Clampdown on Obama’s Open Government

  • Climate scientist James Hansen says censoring science and controlling the message or restricting access is not unique to the Bush White House. (Photo courtesy of The White House)

The Obama administration has stressed openess and transparency in government. But Lester Graham reports, government employees, scientists and journalists say that transparency is not as clear as they’d like.

Transcript

The Obama administration has stressed openness and transparency in government. But Lester Graham reports, government employees, scientists and journalists say that transparency is not as clear as they’d like:

Federal government websites have started featuring plans for transparency. Go to the Environmental Protection Agency site and you’ll find the “Open Government Plan 1.0.” The Food and Drug Administration site has a “transparency tool.” You can click on the Department of Energy’s “open” icon. Nearly every federal agency has a similar openess and transparency plan.
But inside the agencies you’ll hear a different story.

James Hansen is a climate scientist in NASA’s Goddard Space Center. He was famously muzzled by the Bush administration because Hansen’s science on climate change did not match the Bush White House policy on climate change. But James Hansen says censoring science and controlling the message or restricting access is not unique to the Bush White House.

“It’s really both parties feel they control the offices of public affairs in the science agencies. And, they think that the news that comes out of the offices of public affairs should be supportive of the administration’s policies.”

It seems to be a carry-over from political campaigns. During the campaign, handlers work keep everyone “on message” to make there are no embarrasing statements. Then, they bring that same mentality with them when they’re rewarded with jobs in the government.

One career press officer who did not want to be identified told me about “exteme frustration” among his colleagues. Recently there’s been a quote “tightening of the screws” by political appointees overseeing the press officers. Instead of the press officers doing their job, helping journalists get in contact with the bureaucrats, and scientists within an agency… they’re inhibited, restricted by political appointees.

Journalists have been trying to work around the obstacles thrown up by the political appointees.

Christy George is a reporter and the President of The Society of Environmental Journalists. Full disclosure here– I am a member of the SEJ. She says the journalists have been fighting this battle against many presidential administrations.

“Politicians love to control their message.”

But with all the promises of transparency in government, some reporters thought things would change.

“When President Obama came in and pledged to greater transparency and open government, we thought that was going to be a good thing and dramatically different from the Bush administration. And it’s not dramatically different in certain agencies. It seems like things are just largely continuing on.”

Christy George is quick to note, the Environmental Protection Agency has addressed some of the journalists’ issues. But, there are still problems of getting access to key scientists and others who contribute to how laws are enforced.

“It becomes harder to get information out of government when people are trying to manage information.”

Darrell West is the vice president and director of Governance Studies at the think tank, the Brookings Institution. He says when political appointees work to control the message, it’s not helpful to anyone.
And West says some of this transparency that agencies are trumpeting is really a way to avoid the scrutiny of journalists and activists and present information directly to the public through the internet.

“There is a risk that the flow of information is going to be more restricted and people are going to be told only what the government wants them to hear.”

And if you’re only hearing what the government wants you to hear… there’s a significant risk you’re not going to hear all you need to know.

For the Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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TV Weathercasters on Climate Change

  • TV weathercasters have differing opinions about climate change according to a recent study. (Photo courtesy of Scott Eric CC-2.0)

A new survey reveals what TV weathercasters think about climate change. Lester Graham reports… that’s important because many people look to the TV weathercaster for information about climate change.

Transcript

A new survey reveals what TV weathercasters think about climate change. Lester Graham reports… that’s important because many people look to the TV weathercaster for information about climate change.

Surveys by the George Mason University researchers have shown many people trust the person who tells you whether to take an umbrella for news of global warming.
Edward Maiback is director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason. The survey revealed different TV weathercasters have different opinions about climate change.

“About half of them tell us, responded to our survey that climate change is real; about a quarter said that it wasn’t and about another 20 percent said that they weren’t sure.”

By comparison, a survey of leading climate scientists found 96-percent of them indicated climate change was real and human activity is a significant cause.

