More On The Mix of Politics And Science

[Bob Parcelles,Jr.]

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More info.

Bob Parcelles, Jr.
Pinellas Park, FL

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Oil and Websites Don't Mix
by Jeffrey Benner
Wired Online
2:00 a.m. Mar. 23, 2001 PST

Like oil and water, politics and science don't mix
very 
well.

And in the case of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

website, the science
of ecology got all mucked up when it
was mixed with the politics of oil drilling.

It all started shortly before President Bush set foot
in 
the White House,
when the "transition team" -- which
included officials representing President Clinton and
Bush 
-- instructed all
federal agencies to remove information
from their websites specifically related to the
Clinton 
administration and
its policies.

Since Bush had made opening the refuge to oil
exploration a 
campaign
issue -- promising to reverse Clinton's rigid
protection of the area -- the folks at the Alaska
branch of 
the Fish and
Wildlife Service, which oversees the Arctic
refuge, found themselves in a tough spot.

After all, the department's motto is "to conserve,
enhance, 
and protect wild
things on the last frontier."

Complicating matters further was that the memo was
vague 
and devoid of
specifics.

Faced with vague instructions to purge the website of 
anything Clinton, a
duty to protect Alaska's wildlife, and a
new boss rumored to be hell bent on oil, USFWS Alaska 
public affairs
representatives Karen Boylan and Bruce
Woods felt they were walking a fine line without a
map.

For instance, the website had a letter from former 
Secretary of the Interior
Bruce Babbitt outlining the
government's opposition to oil wells in the refuge.
Then 
there was a section
dealing with the arctic refuge, which
provided extensive scientific information to support
the 
administration's
position that oil drilling would have a
disastrous impact on wildlife in the refuge.

The letter from Secretary Babbitt definitely had to
go. But 
what about the
analysis of oil's impact on the
environment? That was a tougher call. Was it a
political 
treatise, or a
scientific document?

"Dealing with the change in policy was tough," said
Boylan, 
who was trained
as a biologist. "The hardest part is to
stay with the biological information that communicates
the 
values of the
refuge and not get into political territory.
It's hard. We got into this business because of 
conservation."

A few days before Bush took office, they posted a new 
version of the website
that attempted to preserve the
scientific information on the potential impacts of 
drilling, without putting
the new administration in an awkward
position. Boylan calls it "Version B." It's roughly
what 
appears on the
website now.

"We were looking to get rid of positional documents
from 
the previous
administration," Boylan said. "We didn't want
the department to have to tell us to take things down.

Everyone was
scrambling to do the right thing."

But after a few days, Boylan and Woods decided that
perhaps 
they hadn't gone
far enough. They took down the
entire section dealing with the potential
environmental 
impact of oil
development on the refuge's ecosystem. No
instructions from anyone prompted this second revision

("Version C"), Boylan
said.

The next day, acting FWS director Marshall Jones (he
is 
still in that
position) called Boylan and Woods from
Washington. He told them a group called Defenders of 
Wildlife had complained
about the information on the impact
of oil exploration getting taken down. By the end of
the 
conference call,
they all decided it would be best to revert
back to "Version B."

"In the scrub of the website, we took out anything
that 
would be counter to
new policy," Boylan said. "We were
trying to be proactive, but we pulled too much. So we
put 
back most of what
we pulled. Most is back up there."

Still, when compared with how it appeared before the 
transition began, the
final version still contains significant
revisions to the section on oil and gas development.

The Defenders of Wildlife collected screenshots of the
site 
before and after
the changes. According to faxed
copies of these, the version that now appears on the 
website went beyond
obviously necessary edits like
removing position statements from Babbitt.
A summary of a 1987 USFWS study of the environmental
impact 
of oil
development on the refuge has been
removed, although there is still a link (PDF file) to
the 
study itself.
Also, unambiguous statements asserting that
development will impact the environment negatively
have 
been deleted or
watered down.

Woods and Boylan defend the revisions. The scientific 
information has been
preserved, and only interpretations of
the data have been altered, they said.

"If you pulled up from before and after, you would
find 
virtually no change
in the science," Woods said.
"Statements of opinion were changed."

But a close look at the changes yields examples where
the 
line between fact
and opinion, science and politics, is
tough to see.

For example, the Clinton-era site stated:

"In winter, only about nine million gallons of liquid
water 
are available in
the (section of ANWR where development
is proposed), which is enough to freeze into and
maintain 
only 10 miles of
ice roads. Therefore, full exploration ...
would require a network of permanent gravel pads and 
roads."

That paragraph now reads:

"In winter, only about nine million gallons of liquid
water 
may be available
in the entire 1002 Area, which is enough
to freeze into and maintain only 10 miles of ice
roads. 
Therefore, full
development may likely require a network of
permanent gravel pads and roads."

In both versions, a list of potential impacts of oil 
development on the ANWR
environment follows. Four of the
original seven have been edited somehow. Two were
deleted 
altogether,
including this one regarding water
supplies:

"Increased freezing depths of rivers and lakes as a
result 
of water
extraction (for ice road and pad construction
and for oil well reinjection), killing overwintering
(sic) 
fish and aquatic
invertebrates."

Confronted with some specific examples of changes,
Woods 
conceded that the
editing process had not been easy.
"The line between opinion and science became fuzzy."

In a speech at the National Energy Summit on March 19,

Secretary of Energy
Spencer Abraham said the nation
suffered from an "energy supply crisis." He also
addressed 
what he called
"myths" that were blocking an increase in
supply. Myth number one: "It is impossible to balance 
energy exploration and
environmental protection."

While it sounds as though minds have already been made
up 
at the top, Boylan
and Woods say all they can do is
try to inform their superiors about what they know
best: 
wildlife.

"We can just do our best to educate all the
decision-makers 
in the areas in
which we have expertise, which are
biology and ecology," Woods said. "We don't have
expertise 
in geology."

The way things are going, in four years they will at
least 
have learned a
thing or two about politics.

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=====
Bob Parcelles, Jr
Pinellas Park, FL
RJP Associates <rjpassociates at yahoo.com>
rjparcelles at yahoo.com
http://rainforest.care2.com/welcome?w=976131876
"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."- Confucius

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