WaPost: Climate Researchers Feeling Heat from Bush Administration

[Dr. Jones]

Ah, so we DO have a controlled media after all. Big shocker.

If this ain't fascism under a dictatorial leader, I don't know what is.

Climate Researchers Feeling Heat From White House

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 6, 2006; Page A27

Scientists doing climate research for the federal government say the Bush administration has made it hard for them to speak forthrightly to the public about global warming. The result, the researchers say, is a danger that Americans are not getting the full story on how the climate is changing.

Employees and contractors working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a U.S. Geological Survey scientist working at an NOAA lab, said in interviews that over the past year administration officials have chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether. Their accounts indicate that the ideological battle over climate-change research, which first came to light at NASA, is being fought in other federal science agencies as well.

These scientists -- working nationwide in research centers in such places as Princeton, N.J., and Boulder, Colo. -- say they are required to clear all media requests with administration officials, something they did not have to do until the summer of 2004. Before then, point climate researchers -- unlike staff members in the Justice or State departments, which have long-standing policies restricting access to reporters -- were relatively free to discuss their findings without strict agency oversight.

"There has been a change in how we're expected to interact with the press," said Pieter Tans, who measures greenhouse gases linked to global warming and has worked at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder for two decades. He added that although he often "ignores the rules" the administration has instituted, when it comes to his colleagues, "some people feel intimidated -- I see that."

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/05/AR2006040502150.html?referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=email

[salin]

1. The govt is OWNED by corps - can't let reality get in the way of profits.

[Coastie for Truth]

5. Especially Big Oil

Oil and natural gas take us down the street and around the world. They warm and cool our homes and businesses. They provide the ingredients for medicines, fertilizers, fabrics, plastics and other products that make life safer, easier and better.

Oil and gas, along with other fossil fuels, may also be affecting our climate. How much is uncertain since changes are hard to measure and natural forces are also at work.

Scientists are trying to learn more. Policymakers are debating what should be done. While U.S. oil and natural gas companies believe that uncertainties about climate change make it hard to justify mandatory, severe, near-term emission reductions, they are voluntarily reducing emissions in low-cost, common-sense ways, developing new technologies to ensure future progress, and investing millions of dollars in climate research.

For more information about the industry and climate change, please click on topic headings on the left.

and

More research and better technology are important to addressing climate change. That’s why U.S. oil and natural gas companies are sponsoring significant new climate change research and encouraging development of technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Click here for more information.

David E Wojick, Ph.D., PE, offers An Assessment of the Strategic Plan of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program in his December 2003 report on Key Uncertainties, Milestones and Issues: " . . . the Strategic Plan of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program is a significant piece of work. The Strategic Plan successfully targets many of the key uncertainties in climate science, but with significant gaps in the Plan that still need to be filled. Consideration of certain mechanisms of natural variability needs to be expanded, and the network of critical dependencies needs to be defined."

Harvard-Smithsonian scientists Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas examined the repeated claim that 20th century climate was unusual compared to that of the last 1000 years in the recently published study, "Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 Years: A Reappraisal". The study, published in Energy & Environment, analyzed numerous climactic indicators, and specifically notes that many parts of the world showed medieval warming that exceeded the warming observed in the 20th century.

Astro-physicist Dr. Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics takes a close look at the Earth's temperature in a Heritage Foundation lecture entitled Warming Up to the Truth: the Real Story about Climate Change. Baliunas says that the sun's rising energy output -- rather than human activities -- accounts for recent warming at the Earth's surface. If mankind's emissions were responsible, she argues, the change would also be reflected in the troposphere. However, precise temperature measurements recorded by satellites and balloons fail to show a significant increase.

An Australian statistician, Ian Castles, and a British economist, David Henderson believe that the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has wrongly forecast future economic growth, leading to a substantial overestimate of future carbon dioxide emissions. The IPCC's 2001 calculation of future emissions drove its projections of potential temperature increases. If Castles and Henderson are correct, the IPCC temperature projections are seriously inflated, predicting much more warming than models said will occur. The error in the IPCC's economic growth forecasts is apparent when comparing developing versus developed country growth. Castles observes that under the IPCC approach, the per capita income of the average South African is projected to be four times that of the average American in 2100--and that the South African economy will be comparable to that of the entire world in 1990. The IPCC is studying Castles and Henderson's work.

This study by environmental scientist Dr. David Wojick examines six different National Academy of Science reports and identifies very fundamental questions that have to be faced when making a credible assessment of climate change – and our current ability to understand and project possible change in the future. In many instances new scientific research is beginning to address some of these key issues, but just beginning. Click below to view a full copy of the report.

Danish Professor Bjorn Lomborg, formerly a member of Greenpeace, has created a firestorm of controversy with his new book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. Based on an exhaustive review of environmental statistics, the book concludes that our environment is improving and is likely to continue to do so.

Coastie's comment -
Wojick? Lomborg? Heritage Foundation? Castles & Henderson? - Has the American Petroleum Institute No Shame?

[mdmc]

2. .

:mad:

[Aviation Pro]

3. Working with the National Hurricane Center

...I get the same feeling of unease from many of the gifted meteorologists there. There is a hesitation to provide information on the coming season, which from all indications will be as worse if not worse than last season. The 2006 Hurricane Forecast from Colorado State University was played down in the press after its release and I'm sure that the most vulnerable areas are going to regret this.

Link to the full report is here: http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/2006/april2006/apr2006.pdf

[Dr. Jones]

7. Perhaps LIHOP has some merit after all...

Let It Happen On Purpose...finally they will be able to eliminate Posse Comitatus and maybe even implement martial law...they've been itching for that for years now. Bush salivates every time he's able to broach the subject and urges Congress to follow through...
:mad:

[MadHound]

4. This administration is the most hostile science in our history

At least past administrations, while vile, continued to ground themselves in the reality of science. Bushco on the other hand doesn't want science to get in the way of his plans, and therefore he dismisses it out of hand, whether it be meteorology, biology, physics, etc. If reality is inconvient for him, he disposes with it and does what he wants.

And thus the decline of our country accelerates.

[leftyladyfrommo]

6. This is the kind of stuff that scares me

How do we make decisions if we can't get good, solid, scientific info?

Fortunately, we have the Internet. It is probably going to save us all.

[Dr. Jones]

8. But maybe not for that much longer,

the Pentagon has been itching to control the internet as well. Total information control. That's what they're ultimate goal is.

Only way we'll stop this dangerous slide towards total dictatorship is if we run Bush and friends out of office, and I mean NOW. The Dems have to take a stand. The repugs (good luck there) must wake up and start to succumb to the will of the people, that is, to get an unpopular President out of office through impeachment.

[peacetalksforall]

9. This information should be blasted side-by-side with the fake news

story. I mean side-by-side literally. There are many people who can go back and forth ina comparison way and get more out of a story than all text shown horizontally across the page, but in a very conscripted sequence. A third column could outline the silencing of librarians and other industries that are involved in Homeland Security investigations.

Homeland Security - what a joke it has become.