Thank you EPA...
WaveCameCrashin
Posts: 2,929
:evil: I can't believe this. Why would the EPA do this ?
IMO they have way to much power..
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysi ... Panel.aspx
Obama Slips Up On Oil Spill Panel
By HENRY I. MILLER
Posted 06/02/2010 06:23 PM ET
I dislike President Obama's style and substance. A whiner and left-wing ideologue, he is remarkably slow-witted when out of range of speechwriters and teleprompters. I'll say one thing for him, though: He brings a sense of irony to government.
The latest example is the incomprehensible choice of William Reilly, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to co-chair the presidential commission to investigate the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
During Reilly's tenure, the EPA implemented policies that prevented the development of a high-tech method to mitigate the effects of the oil washing onto the magnificent beaches along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida.
During the 1980s microorganisms genetically engineered to feed on spilled oil were developed in laboratories, but draconian federal regulations discouraged their testing and commercialization and ensured that the techniques available for responding to these disasters remain low-tech and marginally effective.
They include methods such as deploying booms to contain the oil, spraying chemicals to disperse it, burning it and spreading absorbent mats.
At the time of the catastrophic 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, there were great expectations for modern biotechnology applied to "bioremediation," the biological cleanup of toxic wastes, including oil. Reilly, who at that time headed the EPA, later recalled:
"When I saw the full scale of the disaster in Prince William Sound in Alaska ... my first thought was: Where are the exotic new technologies, the products of genetic engineering, that can help us clean this up?"
Reilly should have known: Innovation had been stymied by his agency's hostile policies toward the most sophisticated new genetic engineering techniques. The regulations ensured that biotech researchers in several industrial sectors, including bioremediation, would continue to be intimidated and inhibited by regulatory barriers. Those policies remain in place today, and the EPA's anti-technology zealots show no signs of changing them.
The best way to prevent such accidents is, of course, to obtain energy from sources other than fuel oil. Bio-fuels have been widely touted as a possibility, but solutions to technical difficulties, such as breaking down plant materials so that they can be metabolized into ethanol, have thus far eluded scientists.
Ironically, EPA regulation has also inhibited the development of the genetically engineered bacteria and fungi that are needed. Thus, EPA's policies have for decades stymied safe energy production in two ways: (1) by preventing innovation applied to industrial processes that could produce biofuel, and (2) by obstructing the development and commercialization of oil-eating organisms that could be used in a spill.
Characteristically, the EPA didn't let science get in the way of policy. Its regulation focuses on any "new" organism (strangely and unscientifically defined as one which contains combinations of DNA from unrelated sources) that might, for example, literally eat up oil spills.
For the EPA, then and now, "newness" is synonymous with risk, and because genetic engineering techniques can easily be used to create new gene combinations with DNA from disparate sources, these techniques therefore "have the greatest potential to pose risks to people or the environment," according to the agency press release that accompanied the rule.
But science says otherwise. The genetic technique employed to construct new strains is irrelevant to risk, as is the origin of a snippet of DNA that may be moved from one organism to another: What matters is its function. Scientific principles and common sense dictate which questions are central to risk analysis for any new organism:
How hazardous is the organism you started with? Is it a harmless, ubiquitous organism found in garden soil, or one that causes illness in humans or animals? Does the genetic change merely make the organism able to metabolize and degrade oil more efficiently, or does it have other effects, such as making it hardier and more resistant to antibiotics and therefore difficult to control?
The EPA ignored the widely held scientific consensus that holds that modern genetic engineering technology is essentially an extension, or refinement, of earlier, cruder techniques of genetic modification. In fact, the U.S. National Research Council observed in 1989 that the use of the newest genetic engineering techniques actually lowers the already minimal risk associated with field testing.
The reason is that the new technology makes it possible to introduce pieces of DNA that contain one or a few well-characterized genes, in contrast with older genetic techniques that transfer or modify a variable number of genes haphazardly. All of this means that users of the new techniques can be more certain about the traits they introduce into the organisms.
The bottom line is that organisms crafted with the newest, most sophisticated and precise genetic techniques are subject to discriminatory, extraordinary regulation. Research proposals for field trials must be reviewed repeatedly case by case, and companies face uncertainty about final commercial approvals of products down the road even if they prove safe and effective.
Government policymakers seem oblivious to the power of regulatory roadblocks to impair resilience. Experiments using genetically engineered organisms confront massive red tape and politics and require vast expense. The costs and uncertainty of performing this R&D have virtually eliminated them as a tool to clean up oil spills and other pollution.
