President Obama has entered the discussion about Puget Sound shoreline regulation in an interesting if tangential way. Let’s hope that the Puget Sound Partnership, Department of Ecology, and COBI planners were listening. Earlier today, he said…
From tiny embryonic cells to the large-scale physics of global warming, (Obama) urged researchers on Monday to follow science and not ideology as he abolished contentious Bush-era restraints on stem-cell research.
“Our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values,” Obama declared as he signed documents changing U.S. science policy and removing what some researchers have said were shackles on their work.
“It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda — and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology,” Obama said.
Researchers said the new president’s message was clear: Science, which once propelled men to the moon, again matters in American life. AP story
The New York Times said…
President Obama’s directive on Monday to “guarantee scientific integrity” in federal policy making could have a far-reaching impact, affecting issues as varied as climate change, national security, protection of endangered species and children’s health.
… Mr. Obama delighted many scientists and patients by formally announcing that he was overturning the Bush administration’s limits on embryonic stem cell research. But the president also went one step further, issuing a memorandum that sets forth broad parameters for how his administration would choose expert advisers and use scientific data.
The document orders Mr. Obama’s top science adviser to help draft guidelines that will apply to every federal agency. Agencies will be expected to pick science advisers based on expertise, not political ideology, the memorandum said, and will offer whistle-blower protections to employees who expose the misuse or suppression of scientific information. more
We call on Gov. Gregoire, Mayor Kordonowy and our City Council to embrace the President’s message and inform planners at all levels to rely on real science when formulating land use regulations.
The term “best available science” was wisely included in our state’s Growth Management Act, but it has come to mean something very different from “the best available scientific information.”
In our state and local governments, when relevant environmental research has not been available, planners (almost universally non-scientists) have used studies from dissimilar environments in other parts of the US, or local work that has not been peer reviewed, to justify their personal agendas. They have even had the audacity to call the work “peer reviewed” when the “peers” were land use planners, trained to be bureaucrats not scientists.
See Weird Science and Best Science for more info.
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