Maybe that differences shouldn’t be surprising. Forecasting the weather is not the same as predicting climate change. Weather… is next week. Climate is the next century.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Saving Energy in Online Activities

  • Servers at Expedient data center in Garfield Heights, near Cleveland, Ohio (Photo by Julie Grant)

One industry that’s not suffering in the economic downturn is information technology. The demand for IT keeps growing. But that worries some people. Our growing number of internet searches and data storage is using a lot of energy. Julie Grant reports on how some companies are making their IT more environmentally friendly – and saving money in the process:

Transcript

One industry that’s not suffering in the economic downturn is information technology. The demand for IT keeps growing. But that worries some people. Our growing number of internet searches and data storage is using a lot of energy. Julie Grant reports on how some companies are making their IT more environmentally friendly – and saving money in the process:

(sound of an internet search with a tea kettle)

By some estimates, two Google searches create the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling water for a cup of tea.

Most people don’t think about the greenhouse gas emissions caused by their internet use. But there are about 200-million
searches globally each day – and each search kicks a lot of servers into gear. It adds up.

Albert Esser is an IT expert with Dell Computers. He says
in just a few years internet use could use 3% of the nation’s energy supply. That’s a lot of carbon pollution.

“From a global greenhouse perspective, that’s about the same as the airline industry will cost.”

But Esser says computers don’t need to use that much energy. Most computer systems are so
in-efficient today – that they’re wasting more than 90% of the energy they use.

(sound of a data center)

This is a data center. It’s filled with racks and racks of servers.

A hundred different companies rent space here. Each company has its own set of servers – to coordinate its email systems, word processing, online credit card transactions – all kinds of programs its employees and customers use.

But data centers can be real energy hogs. They need electricity to run all those servers. That creates a lot of heat, so they also need air conditioning. One data center can use as much electricity as a good-sized town.

(sound of electricity in the data center)

“You can hear the electricity, in here. The piles of batteries you see are attached to the uninterruptable power supply.”

Bryan Smith is marketing director for Expedient, which runs this and other data centers around the country. His customers want their computers to be fast, and that takes a lot of power.

But Smith says the data center does everything it can to cut down on energy usage.

“It’s obviously in our best interest to be energy efficient, because we’re the ones paying the power bill.”

So, they’ve set up the server racks to make them easier to cool. They’re also building a system to pull in cool air from the outside, instead of using so much air conditioning.

Some companies that use the data center are also starting to use software to create what are called virtual servers.

“This rack here is a virtualization rack, so you’ve for one rack here that has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 computers in it. Right? So each one of these servers is equal to 16 physical servers.”

And so for each of those ‘virtual servers’ they can turn off
15 actual servers.

But, even with all that saved space and energy, Expedient’s data centers are growing faster than they ever anticipated.

This one built in Cleveland only two years ago is just about sold out of space – so Expedient is building another data center next door.

Albert Esser at Dell says the most environmentally friendly way to build data center is not to build one at all.

He says making better use of old centers, with virtual computers and other energy efficiency measures, produces a lot less pollution. And it saves money.

“I think the economic downturn, as harsh as it sounds, is the best thing which could ever happen to green IT. Because the economic pressures will make people think much harder to just build a new data center without changing the way they operate it.”

So IT is learning what a lot of companies are learning – that going green can mean saving energy – and that’s better for the bottom line.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Report: Epa Limiting Info Access

A government watchdog group says the Environmental
Protection Agency might be limiting the public’s access to
information. Rebecca Williams reports that could hurt future
research on health and safety:

Transcript

A government watchdog group says the Environmental
Protection Agency might be limiting the public’s access to
information. Rebecca Williams reports that could hurt future
research on health and safety:

The EPA has been closing several of its research libraries. The agency
started doing that two years ago to save money. The libraries have
information on chemical safety, Superfund sites, and all kinds of other
health and safety data.

The Government Accountability Office says the EPA cut corners… and acted
too quickly.

The GAO reports the EPA closed the libraries without consulting outside
experts.

The report says the EPA closed its Chemical Library without notifying EPA
staff or the public. EPA scientists used the library to review industry
requests before new chemicals could be put on the market.

