Donald Kennedy has been more political and administrative than scientific his entire career. He has always been readily identified as liberal. He is doing what liberals do, which is pose as one thing (scientist), while acting politically.
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
[[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.]]
Now that is a pejorative assessment painting with a broad brush stroke. Demonization is a very lame debate tactic. I can only speak for myself, the argument is about cause and scope of effect, and I do not listen to Rush Limbaugh. I listen to people like Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT. Do you deny the 'hockey stick' model has been proven to be fraudulent ? Do you deny that funding plays an important role ? Scientific advancement has never been furthered by consensus opinions, but by skeptics who challenge that consensus, otherwise we would still be adhering to the flat earth view. It was only three decades ago that global cooling was the professed scientific consensus creating dire predictions.
"Donald Kennedy is possibly the most highly respected science journalist in the nation."
Presuming we're talking about the same Donald Kennedy, he'd probably
view that description as woefully incomplete.
He's a scientist. Forty years at Stanford; Dept. of Biological Sciences,
IIRC. Note to mention a long stint as President of Stanford.
Who is ALSO the editor-in-chief of "Science", which includes his
duties of writing editorials.
But calling him a journalist is very simply a highly selective
and well-nigh incorrect portrait.
And I say this even though I don't always agree with Kennedy's editorials.
And am unworthy to tie his shoes (as a scientist)
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2000/october11/kennedy-1011.html
Good idea for you to follow as your post indicates a lack of research on your part. Getting all impressed by the credentials of those you quote, you swallowed up hook, line and sinker what they said without ever a thought of validating it for real.
I operate the "WeatherLab at Panama City" and I work with this on daily basis. In light of what is well-known, your post floats like a you-know-what in a punch bowl. The question is, are you going to go ahead and find out for yourself, or keep parroting items you have cherry picked that make you feel all warm and fuzzy and comfortable with your foregone conclusion?
You're casting pearls before swine here; the poster of this article hasn't a clue as to what you are alluding...
Water vapor is the NUMBER one greenhouse gas.
The computer models in use can not handle it at all.
There's no money in solving anything, silly!
Hockey Sticks, Principal Components and Spurious Significance
This article identifies what is almost certainly a computer programming error in the principal components method used in MBH98. The error causes their PC method to nearly always identify hockey stick shaped series as the “dominant pattern” in a data set (the so-called “first Principal Component” or PC1), even when the data are just random numbers. We carried out 10,000 simulations in which we fed “red noise”, a form of trendless random numbers, into the MBH98 algorithm and, in over 99% of the cases, it produced hockey stick shaped PC1 series.
Donald Kennedy has been more political and administrative than scientific his entire career. He has always been readily identified as liberal. He is doing what liberals do, which is pose as one thing (scientist), while acting politically.
What a great gig, Cap'n! Cheers!
Could just be cow farts, being as you are in Texas. Perhaps you guys could bag them.... Hey I know, we could use them to power SUVs.
Our main study deals with hurricanes as you might suspect. Sometimes they make themselves more available to us than we really want, but each one is a treasure trove of data.
I'm sure this happens in other professions where you come upon an article in the news that flies in the face of the facts you well know. Usually this global warming type of thing would be confined to the grocery store checkout line tabloids like Enquirer, etc., but the news media is engaged in an unending search for anything that can be used as anti-Bush fodder that it now regularly hits the MSM.
I think our new (signed up today) poster thought he would come here to educate us. He needs to first educate himself by reading some of the facts that he has somehow managed to avoid.
Very true. He seems to be an okay sort, but just another well-meaning person who doesn't question what he reads.
By the way, my Dad's a retired weatherman -- you picked a great career!
There are some hard figures on this and Rush is right on this one.
Appearances can be deceptive. The old forests were not doing well due to growth patterns, disease, etc. Modern forestry is very good at maximizing the growth potential for forests thus increasing them, much the same way a well planted and tilled garden produces better than randomly scattering seeds over un-tilled gound.
There's a profit motive in forestry and it works in our favor as well.
> ...the primary GW hypothesis which is that human CO2 is causing an increase in water vapor which is causing warming.
The way I understand it, the *primary* hypothesis is, Does global warming exist? After that comes, If global warming exists, what causes it? Then finally, If the answer to No. 2 is that Man causes GW, what, if anything, should we do about it?
Many scientists have signed on to the primary hypothesis. And while environmentalists are quick to blame Man, many scientists are not so sure.
"Science has become a seldom-read journal approaching throw-away status. Publishing in Science will often relegate your research article to immediate obscurity..."
This is total nonsense. I'm not going to take the time to debunk what you are saying here. Anybody reading this who is unaware of the status of the journal Science may I recommend you simply do a google on "prestigious journal Science" (use the quotes.) There are over 25,000 matches. Boy, some folks think you can just spout anything at all and it will be believed by the ignorant. What you wrote is a little like saying "well, people used to think diamonds were kinda cool, but now most folks just throw 'em away. Ya got any you'd like to get rid of??"
"likely has its primary origin in the output of the sun. Numerous other factors mediate the overall effect"
That's like saying the source of keeping me alive is likely to be my breathing. The point is the anthropogenic rise in atmospheric carbon-dioxide. There is no dispute that CO2 has risen dramatically in the past 50 years. Burning fossil fuel releases CO2. Humans burn a lot of it. Why is this a poplitical issue?
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