Posted on 03/21/2006 6:11:29 AM PST by sonsofliberty2000
WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- A renown U.S. scientist says he is limited by the Bush administration as to who he can talk with and what he can say because of Bush`s political strategies.
James Hansen, chief of NASA`s top institute studying the climate, told Scott Pelley of the CBS program 60 Minutes government officials are attempting to rewrite science.
Hansen says global warming is accelerating because of human actions, specifically the burning of fossil fuels that emit huge amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbon and other pollutants into the atmosphere.
Hansen told CBS he believes humans have approximately 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases before global warming becomes unstoppable. He says the White House is blocking that message.
'In my more than three decades in the government I`ve never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public,' says Hansen.
Hansen says the Bush administration wants 'to listen only to those portions of scientific results that fit predetermined inflexible positions. This, I believe, is a recipe for environmental disaster.'
60 Minutes noted it had been trying to discuss the issue with the president`s science advisor for months, but was finally told he would never be available.
Especially 60 Minutes! I found another story though:
http://www.ombwatch.org/article/blogs/entry/1655/23
Climate Change, Whistleblowers, and Politicizing Science
If you missed it last night (what, you were watching basketball?), 60 Minutes had a segment on the Bush administration's tendency to rewrite the science of climate change. Here's a brief look:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
What James Hansen believes is that global warming is accelerating. He points to the melting arctic and to Antarctica, where new data show massive losses of ice to the sea.
. . . .
"The natural changes, the speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes that humans are making to the atmosphere and to the surface."
Those human changes, he says, are driven by burning fossil fuels that pump out greenhouse gases like CO2, carbon dioxide. Hansen says his research shows that man has just 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases before global warming reaches what he calls a tipping point and becomes unstoppable. He says the White House is blocking that message.
"In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public," says Hansen.
Restrictions like this e-mail Hansen's institute received from NASA in 2004. "[T]here is a new review process … ," the e-mail read. "The White House [is] now reviewing all climate related press releases," it continued.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the wake of last night's report, the Government Accountability Project announced today its support for a new nonprofit watchdog called Climate Science Watch, which will will support and be a resource for federal scientists who are experiencing political interference with their ability to communicate their findings on climate change.
Another watchdog?
What restrictions, exactly? Did somebody tape Hansen's big mouth shut? Or take away his "bigger-than-everyone-else's" soapbox?
All I could find:
http://wjz.com/minutes/sixtyminutes_story_079234356.html
"In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public," says Hansen.
Restrictions like this e-mail Hansen's institute received from NASA in 2004. "… there is a new review process … ," the e-mail read. "The White House (is) now reviewing all climate related press releases," it continued.
Why the scrutiny of Hansen's work? Well, his Goddard Institute for Space Studies is the source of respected but sobering research on warming. It recently announced 2005 was the warmest year on record. Hansen started at NASA more than 30 years ago, spending nearly all that time studying the earth. How important is his work? 60 Minutes asked someone at the top, Ralph Cicerone, president of the nation’s leading institute of science, the National Academy of Sciences.
Nevermind. Even better, perhaps:
Climate of dissent
Sunday, March 19, 2006
http://www.bergen.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkzOTcmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTY4OTg1MzAmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxNA==
James Hansen, a top NASA scientist and former Ridgewood resident, touched off a political ruckus in January when he told The New York Times that the Bush administration was trying to censor his public comments about global warming.
Hansen has been warning about the catastrophic potential of climate change for three decades, often against the wishes of Republican White Houses that dismissed the problem or advocated a slower approach to reining in greenhouse gases.
The censorship charges sparked similar complaints from other government scientists and prompted NASA's administrator to promise "scientific openness" at the agency. A 24-year-old press officer at NASA, who had been keeping tabs on Hansen, resigned after admitting that he lied on a resume about his college degree.
Hansen sat down with Record Staff Writer Alex Nussbaum earlier this month to discuss the politics of science, the Bush administration and why he thinks humanity is running out of time to prevent an ecological crisis.
THE RECORD: How have things changed since you went public with your censorship claims?
HANSEN: For the moment, I'm just ignoring that issue because NASA has now appointed a committee to decide on what communications policies should be, and they haven't finished deliberations. The NASA administrator has said everything right. He even said if you want to say something related to policy, that's OK as long as you say it's your own opinion, it's not NASA policy or position.