While he headed the EPA, Reilly was one of those know-nothing policymakers. Obama's tapping him to investigate the Gulf oil spill exemplifies what Newsweek and Washington Post contributing editor Robert Samuelson has called a "parody of leadership."
• Miller is a physician and molecular biologist and a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. His most recent book is "The Frankenfood Myth."
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysi ... Panel.aspx
Obama Slips Up On Oil Spill Panel
By HENRY I. MILLER
Posted 06/02/2010 06:23 PM ET
I dislike President Obama's style and substance. A whiner and left-wing ideologue, he is remarkably slow-witted when out of range of speechwriters and teleprompters. I'll say one thing for him, though: He brings a sense of irony to government.
The latest example is the incomprehensible choice of William Reilly, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to co-chair the presidential commission to investigate the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
During Reilly's tenure, the EPA implemented policies that prevented the development of a high-tech method to mitigate the effects of the oil washing onto the magnificent beaches along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida.
During the 1980s microorganisms genetically engineered to feed on spilled oil were developed in laboratories, but draconian federal regulations discouraged their testing and commercialization and ensured that the techniques available for responding to these disasters remain low-tech and marginally effective.
They include methods such as deploying booms to contain the oil, spraying chemicals to disperse it, burning it and spreading absorbent mats.
At the time of the catastrophic 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, there were great expectations for modern biotechnology applied to "bioremediation," the biological cleanup of toxic wastes, including oil. Reilly, who at that time headed the EPA, later recalled:
"When I saw the full scale of the disaster in Prince William Sound in Alaska ... my first thought was: Where are the exotic new technologies, the products of genetic engineering, that can help us clean this up?"
Reilly should have known: Innovation had been stymied by his agency's hostile policies toward the most sophisticated new genetic engineering techniques. The regulations ensured that biotech researchers in several industrial sectors, including bioremediation, would continue to be intimidated and inhibited by regulatory barriers. Those policies remain in place today, and the EPA's anti-technology zealots show no signs of changing them.
The best way to prevent such accidents is, of course, to obtain energy from sources other than fuel oil. Bio-fuels have been widely touted as a possibility, but solutions to technical difficulties, such as breaking down plant materials so that they can be metabolized into ethanol, have thus far eluded scientists.
Ironically, EPA regulation has also inhibited the development of the genetically engineered bacteria and fungi that are needed. Thus, EPA's policies have for decades stymied safe energy production in two ways: (1) by preventing innovation applied to industrial processes that could produce biofuel, and (2) by obstructing the development and commercialization of oil-eating organisms that could be used in a spill.
Characteristically, the EPA didn't let science get in the way of policy. Its regulation focuses on any "new" organism (strangely and unscientifically defined as one which contains combinations of DNA from unrelated sources) that might, for example, literally eat up oil spills.
For the EPA, then and now, "newness" is synonymous with risk, and because genetic engineering techniques can easily be used to create new gene combinations with DNA from disparate sources, these techniques therefore "have the greatest potential to pose risks to people or the environment," according to the agency press release that accompanied the rule.
But science says otherwise. The genetic technique employed to construct new strains is irrelevant to risk, as is the origin of a snippet of DNA that may be moved from one organism to another: What matters is its function. Scientific principles and common sense dictate which questions are central to risk analysis for any new organism:
How hazardous is the organism you started with? Is it a harmless, ubiquitous organism found in garden soil, or one that causes illness in humans or animals? Does the genetic change merely make the organism able to metabolize and degrade oil more efficiently, or does it have other effects, such as making it hardier and more resistant to antibiotics and therefore difficult to control?
The EPA ignored the widely held scientific consensus that holds that modern genetic engineering technology is essentially an extension, or refinement, of earlier, cruder techniques of genetic modification. In fact, the U.S. National Research Council observed in 1989 that the use of the newest genetic engineering techniques actually lowers the already minimal risk associated with field testing.
The reason is that the new technology makes it possible to introduce pieces of DNA that contain one or a few well-characterized genes, in contrast with older genetic techniques that transfer or modify a variable number of genes haphazardly. All of this means that users of the new techniques can be more certain about the traits they introduce into the organisms.
