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News & Analysis | REG•WATCH Blog | Press Room
Monday, March 20, 2006
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.
Posted by Robert Shull
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