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The New York Times and HuffPost and many others report on EPA abruptly blocking three agency scientists from giving talks on climate change - specifically in the context of a Rhode Island event, with the subject of discussing a report on current conditions in Narragansett Bay and future threats that include climate change.
The New York Times (the origin)
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency has canceled the speaking appearance of three agency scientists who were scheduled to discuss climate change at a conference on Monday in Rhode Island, according to the agency and several people involved.
John Konkus, an E.P.A. spokesman and a former Trump campaign operative in Florida, confirmed that agency scientists would not speak at the State of the Narragansett Bay and Watershed program in Providence. He provided no further explanation.
Scientists involved in the program said that much of the discussion at the event centers on climate change. Many said they were surprised by the E.P.A.'s last-minute cancellation, particularly since the agency helps to fund the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, which is hosting the conference. The scientists who have been barred from speaking contributed substantial material to a 400-page report to be issued on Monday.
...
Monday's conference is designed to draw attention to the health of Narragansett Bay, the largest estuary in New England and a key to the region's tourism and fishing industries. Rhode Island's entire congressional delegation, all Democrats, will attend a morning news conference. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, an outspoken critic of Mr. Pruitt, will be among the speakers.Scientists there will unveil the report on the state of the bay, which E.P.A. scientists helped research and write. Among the findings will be that climate change is affecting air and water temperatures, precipitation, sea level and fish in and around the estuary.
The HuffPost article provides some context:
The researchers were booked to appear Monday in Providence at the State of the Narragansett Bay and Watershed workshop, an event highlighting the health of New England's largest estuary, where temperatures have risen 3 degrees Fahrenheit and water has risen up to seven inches over the past century.
...
The move comes days after the EPA scrubbed dozens of links from its website to materials that helped local governments deal with the effects of climate change. Administrator Scott Pruitt has said he does not believe greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels cause climate change, and has scrapped or proposed eliminating numerous regulations to reduce emissions. Two weeks ago, he proposed repealing the Clean Power Plan, the federal government's primary policy for slashing utilities' output of planet-warming gases.
...
The sudden cancellations on Sunday inflame concerns that the agency is muzzling scientists to further the White House's political interests.
I have a hunch Rhode Island isn't included in Trump's list of American places to be "made great again".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by etherscythe on Friday October 27 2017, @06:08PM (3 children)
This kind of thinking is what has left us with a potentially toxic chemical C8 in our drinking water. "I don't see it, therefore it isn't a problem."
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html [nytimes.com]
See also: this year in hurricanes. Yes, the science is complicated. The world is big. But it's not so big that it's immune to wildly accelerating industrial processes and other human behavior. The ozone layer was the first example I'm aware of, and while we largely corrected that issue, we had the benefit of the offending chemicals being used in markets still in their infancy. With much greater entrenched commercial ecosystems in place now, it will be that much harder to change course. A little humility, at the very least, would be quite advisable as an ecological policy.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday October 28 2017, @11:50AM (2 children)
It's also lead to a known toxic chemical, dihydrogen monoxide which is now present in all of our drinking water.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Monday October 30 2017, @02:14PM (1 child)
Cute. I say "potentially toxic" because the effects are not fully proven, but it's a major world of difference between water on the one hand and the documented-but-suppressed severely increased rate of birth defects and miscarriages, previously docile and healthy cows charging and collapsing, coughing up blood on the other. And those are just the short-term effects. They no longer use this chemical in the manufacture of Teflon and Scotchgard, but it took a lot of work by concerned and/or materially harmed citizens to achieve this goal, and commercial hubris or downright greed are the reason.
And the worst part is, other citizens in a one-major-company town, even though they may themselves be at risk of the same kinds of problems, are hostile and aggressive to those who try to bring these issues to light simply because it threatens their employment gravy train.
"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @05:17PM
Water kills orders of magnitude more people than the scary, dangerous chemical du jour does.
Now let's consider your first post in this thread.
We still have two things to consider: 1) is there a serious problem? and 2) Are the proposed solutions better than doing nothing at all? Climate change has problems on both fronts. The harm is notoriously unproven (it's not enough to show that global warming happens). And the solutions are notoriously bad such as globally higher food prices (due to US corn ethanol subsidies and gasoline mandates) and higher electricity prices (in Europe, such as Germany's Energiewende program). More people have probably died from the fixes than from the initial climate change problems.
Now, let's consider your story of "C8" (or perfluorooctanoic acid, PFOA). The last time I heard this particular story, it struck me that the story was describing ethylene glycol poisoning [nih.gov] (commonly referred to as "antifreeze" in the US automotive industry). The symptoms fit as does the presence of green dye (a common coloring of commercially sold ethylene glycol) in the animals' organs (which incidentally indicates a lot of the chemical was consumed in order for the dye to be so visible in the farmer's autopsies). There apparently was some genuine problem with PFOA since Du Pont has paid out significant amounts [usatoday.com] in a large number (roughly 3500) related PFOA exposure lawsuits. But this particular story doesn't fit that profile since it was acute poisoning rather than the long term cancer risks and such of these other cases.
Of course, the problem is that if it is antifreeze poisoning, then anyone, including the farmer himself, could have done it (most likely unintentionally) since the chemical is rather easy to come by. Not good for the lawsuit.