Posted on 02/26/2006 11:12:43 AM PST by alumleg
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are among the most popular and scientifically sophisticated agencies in the U.S. government. Not only do they do good science, they do dramatic, risky, and even romantic things--capturing comet dust, sending surveyors to Mars, flying airplanes into hurricanes, and providing images of impending weather events. They are full of productive, respected scientists. We have published papers from groups at both agencies and have been proud to do so.
But these days, we're trying to figure out what is happening to serious science at NOAA and NASA. In this space a month ago, I described some of the research that supports a relationship between hurricane intensity and increased water temperatures. Two empirical studies, one published in Science and one in Nature, show that hurricane intensity has increased with oceanic surface temperatures over the past 30 years. The physics of hurricane intensity growth, worked out by Kerry Emanuel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has clarified and explained the thermodynamic basis for these observations.
Yet a NOAA Web site** denies any relationship between global climate change and hurricane strength. It attributes the latter instead to "tropical multidecadal signals" affecting climate variability. Emanuel has tested this relationship and presented convincing evidence against it in recent seminars. As for the many NOAA scientists who may agree with Emanuel, the U.S. Department of Commerce (the executive agency that NOAA is part of) has ordered them not to speak to reporters or present papers at meetings without departmental review and approval.
That's bad enough, but it turns out that things are even worse at NASA, where a striking front-page story by Andy Revkin in the New York Times (28 January 2006) details the agency's efforts to put a gag on James Hansen, direct or of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, after a talk he gave at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco in December 2005. His sin was that he pointed out that the climate change signal is now so strong, 2005 having been the warmest year in the past century, that the voluntary measures proposed by the administration are likely to be inadequate.
Hansen was told that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued. The Times story identifies two NASA public affairs officials, Dean Acosta and George Deutsch, as responsible for delivering this news and insisting that Hansen's "supervisors" would have to stand in for him at public appearances. Those will presumably take place in approvable venues and certainly not on National Public Radio (NPR). Deutsch is reported to have rejected a Hansen interview requested by NPR on the grounds that it was "the most liberal news outlet in the country."
For at least two reasons, this event may establish a new high-water mark for bureaucratic stupidity. First, Hansen's views on this general subject have long been widely available; he thinks climate change is due to anthropogenic sources, and he's discouraged that we're not doing more about it. For NASA to lock the stable door when this horse has been out on the range for years is just silly. Second, Hansen's history shows that he just won't be intimidated, and he has predictably told the Times that he will ignore the restrictions. The efforts by Acosta and Deutsch are reminiscent of the slapstick antics of Curley and Moe: a couple of guys stumbling off to gag someone who the audience knows will rip the gag right off.
These two incidents are part of a troublesome pattern to which the Bush administration has become addicted: Ignore evidence if it doesn't favor the preferred policy outcome. Above all, don't let the public get an idea that scientists inside government disagree with the party line. The new gag rules support the new Bush mantra, an interesting inversion of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield's view on war: "You don't make policy with the science you have. You make policy with the science you WANT." But the late-breaking good news is that NASA Administrator Griffin has said that there will be no more of this nonsense, and Deutsch, the 24-year-old Bush appointee sent to muzzle Hansen, has left the agency abruptly after his résumé turned out to be falsified. A change of heart? Stay tuned.
10.1126/science.1125749
**www.magazine.noaa.gov/stories/mag184.htm
Haven't seen the latest, will look for them.
Welcome to Free Republic and thanks for the post. A lot of people here think there is no such thing as global warming/climate change, because that's what Rush Limbaugh tells them to think. It is disgraceful that pols are muzzling scientists. But what Donald Kennedy needs to do, is to get the ear of the President and the Republican leadership, not antagonize them.
"It's similar to some charities: the last thing their big bucks executives and board members want is the problem to be solved. Then they have to look for real jobs."
I don't believe that. Do you? They do want the problem solved because then it makes them look like geniuses for hiring certain scientists or funding certain research programs. In turn their professional worth goes up and they are more likely to be hired by some other organization with a problem to solve. Being an exectutive or a board member is like any other job. If you aren't productive, you will get the boot eventually.
"We have to give up meat because the methane from farm animals is a much more serious 'green house' gas than CO2..."
