The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases.
The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.
Dr. Hansen, 63, a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, is a leading authority on the earth’s climate system. He directs efforts to simulate the global climate on computers at the Goddard Institute on Morningside Heights in Manhattan.
Since 1988, he has been issuing public warnings about the long-term threat from heat-trapping emissions, dominated by carbon dioxide, that are an unavoidable byproduct of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels. He has had run-ins with politicians or their appointees in various administrations, including budget watchers in the first Bush administration and Vice President Al Gore.
The fight between Dr. Hansen and administration officials echoes other recent disputes. At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone.
Predictably, the politicians are making the question one of politics — while scientists see the issue as freedom of inquiry. The latter requires discussion and freedom of speech. Something reactionary politicians are always willing to sacrifice.
[note: link takes you to Reuters coverage of the article — which avoids erratic registration crap. NY TIMES link here.]
Scary. Whether or not the current climatic trends are caused by human activity or not (and the vast majority of the scientific community agrees that they are, at least in part), the stifling of a scientist’s expression by the administration can’t be a good thing.
I mean, the fun thing about science is that if you disagree with someone, all you have to do is prove him wrong. Maybe the administration is more worried about the “scare tactics” of the reporters, but the trick to making a democracy work is really to make sure everyone has access to all the information about a topic, and the education to form a judgment based on this information. So what if the reporters get all antsy and start making doomsday predictions? They’re allowed to. When it comes to our role as planetary custodians, I’d rather err on the side of caution.
Of course the Earth has been warmer and cooler in the past. The point is that it has never warmed up at the RATE it’s warming now in recent geological history. Scientists have not been able to explain how this could be without including the effects of man. For example, they found out a couple of months ago that greenhouse gases are at their highest point today than at any point in the past 650,000 years. That seems likely to have at least some effect.
……what do ya think???
No, that’s when the data obtainable from the ice core runs out, not when the greenhouse gas level first dipped below our current levels.
Did you read it through? There are air samples in the ice core going back 650,000 years, so they analyzed them. This is from a report published in Science, a prominent scientific peer-reviewed journal. I think it carries a bit more weight on what’s valid science than the talking heads on Fox News.
“In the ice core study, European researchers using three large samples of polar cap ice found carbon dioxide levels were stable until 200 years ago.”
“Today’s rise is about 200 times faster than any rise recorded.”
“Half of the current rise … was going on anyway. But that means half of what’s going on is not background. It’s human induced.”
Gee, Mike. You left out a couple of comparable resources: Michael Brown and, probably, the Book of Genesis. Who needs computational analysis when you can have revelations?
Greg — you prompt more nostalgia [that always dates me] because I worked for a brief spell with one of the ice geologists from the original Geophysical Year. The job description didn’t even exist before they set off for Antarctica.
He got the gig because as a petrologist, he had qualifications in analytical chemistry and geology — and he knew his way around a drill rig! Those cores are still around over a half-century later.
That’s a bogus argument. It’s actually EASIER to predict things on the large scale than on the small scale. Someone can tell you Region X is going to have 4-6 tornadoes this year with a lot more certainty than they can predict which towns they’re going to hit and on what days. There are too many variables that come into play when you have to predict the little things, but when you stick to the big things most of those variables become neglible.
Where is this ironclad documentation you speak of? Here’s an article that goes into the perceptions of global warming in the scientific community vs. in the general public. Some quotes:
“She analyzed 1,000 research papers on climate change selected randomly from those published between 1993 and 2003. The results were surprising: Not a single study explicitly rejected the idea that people are warming the planet.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t any. But it does mean the number must be small, since none showed up in a sample that represents about 10 percent of the body of research, Oreskes said.”
“In the history of science, no subject has been as meticulously reviewed and debated as global warming, said science historian Spencer Weart . . . “The most important thing to realize is that most scientists didn’t originally believe in global warming,” he said. “They were dragged — reluctant step by step — by the facts.””
“Earth’s climate has swung from steamy to icy many times in the past, but scientists believe they know what triggered many of those fluctuations . . . All of those shifts happened over tens of thousands of years — and science shows none of them is happening now.
Instead, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are increasing at a rate that precisely tracks man’s automotive and industrial emissions.
“The process is 1,000 times faster than nature can do it,” Battisti said.”
“By giving equal coverage to skeptics on the fringe of legitimate science, journalists fuel the perception that the field is racked with disagreement.
“You get the impression it’s 50-50, when it’s really 99-to-1,” Steig said.”
“Of course, there’s nothing wrong with business questioning whether global-warming science justifies actions that may have profound economic impacts. And science can’t advance without an open exchange of ideas.
But climate researchers say skeptics are recycling discredited arguments or selectively using data to make points. And as Oreskes showed, few skeptics publish in peer-reviewed journals, which check for accuracy and omissions.”
“Skeptics portray themselves as Davids versus the Goliath of organized science, which is always resistant to new ideas. But global warming is the new idea, said Oreskes. Skeptics, she said, represent the old school of thought — that climate is so stable man could never tip it out of whack.”
Remember Mike, a theory in science is not speculation, but a hypothesis heavily supported by evidence. Examples include Newtonian and Einsteinian physics, evolution, quantum mechanics, and the Navier-Stokes equations that are the reason that weather tends to be chaotic, and which are used in weather and global warming simulations.
Global warming is a hypothesis working its way toward a theory because of good measurable results.
Jakkle
I don’t know where you get these ideas.
Methane coming from Cattle ranches. Yup, there are more ranches today then 10 years ago. Maybe not in the US, but especially in South America, including Brazil these ranches have exploded. With the increases in standard of living, comes an increase in Beef demand.
Car Emissions
You just answered your own observation. Trucks and SUVs are, for the most part, not covered by CAFE rules. Also their emission standards are lower. Then when you add in the burgening markets in India, China, and the rest of the world, emissions have increased. Not to mention that most of these countries either don’t have any emission standards or have weak standards.
Yes you might see better, but that is because the type of emissions have changed. Before it was particulate matter that obscured the view. Today, particulate matter has greatly diminished. It was the amount of particulate matter that concerned scientist during the 1970s. It was believed that it would block the amount of sunlight reaching the earth thus causing global warming.
The emissions today are not the particulate, but the clear Carbon Dioxide. These gases will trap the heat so it can not escape. That is what will warm the planet.
Deforestation
Not a joke. The majority of CO2 is absorbed in the tropical rain forests, most notable Brazil’s Amazon Basin. These forests are being cut down at an alarming rate and not being replaced. As the amount of CO2 increases, it can not be converted by the remaining vegetation. North American forests do convert CO2 to O2, but not at near the rate of the rain forests. Because of the warmth, moisture, and direct sunlight, a rain forest grows many times faster then those in temperate, drought occasioned forests.
Remember, just because you don’t see it happening, doesn’t mean it isn’t.
I read an article in a science journal (don’t remember which one) 10 years ago that discussed the CO2 concentration in ice cores. It reported higher concentrations in the past. Odd.
Is there “cherry picking” going on with the data in order to support The Message?
Jakkle
The problem is the denial that there is any problem. The Kyoto Treaty was a start. Many thought it too poor a start to do anything constructive, but it was still a start. Yet one of the first things Bush did coming into office was to denounce the Kyoto Treaty. Since then he has pushed out scientists that advocated the mainstream approach and promoted those that agreed with his capitalist approach. With the most energy hogging country in the world turning it’s back on Kyoto, it fell apart. In certain circles, that is called “Leadership”.