Congress has directed the EPA to re-open the libraries. The EPA hasn’t
reopened them yet. But the agency says it’s reviewing its library plans.

For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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The Encyclopedia of Life

A new online encyclopedia wants to give all living things on Earth their own
web sites. Even the mosquitoes and leeches. Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

A new online encyclopedia wants to give all living things on Earth their own
web sites. Even the mosquitoes and leeches. Rebecca Williams reports:


The Encyclopedia of Life is like MySpace for bugs, birds and bottom feeders.
There are bios, photos and videos of 30,000 species on the site. But
the scientists who run the site are planning pages for every species on
Earth. All 1.8 million of them.


Jesse Ausubel helps manage the encyclopedia. He wants you to be able to
pull up the site on your phone or Blackberry while you’re on a hike. Like a
field guide to find out what that funny looking bug is.


“But it’s also for scientists looking for large patterns in nature – if you want to study all plants that have purple coloring or all
animals that live at least 60 years.”


Ausubel says in a few months, they’ll launch the interactive version of the
Encyclopedia. Experts will make sure the science is accurate. But if you
want to blog about your favorite spider, there’s room for that too.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Cash Strapped Biologists Lean on Volunteers

  • The lynx was recently considered extinct in Michigan until a trapper caught one. (Photo courtesy of USFWS)

For years, federal and state governments have cut funding for wildlife protection. That’s led to complaints from biologists who say they don’t have enough money to adequately do their jobs, but it’s also led to a new movement. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports on how citizens are starting to take over duties once performed by trained scientists:

Transcript

For years, federal and state governments have cut funding for wildlife
protection. That’s led to complaints from biologists who say they don’t
have enough money to adequately do their jobs, but it’s also led to a new
movement. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee
reports on how citizens are starting to take over duties once performed by
trained scientists:


Ray Rustem says wildlife biologists these days are often chained to their
desks.


“Years ago, when I first started with the Department of Natural
Resources, wildlife habitat biologists spent quite a bit of time in the field
actually doing fieldwork. With the types of things that are going on now,
they’ve become much more in getting the planning done and we’ve had
to shift some of that fieldwork done to the technician level. Frankly,
yeah, we could always use additional people out there.”


Rustem is with the Wildlife Division of the Michigan Department of
Natural Resources. He says state funding has fallen steadily for years,
and one way he’s made up the difference is by involving Michigan
citizens. Rustem says the DNR uses dozens of volunteers for its frog and
toad survey in the early part of the summer.


“This is our tenth year and we’ve got at least 120 people who’ve been
doing this all ten years. That’s a tremendous amount of data that’s being
provided for us on information about species and where they’re located.”


Many groups are now using so-called citizen scientists to collect data.
Sally Petrella is a biologist who works with the non-profit organization
the Friends of the Detroit River.


“We’ve cut out so much of the funding for regular science that there’s a
real lack, and citizen scientists can cover far more areas than
professionals can, at a much lower cost.”


Petrella is standing beside the murky, reed-choked waters of the Rouge
River Watershed. It’s home to six species of frogs and toads. Every
summer, Friends of the Detroit River enlists the help of 700 people to
listen for the creatures as they call to each other from the marshy
grasses.


Petrella is standing beside one of her more loyal volunteers… Al Sadler.
Sadler admits that part of the appeal is the walk along the banks of the
river… but he also believes that public participation in wildlife
protection has become an absolute necessity.


“I think that it’s required if we plan on keeping any wildlife areas
around. I think that if citizens don’t get involved, I think that people
won’t know what they’re going to miss, and before we know it, there
won’t be much wild places left.”


Sadler is a fairly typical citizen scientist. He has a day job as an engineer
and volunteers in his spare time, but there are also people with advanced
degrees in biology and wildlife management who are called citizen
scientists simply because they don’t work for the government.


Dennis Fijakowski is one of those people. He’s the executive director of
the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy.


“We can’t count on the government to do everything for us. We have to
be a part of the solution.”


