"Architect of the REACH Regulation" Calls for UN Panel on Chemicals

Margot Wallström is European Commission vice-president and the force behind the development and passage of the European Union's Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH) regulation.

She is also now a conference room.

Okay, technically she isn't herself a conference room. But one of the two conference rooms in the new European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) conference center inaugurated April 3rd is named after her (the second is named after Guido Sacconi, the European Parliament's rapporteur for REACH). The new conference center, located at ECHA headquarters in Helsinki, Finland, is one of the most modern facilities available, including computer panels and microphones for each of the 200 seats.

In her invited remarks at the inauguration Ms. Wallström called for a new high level UN panel that would "tackle the risks from chemicals in the same way that the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is doing for climate change." The new UN panel would consist of a team of independent researchers. While she didn't provide further details at the ECHA event, you can read more about it here (assuming you can read Swedish).

Mr. Sacconi, while not present at the ECHA unveiling, recently made the news as he, in conjunction with Europe's largest trade union, published a list of 306 chemicals that they consider to be of very high concern.

Ms. Wallström isn't the only one calling for more chemical control. Dr Thomas Jakl, Chairman of ECHA’s Management Board, in response to a question from the students about the role of consumers, implored them to "be active, seek out information on chemicals...ask manufacturers what is in the products that you buy. Man made chemicals are in the blood of every single one of us – they should be a matter of concern for us all.”

Cleaning Products Coming Clean - What Really Is In Windex?

Sure, we all know what is in Windex. Right? Isopropanol, 2-Butoxyethanol, Ethylene glycol n-hexyl ether, Water, and Ammonia. Well, now you can go to a new web site set up by S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. called www.WhatsInsideSCJohnson.com to describe most of the ingredients for its Windex cleaner, as well as for its Glade, and Shout brands.

The company is part of a recent trend. Other manufacturers of household cleaning products have begun disclosing the chemicals in some of their products. For example, Clorox Co. lists ingredients for its Formula 409 and other products at TheCloroxCompany.com. Seventh Generation Inc., which has long disclosed most of the ingredients for its eco-friendly cleaning products, last year started explaining chemical names in terms that consumers can better understand on its labels. And Procter & Gamble Co. plans to list its ingredients online and describe them in consumer friendly terms.

S.C. Johnson announced in March that they would disclose the ingredients in all of its home cleaning and air cleaning products. If you go to the S.C. Johnson site, for example, you can see the breakdown of its Windex Outdoor Multisurface Cleaner in terms of what each chemical does. Mostly it is Water, of course, but also listed are: 2-(8-Methylnonoxy) Ethanol (Cleaning Agent), Sodium Xylene Sulfonate (Wetting Agent), Sodium Citrate (Stabilizer), and Sodium Carbonate (pH Balancer). The plan to disclose ingredients includes products with fragrances, which generally have been closely guarded trade secrets. Other companies are less sure about doing this, because it is confidential business information; they would prefer a general category called "fragrances, dyes and preservatives." But S.C. Johnson says they prefer the "palate approach" that would give consumers all the information they need to make choices.

The move is not purely altruistic. Consumers have been asking for more information on ingredients in terms they can understand. So in a sense, companies are responding to market pressures. But they are also responding to pressure from advocacy groups who are pressing for greater disclosure. Environmental Working Group, for example, has been visibly campaigning against the use of phthalates in products, and this disclosure will make their use more obvious (and thus likely increase demand for their removal). While both FDA and European regulators have approved the use of phthalates and the industry says they are safe, personal care products are being forced by public insecurity to reformulate their products. Other groups are also pressuring industry to list all their ingredients. A lawsuit filed in February by EarthJustice on behalf of several environmental groups seeks to force Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Reckitt-Benckiser (makers of Woolite), and Church and Dwight (makers of Arm and Hammer products) to list all of their ingredients.

All of this ties in with other programs that seek greater disclosure of ingredients and their health and safety, such as REACH in the EU and TSCA reform in the US and worldwide Ecolabelling efforts. California's development of a new "Green Initiative" will also exert pressure to both disclose their ingredients and show that they are safe. Those companies that lead the way will likely gain market share as consumers more and more focus on products they feel are more sustainable.

These efforts are receiving a boost from industry trade groups that recently set up joint guidelines to encourage use of a standardized format for presenting the technical information. "Consumers want to know more to ensure the safety of their family," says a Procter & Gamble spokesman. "The industry is changing along with that."

Chemical Control Reform - Kids Safe Out...ChAMP In?

As discussed here previously, the US is taking a hard look at its 30+ year old chemical control law, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Many argue that the law is outdated, both because it doesn't require health and safety data for new chemical notifications and because the bar for regulating existing chemicals seems too high a hurdle. Around 63,000 existing chemicals were grandfathered onto the TSCA Inventory with no health and safety review, and only a handful have seen such reviews since.

