US funding dubious science and unfounded fear

Eco-militants that defiled scientific integrity in government agencies defy corrections

by Ron Arnold       

Donald Trump’s EPA is facing a tsunami of vitriol for trying to drain the DC swamp of rogue regulators that rule with made-to-order scientific lies and invented threats, such as its ruling that the carbon dioxide which makes life on Earth possible is a pollutant. When President Trump proposed a $1.6 billion cut from EPA’s expected $8.1 billion budget, employee screams of doomsday intimidated Congress into forking over the full gimme-gimme. In response to the specter of lost jobs and less political power, entrenched Obama holdovers have organized to sabotage Trump’s reforms in what is being called the Deep State.

Fear is palpable throughout the EPA, where secret email accounts revealed serious abuses of power, where bureaucrats dictatorially took over virtually anything wet as “Waters of the United States,” including agricultural irrigation ditches and stock watering ponds (Trump revoked that rule), and where policies that destroyed the homes and lives of thousands have been routinely based on “liberal” interpretations of federal laws and scientific research that did not stand up to critical scrutiny.

The fear evidently touched EPA “Scientific Integrity Official” Francesca [Grifo], an Obama appointee who previously oversaw the “scientific integrity program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (“an oxymoron if there ever was one,” said Forbes magazine). She postponed this year’s meeting of EPA’s scientific integrity “stakeholders” when she found out that her faithful corps of environmental activist advisors was to be joined by independent scientists approved by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.

The Grifo flap and other Environmental Protection Agency problems masked a much bigger government science outrage: the $315 million scandal engulfing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This scandal further underscores why Trump’s reforms are necessary.

In March, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee probed into HHS’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the $315 million in taxpayer-funded grants awarded since 1985 to the Italian research group Ramazzini Institute. The organization is an “independent” science academy focused on cancer research into commercial products. Its output had become the subject of controversy for its fixation on “scaremongering about chemicals, artificial sweeteners and other products.”

Ramazzini’s early claim that sweetener aspartame was carcinogenic was widely panned by the European Food Safety Authority, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Italian media. Its 2016 claim that sucralose (Splenda) was linked to cancer brought similar reactions. Not surprisingly, government and scientific bodies around the world have long criticized it for using secretive, questionable science to reach politically motivated conclusions.

In 2012, EPA scientists “identified discrepancies in the results of methanol studies” conducted by Ramazzini. Similar EPA complaints from 2010 prompted Senators James Inhofe (R-OK) and David Vitter (R-LA.) to say Ramazzini’s work “is in dire need of review.”

The question remains: Who opened America’s public coffers – mostly without competitive bidding – for Ramazzini and its New York-based affiliate Collegium Ramazzini, the advocacy cooperative of scientists and researchers in the grant-gobbling Ramazzini circle?

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute (E&E Legal) confirm that the money came from HHS’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Toxicology Program.

Since toxicologist-microbiologist Linda Birnbaum became director of both in 2009, the two agencies provided $92 million, one third of Collegium members’ support. She herself is a Collegium member. A knowledgeable source says she got the NIEHS-NTP appointment largely because she was willing to expand the agency’s mission to include the health effects of climate change, while the other candidate for her job was not.

According to public records, Birnbaum’s NIEHS contracted with Ramazzini and its affiliates – through multiple third parties – muddying it up what services were rendered under these contracts and how they were prearranged.

Another Ramazzini fellow, Dr. Christopher Portier, a senior collaborating scientist for the anti-pesticide Environmental Defense Fund, and a well-known anti-glyphosate activist, worked for an HHS agency for 32 years. He initiated a report claiming the common weed killer glyphosate (used in Roundup herbicides) is carcinogenic. It was the only study among many that made this assertion, but activists used it to call for banning Roundup, which is often used in conjunction with genetically engineered crops to eliminate the need for weeding and tilling, thereby reducing erosion. 

The president of Collegium Ramazzini is former NIH researcher Dr. Phil Landrigan, now a professor at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. According to reports, Director Birnbaum coordinated with Dr. Landrigan to publish more than two dozen Ramazzini studies in the NIEHS-run journal, Environmental Health Perspectives. Landrigan also received substantial funding from Birnbaum’s NIEHS, E&E Legal reported.

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee continues to probe the Ramazzini morass. Backed by Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Darin LaHood (R-Ill.), Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is following up on a joint letter to HHS Secretary Tom Price, requesting documents and correspondence between Ramazzini and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

The letter noted that Birnbaum’s NIEHS “has refused to respond to [FOIA] requests seeking information related to contracts between your Department, including NIH and NEIHS, and Ramazzini.” A source familiar with the issue says a dialogue was established and is progressing.