Fijakowski says ordinary people have made important contributions to
wildlife conservation. He says the lynx was considered extinct in
Michigan until a trapper caught one, and a rare Great Gray Owl was
discovered on a national wildlife refuge last spring by a photographer.


“You look back at the conservation history of our state and it was citizen
led. All of the important, the milestone decisions, legislation… it was
citizen led.”


John Kostyack with the National Wildlife Federation says involving
citizen scientists is great, but…


“They’re not really a substitute for having staff in the wildlife agencies…
state and federal and tribal. Because they are the ones who are going to
take this initial data, which is going to be very rough from volunteers,
and then use it to decide upon where to take the research next.”


And there have been cases in which citizen scientists have clashed with
state and federal governments. They are consistently at odds with government
officials over issues related to global warming and the Michigan Wildlife
Conservancy is locked in a bitter battle with state biologists over whether
the state is home to a viable cougar population.


The Conservancy’s Dennis Fijakowski acknowledges that the union
between government biologists and citizen scientists may not always be
an easy one, but he says the involvement of residents in the protection of
their state’s wildlife can only be a good thing.


“Because all anyone of us wants is that we pass on a wild legacy to our
children and grandchildren… and we’re not going to if we don’t get our
acts together.”


Many organizations offer citizens the opportunity to get involved in data
collection, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.


For the GLRC, I’m Celeste Headlee.

Related Links

Home Renovation Turns Up Surprise for Science

  • Egg collectors kept precise records about where and when their prize possessions were gathered. They carefully removed the contents of the egg, then nested the shells in cedar sawdust to protect them from insects. (Photo courtesy of Carrol Henderson)

More and more people say their favorite hobby is bird-watching. Many travel to hot bird-watching spots, and keep lists of which birds they see and where. A hundred years ago, birders were just as enthusiastic, but they practiced the hobby very differently. They collected bird eggs. A Midwestern farm family recently discovered an ancestor’s egg collection when they were remodeling an old farmhouse. Experts say the collection has a lot to offer to scientists studying birds today. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

More and more people say their favorite hobby is
bird-watching. Many travel to hot bird-watching spots, and keep
lists of which birds they see and where. A hundred years ago,
birders were just as enthusiastic, but they practiced the hobby
very differently. They collected bird eggs.


A Midwestern farm family recently discovered an ancestor’s egg collection when they were
remodeling an old farmhouse. Experts say the collection has a
lot to offer to scientists studying birds today. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:


Carrol Henderson considers himself a very lucky man. He’s the director of the non-game wildlife program at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. He grew up on a farm in central Iowa.


Last summer, he learned that a family in his old neighborhood was renovating a farmhouse. It had belonged to Ralph Handsaker. When Handsaker died thirty years ago, the house was boarded up and left alone.


“… And when the family started renovating this old farmhouse for the great-great-grandson, John Handsaker, along with a number of old animal mounts and interesting things, there were these two large chests with about fifteen drawers each, that were totally filled with little sets of wild bird eggs.”


The smallest egg, from a hummingbird, was small enough to sit on top of a dime. The biggest was an ostrich egg almost six inches long. Some were creamy white, others were speckled, others streaked with color like a Jackson Pollack painting.


There were more than 3,600 eggs, representing more than 400 species of birds from all over the world. And they were in perfect condition.


“Each set of eggs was very neatly labeled with information about the day they were collected, who the collector was, and information about the habitat where the egg was collected. Some of these eggs went all the way back to 1875, and they were collected by over three hundred different people from all over the world.”


This is how nature-lovers expressed their passion in those days. They called themselves oologists. They kept their eggs in drawers lined with cedar sawdust to protect them from insects. They also kept meticulous records.


“So the scientific data was very high quality among these avid collectors. So even today, these provide very important nest records for birds that are now gone. Like in my home county of Story County, Iowa, there were Marble Godwits, King Rails, Prairie Chickens, and Bobwhite Quail, and those are all gone now.”


The birds disappeared as people turned prairies into farms. But Carrol Henderson says the records in the bird collection provide detailed information about where and when they nested.