So I hope that NASA will be a good example. Some of the other agencies are even more strict, and in that there may have been some progress. In the case of NOAA [the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration], they have publicly taken a position that there's no relation between global warming and hurricane intensity and told their scientists they weren't supposed to dispute that, which is not a very good scientific approach. After I raised that issue, then they did change their position and took off their Web site the official position about the relationship. So that's progress.
In my more than 30 years of government, I've never seen such constraints on communication between scientists and the public. At EPA, for example, there's very strong constraint on communication, which I find objectionable because I feel that we're paid by the taxpayers, and we should be free to communicate. Responsible scientific opinions should not be decided by bureaucrats; they should be decided by scientists. As long as you make clear that you're not setting policy or attempting to set policy, then I don't think we should be so tightly constrained.
You said you were threatened with "dire consequences" if you publicly disputed White House policies. What do you think that meant?
That was said by one of the public affairs people. I'm sure that the new policy will not allow that sort of pressure. It was getting out of hand. In my opinion it was coming from the top. The inaccurate impression that was eventually left by The New York Times stories was that this was created by a 24-year-old. But the attempted constraints on me were really coming from his bosses. The highest levels in public affairs, the top two people, are both political appointees. It should be interesting to see how the approach will change with the new policies, which should be decided on in the next few weeks.
Your outspokenness on climate change has put you at odds with political superiors for decades. Why have you continued to speak out?
We're really near what I call the tipping point or point of no return. We've already had 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming, and there's another degree that's in the pipeline, without any further increase in greenhouse gases, because it takes the system time to respond because of the thermal inertia of the ocean. There's still more in the pipeline because of the infrastructure that exists – vehicles and power plants. Even if we decide that we should slow down the emissions, there's no way to stop them on a dime. So there's probably at least 1 degree Fahrenheit additional in the pipeline.
I think that's the highest that we dare let the global temperature go. That would make 3.5 degrees, and that's as warm as it has been in the last million years. If you follow a business-as-usual scenario with continuing to increase the emissions the way we have in recent years, the warming would be 5 degrees Fahrenheit on top of the 1.4, and that would be as warm as it has been since the middle Pliocene, which is 3 million years ago.
Three million years ago, the sea level was at least 25 meters [about 80 feet] higher, and there was no sea ice in the Arctic. Polar bears and seals and other wildlife there that depend on the ice would be pushed off the planet. There's a lot of other plant and animal life that would go extinct, especially the rich diversity of alpine species. They can try to migrate up the mountain as it gets warmer, but there's a limit. The area's getting smaller and smaller as you go up and the soils may not exist to allow things to migrate.
Adapting to a larger sea level change is going to be practically impossible in the coastal regions. It would be happening at a rate of a foot per decade, but you don't feel it as a gradual effect. You feel the effect at the time of nor'easters or hurricanes or other storms and that destroys infrastructure, and then you rebuild. But you're going to be forced to rebuild at a higher level and you're going to be continually moving. So a large sea level change is something that may be unthinkable.
I argue we should try to limit additional warming to 1 degree Celsius, which is 2 degrees Fahrenheit. There are still going to be impacts from that. But that would be in the range that has existed in the last million years, or near the top of the range. It's a lot more feasible to adapt to those terms.
What's this episode taught you about the intersection between science and politics?
The thing which caused the consternation was the statement at the end of my talk at the American Geophysical Union meeting in December, where I said that the difficulty [in addressing global warming] was related to the influence of special interests. The only way to overcome the special interests in a democracy is for the people to make their views and wishes known, but in order to do that the public needs to be accurately and honestly informed.
To be successful in science you need to present both sides of an argument without bias, and that hopefully is what I'm trying to do. This is obviously a very difficult problem. The United Nations has set up an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. They worked seven years to produce a very thick document. But it's so thick that they have to produce a summary for policy makers. But the policy makers are involved in the writing of that summary, and that proves to be a sticky problem.
You grew up in Iowa and studied at the University of Iowa under legendary astrophysicist James Van Allen, discoverer of the radiation belt surrounding the Earth. Did that background prepare you for the public debates you've taken up?
