New Disclosure Law Threatens EPA-Government-Industrial Complex

by Lewis Loflin

"The science is settled" according to climate change advocates. Besides the fact climate change is a natural event including abrupt climate changes, let's see the proof man is behind it. Can't do that. In fact they fight tooth and nail to keep data and methodology a secret. This is particularly true with government agencies like the EPA.

One would think publicly funded research used as the basis of often costly and questionable intervention into every facet of our lives is public property and the public has the right to see the evidence. Until now, no we haven't.

The AP is reporting March 30, 2017 that the House has passed a law requiring disclosure to the public of publicly funded research. The bill was approved 228-194 clearly along party lines. Democrats went ballistic:

"...the bill would cripple EPA's ability to conduct scientific research based on confidential medical information and risks privacy violations by exposing sensitive patient data."

They can redact a person's name but still present the data and methodology even if related to medical issues. That is not the point - publicly funded research is public property and we have a right to it. If one doesn't want to disclose their work, no public grants and they are barred as expert witnesses.

When I tried to Google this issue I kept getting pages about Trump attacking "science" at the EPA. The EPA discloses little science, but too often mixes it with policy. www.thehill.com has the headline "House votes to restrict EPA's use of science" is the typical deception put out by the media. Full disclosure of methods and data, the heart of the scientific method, is restricting science???

This view has shown up in 19 of 20 searches and indicates to me biased search algorithms. To quote The Hill March 29, 2017:

"...to restrict the kind of studies and data the... EPA can use to justify new regulations...would prohibit the EPA from writing any regulation that uses science that is not publicly available."

So what is the problem?

"But Democrats, environmentalists, and health advocates say the HONEST Act... would irresponsibly leave the EPA unable to write important regulatory protections, since the agency might not have the ability to release some parts of scientific data underpinning them."

Understand how agencies like the EPA operate. They are given broad powers to make laws and enforce them, acting more like a 4th branch of government. Their decisions send people to prison for selling the wrong orchids, strip citizens of their property rights and ruin their livelihoods, and can come crashing into one's home with armed storm troopers or ruin anyone with lawsuits or unjust fines or impose billions in needless costs and cost thousands of jobs for no good reason other than political whims of environmental advocates.

For Democrats the regulatory state accomplishes what they can't get through the legislature.

If we have agencies that act as judge, jury, and executioner we have a right to see that this action is based on. This should go for any government agency. Why can't we run the EPA more like the FDA?

CNN commentator Van Jones proclaims these efforts at open science "may have signed a death warrant for our planet" in regards to curtailing abuse at the EPA though executive action, which is perfectly legal.

"If the science is settled" then why resist presenting the proof of the claim? Because they have no proof because they routinely violate the scientific method and they damn well know it. Quoting Prof. J. Scot Armstrong, "fewer than 1% of papers in scientific journals follow the scientific method." No kidding , that's what I've said for years.

Prof. Armstrong co-founded science journals such as Journal of Forecasting (1982) and the International Journal of Forecasting in 1985. He is proud to note he doesn't live off government grants which he says is a lot of the problem. Little "climate change" research adheres to the scientific method.

An example he gave was working on polar bear population projections, but the government barred releasing the data even to researchers. Refusal to disclose data or methods riddles the entire EPA-government industrial complex.

Prof. Armstrong's speech is available at YouTube https://youtu.be/P0i3HnA0TI4 go to the 26 minute mark.