Options abound. Should the US pursue a system more like the new chemical control law in Europe, called REACH, which requires that manufacturers and importers of all chemicals - existing and new - provide a dossier summarizing health and safety for all intended uses? Or something more like the Canadian prioritization review and management program in which the government does the hard work of the initial screen for all existing chemicals? Or something like the Kid Safe Chemical Act that has twice been introduced by the US Congress before?

This week at the annual GlobalChem chemical industry conference being held in Baltimore, MD, Jim Jones, EPA's acting toxics and pesticides chief, told attendees at the GlobalChem chemical industry conference in Baltimore, that at the office's first meeting with new EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, she told staff that “‘ChAMP is fine, but I want to see more, more quickly.’”

ChAMP is the current semi-authorized by TSCA mechanism that EPA has been using to maximize the value of the reams of data received under the voluntary HPV Challenge program between 1998 and 2008. But ChAMP goes further, with proposed enhancements that would "reset" the TSCA Inventory, look at moderate volume chemicals, and inorganic high production volume chemicals that were excluded from the original HPA Challenge.

Jones' comments signal that EPA may be leaning toward TSCA Reform that mirrors more the ChAMP program than the Kid Safe Act. Environmental and health advocacy groups have favored the Kid Safe Act because it puts the onus on producing data on the manufacturers of chemicals, similar to REACH in the EU. Industry favors something more like ChAMP, which initially would require more Agency effort during the screening process, but may provide for a quicker review and prioritization. Once chemicals are prioritized for more in-depth review, industry would provide specific data focused on addressing any real or perceived concerns.

Jackson has hinted on more than one occasion since taking office that she favors the current chemical management system as a basis for reforming the program. The ChAMP program was initiated following former President Bush's commitment to complete the characterizations of Inventory chemicals by 2012 as part of the 2007 Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement with Mexican and Canadian officials.

Officially though, the administration has not yet taken a position on TSCA reform, but Jones suggests that "the administrator is “very interested” in the issue and has discussed the issue “with her small political team several times.” Meanwhile, EPA will continue to use its existing TSCA authorities to regulate substances that are of concern. While Congress is mulling the future of TSCA, EPA has been more assertive in using such TSCA authorized tools as test rules and enforcement actions. It also has been very busy reviewing the data received from the HPV Challenge and issuing hazard and risk prioritizations.

Ten Replies...Advocacy vs Science (From Helicity)

I came across a very interesting blog called Helicity that was replying to the replies of a climate change skeptic (to his earlier post). I thought many of his responses were both patient and insightful, and it's a topic I have covered myself. For those (like me) who aren't familiar with it, helicity is a meteorological term that, "in the most general sense, illustrates to what extent a fluid flows in a corkscrew manner. It’s used in forecasting the likelihood of tornadic development through the Storm Relative Helicity scale (SRH)." The blog's author, "Daniel ‘counters’ Rothenberg, a student of Atmospheric Science at Cornell University," uses helicity as a metaphor for the wild spinning of academic and everyday life.

It's a long post, and I highly recommend you read it. I hope Daniel won't mind that I've included a couple of excerpts here that I found interesting.

Regarding consensus:

"What does “consensus” mean? It means that the people that actually do climate science generally reach the same conclusions and interpretations of the data they work with. In climate science, there is a strong consensus that AGW is the best interpretation of the pertinent data. What this response fails to hit almost entirely is that it’s not the consenus that matters; it’s how that consensus came to be. In the case of climate science, AGW continues to be supported by new lines of evidence. It allows us to answer questions, but also to ask more questions. The important thing is that ain’t nobody done gone and knocked AGW’s knee-caps out! There is a consensus precisely because not only is AGW the most robust explanation of the data out there, but no one has come and falsified it yet."

Regarding peer-review (or lack of it):

"You know, when a skeptics scientific thesis can thoroughly be debunked and refuted in a short, few-paragraph blog post, is it any wonder that it can’t pass the muster of peer-review? Peer-review is far from a perfect, flawless process, and it certanly can insulate the scientific establishment from major changes - even changes which prove to be necessary. But the issue isn’t politics in the peer-review process; it’s flawed science wasting peer-reviewers time."

Regarding refuting data:

"If someone has a serious issue with the latest Mann paper (or any paper in the climate science literature), then it’s about time that they draft a formal refutation and publish it. I can guarantee that if the refutation is legitimate, it won’t have any problem making it into a respected journal. If skeptics are really sitting on AGW-shattering calculations and have better theories formulated, then they need to start publishing them. The problem is that they don’t."

