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
Hey, I'm not arguing global warming. I'm wondering if it is appropriate for politicians to be muzzling scientists. I take it you think that's okay?
Yes. Yes I am sure.
Even if the earth were warming, there simply isn't enough data to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that humans are the cause.
The earth seems to have been warming steadily since the ice age. Did Dinosaur methane emissions do what cars and cows are being blamed for today? This just develoves from there.
Overpopulation is the real issue of our age, but nobody is going to touch that one. As long as those evil producers are declining and those angelic non-producers are expanding out of control, everything is wonderful.
Newsweek, April 28, 1975
www.denisdutton.com
There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
I'd be against muzzling them but definitely in favor of cutting all their funding until they can produce at least a halfway credible theory of man made climate change on a global scale.
So far I haven't seen it.
Well, that is a cogent comment. Yes, it is an editorial. About politicians muzzling scientists.
Science gets politicized all the time in the real world. In this case there is a worldwide movement to limit energy use for political, not scientific, reasons. Global warming was an ideal scientific theory to hitch on to which is why there are so many european and UN types pushing the ideas of transferring wealth from rich, capitalist, energy using coutries to poor, mostly authoritarian ones.
In short, it's socialism dictated by world bureaucrats.
I think one can garner your political leanings, joining FR just to post this piece. This oped by Science magazine is easily dismissed. Why ? The fraud that pervades the IPCC, upon which most global warming experts rely. Global warming and Darwinism have become industries unto themselves that is reliant on government funding and grants. To keep that money flowing, they must paint the most dire pictures (global warming) and deny/demean any opposition (global warming and Darwinism). To let counter opinions gain legitimacy will certainly dry up the funds they so enjoy spending and living off of. Magazines like Science and Nature do have self-serving agendas, to keep the money flowing for their sacred cows. Sadly, instead of advancing science, they engage in scientific censorship.
The above said, I do hope a ZOT does not occur, though your leanings are apparent and contrary to most on this site, your tone was not offensive.
So this makes it OK for politicians to be telling scientists what they may and may not say at scientific meetings?
Is it appropriate for a scientist to use his position to advance a political agenda?
The reason for my post was to point out the fact that we have politicians who think it is OK to tell scientists what they may and may not say at scientific meetings. And the tone of your comment makes it obvious that this is a general problem with what used to be called conservatives.
It's disturbing, until you take into consideration that Hansen's words as an individual would be construed by many as NASA's opinion, not simply Hansen's.
Where is that even alledged. It is his supervisors, not politicians. You are twisting facts.
Ahhhh. Science.
It certainly isn't what it used to be.
National Geographic? nice pictures but otherwise crap. If you have access to the classic days of WW2 and just after, note the difference.
This atticle has NOAA and NASA peppered throughout and that zinger is snuck in with the hope that it will have "authority by association", although this is one idiot's opinion using that saddest of all techniques: the Hilary approach, where...
... . They concluded: her trick was never actually to make any arguments -- just state conclusions that were all already accepted as self-evident by her audience.
This doofus whines about NOAA and NASA limiting themselves to science. His political bent suffers as a result. Too effing bad! Science has not challenged global warming. Science merely will not go where the ignorant and the "progressives" wish to go: to manippulate society with the chimera of "stopping global warming", a fool's errand.
Is it appropriate for scientists to politicize science? Is it appropriate for them to disseminate theories (e.g. the "forcing" theory) as established fact to the general public? Scientists on the other side have been muzzled in academia and the scientific press. Are you okay with that?
Absolutely not. And whether or not that is what is going on is left up to the scientific community to decide. This is a time honored way that scientists have policed their own, and it has borne great fruit for all of society.
Do you think it's okay for journalists to muzzle scientists who don't subscribe to the global warming mantra?
Do you really think there's a conspiracy out there which will keep any scientist or wacko quiet? I notice that there's never any background done or search for motivation on a "muzzled" scientist who is already a Carterite "greenpisser." But if a scientist is skeptical of the global warming theory he's automatically searched for ties to Big Oil or the Bush Administration.
Give me a break, don't believe Everything you hear. Look at what motivates people and always be skeptical. You'll never find 100% agreement on any scientific theory, but in this day and age you'd think there were no scientists who disagree with the hockey stick.
Read "State of Fear," not as a crackpot rightwing book, but just to keep your mind open to motivational factors for the "humans are destroying the world" theories.
Never mind, just keep believing everything the New York Times tells you.
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