Bush Charged with Rape (of Science)

UPDATE: Calpundit, a much better writer than I am, has a much better post about this than I do, although he hasn't related it to the Yucca Mountain morass.

Before I began my blog, I tried writing down all the things the administration was doing that really, really pissed me off. Pissed me off in a bad-for-everyone-in-the-U.S.-or-even-the-world kind of way, not just a bad-for-Democrats kind of way. I really believe that many of the bad things B*** has done are non-partisan and apolitical in their badness. Which is to say, Republicans of a solid character (hello out there??) should be as angry as Democrats.

Eventually I gave up writing down scraps of information on sticky notes and decided to start this thing. My desk was covered with the little yellow things. I gathered them up and started going through them, categorizing, prioritizing. When I was done, I found that the thickest pile, and the thing I was most anxious and angry about, was B***'s treatment of science. Not just a scientist, but the entire field. Scientific process is something the adminstration sneers at. And this administration's attitude toward science is something the media has really dropped the ball on reporting, at least in any coherent way.

To illustrate my point, here's a partial list of things the administration has ruled on in contravention of broad scientific consensus:

• Global warming


• Stem cell research


• International AIDS and family planning


• Lead pollution levels in drinking water


• Mercury pollution levels in fish


• Abstinence education


• Endangered Species Act

Things have gotten so bad that the Union of Concerned Scientists yesterday issued a letter signed by 20 Nobel Laureates (60 scientists altogether), claiming, among other things:

...the administration has distorted and suppressed scientific findings at federal agencies that contradict administration policies; undermined the independence of science advisory panels by subjecting panel nominees to political litmus tests that have little or no bearing on their expertise; nominated underqualified individuals, or individuals with industry ties, to advisory panels; and disbanded some science advisory committees altogether.

So okay. It's 2004, an election year, and the press seems awakened to the possibilities of coherent criticism of the administrations. I am genuinely hopeful that this letter will spur some analysis in the mainstream press. Honestly.

But wait. There's more:

The nation's nuclear waste dump proposed for Nevada is poorly designed and could leak highly radioactive waste, a scientist who recently resigned from a federal panel of experts on Yucca Mountain told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Paul Craig, a physicist and engineering professor at the University of California-Davis, said he quit the panel last month so he could speak more freely about the waste dump's dangers.

So okay, the press does its bit and gets people skeptical about B***'s treatment of science. Fine. But, given its track record, do you think this administration will really back down from the Yucca Mountain dump simply because every scientist on the safety panel signed a letter saying it's unsafe? Given administration ties to the nuclear energy industry?

I'd love to think B*** would halt construction, but given its track record, I think it's far more likely that it'll convene another panel, made up of different scientists, some or all of whom will have ties to the nuclear energy industry.

And that thought, probably equal to any other anti-B*** thought I have, is my chief catalyst for trying to get this fucker out of office in the fall.