“And another intriguing thing is that when these people blew out the eggs, there was still a lining of the egg white or albumen left inside the egg. And that still has the original DNA genetic material, so it actually would be possible for scientists to do DNA analysis of these eggs to take a look at how they may compare with birds nowadays.”


Henderson says these collectors didn’t think they were harming the birds. That’s because if their eggs disappear, most birds will lay another set. But competition for the eggs of rare birds was disastrous.


“One person in Philadelphia had a collection of over seven hundred Peregrine Falcon eggs. Another Peregrine egg collector went to the same cliff and collected all the eggs from the Peregrines every year for 29 consecutive years. And then finally the nest was abandoned. And he said it was abandoned due to encroaching civilization. That was where egg collecting really had something of a dark side.”


Eventually, attitudes began to change. In 1918, the federal government passed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, to protect birds and eggs. But the government let three collectors keep on collecting. One of them was Ralph Handsaker. So his collection goes into the early 1950’s.


Carrol Henderson says there’s a lot to learn from these eggs. One of the best lessons is about human responsibility. Henderson says people these days enjoy nature differently than they did a hundred years ago. But we can still learn something from earlier methods.


“It’s like a little time machine: stepping back in time, seeing what was here, and then looking at what’s changed, and what does that mean for our own conservation efforts, how can we do a better job today to collect information and use that for our own conservation of wildlife species?”


Carrol Henderson’s article about the Handsaker egg collection will appear in the October issue of Birders World magazine. The Handsaker family is planning to donate the collection to a major university.


For the GLRC, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Gao Report: Epa Can’t Properly Review Chemical Safety

  • The Government Accountability Office is urging Congress to give the EPA help in assessing chemical safety. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Government Printing Office)

A government report reveals that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cannot assess the health risks of most of the chemicals in the products we use. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A government report reveals that the U.S. Environmental Protection agency cannot assess the health risks of most of the chemicals in the products we use. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


The investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accounability Office, found the EPA didn’t have the authority or the funding to properly review 85% of the chemicals in use today.


Chemicals that have been in use for years have not been properly reviewed because the EPA only has access to limited information. The laws, as they are written now, protect a chemical or other company’s secrets over public knowledge of the health risks.


Independent studies have indicated many of the close to eighty thousand chemicals in use might be threats to human health. The GAO report also indicates the EPA “…lacks sufficient data to ensure that potential health and environmental risks of new chemicals are identified.”


The GAO recommends that Congress give the EPA more authority to improve its ability to assess chemical risks.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Epa Needs to Improve Air Toxin Monitoring

  • The Inspector General says that the EPA could improve the air toxin monitoring system. (Photo courtesy of the National Institutes of Health)

The Inspector General for the Environmental Protection Agency says the agency needs to improve its air toxin monitoring system. A new report says there are no monitors in 45 out of 50 areas where cancer risks are highest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:

Transcript

The Inspector General for the Environmental Protection Agency
says the agency needs to improve its air toxin monitoring system.
A new report says there are no monitors in 45 out of 50 areas where
cancer risks are highest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:


The greater Chicago area is at the highest risk for cancer from air toxins in the Great Lakes region, though residents of big cities in all of the Great Lakes states are at an elevated risk.


The Clean Air Act lists nearly 190 hazardous air pollutants the EPA must regulate. The EPA Inspector General’s report says many high-risk areas have monitors but not within the specific area where people are most vulnerable.


Jim Pew is an attorney with the activist group, Earth Justice. He says it’s important to construct more monitors, but it’s more important to act on the data the EPA already has.


“It’s not a lack of information that’s stopping EPA from acting to get these risks down, and it’s not an impossibility, there are known ways that these problems can be addressed, it’s a lack of will. The agency just doesn’t want to do it.”


Officials with the EPA say they generally agree with the inspector general’s findings.


For the GLRC, I’m Celeste Headlee.

