The Administration's war on Federal Government Science

[Chadman]

Facts? Who Needs Facts?
Francesca Grifo
February 15, 2007

Dr. Francesca Grifo is senior scientist and director of the Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Formed in 1969, UCS is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world.

Federal government science has been distorted, manipulated and suppressed on everything from childhood lead poisoning to toxic mercury emissions, with serious consequences for our health, safety and environment. And through executive order, the Bush administration has attempted to centralize decision-making power in the White House, in the process preventing independent science from informing policy. This cannot be allowed to continue. Congress must act to restore scientific integrity and checks and balances to the federal policy-making process.

If recent activity in the House and Senate is any indication, Congress intends to hold the administration accountable for its abuse of the scientific process. Congress held two hearings in as many weeks?one in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and another in the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee?to investigate allegations that federal scientists face political barriers in communicating their work outside their agencies.

The hearings focused on climate change, ?Exhibit A? in the administration?s abuse of science. A*recent investigation by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Government Accountability Project (GAP) exposed new evidence of widespread political interference across federal science agencies.

The joint investigative report by UCS and GAP, which includes a survey of hundreds of federal scientists at seven federal agencies and dozens of in-depth interviews, documents a high regard for climate change research but broad interference in communicating scientific results. As part of the report, UCS sent a questionnaire to 1,600 federal climate scientists, and 150 scientists reported personally experiencing at least 435 occurrences of political interference in their work over the past five years.

Nearly half of all respondents (46 percent) perceived or personally experienced pressure to eliminate the words ?climate change,? ?global warming? or other similar terms from a variety of communications. Forty-three percent of respondents reported they had perceived or personally experienced changes or edits during review of their work that changed the meaning of their scientific findings. And nearly half (46 percent) perceived or personally experienced new or unusual administrative requirements that impair climate-related work.

The 40 expert interviews included in the report revealed restrictive media policies that impaired timely release of information to help policy makers and the public understand global warming science. Scientists reported unnecessary delays and misrepresentation of press releases on new research, requirements for pre-approval for press interviews and agency public affairs officials listening in on interviews between journalists and scientists.

These political barriers to communicating science are not unique to global warming research. The problem has surfaced in many federal science agencies whose staff work on topics ranging from airborne bacteria to endangered species. Of the more than 1,800 federal scientists across nine agencies who have responded to questionnaires about this issue, 699 scientists (39 percent) report that they fear retaliation for openly expressing concerns about their agency?s mission-driven work. This number should be zero.

UCS has documented scores of specific examples of abuse in its ?A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science ." These take many forms?from censorship and suppression of federal science, to dissemination of inaccurate science-based information to the manipulation of scientific advice. More than 11,500 scientists, including 52 Nobel laureates and science advisors to both Republican and Democratic presidents dating back*50 years, have signed a statement condemning this interference and calling for a restoration of scientific integrity to federal policy making.

But while Congress has begun to wake up to this problem, the administration is attempting a power grab of a different sort, pulling the rug out from under federal agencies. In amendments to a new executive order released in January, the Bush administration*quietly transferred power*from federal agencies to the White House when it comes to new regulations and guidance documents promulgated by federal agencies.

This new rule places political appointees deeper inside federal scientific agencies where they could more easily prevent inconvenient science from ever seeing the light of day. Rather than upholding the work of federal scientists and shielding it from political interference, this rule creates an added layer of political sign-off in agency work.

All branches of government must have access to independent, scientific advice. The thousands of scientists employed by the federal government represent a tremendous resource. Without access to the best available science on climate change and other issues, the public?s understanding will suffer, and our leaders will be unable to make fully informed decisions about our health, safety and environment.

Congress and federal agency leaders should implement reforms that will prevent the continued interference with science for political purposes. Congress must act to protect scientists who speak out when they see interference or suppression of science and all agency policies must affirmatively educate their employees of their rights under these statutes. And federal agencies should immediately enact communications policies that protect the rights of taxpayer-funded scientists to communicate freely about their results with the media and the public without prior approval from the executive branch.

 

[gardenweasel]

""Of the more than 1,800 federal scientists across nine agencies who have responded to questionnaires about this issue, 699 scientists (39 percent) report that they fear retaliation for openly expressing concerns about their agency’s mission-driven work. This number should be zero.""

what kind of retaliation?..harsh language?.....somebody`s "feelings" get hurt?....it`s pretty damned hard to fire a government employee....

that`s roughly one third.....regarding a controversial,highly politicized issue.....

i guess the other 2/3`s that see no problems should just stfu....

another left-wing political (non-profit) organization with THEIR OWN agenda trying to strong-arm government policy....

gimme a break..