The controversies are likely to heat up in the face of news stories saying that Aaron Blair, the scientist who led IARC’s review of glyphosate risks, deliberately withheld findings from studies of some 89,000 U.S. farm workers and family members, concluding that there was no link between cancer and exposure to the chemical. Under Blair’s direction, while he and his team for years apparently ignored evidence that contradicted that conclusion, IARC found that the weed killer was “probably carcinogenic.”

Collegium Ramazzini strongly rebuts any assault on its integrity and infallibility. Its website says its mission “is to be a bridge between the world of scientific discovery and the social and political centers which must act on the discoveries of science to protect public health.” Is this self-congratulation, a power ploy – or a subtle warning to anyone who might question its funding arrangements?

In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower warned against the military-industrial complex and included this important final caveat: “In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Can the Trump Administration or Congress untangle today’s web of the scientific-technological elite and, more importantly, prevent our health and agricultural policies from being driven by dubious science, unfounded fears, deliberately withheld studies, and serious potential conflicts of interest?

It would take more than plowing through mountains of paper. We would learn a lot more from public testimony taken under oath.

Ron Arnold is a widely known researcher, columnist and the author of eleven books on environmental and public policy issues.

My Comments:

"The fear evidently touched EPA “Scientific Integrity Official” Francesca [Grifo], an Obama appointee who previously oversaw the “scientific integrity program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (“an oxymoron if there ever was one,” said Forbes magazine). She postponed this year’s meeting of EPA’s scientific integrity “stakeholders” when she found out that her faithful corps of environmental activist advisors was to be joined by independent scientists approved by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt."

I was one of those rational scientists who was to attend the EPA Scientific Integrity meeting Wednesday afternoon on 14 June. I was notified of the cancellation of that meeting on Friday, the 9th of June.

RICO for government climate deniers? by Paul Driessen and Ron Arnold

How corrupt and fraudulent is the government “science” that denies natural climate change?

A self-appointed coalition of Democrat state attorneys general is pursuing civil or criminal racketeering actions against ExxonMobil, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and other organizations. The AGs claim the groups are committing fraud, by “denying” climate change. The charge is bogus.

What we contest are false assertions that “humans are creating a dangerous climate change crisis.” We do not accept false claims that “the science is settled” and will not be limited to discussing only “what we must do now to avert looming climate catastrophes.”

That’s not just constitutionally protected free speech. It is the foundation of scientific progress and informed public policy.

Meanwhile, EPA and other federal agencies, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate activist organizations, state legal and environmental agencies, and legions of scientists who receive government grants for advancing the “manmade climate cataclysm” mantra are themselves engaging in what many say is truly misleading or fraudulent climate science, policy and regulation.

Millions in poor countries die annually from preventable diseases, because hysterical climate claims justify denying them access to affordable modern electricity and transportation that could be provided by coal, natural gas and petroleum products. In developed nations, climate hysteria has cost millions of jobs, adversely affecting people’s living standards, health and welfare. In European countries, thousands are dying each winter, because they can no longer afford proper heat.

The problem is not human intervention in the climate; it’s improper political intervention in climate science. It has corrupted scientific findings from the very beginning.

A 1995 document from the US State Department to the IPCC confirms this, or at least gives allegations of fraud and corruption sufficient credence to raise serious integrity questions.

When a recent FOIA lawsuit sought that 1995 document, the State Department said there is “no such correspondence in our files.” But if we have a copy of the document, how come State doesn’t? Attesting to its bona fides, Our copy has State’s date-stamp, a Department official’s signature – and 30 pages of detailed instructions on how the Clinton Administration wanted the IPCC to change its scientific findings and summary for policymakers, to reflect US climate and energy policy agendas.

The document is too complex and technical to summarize. So we’ve posted it in PDF form – unchanged in any way and exactly as received from a well known and credible source who must remain anonymous to avoid retribution by people like the RICO prosecutors. You’ll be amazed at what it says.

It consists of a three-page cover letter to Sir John Houghton, head of the IPCC Science Working Group, from Day Mount, Acting State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment and Development, introducing 30 pages of line-by-line “suggestions” from scientist Robert Watson and others. One wanted a correct statement about warming rates changed to a flat lie. “Change ‘continue to rise’ to ‘rise by even greater amounts’ to provide a sense of magnitude of the extended change,” it says.

Talk about agendas dictating science. Moreover, this “ominous” warming ended just a couple years later, there has been virtually no planetary warming since then, and the warming followed 30 years of cooling.

The document raises serious questions about State Department actions on subsequent IPCC Assessment Reports. What did State do? Where are the correspondence and instructions to change the science in other IPCC reports? What are the State Department, EPA and other Obama agencies doing now to further corrupt climate science and advance their radical energy, social, economic and political agendas?

