OOPS, WRONG STORY

Politics beats science in Senate (Derrick Z. Jackson, 8/1/2003, Boston Globe)

In 2001, George W. Bush, despite a decade more of alarming studies in scientific journals, pulled out of the Kyoto global warming treaty and reversed his pledge to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions. He said he would wait until ''we can make a decision based upon sound science.'' Once he got the sound science, he said hear no science, see no science, delete all science. [...]

The Senate vote to delay action on cars came on the same day that the American Geophysical Union's Journal of Geophysical Research reported the first evidence that global cooperation on the atmosphere does matter. Researchers found a slowing of the destruction of the ozone layer that protects us from ultraviolet rays. They said the slowing coincides with the reductions in chlorofluorocarbons from spray cans, refrigerators and air conditioning that started in 1989 as a result of an international treaty.

''This is proof that the treaty is working,'' said lead researcher Michael Newchurch of the University of Alabama-Huntsville.

On gas guzzling cars, Bush and senators still wait for proof. They sit in a huddle at the seance, waiting for the next instruction from Exxon-Mobil and Ford. The message will not contain sound science. It will be another hoax.

Gee, from the headline we just assumed he was going to castigate the dimwits who killed Admiral Poindexter's terror market just because they're scientific illiterates trying to score political points. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 1, 2003 10:43 AM