Isn't it great when politics can solve issues in science:
...a pair of Environment Canada bureaucrats said they don't even know who's responsible for climate change policy anymore. They said the now-defunct directorate was specifically in charge of overseeing all new climate-change policy, and that its 10 employees are being reassigned to various quarters.While that is admittedly a lot of ways of saying it, it appears the results of New Science is in - no worries - move along! Bloggers and politicians have settled the matter so let it be. Hopefully so they will have the vision to apply the same understanding of which knowledge can be to medicine and engineering."Even the people working here say, 'Who's really accountable for making climate change policy anymore?' They don't even know," said one bureaucrat who requested anonymity. "Right now we don't know who's accountable."
No, I meant the other sort of engineering.
Comments
Jay Currie - March 15, 2007 5:28 pm
Wow, given the last ten years of "all action, all the time" on the climate change file I would think greenies would be rather pleased to see the back of the bureaucrats who presided over the 35% increase in Canada's CO2 emissions.
As for science, well that's just so 1999...now one of the IPCC lead authors informs us via the Guardian,
<blockquote><p>This is the wrong question to ask of science. Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights into the question if it recognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science. But to proffer such insights, scientists - and politicians - must trade (normal) truth for influence. If scientists want to remain listened to, to bear influence on policy, they must recognise the social limits of their truth seeking and reveal fully the values and beliefs they bring to their scientific activity. the guardian emphasis (and staggered astonishment) added</p></blockquote>
Alan - March 15, 2007 9:14 pm
Right. You figure out the right path on climate change, if any, by firing the scientists who don't place being popular with the loud clique above science.<p>Remind me to never drive in a car engineered to your satisfaction.
David Janes - March 16, 2007 6:29 am
The article you reference from TorStar quotes "anonymous" bureaucrats who "speak for background" and who could be reasonably feel a little bitter about being booted from their little project. What I don't see mentioned <i>anywhere</i> in there, as implied by Al's last response, is the word "scientist". What does this crack team have to show for the last 10 years of work that Harper should keep them on: the now defunct "Green Lane"? The laughable and ineffective "one-tonne challenge", whose demise has "demoralized bureaucrats"?
My comfort level of using any product that doesn't have their involvement remains fine.
Alan - March 16, 2007 8:16 am
I hate when you point out the obvious.