We know they won’t answer truthfully. If they did, they’d have to investigate themselves under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Worse, the corruption, deception, manipulation, exaggeration and fabrication have grown with every passing year, as alarmists sought to obfuscate their shenanigans and preserve their $1.5 trillion Climate Crisis Empire. The AG actions are designed to punish and silence organizations that are revealing the scientific flaws and deceptions.

The IPCC was set up in 1988 to examine possible human influences on Earth’s climate, amid powerful natural forces that have always driven the complex, dynamic, turbulent, frequently changing climate. As we note in our book, Cracking Big Green, from the outset, Swedish meteorology professor and zealous warming advocate Bert Bolin wanted to help scientists “get global warming onto the political agenda.”

By 1995, Bolin could finally say “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” Of course, “discernible” merely means “detectable.” But it gave the State Department license to dictate the “science.” Then “discernible” morphed into “dominant,” which morphed into “sole.” Suddenly humans had replaced the complex, interrelated natural forces that had driven innumerable climate changes throughout Earth’s history. Voila. Climate hysteria began to drive the political agenda.

Behind the hysteria are carefully orchestrated efforts to find steadily increasing planetary temperatures, and claim floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, snowstorms and snowless winters are more frequent and intense – even though Real World records show they are not. Original data are “homogenized” with other data to create higher temperatures; student papers and activist news releases are presented as “peer-reviewed studies” in IPCC documents; computer models are presented as “proof” of chaos, even though actual observations contradict their predictions; and ClimateGate emails reveal more chicanery. As climatologist and professor David Legates explains, even the 97% consensus claims are fraudulent.

Organizations that pointed out these flaws and fabrications became a threat to politicians, activists, “warmist” scientists and bureaucrats who were determined to advance an anti-fossil-fuel agenda. Their money and efforts were not winning the non-debate. They needed a blitzkrieg counterattack.

In June 2012, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Climate Accountability Institute organized a “workshop” in La Jolla, CA for climate activists, scientists, lawyers and other experts. Their subsequent report detailed how successful attacks on tobacco companies could be used as a template for campaigns, RICO actions and other operations against “climate denier” companies and organizations.

By 2015, Senator Sheldon “Torquemada” Whitehouse (D-RI) was calling for RICO prosecutions. His actions prompted free market champion Alex Epstein to tell a congressional committee the senator should resign because of his “unconstitutional” attacks on free speech and the energy that powers our economy.

In January 2016, a secret meeting was held in the Rockefeller Family Fund’s Manhattan offices. It brought 350.org founder Bill McKibben and a dozen other anti-hydrocarbon activists together, to refine their legal strategies against ExxonMobil and others who dared to challenge “the scientific consensus” that fossil fuels have brought humanity and our planet to the brink of “climate chaos.”

Then, on March 29, 2016, New York AG Eric Schneiderman headlined a press conference of 16 state attorneys general, who announced their intention to go after organizations that were “committing fraud” by “knowingly deceiving” the public about the threat of manmade climate change. Within days, he had launched a RICO action against ExxonMobil, and the Virgin Islands had done likewise against CEI.

It is difficult not to perceive a pattern of collusion here, among the activists and their financiers, among the AGs, and probably among all of them. We are eager to see what emails and other documents might reveal – especially since Section 241 of US Code Title 18 makes it a felony “for two or more persons to agree together to injure, threaten or intimidate” another person in exercising their constitutional rights.

We have only begun to fight – for energy, jobs, sound science, free speech and human rights. CEI and Exxon are vigorously battling the outrageous RICO suits, and CFACT will present its new Climate Hustle movie in a one-day May 2 extravaganza in hundreds of theaters across the USA. We will not be silenced.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org). Ron Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. They are coauthors of Cracking Big Green: To save the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine. 

My Comments:

This RICO persecution of those who say that catastrophic man-made global warming is nonsense, is proof that the socialists have no respect at all for either individual rights, such as free speech or property rights, or for the scientific method or indeed any rational thought.

The socialists are not willing to engage those who oppose them on the field of rational discussion.  They are aware of the fact that they are unarmed and unprotected in a rational discussion of ideas.  At first they tried calling those of us who believe in rational discussion ugly names and attributed belittling beliefs to us, which they simply made up.  When I signed the Minority Report on Global Warming, I noted that: “Observe which side resorts to the most vociferous name-calling and you are likely to have identified the side with the weaker argument and they know it.”  That school-yard tactic by the socialists failed, so now these desperate alarmists and profiteers have turned to RICO persecutions by government in the courts.  It could not be more obvious how intellectually bankrupt they have become.

To be a socialist is very clearly to be opposed to all of the real advantages of civilized human society.  They would infuse that society with the constant use of force unguided by reason and indeed directed by the malevolent radical environmentalist's bias against humans.  They would deprive us as individuals of the freedom to cooperate with others in endeavors of our own choice.  Such a society will soon become thoroughly evil and unsustainable.  That that is the course of such societies is richly substantiated by history.