Christine Todd Witless Bush’s EPA pick has much to learn
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Anti-regulatory edge -- Said New Jersey
environmental policy "Open for Business" --
dodges global warming -- confuses global warming with ozone depletion
Source: Orange County Weekly
Christine Todd Witless Bush’s EPA pick has much to learn
by Anthony Pignataro
It’s an American tradition for incoming
presidents to nominate completely
unqualified individuals for cabinet posts.
John F. Kennedy put Robert
McNamara—the father of Ford’s
Edsel—in charge of the Pentagon.
Ronald Reagan was something of a
master at this practice, having installed
James "I don’t know how many future
generations we can count on before the
Lord returns" Watt as interior secretary
and longtime political crony Edwin
Meese as attorney general.
Now George Bush the Younger has
made his own contribution to the cabinet
Hall of Shame: New Jersey Governor
Christine Todd Whitman is his choice to
head the federal Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA).
The EPA enforces the nation’s myriad anti-pollution regulations. For the past
eight years, Carol Browner—an environmental attorney, former head of
Florida’s Department of Environmental Regulation and a staunch
environmentalist —has headed the agency.
Whitman’s tenure as governor had a decidedly anti-regulatory edge: in
addition to naming state environmental policy "Open for Business," she
dismantled numerous state pollution-monitoring and -reduction programs. It’s
also clear she doesn’t understand environmental science.
Consider the Dec. 21 New York Times article detailing what happened when
a reporter asked for her assessment of global warming.
"Still somewhat uncertain," she told the reporter. "Clearly there’s a hole in the
ozone—that has been identified. But I saw a study the other day that showed
that that was closing. It’s not as clear, the cause and effect, as we would like
it." Later, Whitman added that global warming and ozone depletion were
"interrelated" and that she wasn’t "sure that there’s a scientific consensus on
how to deal with them."
For environmentalists, Whitman’s answer is extremely unsettling. Not only did
she confuse ozone depletion with global warming—two very different and
distinct problems—but she also grossly understated scientists’ current
understanding of both phenomena.
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UC Irvine research professor F. Sherwood Rowland agrees. "The answer is a
non sequitur," he said after listening to the Times quote. Rowland explained
that while distant interrelations do exist between global warming and ozone
depletion, the two phenomena occur independently of each other.
Rowland is in a unique position to comment on Whitman’s statement, having
been one of three research scientists to win the Nobel Prize for chemistry in
1995 for work isolating the damage chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) do to the
planet’s ozone layer. Currently the Donald Bren research professor of
chemistry and earth system science at UCI, Rowland is one of the
"environmentalist gods" so often derided by religious zealots and pro-business
ideologues.
That’s understandable, considering Rowland’s pissant credentials. He earned
his doctorate in chemistry from the University of Chicago in the late 1940s,
having studied under such legendary physicists as Edward Teller and Enrico
Fermi. His mentor was Dr. William Libby, who eventually won his own Nobel
Prize for chemistry in 1960 for his development of the carbon 14 dating
technique.
As such, he is uniquely qualified to give governor Whitman a much-needed
lesson in atmospheric science.
"Ozone depletion is unrelated to global warming," said Rowland. "Ozone
depletion allows more ultraviolet radiation, which causes skin cancer. It is all
very well understood."
Simply put, the ozone layer is a natural shield protecting surface animal life
from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation, which can cause skin cancer. The
work by Rowland and his colleagues that earned them the Nobel Prize
showed that CFCs, emitted for decades by air conditioners, refrigerators and
aerosol cans, destroy stratospheric ozone.
As for the "study" Whitman mentioned concerning the ozone hole’s eventual
disappearance, Rowland explained that there is now consensus in the scientific
community that CFC controls enacted over the past decade have finally begun
to slow the release of ozone-depleting chemicals into the upper atmosphere.
Indeed, global agreements such as the 1987 Montreal Protocol have cut CFC
emissions throughout Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States. But these
gains have been partially offset by increased CFC emissions throughout Asia,
particularly China.
"The ozone hole should go away permanently in the next 50 to 75 years," he
said, explaining that the hole waxes and wanes naturally over the course of a
year. "We’ve put a cap on [CFC releases], and now we have to let natural
processes repair it."
That’s ozone depletion in one very brief lesson. But global warming is
something completely different.
"Global warming concerns the escape from Earth of infrared radiation," said
Rowland. He explained that the buildup of carbon dioxide and methane in the
lower atmosphere traps the heat released by the Earth like a greenhouse,
heating the planet.
"It is a much more detailed subject than ozone depletion," Rowland said. "The
complications are very elaborate. But there is no doubt that carbon dioxide
and methane are increasing in concentration."
Rowland said it’s common for him to hear people confuse ozone depletion
and global warming. As for our future regulator, he said, "It just means the
learning curve for her is very steep. It’s only disconcerting if she hasn’t learned
better [once] she’s confirmed."
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