 

[Chadman]

Ok, how about this paragraph...democrats, republicans, et al...

"More than 11,500 scientists, including 52 Nobel laureates and science advisors to both Republican and Democratic presidents dating back*50 years, have signed a statement condemning this interference and calling for a restoration of scientific integrity to federal policy making."

Can I ask you this...what right does this administration have in doing what they are doing? Why should the White House have any say in what independent scientists do or say? I think most people that aren't Bush administration apologists know why they are doing it. Of course it's no big deal to you...

I'm sure all of these government scientists, who have worked for this country for years, through republican and democratic administrations are only out to get the Bush administration, right?

Another question...why is this the administration the only one that needs to reign in these scientists? I guess they must be terra-rists.

It's a fricking sad joke. More totalitarian rule, sponsored by King George and his henchmen. God forbid any federal judge ever rule that these scientists may have a point...that dude or dudette will end up released from the bench and probably stretched out on a different kind of bench.

 

[DOGS THAT BARK]

Yep I like to see the 1st one come forward that has been lost job--any supporting facts like this one where just the reverse is true--


06:08 PM PST on Thursday, February 8, 2007

By VINCE PATTON, KGW Staff

In the face of evidence agreed upon by hundreds of climate scientists, George Taylor holds firm. He does not believe human activities are the main cause of global climate change.

Hundreds of scientists last Friday issued the strongest warning yet on global warming saying humans are "very likely" the cause.


?Most of the climate changes we have seen up until now have been a result of natural variations,? Taylor asserts.


Taylor has held the title of "state climatologist" since 1991 when the legislature created a state climate office at OSU The university created the job title, not the state.

His opinions conflict not only with many other scientists, but with the state of Oregon's policies.


So the governor wants to take that title from Taylor and make it a position that he would appoint.


In an exclusive interview with KGW-TV, Governor Ted Kulongoski confirmed he wants to take that title from Taylor. The governor said Taylor's contradictions interfere with the state's stated goals to reduce greenhouse gases, the accepted cause of global warming in the eyes of a vast majority of scientists.


?He is Oregon State University's climatologist. He is not the state of Oregon's climatologist,? Kulongoski said.

 

[WhatsHisNuts]

DTB: I think you just answered Weasel's question about what the scientists are afraid of. To expand upon it a little more, if your line of work depends on federal funding, you might be a little "gun-shy" when it comes to publishing work that refutes the federal government's stance.

 

[DOGS THAT BARK]

Hmm for a minute I thought you might be here with fact on someone from Global warming crew getting fired

I think the word fear would be better used with the prozac eating sky is falling crowd--

I as well as CA crop farmers Chi-New York ect are looking forward currently to a little "global warming"

we just rehashed this last week--here is link for refresher--and article in it for your viewing--with facts not opinions--

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1363818.ece

February 11, 2007

An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change
Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, says the orthodoxy must be challenged
When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months? time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.

The small print explains ?very likely? as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain?s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.

Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.

Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter?s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Ad?lie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.
So one awkward question you can ask, when you?re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is ?Why is east Antarctica getting colder?? It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you?re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it?s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.
That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.

Climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis. The 20th-century episode, or Modern Warming, was just the latest in a long string of similar events produced by a hyperactive sun, of which the last was the Medieval Warming.

The Chinese population doubled then, while in Europe the Vikings and cathedral-builders prospered. Fascinating relics of earlier episodes come from the Swiss Alps, with the rediscovery in 2003 of a long-forgotten pass used intermittently whenever the world was warm.

What does the Intergovernmental Panel do with such emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm and cold periods, linked to solar activity and going on long before human industry was a possible factor? Less than nothing. The 2007 Summary for Policymakers boasts of cutting in half a very small contribution by the sun to climate change conceded in a 2001 report.

Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun?s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.

He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun?s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.

The only trouble with Svensmark?s idea ? apart from its being politically incorrect ? was that meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be involved in cloud formation. After long delays in scraping together the funds for an experiment, Svensmark and his small team at the Danish National Space Center hit the jackpot in the summer of 2005.

In a box of air in the basement, they were able to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulphuric acid and water. These are the building blocks for cloud condensation. But journal after journal declined to publish their report; the discovery finally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year.

