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TechnoratiWe may not be getting the whole story about climate research from our government.New federal guidelines on what scientists say or write about their research place severe limits, perhaps unconstitutional ones, on their ability to talk about climate change.
Those policies affect scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, both of which have facilities at the Commerce Department's South Broadway complex in Boulder.
For political reasons, it appears, the Bush administration has decided to censor information that indicates global warming may be caused by human beings.
Commerce's new media policy faces criticism from advocacy groups that argue it claims to allow scientific openness but in fact will chill scientists' speech and writings. The policy, unveiled last month, affects public communications from the agencies, effective in May. It updates three existing policies dating back to the 1980s.
Two watchdog groups, the Government Accountability Project and the Union of Concerned Scientists, have called the new policy "unconstitutional and unnecessarily overbroad."
It requires that scientists:
Give two weeks' notice of their public communications "of interest" made in an unofficial capacity.
Refrain from discussing their personal views in interviews conducted on government time, defined as "personal opinions that go beyond scientific conclusions based on fundamental research related to their jobs."
Refrain from answering interview questions during the workday that stray from their primary area of research.
The two groups say the policy conflicts with whistleblower protection laws and free speech provisions, does not guarantee scientists the right of a final review for materials to be issued in their name, and does not incorporate sufficient transparency or accountability in employees' right to appeal department decisions about their communications.
Why should we care? Two examples:
Government scientists working on consideration of listing polar bears as an endangered species say they have been prohibited from speaking about the effects of climate change on the bears while they are in the Arctic region, and that reports they have prepared have later been "significantly altered" before being released.
The bears may be endangered because the sea ice they depend on is disappearing, according to the web site OMBwatch.org. But reporting connected with listing them as endangered omits mentioning any link between human activity and rising temperatures in the Arctic.
And U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, has held two hearings this year of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which he chairs, on political interference with science.
In March he said of former oil industry lobbyist Philip Cooney, appointed as chief of staff at the Council of Environmental Quality: "Mr. Cooney and his staff made hundreds of separate edits to the government's 'strategic plan' for climate-change research. These changes injected doubt in place of certainty, minimized the dangers of climate change and diminished the human role in causing the planet to warm."
And while President Bush said in 2001, "My administration's climate-change policy will be science-based," there is mounting evidence that government scientists' judgments are circumscribed by politics.
All this is to say that the very people trying to get at the roots of climate change and why it's happening - a phenomenon obvious all over the world in recent years - are in some instances being censored and prevented from speaking freely about the results of their research.
Political manipulation or censorship of research is neither science-based nor appropriate. It will stand in the way as the world grapples with climate change. Science and scientists deserve our respect and our attention. They must not be silenced for political reasons.
Susan Deans, for the editorial board E.W. Scripps Co.
© 2006 Daily Camera and Boulder Publishing, LLC
8 Comments so far
Show Alltech2: Science: experiments in empiricism mode that lead to validation of a hypothesis, or in brighter minds, amending the initial thesis. In any case, the fact that it has been cold in the US is problematic as it does not LOOK like global warming here in the nation that's most responsible for the ecologically malignant footprint(s). A better word is climate instability, as weather patterns are being disrupted, but the warming trend for some odd reason is not all that apparent in our land of the consumer-free. Wild hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts are on the increase.
The article and several comments keep referring to this thing called "science". Do any of you even understand what you are referring to? I dare you to define it. You so easily refer to "it" as some homogeneous whole, and its participants as some mythical band of brothers. But what is this "science" you refer to. By your comments, you show yourselves to be wearing the hat of a metaphysician or a philosopher, discussing politics and history.
JADED is on the right track, and its been a very cold winter and spring where I live.
Tijuanalibre: Human knowledge follows synaptic changes. Sudden discoveries throw apart the previous paradigm. Mystics like Ouspensky explain a theory of a kind of resonance, as opposed to the way we normally assess scientific theory. Resonance follows a holographic sense that what happens ANYWHERE (Deepak Chopra also speaks well on this abstract topic) affects everywhere. As earth heats up, it may set into motion reverberations that impact other players in orb around our sun. Years back when 22 asteroids hit the planet Jupiter, named after the astronomers who noted the phenomena (Schumaker-Levy), every source treated it like a sporting event, counting each HIT. I was pleased to be interviewed on CBS in Alburqueque and discussed it from a metaphysical perspective. Jupiter, a/k/a Zeus is the head honcho of Olympus, i.e. its bubba/CEO. I wrote a movie script based on the various personae of Olympus throwing rocks at Zeus to suggest his less than savory performance as LEADER. Why? Because all he focused on in his basis for determining well-being was stock and/or sports scores. Sound familiar? So now Mars is active, huh, and our planet is wasting its treasure in human bodies and resources on as senseless a war as ever there was one. Taking earth as a being, Gaia/Mother Nature, imagine how SHE feels that all the children carefully nourished to the tune of 6 billion, for the most part still tear asunder the EDEN that was gifted for all. My background in English literature has taught me to look up events for their inherent metaphors and symbolic significance. It's a useful practice, particularly in times when sanity is not apparent on the part of those calling the big shots.
Information can be censored but they can't hide the weather or the obvious effects of global warming.
Interesting story, from the Times of London, about climate warming on Mars. Probably GW Bush's fault.
The Sunday Times April 29, 2007
Climate change hits Mars
Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake.
Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.
Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena.
The mechanism at work on Mars appears, however, to be different from that on Earth. One of the researchers, Lori Fenton, believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds.
In a paper published in the journal Nature, she suggests that such winds can stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet's temperature.
Fenton's team unearthed heat maps of the Martian surface from Nasa's Viking mission in the 1970s and compared them with maps gathered more than two decades later by Mars Global Surveyor. They found there had been widespread changes, with some areas becoming darker.
When a surface darkens it absorbs more heat, eventually radiating that heat back to warm the thin Martian atmosphere: lighter surfaces have the opposite effect. The temperature differences between the two are thought to be stirring up more winds, and dust, creating a cycle that is warming the planet.
People with power will censor whatever it is they can. They encourage people to perfect the art of lying to themselves, and consequently trap them in walls of ignorance.
Steve,
Too late -- the anti-Copernicans are alive and kicking. Check this out:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/48148/
Of all the crimes these people have committed - and they seem to have left no stone unturned in that effort - the only thing worse than this is the election theft. On our way back to the Dark Ages? I think we made it in 6 years.