As I said, these are only excerpts from the Helicity post. I recommend reading it in its entirety.

[And for those who are easily confused...this is a blog, so it isn't science, merely an opinion about science.]

European Trade Union Lists 306 "Substances of Very High Concern" - Will this Blacklist Safe Chemicals?

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), based in Brussels, published a "Trade Union Priority List for Reach Authorisation," featuring a list of 306 chemicals that ETUC says “are of very high concern.” ETUC is calling on European Union (EU) member states to include the list of 306 chemicals on the candidate list of substances for authorization under the EU’s Registration, Evaluation, and Authorisation of Chemicals (REACH) program.

As I have noted previously, REACH is the new chemical control law in Europe and it requires all manufacturers and importers of chemicals to "register" them within a specific time frame if they want to continue using chemicals that have already been on the market. New chemicals must be registered before going on the market, with registration requiring a substantial dossier compiling all of the health and safety data, as well as exposure scenarios for every intended use of the chemical.

In addition to the registration (the "R" in REACH), there is a requirement for certain "substances of very high concern" (SVHC) to receive authorization for continued use (the "A" in REACH). Authorization requires the manufacture to submit an application that includes all of the usual health and safety data in a dossier, and also a plan for its substitution by substances of lesser concern. Authorization is for a limited time and for specific uses only, and only to allow development of alternatives.

Last fall the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) issued the first of what will be regular lists of "candidate" chemicals, i.e., those substances for which Authorization will be necessary of the manufacturers or importers want to keep the sustance on the market for a while longer (otherwise, they will simply be banned). The first candidate list contained 16 chemicals.

While only ECHA is responsible for issuing the candidate list, other organizations have jumped on the "list" bandwagon in an effort to suggest chemicals they think ECHA should nominate for Authorization. ETUC is particularly concerned about 191 chemicals identified as causing occupational diseases (e.g., acrylamide, bisphenol A, and formaldehyde). Last year a group of European environmental organizations under the collaboration name ChemSoc issued a SIN List (Substitute It Now) of substances they felt were of high concern. In addition, individual Member States of the European Union can suggest chemicals of particular interest to them.

As noted, only ECHA can issue the candidate lists, but with ETUC, ChemSoc and surely others issuing their own lists there is a definite potential for blacklisting. Even the candidate list itself doesn't say the chemicals listed need to be banned or severely restricted, only that they are in need of a much closer look. Some of the candidate list chemicals will eventually be removed as new information is made available by the manufacturers. But having a list of chemicals that someone arbitrarily says are of "very high concern" can be very damaging to busy as downstream users are hesitant to use chemicals that are being targeted. Compare the several hundreds of chemicals on ETOC's list (306) and the SIN list (200) versus only 16 on the first ECHA candidate list and you can see the potential for blacklisting even before there is any formal evaluation of the data.

ETUC says its goal is to contribute to the practical implementation of the authorization phase of REACH. ETUC says it endorses an approach where risks of certain chemicals are controlled and the most hazardous chemicals are replaced with safer alternatives. While all of the chemicals listed by ETUC supposedly meet the REACH criteria for classification as ‘substances of very high concern,’ (i.e., persistent, bioaccumulative, toxic or carcinogenic, mutagenic, or reproductive toxicants), the ETUC list goes further as it "ranks chemicals by reference to their intrinsic toxicological properties and identifies those that cause occupational diseases which are recognised at EU level.”

We'll see how these independent lists affect the market, which could very well substitute away from chemicals that can be safely used and toward chemicals that may actually have a greater impact on human health and the environment.

New NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco Says Science is Her Top Priority

Dr. Jane Lubchenco took over the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on March 22, 2009. A day later she did a joint interview with writers from two of the most prestigious science news journals - Science and Nature. When asked what her top priorities were as she took over the agency, she responded "Clearly, science is a priority for me."

Expanding on that idea, Dr. Lubchenco said:

It's my belief that a resilient society and economy depend on informed decisions regarding environmental challenges and resource-management issues. The role of science is to provide the knowledge to do that informing. Those decisions might be made by individuals or governments or by companies; I believe those decisions will be better if they are informed by science. I use "informed" judiciously because I don't think the science should dictate any particular outcome. Decisions are going to take into account a number of different things — values, politics, economics — but science should be at the table in a way that is understandable and relevant and credible and salient. NOAA, as an applied-science agency, has the responsibility to develop and communicate and use science to make policy and management decisions, but also to inform policy and management decisions that are made by others.

When asked whether there was "a big problem in terms of scientists being muzzled in the last administration," she said that it's probably hard to know for sure, but that "as we move forward science will be respected; it will not be muzzled. It will not be distorted. And scientists will be free to share their scientific findings whether they fit any preconceived policy or not." She also indicated that she and John Holdren, the new presidential science adviser and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, would be reviewing all policies and practices to ensure scientific integrity.