The bottom line is that organisms crafted with the newest, most sophisticated and precise genetic techniques are subject to discriminatory, extraordinary regulation. Research proposals for field trials must be reviewed repeatedly case by case, and companies face uncertainty about final commercial approvals of products down the road even if they prove safe and effective.
Government policymakers seem oblivious to the power of regulatory roadblocks to impair resilience. Experiments using genetically engineered organisms confront massive red tape and politics and require vast expense. The costs and uncertainty of performing this R&D have virtually eliminated them as a tool to clean up oil spills and other pollution.
While he headed the EPA, Reilly was one of those know-nothing policymakers. Obama's tapping him to investigate the Gulf oil spill exemplifies what Newsweek and Washington Post contributing editor Robert Samuelson has called a "parody of leadership."
• Miller is a physician and molecular biologist and a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. His most recent book is "The Frankenfood Myth."
IMO they have way to much power..
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysi ... Panel.aspx
Obama Slips Up On Oil Spill Panel
By HENRY I. MILLER
Posted 06/02/2010 06:23 PM ET
I dislike President Obama's style and substance. A whiner and left-wing ideologue, he is remarkably slow-witted when out of range of speechwriters and teleprompters. I'll say one thing for him, though: He brings a sense of irony to government.
The latest example is the incomprehensible choice of William Reilly, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to co-chair the presidential commission to investigate the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
During Reilly's tenure, the EPA implemented policies that prevented the development of a high-tech method to mitigate the effects of the oil washing onto the magnificent beaches along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida.
During the 1980s microorganisms genetically engineered to feed on spilled oil were developed in laboratories, but draconian federal regulations discouraged their testing and commercialization and ensured that the techniques available for responding to these disasters remain low-tech and marginally effective.
They include methods such as deploying booms to contain the oil, spraying chemicals to disperse it, burning it and spreading absorbent mats.
At the time of the catastrophic 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, there were great expectations for modern biotechnology applied to "bioremediation," the biological cleanup of toxic wastes, including oil. Reilly, who at that time headed the EPA, later recalled:
"When I saw the full scale of the disaster in Prince William Sound in Alaska ... my first thought was: Where are the exotic new technologies, the products of genetic engineering, that can help us clean this up?"
Reilly should have known: Innovation had been stymied by his agency's hostile policies toward the most sophisticated new genetic engineering techniques. The regulations ensured that biotech researchers in several industrial sectors, including bioremediation, would continue to be intimidated and inhibited by regulatory barriers. Those policies remain in place today, and the EPA's anti-technology zealots show no signs of changing them.
The best way to prevent such accidents is, of course, to obtain energy from sources other than fuel oil. Bio-fuels have been widely touted as a possibility, but solutions to technical difficulties, such as breaking down plant materials so that they can be metabolized into ethanol, have thus far eluded scientists.
Ironically, EPA regulation has also inhibited the development of the genetically engineered bacteria and fungi that are needed. Thus, EPA's policies have for decades stymied safe energy production in two ways: (1) by preventing innovation applied to industrial processes that could produce biofuel, and (2) by obstructing the development and commercialization of oil-eating organisms that could be used in a spill.
Characteristically, the EPA didn't let science get in the way of policy. Its regulation focuses on any "new" organism (strangely and unscientifically defined as one which contains combinations of DNA from unrelated sources) that might, for example, literally eat up oil spills.
For the EPA, then and now, "newness" is synonymous with risk, and because genetic engineering techniques can easily be used to create new gene combinations with DNA from disparate sources, these techniques therefore "have the greatest potential to pose risks to people or the environment," according to the agency press release that accompanied the rule.
But science says otherwise. The genetic technique employed to construct new strains is irrelevant to risk, as is the origin of a snippet of DNA that may be moved from one organism to another: What matters is its function. Scientific principles and common sense dictate which questions are central to risk analysis for any new organism:
How hazardous is the organism you started with? Is it a harmless, ubiquitous organism found in garden soil, or one that causes illness in humans or animals? Does the genetic change merely make the organism able to metabolize and degrade oil more efficiently, or does it have other effects, such as making it hardier and more resistant to antibiotics and therefore difficult to control?
The EPA ignored the widely held scientific consensus that holds that modern genetic engineering technology is essentially an extension, or refinement, of earlier, cruder techniques of genetic modification. In fact, the U.S. National Research Council observed in 1989 that the use of the newest genetic engineering techniques actually lowers the already minimal risk associated with field testing.