The example I gave of Van Allen's influence on students was his demeanor. He was just calm. He didn't get flustered. When I went to NASA, I heard that his proposal for an experiment on a mission to Jupiter was not selected because NASA headquarters was not very happy with him; he criticized NASA repeatedly for its emphasis on putting men in space instead of automated spacecraft. When I mentioned that to him in a letter, he just said, "I know that my positions have not endeared me to people at NASA headquarters, but I take the position that I'm dealing with honorable men."
It's a good attitude.
'In my more than three decades in the government I`ve never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public,' says Hansen.
Well, Dr. Hansen, it would seem that your only recourse is to resign your government position in protest. Then you can say anything you like.
Of course, it is complete nonsense that the message of global warming (oh, excuse me, "global climate change") is not getting out to the public. Dr. Hansen is being more than just a bit disingenuous.
I would agree with Dr. Hansen on one point, although not for the reasons he gives. The federal government does exert too much influence on science. By controlling the money for big science in this country, Congress and the federal funding agencies determine what is studied. I have seen the effects on the universities first hand, and it has not been pretty.
Another ranting con-man living off the taxpayer's teat.
Try to apply for a government grant to study the proposal that global warming is a UN Marxist scam to redistribute wealth and destroy free enterprise. You won't get it. Guaranteed.
Global warming studies have been politicized and are now crossing the line into outright propaganda.
I agree with you on that.
The other day (on CNBC perhaps?) a roundtable guest from Accu-weather pointed out that the current cycle, of cold years followed by warm-dry years, also occurred in the first decades of the 20th Century. In that case it was ---cold weather -- followed by the dust bowl.
The other panelists didn't seem at all impressed by his innocent observation.
This is gibberish. Methane and CFC's are not produced by combustion. He's simply lumped together the three "hot button" envirowhacko bogeymen into one mindless rant.
" The United Nations has set up an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. They worked seven years to produce a very thick document."
Here's the rest of the story -
Back in 2002 the US, along with a coalition of Third World, tossed out Robert T. Watson, head of the IPCC, and replaced him with Rajendra Pachauri, an engineer from India. Why did Watson get fired?
Patrick Michaels, one of America's premier climate scientists, explained that Watson told the asinine whopper that the earth would warm by 11 degrees.
In the dark of night, after the IPCC members reached consensus that there was little or no proof of so-called global warming, Watson inserted this lie into the IPCC report.
At the time, the UN also made 244 other temperature forecasts, all showing a cooling. But Watson manufactured this lie. Then Watson pointed to this fabricationand told the press that it "adds impetus for governments to live up to their commitments (under the Kyoto protocol) to reduce emmissions of greenhouse gases." And the propaganda press dutifully reported it
Watson was notorious with his carping against the United States and ignoring science in favor of looney left wing politics. He railed against capitalist free enterprise socities while embracing Soviet communist planned economies and government control of private property for the Marxist common good.
Hanson has firmly established himself in the camp of the left wing lunatics and should receive not one iota of credibility.
"In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public," says Hansen."
That must explain why he's flaping his hole on 60 Minutes?
How dumb does he think we are?
The problem is that his beliefs aren't based on solid science.
We don't have the ability to predict climate change. Our computer models can't even predict past climate changes, so we know they aren't accurate.
Scientific conclusions are based on proving things scientificly. These claims about global warming can't be proven scientificly.
When scientist make claims based on solid facts, or a compelling body of evidence that isn't easily refuted, then their claims have a great deal of credibility.
However, the human created global warming hype isn't based on solid facts or a compelling body of evidence that isn't easily refuted. The computer models aren't able to pass simple test like accurately predicting known climate changes from the past.
What we have are a bunch of "scientists" saying they are sure of something that we can prove they can't be sure of. That's pretty damaging to their credibility in my mind.
NASA Extinguishes
Global-Warming Fire
By Patrick Michaels
The Cato Institute
2-9-2
It really happened.
The NASA scientist who lit the bonfire of the global warming vanities with his flamboyant congressional testimony 14 years ago, has turned the hose on its dying embers.
There is now no reason for the Bush administration to give an inch on climate change. Sure, energy efficient technologies (like my Honda hybrid) are worth exploring. But there is absolutely no scientific reason for any expensive policy like the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Mr. Bush led the world by being the first to walk away from Kyoto, and science has proven him correct.