Lubchenco also said that one thing she would like to do is "establish a National Climate Service in partnership with other agencies."

The full interview can be read in Nature magazine.

USEPA Offers "Strategic Plan" for Evaluating the Toxicity of Chemicals

This week the USEPA released a "Strategic Plan for Evaluating the Toxicity of Chemicals," which departs from "the traditional risk assessment approach that relies heavily on data generated through the intentional dosing of experimental animals." As most people know, animal welfare issues have led to a desire to find non-animal testing methods. At the same time there is pressure to provide data that adequately characterizes the hazards and risks of industrial and consumer chemicals.

According to EPA, while the traditional approach

"has provided EPA with sound science to support regulatory decision making over the past several decades, EPA must address ever-increasing demands, including consideration of complex issues such as cumulative exposures, life-stage vulnerabilities, and genetic susceptibilities, not to mention the increasing number of chemicals and cost of toxicity testing. A new approach is proposed to address these demands, an approach based on the application of advances in molecular biology and computational sciences to transform toxicity testing and risk assessment practices."

Based on a 2007 report by the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, "Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: a Vision and a Strategy," an Agency workgroup coordinated to produce the new Strategic Plan that "focuses on identifying and evaluating "toxicity pathways," i.e., cellular response pathways responsible for adverse health effects when sufficiently perturbed by environmental agents under realistic exposure conditions."

While EPA expects that the new paradigm will "create more efficient and cost-effective means to screen and prioritize for further assessment the tens of thousands of chemicals that are already found in the environment," there is some question as to whether that expectation is realistic. For example, I see four major challenges.

1) Developing and validating the methodologies: Development of new methods generally takes many iterations to determine the conditions that provide the most information with reliability and repeatability. Thus, it will likely be quite a few years before the methods being developed can be used for decision-making. Can we wait that long?

2) Translating expressions of exposure at the gene, protein, molecular, and cellular levels to the target organ and organism level: Whereas a standard animal study provides easily interpretable and accepted measures of toxicity (e.g., death, loss of body weight, reduced reproduction), the new methods provide much more nuanced results whose toxicological significance may be very difficult to establish. These subtle responses may simply be adaptive rather than result in diminished capacity.

3) Communicating why this is better than the current QSAR-based screening methods: The new methods will serve only as screening tools for prioritizing chemicals for further review. Ultimately the final risk management decision-making may still be based on the established standard testing methods. EPA will need to explain why these new screening level methods are better than the current US approach to screening chemicals. This may be especially difficult given that a Canadian prioritization program reviewed the 23,000 chemicals on its existing chemicals inventory based largely on existing study data and QSAR analysis.

4) Funding: The 2007 NRC report “Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century” suggested that transitioning into this new computational, informational, and molecular-based strategy would require $100M in funding every year for a period of 10-20 years. Given the current economic situation and competing issues such as climate change, TSCA reform, green chemistry, endocrine disruption, and others, it is hard to imagine that adequate funding can be made available for this endeavor.

Scientists as political activists?

I mentioned previously the climate change conference held in Copenhagen, which was designed to stimulate some activism on the part of scientists in preparation for December's much anticipated international climate change conference. Despite this goal, however, one point made repeatedly was that "formulating an action plan to curb climate change is not the job of scientists."

Herein lies a dilemma (wrapped inside a conundrum, or is it the other way around).

Scientists traditionally prefer to do the science and leave the policy development to others. For one thing, public policy must consider many more things than just the science. There are sociological, economic, political, and pragmatic considerations. But at the same time politicians are asking scientists, for example climate change scientists, what action they should take to address the problem. Unfortunately, while they can predict what may happen, it's even more difficult to provide guidance on what to do about it. This is true for a couple of reasons.

First, models can never provide a perfect prediction of how and where the climate will change. One participant in Copenhagen noted: "Tell me what the stock market will do in 100 years and I will tell you what the climate will do." Second, most climate scientists will tell you that their role does not include policy formulation. They can provide scenarios of what will happen if emissions hit certain thresholds, but when politicians ask what is the absolute maximum amount of CO2 we should allow, there is no easy answer. In the end, it depends on how much risk we are willing to take. That, and how good we are at predicting tipping points.

So the organizers of the Copenhagen conference hoped that they can encourage scientists to take a more active role and speak not as scientists but as concerned citizens. Some may feel uncomfortable with "blurring the line between science and activism," but they also know that no one understands the risks better than they do and no one is better placed to give informed opinions.

