Scientific studies used by the Obama administration to help justify tough environmental regulations are coming under intensifying scrutiny, with critics questioning their merit as the Trump EPA reverses or delays some of those rules.
In one case, agencies determined the research used to prop up a ban on a pesticide was questionable. On another front, the Environmental Protection Agency never complied with a congressional subpoena for the data used to justify most Obama administration air quality rules.
“EPA regulations are based on secret data developed in the 1990s,” Steve Milloy, who served on President Trump’s EPA transition team, told Fox News. “For the EPA, coming up with cherry-picked data is standard operating procedure.”
Milloy, author of “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA,” was previously a lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission and is among critics who accuse federal agencies of carefully selecting scientific research to fit a political agenda
In October, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt issued a directive to ensure that individuals serving on EPA advisory committees don’t get EPA grants and are free from potential conflicts of interest.
“Whatever science comes out of EPA, shouldn’t be political science,” Pruitt said in a statement. “From this day forward, EPA advisory committee members will be financially independent from the agency.”
Environmental groups blasted the decision.
“For Pruitt, anything that helps corporate polluters make money is good and science and facts are just roadblocks he wants to tear down,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club.
Pruitt has become one of the most controversial members of the Trump administration in its first year, cast by his detractors as battling the kinds of regulations his agency is supposed to be upholding. But his office suggests many of those rules were flawed from the start.
Here’s a look at some of the most controversial studies behind those regulations:
Pesticide Ban
Pruitt recently reversed the 2015 ban on the insecticide chlorpyrifos for agricultural use, amid questions over the process.
The Obama administration’s EPA had originally justified the ban based on a study by the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health, which said the insecticide was linked to childhood developmental delays. While it was already banned for home use since 2000, the decision put the U.S. at odds with over 100 countries that allow the chemical for agricultural purposes.
Government agencies later questioned the findings.
The EPA Scientific Advisory Panel’s meeting report said: “[T]he majority of the Panel considers the Agency’s use of the results from a single longitudinal study to make a decision with immense ramifications based on the use of cord blood measures of chlorpyrifos as a PoD for risk assessment as premature and possibly inappropriate.”
The USDA stated it had “grave concerns about the EPA process…and severe doubts about the validity of the scientific conclusions underpinning EPA’s latest chlorpyrifos risk assessment.”
The center also gets EPA funding, noted Angela Logomasini, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank.
“Agencies shouldn’t be able to cherry-pick. It’s a problem with administrative procedures across the board,” Logomasini told Fox News. “When money goes to politically active research groups, it’s government funding of the science.”
Harvard Study
The Obama administration’s EPA used the 1993 Harvard Six Cities Study to justify air quality regulations on particulate matter, or particles of pollution in the air. The regulations—linked to devastating the coal industry—also affect automobiles, power plants and factories.
Another problem with some of the Obama junk science studies was that the so-called solution was both economically and scientifically infeasible.
This was especially true when it came to demands for application of technologies that had not even been invented yet.
For the left, science, like news and truth, is something to manipulate to serve a political end.
A report showed that, during the Bush administration, the levels of every hazardous element in the air were reduced, and this was done without economy-killing regulations. However, merely cleaning the environment is not the left’s goal; as in every other aspect, the goal is CONTROL.
Make no mistake do not go to sleep, the globalist agenda marches on, it just was slowed from the speed of an amtrack going into a curve speed. Insane outrageous conspiracy theories of the 1990s are proven as true, they are done openly and because they are so blatent people dont think anything of them.
They banned DDT becuase of Junk Science and Carsons Lies the same for Silicone Breast Implants and those idiots from PETA or PCRM sued to have dumb warning labels on milk I mean this whole Global arming/Climate Change is based upon Junk Science and Politics
@Spurwing Plover: If the Milk warnings were for hormones in the milk that was a good thing the harm to the cow was very real. Small dairy farmers wouldnt use them, but industrial factory dairy farms were. 1 and 2% milk should have labels “heavily marketed pig slop”. https://www.naturalnews.com/043942_skim_milk_hog_slop_dairy_industry.html
https://www.livestrong.com/article/375661-the-effects-of-drinking-milk-that-contains-growth-hormones/
The ignorance against raw milk should be advertised.