September witnessed the END of Scientific Integrity at NASA/NOAA

[populistdriven]

September 25, 2006

Recent Government press releases have provided damning proof that the Republicans have co-opted scientific integrity in Government and replaced it with spin designed to beneft the global corporations that generate most of the damage to the environment.

Example 1

Today the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (commerce department) released a press report titled:

"SHORT-TERM COOLING OF OCEANS SUGGEST 'SPEED BUMP' IN WARMING"

You can read the report for yourself here if you like here: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2704.htm

The NOAA press release takes advantage of our main-stream-media that survives on 10 second headlines, the report is cleverly written to get the press to report that global warming is possibly not the problem we thought it was, at least in the short term. In fact, a brief cooling of the oceans caused by in increase in ice-cold glacial meltwater was predicted by scientists studying global warming 30 years ago. The headline is a LIE. An accurate headline would be:

"SHORT-TERM COOLING OF OCEANS SUGGEST MELTING OF GLACIAL ICE IS ACCELERATING"

We know that the Republic Neocons have working inside government agencies to purge them of scientists who tried to maintain scientific integrity and refused to spin their results to the advantage of US corporations. We have been warned repeatedly. Below is further proof.

Example 2

In early September NASA released a press report with the following headine:

"NASA SAYS OZONE LAYER IS HEALING"

You can read the NASA PR for yourself here if you like here: http://sympatico-msn-ca.com.com/2300-11395_3-6111282-1.html?part=sympatico-msn-ca&tag=ca_home&subj=ns_6111282
The actual report is long on rhetoric and short on scientific facts.

In summary, the reports finds that "Studies by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirm that the Earth's ozone layer is mending."

If you look at the actual scientific results and reports, the fact is that the ozone layer is NOT mending, it is more than 98% of the record-sized ozone hole in the year 2000. Its rate of growth has halted but you can hardly state that it is on the mend.

If you have cancerous tumor and its size after 6 years of chemotherapy has only shrunk by 2% no responsible doctor would tell a patient that they are "on the mend". They still have cancer, they are not cured and the physician may even tell the patient that they are never going to be cured by the chemo alone.

The actual report that the NASA PR is based on is here: http://www.wmo.ch/web/arep/06/ant-bulletin-3-2006.pdf

From the front page executive summary:

"Ozone sonde observations show up to 90% ozone loss in the 15-20 km altitude range by 20 September compared to early August. The area where total ozone is less than 220 DU (also called the "ozone hole area") was relatively small until around 20 August. Since then the ozone hole area has increased more rapidly than the 1979-2005 average and is now close to 28 million km , which is more than the maximum reached in 2005 (26 million km ) and very close to the maximum reached in 2003. It is still somewhat lower than the ozone hole area in 2000, which peaked at 28.5 million km on 10 September."

It saddens me to see how science in the public interest has been replaced by science in the corporate interest. I fear for my childrens future.

[Buzz Clik]

1. Ozone hole: point well taken. Global warming: nonsense!

Here is a quote from the second paragraph of the Ocean Cooling article:

Although the average temperature of the upper oceans has cooled significantly since 2003, the decline is a fraction of the total ocean warming seen over the previous 48 years.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2704.htm

NASA and NOAA are not backing away from global warming. As the article clearly explains, this is merely a hiccup in the clear trends.

Reversing global warming will be a public relations battle, not a scientific one. If those who support this fight don't stop with the hysteria, we will never make any progress. These trends in natural warming and cooling are endless. Accept them.

[populistdriven]

2. It misleads by not explaining that the hiccup is caused by global warming

[Buzz Clik]

4. Probably true, but that point has not been demonstrated.

From a link in the article:

Changes in OHCA also affect sea level. Sea level rise has a broad range of implications for climate science as well as considerable socioeconomic impacts . Diagnosing the causes of past and present sea level change and closure of the sea level budget is therefore a critical component of understanding past changes in sea level as well as projecting future changes. The recent cooling of the upper ocean implies a decrease in the thermosteric component of sea level. Estimates of total sea level http://sealevel.colorado.edu>, however, show continued sea-level rise during the past 3 years. This suggests that other contributions to sea-level rise, such as melting of land-bound ice, have accelerated. This inference is consistent with recent estimates of ice mass loss in Antarctica and accelerating ice mass loss on Greenland but closure of the global sea level budget cannot yet be achieved. New satellite observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE; launched in March, 2002 and administered by NASA and Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt, GRACE will map Earth's gravity field approximately once every 30 days during its lifetime) should soon provide sufficient observations of the redistribution of water mass to more fully describe the causes of recent sea-level change.

http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/Pdf/heat_2006.pdf

I don't think that NASA is hiding anything, but their publications office is certainly softening the interpretations.

[populistdriven]

5. I agree with that & that the headlines in the US are being manipulated

i.e.

[skids]

3. Masking sea level rises, too.

Willis said the findings have significant implications for global sea-level rise. "Average sea level goes up partly due to warming and thermal expansion of the oceans and partly due to runoff from melting glaciers and ice sheets," Willis said. "The recent cooling episode suggests that sea level should have actually decreased in the past two years. Despite this, sea level has continued to rise. This may mean that sea level rise has recently shifted from being mostly caused by warming to being dominated by melting. This idea is consistent with recent estimates of ice-mass loss in Antarctica and accelerating ice-mass loss on
Greenland."

My bet is that they are hedging not having yet developed a protocol to test the source of the cooling, and it will be found not to be solely a decadal cycle but in large part due to ice melt. In either case though, when the oceans cool they should recede. They've kept coming in, so when they warm back up the will come in even faster.

[Dead_Parrot]

6. Ozone hole: Look at some longer term data...

The report you linked to only gives a couple of recent years for comparison: Fair enough, as it's a thorough assessment of this year. If you look at a plot of ozone levels for the last few decades...



There does indeed seem to be an upswing. 2006 may be the worst since 2000, but 2003 was the best since 1988: Neither of them mean anything, you have to look at lots of data to get a trend out of it.