One positive note from the current Obama administration is that he has placed scientists in key appointee positions, jobs that too often in the past have gone to political friends whether they know anything about science or not. These scientists as risk managers are "people who are willing and able to weigh up the risks, costs and benefits of various degrees of action."

Global Warming Denialists Turning on Themselves as Their Climate Change Titanic Sinks

I did a post a while back about a "Climate Skeptics Conference" held in New York City. According to Andrew Revkin, writing in the Scotland in Sunday newspaper, it may just have been a last hurrah for the global warming denialist industry.

Case against climate change melting away

For example, from the linked article:

"But large corporations such as Exxon Mobil, which in the past financed the Heartland Institute and other groups that challenged the climate consensus, have reduced support. Many such companies no longer dispute that the greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels pose risks.

From 1998 to 2006, Exxon Mobil, for example, contributed more than $600,000 (£414,000) to Heartland, according to annual reports of charitable contributions from the company and company foundations.

Alan Jeffers, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil, said by e-mail that the company had ended support "to several public policy research groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion about how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner"."

And:

"But Kert Davies, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace, said that the experts giving talks were "a shrinking collection of extremists" and that they were "left talking to themselves"."

And this long piece from the article above:

"But Lindzen also criticised widely publicised assertions by other sceptics that variations in the sun were driving temperature changes in recent decades. To attribute short-term variation in temperatures to a single cause, whether human-generated gases or something else, was erroneous, he said.

Speaking of the sun's slight variability, he said: "Acting as though this is the alternative (to blaming greenhouse gases] is asking for trouble."

S Fred Singer, a physicist often referred to by critics and supporters alike as the dean of climate contrarians, said: "As a physicist, I am concerned that some sceptics, a very few, are ignoring the physical basis.

"There is one who denies that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, which goes against actual data," Singer said, adding that other sceptics wrongly contend that "humans are not responsible for the measured increase in atmospheric CO2."

There were notable absences from the conference this year. Russell Seitz, a physicist from Cambridge, Massachusetts, delivered a speech at last year's meeting. But Seitz, who has lambasted environmental campaigners for distorting climate science, now warns that the sceptics are in danger of doing the same thing.

The most strident advocates on either side of the global warming debate, he said, are "equally oblivious to the data they seek to discount or dramatise".

John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama who has long publicly questioned projections of dangerous global warming, most recently at a House committee hearing last month, said he had skipped both Heartland conferences to avoid the potential for "guilt by association"."

As we have seen, many of the global warming denialists have been pushing the very "party line" that their lauded "shills and charlatans" (plus, of course, the real scientists with real concerns) are now criticizing as very misguided ideologically based opinions.

Keep in mind, this was at the "Skeptics Conference" and these are the words of the "skeptics" themselves. Apparently skeptics are beginning their "every man for himself" race to the lifeboats as their Titanic sinks (perhaps after hitting a melting iceberg).

Holdren and Lubchenco Are Confirmed - And So is Obama's Commitment to Climate Change

On Thursday the Senate unanimously confirmed Jane Lubchenco to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and John Holdren to head the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Lubchenco is a marine scientist whose experience and credibility goes back decades. Holdren is a Harvard University physicist and professor of environmental policy. These confirmations round out Obama’s science team.

And what a team. By selecting such a group of well-renowned scientists and administrators for his key positions - including Steven Chu as Energy Secretary, Lisa Jackson as EPA Administrator, Nancy Sutley as head of the Council of Environmental Quality, and former EPA Administrator Carol Browner in the newly created position of Climate and Energy Policy Advisor in the White House - Obama has signaled that he puts a high value on science. It also signals that he will pursue active policies to address climate change.

Lubchenco and Holdren, along with the others, could play significant roles in shaping the Obama administration’s approach to climate science and policy. Lubchenco has "built an international reputation for her scientific work on marine conservation and climate change and for her ongoing efforts to help scientists participate in public policy debates and communicate their work to the general public."

Holdren has a long history of working on climate and energy policy, clean technology and nuclear proliferation. Over a year ago he gave the prestigious John H. Chafee Memorial Lecture on Science and the Environment at the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE). Called "Meeting the Climate-Change Challenge," Holdren stated:

"We are experiencing dangerous anthropogenic interference by any reasonable definition today. The question now is whether we can avoid catastrophic human interference in the climate system."

He listed three possible policy options..."They are mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. Basically, if we do less mitigation and adaptation, we’re going to do a lot more suffering."

Holdren's full lecture at NCSE can be read here. It's worth the read.

Meanwhile, it's clear that the current administration will place more emphasis on science than his predecessor, with a specific interest in addressing climate change.

Dueling Databases - Industry to Publish Global Chemicals Database

Data are power! I've said this before, and despite being a bit cumbersome as a phrase, it does highlight a growing trend. About a month ago I mentioned that the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) was looking at developing a global database of chemicals used in various products. The database is to be discussed in Geneva in May at the second session of the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM2), which is part of the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) process.

