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The New Gag Rules
Science Magazine ^ | Feb 17, 2006 | Donald Kennedy

Posted on 02/26/2006 11:12:43 AM PST by alumleg

The New Gag Rules

Donald Kennedy*

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


*Donald Kennedy is Editor-in-Chief of Science.

**www.magazine.noaa.gov/stories/mag184.htm


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: canadaismelting; gaggingscientists; globalwarming; hypocrites; iceage; junkscience; science; sciencesuppression
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To: bboop
It IS warmer here thanthe last two weekends. I has to be the fact that all my neighbors are BBQing. Not me though, I'll just mooch. :)

Haven't seen the latest, will look for them.

61 posted on 02/26/2006 12:17:58 PM PST by SouthTexas
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To: alumleg

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.


62 posted on 02/26/2006 12:18:02 PM PST by cloud8
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To: JennysCool

"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.


63 posted on 02/26/2006 12:18:36 PM PST by Kirkwood ("When the s*** hits the fan, there is enough for everyone.")
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To: GSlob
I had Art Bell on the pillow speaker last night. I couldn't take either his view, or his first guest's view of
"global warming", and had to turn it off.

"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?

64 posted on 02/26/2006 12:21:35 PM PST by Calvin Locke
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To: alumleg
He may not be a "tool" but he's defending Hansen's right to publish this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/csci/ which is ridiculed by this: http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/warming_by_design.htm

The tool in this scenario is us. Why we allow Hansen to continue publishing such crap on our dime is perplexing.

65 posted on 02/26/2006 12:22:36 PM PST by palmer (Money problems do not come from a lack of money, but from living an excessive, unrealistic lifestyle)
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To: alumleg

At least you stuck around to engage in dialog - most hurl garbage and then do the cut and run thing. Welcome to the grindstone!


66 posted on 02/26/2006 12:24:56 PM PST by corkoman
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To: alumleg
Hey Junior, read this thread. Take a few hours and think about what the author is saying.

Take a few more hours to get past the whole "I can't stand him he's such a #&%*$(#_)%$&)&*)_)#$@@" thing and THINK about what he is saying, don't FEEL, THINK!

Then realize the error of your reasoning Re: mans effect on the environment.
67 posted on 02/26/2006 12:25:10 PM PST by Dr.Zoidberg (Mohammedism - Bringing you only the best of the 6th century for fourteen hundred years.)
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To: cloud8
It is disgraceful that pols are muzzling scientists.

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.

68 posted on 02/26/2006 12:27:00 PM PST by palmer (Money problems do not come from a lack of money, but from living an excessive, unrealistic lifestyle)
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To: alumleg

Get real jobs, eh? Such complainers. Government scientists are not scientists first, they are sinecurees. On the dole.


69 posted on 02/26/2006 12:27:50 PM PST by bvw
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To: cloud8
Limbaugh doesn't say there is no climate change. He says that MAN is not the cause of it. Big difference, but nice try.

The SUN is at the zenith of it's 11 year cycle, a cycle conveniently ignored by the GW pimps. Volacanos are tops, followed by trees as the major source of "GH gasses", and due to man's intervention, there are more trees than ever...oh, I guess man is responsible...

Where's my chainsaw?
70 posted on 02/26/2006 12:28:14 PM PST by larryw408
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To: alumleg
"...what is probably the most prestigious scientific journal on the planet"

That is no longer true. It may have been true 20 or 30 years ago. The editors of Science (and also Nature) want scientists and the public to still believe that, but for any scientist who has been around for a while, they know that Science has become a seldom-read journal approaching throw-away status. Publishing in Science will often relegate your research article to immediate obscurity.
71 posted on 02/26/2006 12:30:54 PM PST by Kirkwood ("When the s*** hits the fan, there is enough for everyone.")
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To: cloud8

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.


72 posted on 02/26/2006 12:33:23 PM PST by palmer (Money problems do not come from a lack of money, but from living an excessive, unrealistic lifestyle)
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To: alumleg
They brought us GPS, did they now?

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?

73 posted on 02/26/2006 12:37:24 PM PST by bvw
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To: alumleg
These efforts are described as a high-water mark for bureaucratic stupidity, reminiscent of the Three Stooges.

Or not, depending on your political dogma, and your level of tonedeafness on subjects you've "made up your mind" about.

74 posted on 02/26/2006 12:38:46 PM PST by Publius6961 (Multiculturalism is the white flag of a dying country)
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To: JennysCool; keat; alumleg; KMAJ2; Kirkwood
The CBO's August 1998 Climate Change and the Federal Budget says:
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.
75 posted on 02/26/2006 12:43:47 PM PST by Milhous (Sarcasm - the last refuge of an empty mind.)
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To: alumleg
Those who think global warming and other weather phenomena are natural and have almost nothing to do with man's activities have been, not only silenced. They have lost their jobs and others have lost their financial grants for failing to find evidence of man-made global warming.

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.

76 posted on 02/26/2006 12:43:52 PM PST by capt. norm (Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue)
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To: Calvin Locke

Why would you let Art Bell on your pillow speaker? I'd immediately launder the pillow cover with extra bleach, and disinfect the speaker.


77 posted on 02/26/2006 12:44:09 PM PST by GSlob
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To: larryw408
"due to man's intervention, there are more trees than ever"

I know Rush says this a lot, but I think it is one area in which he doesn't know what he's talking about. Go back and read descriptions and surveys by the first explorers of North America. It was basically all forested land east of the Mississippi. Fly over it today and it is mostly agricultural or residential tracts. I've seen dramatic changes in the past 50 years in the community I was raised in where large tracts of timber were cleared and never replanted, but turned into farmland or housing developments. We now see the same thing occurring in Brazil and SE Asia with large areas of forests being harvested and not replanted. I don't think it is an ecological crisis by any stretch of the imagination, but man has changed the face of the land. Sometimes its progress and sometimes it isn't.
78 posted on 02/26/2006 12:44:16 PM PST by Kirkwood ("When the s*** hits the fan, there is enough for everyone.")
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To: GSlob
Donald Kennedy is possibly the most highly respected science journalist in the nation.

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!

79 posted on 02/26/2006 12:45:50 PM PST by Publius6961 (Multiculturalism is the white flag of a dying country)
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To: Dr.Zoidberg; alumleg
Read the thread but understand Rush is not a scientist and that he is is not addressing the primary GW hypothesis which is that human CO2 is causing an increase in water vapor which is causing warming. His ranting about volcanoes can essentially be ignored since volcanoes supply a very small amount of CO2 to the atmosphere compared to humans and other natural sources. Volcanoes may have a short term cooling effect but likely do nothing to the climate in the long run. Comparing "pollution" from volcanoes to human sources using politically defined measurements of pollution is pretty silly.

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.

80 posted on 02/26/2006 12:47:52 PM PST by palmer (Money problems do not come from a lack of money, but from living an excessive, unrealistic lifestyle)
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