"If you follow the trend line, the polar caps will lose all their ice in X number of decades...."
Art baby, what about all the other planets in solar system that are heating up, without the presence of man or the
next cow in line for my steak dinner?
The tool in this scenario is us. Why we allow Hansen to continue publishing such crap on our dime is perplexing.
At least you stuck around to engage in dialog - most hurl garbage and then do the cut and run thing. Welcome to the grindstone!
What is disgraceful is spending billions of taxpayer dollars every year to create more models to push a blatently political scientific theory. Forcing is not worth billions in research. Independence from foreign oil is nice but it's not worth billions in boondoggles either.
Get real jobs, eh? Such complainers. Government scientists are not scientists first, they are sinecurees. On the dole.
I gotta somewhat agree with you though, Rush Limbaugh is no scientist either. I doubt he's looked into the science more than superficially. I have studied forcing, both from an energy balance and a weather modelling perspective. My conclusions are my own, not Rush Limbaugh's.
And by they way men are NOT walking on the moon. The past imperfect verb tense you used suggests we are still getting to the moon. We are not. We be not so being brought walking. Why? Because it was a government project and not a private one. If we had been brought space privatising rather than moon walking, we would likely today still strolling lunarly been brung, be bringing and being brought.
And GPS? Really? Are you sure?
Or not, depending on your political dogma, and your level of tonedeafness on subjects you've "made up your mind" about.
The federal government currently funds several programs that have the purpose or effect of conserving energy or reducing emissions of greenhouse gases but that are not identified as being directly linked to climate change.Despite doubtful data savvy bureaucrats cleverly use Climate Change as a stealthy euphemism for Global Warning to keep that pork coming their way. The alleged anti-environment Bush administration actually increased Climate Change (Global Warning) funding by $250,000,000 from $5,090,000,000 in 2004 to $5,473,000,000 in 2006.
Global warming was the GOAL of the research and to find any evidence otherwise is regarded as failure.
The rinky-dink computer models they use will come with anything they need if they "tweak" them enough....and they do...for $$$$.
News of everything that proves global warming is not man-made is suppressed. Same $$$ at work.
Even global warming's biggest believers will have to admit, that the difference between us taking drastic measures and doing absolutely nothing would only make the difference (in their own computer models, (fully tweaked) of a fraction of one degree over a hundred year span.
It's the "herd instinct" that makes most people buy into it. They are told a huge number of scientists favor global warming. Science has never been about choosing up sides and which ever side has the most members must be right. That's not science, it's political spin.
If you still believe in that crap, you haven't really done any homework. It's all available online and is easy to find. There's no good excuse for being "Stuck on Stupid" on this subject.
Why would you let Art Bell on your pillow speaker? I'd immediately launder the pillow cover with extra bleach, and disinfect the speaker.
Nevertheless, merely a journalist.
You probably don't want to talk about Dr. Richard A. Lindzen, a member of the IPCC committe who said,
When the report's summary came out, he was dismayed to read its conclusion: "The balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate." "That struck me as bizarre," he says. "Because without saying how much the effect was, the statement had no meaning. If it was discernible and very small, for instance, it would be no problem." Environmentalist Bill McKibbon referred to this phrase in an article in The Atlantic in May 1998: "The panel's 2,000 scientists, from every corner of the globe, summed up their findings in this dry but historic bit of understatement."
In an angry letter, Lindzen wrote that the full report "takes great pains to point out that the statement has no implications for the magnitude of the effect, is dependent on the [dubious] assumption that natural variability obtained from [computer] models is the same as that in nature, and, even with these caveats, is largely a subjective matter."
His credentials?
Prof. Lindzen is a recipient of the AMS's Meisinger, and Charney Awards, and AGU's Macelwane Medal. He is a corresponding member of the NAS Committee on Human Rights, a member of the NRC Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, and a Fellow of the AAAS1. He is a consultant to the Global Modeling and Simulation Group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (Ph.D., '64, S.M., '61, A.B., '60, Harvard University)
Respected indeed!
But don't stop with my critique. Read the thread and critique it for yourself. Then read other more scientific sources (I recommend junkscience.com) and critique those as well. Don't just accept either side, but form your own conclusions. And don't dismiss us all here as Rushbots.
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