Now leading bodies of the global chemical industry are planning to publish their own global online database of chemical substances for stakeholders, which they are calling the Global Product Strategy (GPS). The organizations include the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) and Cefic in Europe, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) in the US, and Japan's JCIA. While details are still being worked out, the industry plans to present the concept of GPS at the same ICCM2 meeting.

These databases follow on the heels of many other online resources, including databases that contain the summary results of many studies over many years. The High Production Volume (HPV) Chemical databases resulting from the voluntary HPV Challenges in the US, Europe and Japan are also online. As will the data being developed as a result of the new REACH law in Europe and the new Chemical Assessment and Management Program (ChAMP) in the United States.

Online databases are not entirely new, as chemical plant release data have been available for many years as part of the Toxic Release Inventory. But the near ubiquitous accessibility of the internet, combined with improved user-friendliness of interfaces and the increase in data collection, have contributed to what amounts to a boom of information available to the public. There are drawbacks, of course, of so much data - often too complex to understand - being available to everyone. But overall having access to information will help improve everyone's decision-making capability.

Climate Change and a Novel Water Quality Case Could Have Major Impact on Decision-Making

Most of the time climate change issues don't enter into how Environmental Protection Agencies set nutrient limits in water bodies. That may change. Environmentalists are seeking to require the USEPA for the first time to consider climate change effects on water flow and activity when setting discharge limits for impaired waters.

The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) is suing EPA over its approval of a phosphorus limit on Lake Champlain in Vermont. CLF wants EPA to consider climate change and its impacts on wet weather flows when setting the lake's total maximum daily load (TMDL). The TMDL is the maximum amount of a contaminant that a waterbody can accept without violating water quality limits. TMDLs take into consideration both point and non-point sources into impaired waters, and normally one would not even think about some global phenomenon like climate change. TMDLs tend to be local or regional.

Consideration of climate change impacts could sometimes result in stricter discharge limits, such as when increased precipitation could result in increased pollution runoff. But in other cases, e.g., if climate change causes more arid conditions, it could result in less runoff and fewer pollutants contributing to impairment.

Either way, the question comes down to whether EPA had sufficient information available and knowledge to consider climate change in the permit, which was issued by the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation in 2002. CLF says EPA does have enough knowledge of the effects of climate change, and thus should have taken that into account in the permit. In early March a federal district court granted requests by both EPA and CLP to extend the deadline so they could enter into negotiations in hopes of finding an agreeable compromise.

If CLP wins the case, the next question would be how exactly the EPA would "consider" climate change?

Better Scientific Understanding = Better Policy Decisions

An underlying theme of this page is how science meets policy. In a recent commentary, UK scientist and Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute and special adviser to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, says that "getting understandable science information to policy makers remains a great challenge." I agree. As I noted in Sunday's Dake Page, some with political or ideological motivations often try to obfuscate the science. Professor Sachs suggests "the effective flow of information from the scientific community to the public and to policy-makers, and the systematic application of that information in policy-making remains a great and growing challenge." He opines that "the Bush administration exemplified a government that ignored, distorted, and even disdained scientific information, to the enormous cost to the US and the world."

To counter this, Professor Sachs offers five areas of action "to improve the link between science and policy."

First, he says "the general public must broadly understand scientific issues such as climate change in order to be able to call for and endorse sound public action. Yet the scientific issues are inherently complex, and the public arena is filled with misinformation (by innocent error) and disinformation (by calculated misdirection) by vested interests. To overcome the confusion, it is vital to establish processes such as the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that inform the public of the boundaries of real knowledge and consensus, especially based on the peer reviewed literature. Other venerable scientific institutions and societies (such as the Royal Society or the National Academy of Sciences) can also play this role."

Second, he states that "the public must be informed of the consensus in an intelligible manner." That is something that is sometimes difficult for scientists, who Sachs says, "notoriously neglect to be intelligible, usually not in order to be intentionally obscure, but rather to avoid the imprecision of non-scientific, day to day language." He also suggests that "science journalists (with proper scientific training), the media, and scientist-statesmen are needed to play an important role in translation."

Third, Sachs says that "policy-makers need detailed and systematic inputs beyond the broad public debate." He touts the US President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) as "a vital institution." Sachs believes it is a good step that President Obama has "revitalised it by appointing world class scientific leaders."

Fourth, he emphasizes that "science needs to inform public policy systematically, not only through advising the executive and legislative branches (and indeed, often, the judicial branch), but also through a seat at the table in rule-making and public decision-making." Sachs is highly supportive of "government bodies such as environmental agencies, national laboratories, and standard setting bodies," and suggests that they need "not only their own internal experts, but also panels of independent (non-governmental) scientific experts, free from conflict of interest, and beyond the reach of politics or governmental bureaucratic control."

