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Climate Scientist Speaks Out
The first earth scientist that spoke about climate change in 1988 now speaks out about how the government along
with other controllers in NASA who are in the pocket of someone, are
intentionally blocking the truth about global warming to confuse the
public.
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Nasa scientist accuses White House of global warming cover-up
20 March 2007 - By Steve Conner - nzherald.co.nz
James Hansen, the Nasa scientist who first warned the US
Government about global warming, yesterday delivered a withering
critique of the way the White House has interfered with climate
scientists working for the space agency.
Dr Hansen, the director of Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space Studies
in New York, said that the space agency's budget for studying the
Earth's climate has been slashed and that its scientists have been
systematically gagged about speaking of their concerns.
In detailed written testimony delivered yesterday to the US House of
Representatives, Dr Hansen said that there has been creeping
politicisation of climate change with the effect that the American
public has been left confused about the science of global warming.
"During my career I have noticed an increasing politicisation of
public affairs at headquarters level, with a notable effect on
communication from scientists to the public," Dr Hansen writes in his
testimony.
"Interference with communication of science to the public has been
greater during the current Administration than at any time in my
career," he says. "In my more than three decades in government, I have
never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow
from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled
as it has now," he says.
Political appointees within the public affairs office at Nasa
headquarters were accused by Dr Hansen of interfering in scientific
statements and of blocking reports that link rising temperatures or
melting sea ice with global warming.
He says that instructions and reprimands were often made orally so
that there was no paper or electronic record of the interference,
which allowed press relations personnel to dismiss gagging
allegations as hearsay.
"My suggestion for getting at the truth is to question the relevant
participants under oath, including the then Nasa associate
administrator for earth sciences who surely is aware of who in
the White House was receiving and reviewing press releases
that related to climate change," Dr Hansen says.
On one occasion when Dr Hansen gave a lecture to the American
Geophysical Union about the record global temperatures in 1995, the
White House called Nasa headquarters to complain of the
resulting media attention. Dr Hansen said that one participant in a
three-way telephone conference between the White House, Nasa
headquarters and Nasa Goddard described the heated conversation as a
"shit storm".
"The upshot was a new explicit set of constraints on me, including the
requirement that any media interviews be approved beforehand and that
headquarters have the right of first refusal on all interviews," he
says.
"It became clear that the new constraints on my communications were
going to be a real impediment when I was forced to take down from
our website our routine posting of updated global temperature
analysis."
Since then, Nasa has slashed its budget for the study of Earth
sciences, which has been cut by 20 per cent compared to an increase of
between 1 and 3 per cent in other areas of Nasa's science spending.
The agency's "mission statement" has also been changed so that there
is no longer a reference to saving our home planet, Dr Hansen says.
"That part has been deleted, a shocking loss to me, as I had been
using that phrase to justify speaking out about the dangers of global
warming," Dr Hansen says.
"There is little doubt that the Administration's downplaying of
evidence about global warming has had some effect on public perception
of the climate change issue.
"The impact is to confuse the public about the reality of global
warming, and about whether that warming can be reliably attributed to
human-made greenhouse gases," he says.
- INDEPENDENT |
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The
The
Labors in the Spirits of
Science
Living on the Lost Planet 