The reason is that the new technology makes it possible to introduce pieces of DNA that contain one or a few well-characterized genes, in contrast with older genetic techniques that transfer or modify a variable number of genes haphazardly. All of this means that users of the new techniques can be more certain about the traits they introduce into the organisms.
The bottom line is that organisms crafted with the newest, most sophisticated and precise genetic techniques are subject to discriminatory, extraordinary regulation. Research proposals for field trials must be reviewed repeatedly case by case, and companies face uncertainty about final commercial approvals of products down the road even if they prove safe and effective.
Government policymakers seem oblivious to the power of regulatory roadblocks to impair resilience. Experiments using genetically engineered organisms confront massive red tape and politics and require vast expense. The costs and uncertainty of performing this R&D have virtually eliminated them as a tool to clean up oil spills and other pollution.
While he headed the EPA, Reilly was one of those know-nothing policymakers. Obama's tapping him to investigate the Gulf oil spill exemplifies what Newsweek and Washington Post contributing editor Robert Samuelson has called a "parody of leadership."
• Miller is a physician and molecular biologist and a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. His most recent book is "The Frankenfood Myth."
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysi ... Panel.aspx
Obama Slips Up On Oil Spill Panel
By HENRY I. MILLER
Posted 06/02/2010 06:23 PM ET
I dislike President Obama's style and substance. A whiner and left-wing ideologue, he is remarkably slow-witted when out of range of speechwriters and teleprompters. I'll say one thing for him, though: He brings a sense of irony to government.
The latest example is the incomprehensible choice of William Reilly, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to co-chair the presidential commission to investigate the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
During Reilly's tenure, the EPA implemented policies that prevented the development of a high-tech method to mitigate the effects of the oil washing onto the magnificent beaches along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida.
During the 1980s microorganisms genetically engineered to feed on spilled oil were developed in laboratories, but draconian federal regulations discouraged their testing and commercialization and ensured that the techniques available for responding to these disasters remain low-tech and marginally effective.
They include methods such as deploying booms to contain the oil, spraying chemicals to disperse it, burning it and spreading absorbent mats.
At the time of the catastrophic 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, there were great expectations for modern biotechnology applied to "bioremediation," the biological cleanup of toxic wastes, including oil. Reilly, who at that time headed the EPA, later recalled:
"When I saw the full scale of the disaster in Prince William Sound in Alaska ... my first thought was: Where are the exotic new technologies, the products of genetic engineering, that can help us clean this up?"
Reilly should have known: Innovation had been stymied by his agency's hostile policies toward the most sophisticated new genetic engineering techniques. The regulations ensured that biotech researchers in several industrial sectors, including bioremediation, would continue to be intimidated and inhibited by regulatory barriers. Those policies remain in place today, and the EPA's anti-technology zealots show no signs of changing them.
The best way to prevent such accidents is, of course, to obtain energy from sources other than fuel oil. Bio-fuels have been widely touted as a possibility, but solutions to technical difficulties, such as breaking down plant materials so that they can be metabolized into ethanol, have thus far eluded scientists.
Ironically, EPA regulation has also inhibited the development of the genetically engineered bacteria and fungi that are needed. Thus, EPA's policies have for decades stymied safe energy production in two ways: (1) by preventing innovation applied to industrial processes that could produce biofuel, and (2) by obstructing the development and commercialization of oil-eating organisms that could be used in a spill.
Characteristically, the EPA didn't let science get in the way of policy. Its regulation focuses on any "new" organism (strangely and unscientifically defined as one which contains combinations of DNA from unrelated sources) that might, for example, literally eat up oil spills.
For the EPA, then and now, "newness" is synonymous with risk, and because genetic engineering techniques can easily be used to create new gene combinations with DNA from disparate sources, these techniques therefore "have the greatest potential to pose risks to people or the environment," according to the agency press release that accompanied the rule.
But science says otherwise. The genetic technique employed to construct new strains is irrelevant to risk, as is the origin of a snippet of DNA that may be moved from one organism to another: What matters is its function. Scientific principles and common sense dictate which questions are central to risk analysis for any new organism:
How hazardous is the organism you started with? Is it a harmless, ubiquitous organism found in garden soil, or one that causes illness in humans or animals? Does the genetic change merely make the organism able to metabolize and degrade oil more efficiently, or does it have other effects, such as making it hardier and more resistant to antibiotics and therefore difficult to control?