Sach's fifth and final recommendation is to note that "while expertise is vital...it is not enough." Ultimately, he says "we can't leave...decisions to the scientists, though we want the scientists very close to the ultimate decisions, and to express their views strongly and publicly." Rather, he suggests that the "ultimate decisions depend on democratic processes and consensus building around the scientific evidence that are needed to combine scientific knowledge with ethical guidelines, public values, and a sense of justice, fairness and social cohesion."

While he says that "this meshing of science knowledge and ultimate democratic decision-making is a never ending challenge,...the general commitment to the combination of scientific rigour, public consensus and democratic accountability should be a guidepost for action and institutional design."

In short, scientists and policy-makers must communicate, with each other and with the public.

Read the original commentary here.

Global Warming Denialists - The Art of Deception

Global warming denialists are carrying on an ideologically motivated campaign to discredit real climate science. And they are doing so by willfully and repeatedly misrepresenting the state of our knowledge. They have several methods that all scientists and every citizen should be on the look out for, and these methods should be exposed for what they are - purposeful deceit of the public.

Some of the more prevalent methods to deceive the public include:

"Global warming is just a theory, and the science is still unsettled"

Denialists are fond of manipulating the public by misrepresenting the meaning of scientific theory. They do this to suggest that the science of climate change is still unsettled. But the science of climate change is clear. The scientific consensus is clear.

"The IPCC is ignoring the science"

Except that it isn't. The IPCC, and the thousands of researchers on whose studies the IPCC relies for its compilation of the state-of-the-science, examine every legitimate study that has been conducted regarding climate science. Any new valid data are also incorporated into the discussion, which is why the IPCC, for example, revises its reports every few years - they are incorporating newer data. Claims of "they are ignoring solar forcing" and others, for example, are patently false, and the denialists know this but continue with their charade.

"Many scientists disagree with the IPCC"

Some legitimate scientists legitimately disagree with parts of the consensus. And as legitimate scientists they present their real scientific data to real scientific peer-review. As yet, the legitimate disagreement has been on specific data or on specific interpretation. But these disagreements have been unpersuasive to the vast community of scientists as far as changing the consensus. It comes down to the preponderance of evidence. And the preponderance of the evidence remains clear. Most of the time these legitimate scientists actually, in the end, provide support to the consensus by helping to fine-tune specific details.

"So and so scientist says that global warming is wrong"

To scientists this is one of the most despicable and deceitful ploys used by global warming denialists. They "quote" a certain scientist to suggest that the scientist agrees with their denialist position. Except they selectively quote to misrepresent the scientist's position. Several scientists have had to issue corrections - often repeatedly - to clarify their position or even to deny that their research says what the denialists say it means. One scientist has been fighting for years to stop denialists from continuing to misquote his research, which they continue to do intentionally to claim the exact opposite of what the scientist's research actually concludes. Another had to issue a statement - and even ensure it was posted on his Wiki biography - to refute the way denialists have mischaracterized his views. A major scientific organization had to issue a press release to warn that denialists had fraudulently mimicked its journal design with the explicit goal of suggesting the organization supported their view. It does not.

"Independent organization scientists refute global warming"

One of the favorite means for denialists to deceive the public is to create a "science sounding" organization and pass it off as independent. This despite the fact that all the funding comes from industry donors, ideological foundations, and "private citizens" (who oddly enough tend to be associated with industry donors and ideological foundations). The claim of independence is farcical, as these organizations are merely front groups for the industrial and ideological firms who fund them. Even the handful of scientists they employ are shared amongst the groups to create the illusion that there are more dissenters than are there in truth. More deceit.

"A conference to present the science refuting the global warmist agenda"

Another trick of the denialists is to sponsor a conference in which will be presented "the real science that global warmists ignore." As noted above, no real science is ignored, so this in itself is deceit. But the deceit goes even further as the conference is billed as a scientific conference when in fact it is nothing but an advocacy meeting designed to confuse the public and influence politicians. The recent conference sponsored by the conservative Heartland Institute is a perfect example of the deception employed by the global warming denialist industry. Besides the ideologically oriented HI, the conference was co-sponsored by 57 other organizations, every one of which were ideological, libertarian, anti-tax, pro-business and free-market organizations. No scientific organizations participated. The handful of "science sounding" organizations (about 6 of 57) were the deceitful front groups mentioned in the last point. No new scientific data were presented, and in fact the only science presented was the same old information that has been repeated for years. Any legitimate science would be presented at legitimate scientific conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals. As such, any legitimate science is already part of the consensus and any new legitimate data will be added to the analysis. The conference was a sham designed to deceive.

