NASA Tries to Silence Climate Expert
NASA's top climate scientist said the Bush
administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture
in December calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse
gases.
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.]
Posted: Sun - January 29, 2006 at 06:06 AM