Climate change science censored by Bush administration
A while ago I blogged about climate change, and specifically the feeling in the scientific community that the Bush administration is attempting to cover it up.
Now, CBS’s 60 Minutes in the US have interviewed James Hansen, NASA’s chief climate scientist, and Rick Piltz, a former US government scientist who resigned in protest, who say their ability to report scientific evidence about climate change has been severely impeded by the Bush administration, which seeks to downplay the risks or muddy the science of climate change. The story is here in written form, as are video clips from the televised version. The video includes shots of draft reports on climate change, heavily edited by hand after being submitted to the White House.
Dozens of federal agencies report science but much of it is edited at the White House before it is sent to Congress and the public. It appears climate science is edited with a heavy hand. Drafts of climate reports were co-written by Rick Piltz for the federal Climate Change Science Program. But Piltz says his work was edited by the White House to make global warming seem less threatening.
“The strategy of people with a political agenda to avoid this issue is to say there is so much to study way upstream here that we can’t even being to discuss impacts and response strategies,” says Piltz. “There’s too much uncertainty. It’s not the climate scientists that are saying that, its lawyers and politicians.”
Whistle-blowing Piltz last year founded a new watchdog body, Climate Science Watch, dedicated to holding public officials accountable for the ways they use climate science data in policymaking and to supporting federal scientists experiencing political interference with their ability to communicate their findings on climate change. In the wake of the 60 Minutes story, the even larger Government Accountability Project have announced their sponsorship of Climate Science Watch.
It’s great to see this issue getting mainstream coverage in the US. Frankly it’s shocking that the Bush administration have been getting away with such behaviour on such a vital, dangerous issue of global concern.
March 21st, 2006 at 1:54 pm
Aah yes. Why put up with bothersome news from experts, when you can just seek advice from industrialists, politicians, and hack novelists that agrees with what you already know? This inaction will leave plenty of time to create an oppressive environment in which scientists are cowed into toeing the party line, or else. Then you can spin the remaining unwelcome news out of reports. And if all else fails, just claim that more research is needed, while simultaneously slashing the budgets of the Earth sciences.
The “head buried in the sand” approach that’s so helpful to GWB’s fossil fuel chums doesn’t come as a big surprise anymore: even though he has publically acknowledged the fact of climate change, you know he doesn’t really believe it as his every action speaks otherwise. What *does* come as a big surprise is that
a)media are happy to go along with this, presenting oil company-funded fringe views as mainstream science, and George’s stance on environmental matters as a cost-benefit analysis rather than a faith-based or political or favour-garnering stance: and
b)Relatively mainstream politicians in some other countries seem to want to emulate this anti-science approach. Think John Howard and Don “don’t trust any of the world’s national academies of sciences” Brash. And
c)It looks like the global public are quite happy for their politicians to be anti-intellectual or anti-scientific, as long as they are personable.
For these reasons, I don’t think this will impact Bush too badly. It’s not going to hold the public’s attention like Irangate or Lewinsky, and Bush’s supporters (including Murdoch) will think it’s OK to rewrite the truth as, hey, he’s on our side.
March 22nd, 2006 at 1:23 pm
The media’s response is, after all, pretty consistent with other issues. for example:
* CIA rendition flights
* Torture
* Guantanamo bay
* “There is no civil war in Iraq”
* “What weapons of mass destruction?”
* The Valery Palme affair
* Uzbekistan
* Abu Ghraib
* Saddam (heart) Osama
* Use of chemical weapons against civilians
* The source of “the” anthrax in the letters
* [too many to remember off the top of my head]
Remember: you’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:23 pm
You’re right trevva, not surprising, just depressingly familiar. Still with even Shrub’s evangelical friends beginning to come round…
http://www.stnews.org/News-2719.htm
…we might be witnessing the high water mark of climate change denial. Here’s hoping.
March 22nd, 2006 at 11:35 pm
Yes, make No payments until January 2007!
He’s not the salesman Ronnie was though.
Not that it matters. Votes are no more than ephemeral electronic ghosts now, filtered through the machinery of tomorrow to recreate the fraud of yesterday.
The USA is in grave danger of having to spell “ballots” with different vowels in order to make them count.
respectfully
BJ
March 27th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
Meanwhile, there’s a local climate change conference opening at Te Papa in Wellington tomorrrow morning(Tues 28th March) , complete with presentations from Victoria University’s Antarctic researchers in the School of Earth Sciences, and the Institute of Policy Studies.
Paramount theatre is hosting talks and doco’s for those without the clout to get into the conference, from 6.30pm - 10.30pm on Wednesday 29th March, with support from the British Council, who’ve brought over one David Vaughan from the British Antarctic Survey.
gotta love those scientists, keep telling us where the ice is going….
cheers, katie
March 28th, 2006 at 12:37 am
Saw this on the Herald this morning :
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10374565
On the eve of a major climate conference in New Zealand, a senior Government scientist has spoken out about chaotic policy in science and climate.
Kevin Patterson, who models energy needs for the Ministry of Economic Development, is disillusioned and considering joining the brain drain overseas.
He blamed the Government’s climate change policy - in which projections for meeting Kyoto Protocol commitments mysteriously reversed - on a former Energy Minister confusing a “target” with what could be achieved.
“Pete Hodgson [the minister] stuffed it up … he basically directed the staff to model the next target as if it had been accomplished.”
Dr Patterson was distraught at the dropping of the carbon tax, which he said would have solved about 75 per cent of our global warming problems.
Hodgson claims, of course, that it’s because they didn’t have the numbers in Parliament that they axed the carbon tax, thereby effectively withdrawing from the Kyoto protocol….
But combined with NZ’s stalking-horse role on GM, one wonders if it doesn’t dovetail nicely into a “cozy up to the Bush administration” agenda?
Inquiring Minds Want to Know.
March 28th, 2006 at 7:39 am
If you find out the truth -
A. You’ll have to throw up.
B. We’ll have to kill you.
There were two problems I think. The first is that the gummint really didn’t have the stones to face another election within weeks of being elected, which, given the coalition it had formed would be if not inevitable at least rather likely.
The second is that the government had stuffed up the policy in such a way as to render it into a tax paid to government with little or no flow-on of tax CREDITS to those who actually undertook the farming of trees or the technical changes to reduce the carbon usage. Nor was a balancing reduction in OTHER taxes publicised or even mentioned. This made the tax a problem for the financial minister, while it should have been in the environmentalists area of responsibility the entire time.
Not all-in-all, an inspiring example of that oxymoron, political intelligence.
respectfully
BJ
March 28th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Jeanette’s proposals on Climate Change released yesterday address some of these issues. Kevin Patterson is right - the policy is in disarray, so the Greens have helpfully provided some practical solutions for the Government to consider!
In fact, Climate Change Minister Pete Hodgson was supportive of the document when he opened the conference this morning. Check out the latest post, and the front page of the main Green site for more info.