looking for a new mission, it forgot its primary responsibility, and now we have lead in the water in a number of communities in the US. Moreover, it divested itself of its engineering capability, resulting in a major pollution release into one of our rivers.
Obviously, it is time to re-focus, and regroup.
Refocus and regroup? I know what would motivate the EPA to do that. Send the bastards responsible for the Animas river spill to prison. Through either gross negligence or maybe even criminal mischief the EPA spilled 3 million gallons of toxic waste into the Animas then Colorado rivers. If you or I spilled 1,000 gallons of toxic industrial waste into a river, especially one that’s part of a river system used for drinking water and irrigation, we would go to prison.
The EPA must be brought to heel. After the EPA caused the spill they declared the area around the Gold King Mine an illegal Superfund site. It’s illegal because, well, I’ll let the lawyers explain.
http://freerangereport.com/index.php/2017/05/04/epa-creates-illegal-superfund-site-to-hide-liability-in-gold-king-mine-spill/
“DENVER, CO. A western, nonprofit, public-interest legal foundation with decades of experience litigating regarding environmental statutes today filed a friend of the court brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on behalf of two national mining groups, a Colorado miner, and his company to join in challenging designation of a Superfund site. Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) for its clients Frank J. Anesi, Anesi Mining Venture, LLC, the National Mining Association (NMA), and the American Exploration & Mining Association (AEMA) advised the three-judge panel that the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), pursuant to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund statute), designated what it erroneously called the Bonita Peak Mining District (BPMD) and 46 specific mine sites and two study areas as a vast Superfund site in violation of federal law, its own regulations, and a ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States. Thus, the designation must be stricken.
“In an Orwellian twist, the EPA coined a new term, ‘commingled release,’ to justify its listing of sites that fail to meet the requirements of federal law and its own regulations and to circumvent the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States that barred the EPA from using an ‘aggregation policy,’” said William Perry Pendley of MSLF. “Moreover, because the EPA failed to ‘score’ 29 sites, it has no evidence that they are actually ‘commingled.’”
On August 5, 2015, the EPA triggered a massive release at the Gold King Mine in San Juan County, Colorado that caused three million gallons of heavily mineralized water to be discharged into Cement Creek, which enters the Animas River near the Town of Silverton, Colorado. Shortly after the EPA triggered the release, to obscure and limit its own liability, the EPA created the BPMD—around the Gold King Mine—and made the Superfund designation. Past EPA studies found the area did not merit inclusion on the National Priorities List (NPL).”
I say this is possibly a deliberate, criminal act because the locals had been saying for years that the EPA wanted to turn the area into a Superfund site despite the fact that federal law and their own regulations said they couldn’t do so. In fact, a retired mining geologist sent a letter to editors of the local Silverton newspaper warning he was worried that the EPA would trigger an environmental disaster to allow them to claim the area as a Superfund site. Just a week or so before the EPA triggered an environmental disaster.
In January of this year as one of their last acts under Obama the EPA and DoJ lawyers also said the EPA would not pay anyone for damages despite promising to do so, and despite Congress passing legislation that removed legal obstacles the the EPA claimed late last year would prevent them from doing so.
I’d say it’s time for AG Sessions and EPA director Pruitt to give this matter another look.
The purpose of the SAB is Scientific Review of; EPA’s research, outside research EPA cites/uses for EPA policy, EPA’s directed research, EPA regulations.. NONE of which the 18 past members performed. so 12 of 18 are gone is 6 a quorum so tick tock until those 6 are gone/replaced?
Have they fired the “Puddle Lovers” yet?
You know, the EPA employees who claim you can’t do anything to rain that falls on your own property because EPA employees might want to don too tight and ugly swimwear and wade in it themselves……
Actually it’s “You’re Not Hired” or “You’re Not Renewed” and the cause is for NOT doing Scientific Review of; EPA policy, directed research, regulations.