The EPA ignored the widely held scientific consensus that holds that modern genetic engineering technology is essentially an extension, or refinement, of earlier, cruder techniques of genetic modification. In fact, the U.S. National Research Council observed in 1989 that the use of the newest genetic engineering techniques actually lowers the already minimal risk associated with field testing.
The reason is that the new technology makes it possible to introduce pieces of DNA that contain one or a few well-characterized genes, in contrast with older genetic techniques that transfer or modify a variable number of genes haphazardly. All of this means that users of the new techniques can be more certain about the traits they introduce into the organisms.
The bottom line is that organisms crafted with the newest, most sophisticated and precise genetic techniques are subject to discriminatory, extraordinary regulation. Research proposals for field trials must be reviewed repeatedly case by case, and companies face uncertainty about final commercial approvals of products down the road even if they prove safe and effective.
Government policymakers seem oblivious to the power of regulatory roadblocks to impair resilience. Experiments using genetically engineered organisms confront massive red tape and politics and require vast expense. The costs and uncertainty of performing this R&D have virtually eliminated them as a tool to clean up oil spills and other pollution.
While he headed the EPA, Reilly was one of those know-nothing policymakers. Obama's tapping him to investigate the Gulf oil spill exemplifies what Newsweek and Washington Post contributing editor Robert Samuelson has called a "parody of leadership."
• Miller is a physician and molecular biologist and a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. His most recent book is "The Frankenfood Myth."
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
:roll: Hey I think the drive thru is backing up. Just like the crap in your head..
Maybe u should add the Burger King guy to ur teabagger agenda.
Look man I wasn't trying to be a dick,but I think the EPA messed up by not letting those scientist do research and development b/c they might have been able to prevent the oil from making it to the coastline.
as explained earlier ... the EPA works for industry ... they make sure industry gets away with things ... similar to how the fda works for the agriculture industry ...
ref. http://www.epa.gov/history/admin/agency/reilly.htm
...
Your article should point the finger at his predecessor, Lee M. Thomas during the Reagan Administration. If funding was cut to the EPA regarding bioremediation... he's your guy (more likely, Reagan was your guy).
...
Bioremediation may help in the Gulf, as soon as the oil gusher is capped. It is an expensive proposition (much costlier than hiring fisherman and shrimpers to skim oil off of the surface). Make fucking BP dip into their 2009 16 billion dollar profits to pay for the fucking shit... instead of us tax payers?
How about holding fucking BP and TransOcean responsible for the mess and the cost of cleaning up? Wasn't the whole disaster their responsibility?
...
Finally... if Reilly is not the best choice... who would YOU appoint?
Hail, Hail!!!
If anyone need regulations... it's bio-tech. Those guys are fucking around with shit like Ebola and SAR viruses and who knows what else.
Hail, Hail!!!
I hear you cosmo... I think BP should pay for every last cent and everybody who's life has been impacted like loss of income they should be 100% compensated for every cent they lost, especially people who make a living as fisherman or shrimpers ect
Have you seen that 60 min interview ? I don't think Trans ocean is the one to blame. They warned Bp what would happen if they didn't use the mud like they were suppose to.
I don't know who I would appoint,but I know who I wouldn't. I feel that the EPA COULD GIVE 2 SHITS ABOUT THE ENVIORMENT... They are nothing but an out of control bureaucracy that cares nothing about nothing more than making money..
Wait until cap and trade get's passed and let's see if you still feel the same about the EPA.
Not to mention they can already pass laws without having to go through congress,and you think that they don't have enough power? Maybe you would be happier living under an authoratarian dictatorship.
they can shut you down and fine you big time.
Godfather.
But they don't have real power to do much about the environmental sins of the big corporations.
they do and they don't. when the bush administration took office one of the first things they did was dismiss a lot of the outstanding fines from coal plants, oil and some other industries as well as not enforce their rules. some people in the epa resigned over it because their papers were being rewritten, court cases and previous fines were dropped and big polluters were getting away with breaking the law and not paying a cent. there was something like a 75% drop in court cases from the epa during bush's presidency. they're kinda like the un, they are good at shaking their finger and saying no no but then the guilty party just rolls their eyes, turns their back and walks away and ignores them and nothing changes.
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
And rightly so... they should shut down your illegally polluting processes if you are in violation of statutes and endanger the environmentand put the general public at risk. That is why regulation is necessary. Because the private sector doesn't give a shit about anything other than profits to boost their stock prices.
Hail, Hail!!!
+1 .. been shown time and time again.