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Birders’ Passion Helps Scientists

  • The costs of hiring biologists to do a bird count across the U.S. would be astronomical. (photo by Deo Koe)

Every year, tens of thousands of avid birdwatchers wander through frozen fields and marshy swamps. Their job is to record as many birds as they can find in a given area. For birders, it’s a day to enjoy the outdoors while doing what they love most. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, that passion serves another purpose – it helps scientists:

Transcript

Every year, tens of thousands of avid birdwatchers wander through
frozen fields and marshy swamps. Their job is to record as many birds
as they can find in a given area. For birders, it’s a day to enjoy the outdoors
while doing what they love most. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly reports, that passion serves another purpose – it helps scientists:


(sound of footsteps)


Georgina Doe: “There’s five robins right there and there’s three common mergansers,
males…”


Georgina Doe scans the shoreline with her binoculars. Within seconds,
she spots a tiny glimpse of a bird and names it.


She knows them by the way they dive in the air, and the way they thrust
their chests out.


Doe has been scanning the treetops of Carleton Place, Ontario for
more than 30 years. She says she loves the chase and the element of surprise.
And over the years, birding has also been her escape.


She remembers watching a robin build its nest when her grandson
was seriously ill.


“So I used to count the birds every morning before I went off to
the hospital. And then after that, you come back to reality. Somehow a
little bird can just make you feel better.”


Birds have been a part of all of our lives. We might not know their names.
But we can remember holding a baby chick. Or hearing a cardinal on a crisp cold day. But now, many bird species are dwindling. And scientists are
counting on birders like Georgina Doe to help them find out why.


Doe is one of many birders in North America who collects
information for scientists. Jeff Wells works with that information
at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology.


“There’s no way that we could ever pay the tens of thousands of
trained biologists that would be necessary to gather this kind of
information. It’s only possible when we can engage volunteers like
we do in citizen science projects.”


Cornell runs at least a dozen programs that rely on information
from average birders.


There’s the Christmas Bird Count. About 50 thousand people participate.
Another 50 thousand track species during the Great Backyard Bird
Count in February.


The volunteers reported that wood thrushes are disappearing in
many areas. And they’re tracking the effect of the West Nile Virus
on bird populations.


“If a little bird dies, usually it just disappears quickly
and no one ever sees it. So we don’t really know the impact.
And so looking at the differences in the numbers and distribution
might give us some sense of when the disease was rampant in the summer,
whether it killed off enough birds to make a noticeable
difference in our count.”


(sound of quiet footsteps)


Robert Cermak: “You can see it’s about 10 inches high. It’s all fluffed
up right now…”


Birder Robert Cermak tiptoes closer to a barred owl sitting in the
crook of a tree. We’re in Ottawa, Canada’s capital and a city of about a million
people. When it comes to bird counts, this is Cermak’s territory.


“It’s not often that you see a barred owl, any owl, during
the day. They’re usually more secretive. This one is not too
afraid to be out so it’s probably more accustomed to having people
around it, since this is the center of the city.”


Like Georgina Doe, Cermak has been birding for years. But even with
veterans, there’s always concern about their accuracy. Cermak
discovered this firsthand when he reported seeing a rare
harlequin duck last year.


“I sent it in and a few hours later, someone from Cornell –
very politely because it’s a delicate subject to question
someone’s sighting of a rare bird – but they very delicately
indicated that a harlequin duck is extremely unusual in Ontario and
could I please provide a few extra details.”


Cermak sent them a published account of the sighting. He also
gave them the number of a local expert.


Jeff Wells says researchers check their facts carefully. They look
for reports that don’t match others in the surrounding area. Sometimes
an investigation turns up a trained ornithologist… and sometimes not.
But overall, Wells says the information has formed the basis for
hundreds of published studies.


That’s something that makes birders like Robert Cermak and
Georgina Doe feel proud.


“It’s nice because you’re contributing. You’re doing a
lot of hours, it uses a lot of gas, you go around a lot of blocks
but we just think it’s important.”


(sound of Georgina Doe walking)


Georgina Doe says she doesn’t really think of herself as a
scientist. But she’s out there every day, with her ear to the wind. And that’s
what the scientists are counting on.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.

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