NASA's James Hansen now predicts precisely the same, small amount of warming in the next 50 years that the much-derided "climate skeptics" predicted all along. According to both the skeptics and Mr. Hansen, the planet is destined for a mere 0.7 degree Centigrade (1.25 degree Fahrenheit) warming between now and 2050. It's a good thing "W" listened to those skeptics before he decided on Kyoto. If he had waited for NASA, he might have committed the United States down the road to an unwarranted economic disaster for no good reason.
How did Mr. Hansen, once the darling of the green apocalyptics, come to adopt the scientific position they detest? Nature compelled, and NASA disposed.
The "skeptics" have argued, beginning in congressional testimony in 1989, that warming was likely to be the aforementioned low value because it had been so modest in previous decades, despite major changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane, the two principal "greenhouse" gases.
The skeptics' (the strange name we give to those who think the planet is OK) logic was simple: Nature had declared, despite the protestations of climate modelers and other tax-consumers, just how sensitive the Earth's surface temperature was to changes in global- warming gases. The answer: not very.
Climate models, such as those run by NASA, initially assumed that the sensitivity was much larger than it was in reality, and, consequently, those models predicted more warming than had occurred in reality. When this became embarrassingly obvious even to the non- "skeptics," my colleagues, ever-eager to keep the gravy train rolling, argued that some other compound, called sulfate aerosol, must be "hiding" the warming.
That one didn't wash for several reasons, not the least of which is that warming might even be the net effect of those human dust emissions. This was first noted way back in 1980 by other NASA scientists. But that finding was of little consequence until Mr. Hansen resurrected it in a paper published in 1997.
If nothing is "blocking" the warming, then the climate isn't as sensitive as the climate modelers had assumed. In addition, the climate modelers in general predicted that greenhouse gases themselves were piling up in the atmosphere much faster than they were. Atmospheric physics dictates that warming will damp off unless the gases go into the atmosphere in ever-increasing, exponential fashion.
Mr. Hansen slowly threw in the towel. After noting in 1997 that sulfates might actually cause little (if any) cooling (a position the "skeptics" had long held), he noted, in a 1999 paper, that greenhouse gases weren't increasing so rapidly after all (another fact the "skeptics" had been noting for years). Finally, in two papers in 2000 and 2001, he argued that all of the uncertainty about the planet's true sensitivity to warming dictated that we listen to nature, after all.
So, in his last paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Mr. Hansen and Makiko Sato wrote, "We predict an additional warming in the next 50 years of 3/4 plus or minus 1/4 degree Centigrade [1.35 plus or minus 0.5 degree Fahrenheit]" , which sounds an awful lot like page 210 of "The Satanic Gases," which I authored two years earlier with Robert Balling: "The Earth's average surface temperature will warm 0.65 to 0.75 degrees Centigrade (1.17 degrees to 1.35 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050." The only difference is that we have been using virtually the same number since Mr. Hansen's 1988 testimony.
Where are the reporters? Somewhere between Enron and September 11, you would think that the death of global warming would merit a feature or two unless, of course, it's the kind of news that they don't want you to hear.
We can only eagerly await the upcoming congressional hearings on Mr. Bush's vs. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's energy plans. The former wants oil from Alaska, and the latter wants to restrict combustion because of global warming. Perhaps Mr. Hansen could be called to testify alongside the skeptics.
In all fairness, Mr. Hansen still calls for emissions reductions. That position seems remarkably illogical, except that it is likely to keep him from being stoned by the greens, who feel increasingly betrayed by their once-apocalyptic hero, the man who hosed down global warming. ___
Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of "The Satanic Gases."
The guy makes one little mistake and you're all over him. Jeeeez.
It would be more accurate to say that Hansen has found it necessary to rewrite his own science.
From MonroeDNA's post
NASA's James Hansen now predicts precisely the same, small amount of warming in the next 50 years that the much-derided "climate skeptics" predicted all along. According to both the skeptics and Mr. Hansen, the planet is destined for a mere 0.7 degree Centigrade (1.25 degree Fahrenheit) warming between now and 2050
---oops--I forgot -there were no mountains in his early model, either--
Stop hammering the man! Those are all very easy mistakes that anyone could miss. Jeez, I bet he wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition for all his troubles!
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