"Such and such a source says..."

One common ploy is circular citation. The denialist industry creates a "press release" masquerading as scientific opinion. It then ensures that it circulates to its network of bloggers - some paid, others merely ideological lackeys - for distribution. Call it the "cut-and-paste" method of creating the impression that there is more uncertainty than there is, more disagreement than there is, and more authority than there is. Citing a blog that stole from another blog that stole from another blog that got it from the industry denialist machine is a combination of lazy and deceitful. The intent is to create an implied volume of information when it is in fact nothing more than creative plagiarism. Given that any person with a computer can publish anything they want without any kind of check on its factual integrity, no blog can be used for anything more than ascertaining the blogger's opinion, which by definition is tuned to their inherent biases. That's why you get the same sort of "conspiracy theory" stories showing up on "conspiracy theory" blogs. In short, citing a blog as a source of scientific fact is meaningless, not to mention that it and shows a lack of scientific understanding and/or a willingness to deceive.

"The science definitively says that global warming is not happening"

False. Often this comes in the form of "we know that the temperatures are cooling" or "the sun is causing global warming." These are third-grade level misunderstandings (at best) or intentional misrepresentations (most likely) of the science. But by making the statement definitively the denialists know it sounds authoritative to the public. Just like former vice-president Dick Cheney stating definitively that Saddam Hussein had WMDs (he did not) and that Iraq was involved with the 9/11 attacks (they were not). Being authoritative does not change a lie into the truth, but it does cynically take advantage of the natural tendency for people to assume forceful statements represent reality. This is deception and should be called deception.

"Global warmists are pushing a political agenda for the funding"

This is a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black. Climate scientists toiled for decades doing research, generally with very limited funding. Anyone who knows how much scientists get paid know they don't do it "for the money." In fact, for the denialist industry (funded lavishly by some of the biggest corporations on the planet) to disingenuously suggest that the science is political and their obvious political is science is, well, audacity at its most cynical.

"Al Gore's theories..."

One common ploy - called misdirection by public relations firms and professional magicians alike - is to suggest that Al Gore "invented" global warming, and thus it is a political rather than scientific consensus. Al Gore is a former politician and now businessman who also just happens to have a three decade interest in science issues. His "Inconvenient Truth" presentation is designed to communicate the long-time research of climate scientists. He didn't invent global warming, he is merely a messenger. The science itself has nothing to do with Al Gore, and the denialists know this. They merely use Gore in their sleight-of-hand attempts to misdirect attention away from the fact that there is a clear scientific consensus on global warming.

"Repetition"

Repetition ties all the previous deceit together into a continuous stream of "information" that by shear volume and tenacity is designed to create the illusion of authority. The same handful of "points" are repeated over and over again long after they have been discredited as false, illogical, or just plain silly. The same "experts" are trotted out even though it has been shown that their scientific credibility and integrity is equivocal (to be clear, some of these are legitimate scientists who legitimately disagree, but many are being used as shills by the denialist industry and others are mere charlatans selling snake oil for the industry money). The same "science is being ignored" line is repeated even after it has been shown that the science has already been incorporated into the consensus (even, in fact, after pointing to a specific set of pages in which this point is discussed). The repetition of falsehood is part of the ploy. And it is dishonest.

"Global warmists only demean the "skeptics" because they can't discredit the science"

This is a favorite tactic. As noted above, all real science is presented to the scientific community for peer-review and discussion. Most of the "science" of the skeptics has been shown time and time again to be spurious, incorrect, or irrelevant. Much of it is deliberately misleading, misrepresented, or outright fraudulent. Many scientists and others have spent considerable time evaluating the "cut-and-pasted from blog" science of denialists, and even after their contention is shown to be false and/or completely uninformed or illogical, they continue to repeat the same untruths.

As scientists, and as human beings, we must ask ourselves whether it is "unkind" to call a liar a liar. Should we ignore dishonesty by the denialists because to point out their dishonesty might hurt their feelings? But think about this. Would one not call a murderer a murderer because it would be "unkind" to the murderer? Is it not unkind to the victims to not stand up for their rights? Is it unkind to call Bernie Madoff a swindler, when he in fact is a swindler? What of the rights of his victims? Is it unkind to refute deception?

Should we not call a deceiver a deceiver?

The denialist industry has undertaken a campaign of deception that follows the same playbook as the "smoking isn't addictive and doesn't cause cancer" playbook of the past. Even some of the players are the same. So should a scientist, or a non-scientist who also lives on this planet, stand back and allow the denialists to deceive the public for their own ideological profit?

I think the answer is clear.