Waxman Angrily Assails G.O.P. ‘Science Deniers’

[spanone]

He opened his remarks saying he intended to speak “as bluntly as possible,” and he did not disappoint. He recalled earlier battles on environmental policy with Ronald Reagan, Dan Quayle, Tom DeLay and Dick Cheney. They did all they could to roll back the nation’s environmental and health laws on behalf of their corporate backers, Mr. Waxman said.

“But I have never been in a Congress where there was such an overwhelming disconnect between science and policy,” he said. “The Republicans in Congress have become the party of science deniers, and that is profoundly dangerous.”

Mr. Waxman has served in Congress since 1975.

He said that Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan, the new chair of Energy and Commerce, had joined Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, in sponsoring a bill to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that heat-trapping gases endanger public health and the environment. Mr. Inhofe has repeatedly referred to climate change as a hoax perpetrated by an incestuous coterie of climate scientists unwilling to consider contrary evidence.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/waxman-angrily-assails-g-o-p-science-deniers/?hp

[drm604]

1. Good for Waxman.

I wish I could believe that it will do some good.

[spanone]

2. i'm just happy to know someone is calling them out somewhere

[gratuitous]

3. When you get your gavel back, Mr. Waxman

I hope you wield it with a certain urgency next time. I had very high hopes when the Democrats took control of the House in 2006, and watched in mounting disappointment as opportunity after opportunity was frittered away by House committees. There's a lot of work to do in the country, and the Republicans can't be counted on to do any of it.

[Viking12]

5. Waxman did move some hefty legislation through the House.

Blame the Senators for lack of action on Climate.

[HereSince1628]

4. Mooney--Republican War on Science is now decade_S_ old

How hard is this to see?

The R's realized back in the late 80's that a shift from the rules of science to the rules of law favored their extremism. OF COURSE they attack science, they know that science is VERY UNLIKELY to declare anything proven and perfectly understood.

So they revel in ability to abuse science by taking it into the courts--where entirely different standards of proof prevail.

[devils chaplain]

6. Bravo, Congressman!

Alas, the one-two punch of nutso conservative conspiracy theorists and pollution business lobbyists seems destined to to overcome sanity until our environment reaches a sad and desperate fate.