Thanks to having written The Manic Sun, a book about Svensmark?s initial discovery published in 1997, I have been privileged to be on the inside track for reporting his struggles and successes since then. The outcome is a second book, The Chilling Stars, co-authored by the two of us and published next week by Icon books. We are not exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle it ?A new theory of climate change?.

Where does all that leave the impact of greenhouse gases? Their effects are likely to be a good deal less than advertised, but nobody can really say until the implications of the new theory of climate change are more fully worked out.

The reappraisal starts with Antarctica, where those contradictory temperature trends are directly predicted by Svensmark?s scenario, because the snow there is whiter than the cloud-tops. Meanwhile humility in face of Nature?s marvels seems more appropriate than arrogant assertions that we can forecast and even control a climate ruled by the sun and the stars.

 

[WhatsHisNuts]

Hmm for a minute I thought you might be here with fact on someone from Global warming crew getting fired

I think the word fear would be better used with the prozac eating sky is falling crowd--

I was responding to Weasel's question about what retaliation they would be afraid of. I never said I believed the story, but your post showed why people that are government funded/employed might have to be careful about who's views they are disproving/against.

 

[DOGS THAT BARK]

Scientists threatened for 'climate denial'
By Tom Harper, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:24am GMT 11/03/2007



Scientists who questioned mankind's impact on climate change have received death threats and claim to have been shunned by the scientific community.

They say the debate on global warming has been "hijacked" by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions.

Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five deaths threats by email since raising concerns about the degree to which man was affecting climate change.

advertisementOne of the emails warned that, if he continued to speak out, he would not live to see further global warming.

"Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened," said the professor.

"I can tolerate being called a sceptic because all scientists should be sceptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal."

Last week, Professor Ball appeared in The Great Global Warming Swindle, a Channel 4 documentary in which several scientists claimed the theory of man-made global warming had become a "religion", forcing alternative explanations to be ignored.

Richard Lindzen, the professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology - who also appeared on the documentary - recently claimed: "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labelled as industry stooges.

"Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science."

Dr Myles Allen, from Oxford University, agreed. He said: "The Green movement has hijacked the issue of climate change. It is ludicrous to suggest the only way to deal with the problem is to start micro managing everyone, which is what environmentalists seem to want to do."

Nigel Calder, a former editor of New Scientist, said: "Governments are trying to achieve unanimity by stifling any scientist who disagrees. Einstein could not have got funding under the present system."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/11/ngreen211.xml

 

[djv]

Science should be independent from any WH. Europe and even Brazil out ahead of us in doing what little we can with global warming. Just one example. Stay on guard the robots are coming.

 

[krc]

DOCUMENTARY: The Great Global Warning Swindle..

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792811497638&q=the+great+swindle


krc

 

[DOGS THAT BARK]

---and whats this --is NYT trying to back out like a sand crab and not get caught redfaced ????

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NY TIMES PLANS HIT ON GORE, NEWSROOM SOURCES TELL DRUDGE: 'Scientists argue that Gore's warnings are full of exaggerated claims and startling errors'... Reporter William Broad filing the story, 'A CALL TO COOL THE HYPE'... Developing...

Hmm Might be time for folks to sell their Eli Lilly stock---the temporary Prozac boom might be over---
:142smilie

 

[DOGS THAT BARK]

NYT article---they cut him too much slack--but don't think Al will be concerned he's already cashed via documentary-books ect.
He did learn something from his prior boss's -PT Barnham approach--
"There's a sucker born every minute"

entire article--2 pages
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/s...7a5aa6ed6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

 

[Amfan1]

Mr. Gore got a little carried away with some of his claims(maybe). None of us will know for sure because if Florida is covered in water; it will be after we are dead. But the fact that global warming is happening is indisputable.

The questions are 1. Why is it happening and 2. What can we do about it. In other posts several have said they are doing their part to control their own little space in the world. That is good. I think science and government need to forget trying to stop global warming completely and spend some time looking at how humans will need to adapt to climate change. For that matter, other species also. I say this because I don't think it can be completely stopped.

 

[djv]

Florida under water. We better give Kosar time to move. I wonder if there will be any place left to ice skate out side.
For sure it has started. But what we can do to stop mother nature is very little.
Hey a new guy. 5 post welcome. look out there are some real man eaters here. They say there necons. well a couple may be con's :SIB

 

[Amfan1]

Florida under water. We better give Kosar time to move. I wonder if there will be any place left to ice skate out side.
For sure it has started. But what we can do to stop mother nature is very little.
Hey a new guy. 5 post welcome. look out there are some real man eaters here. They say there necons. well a couple may be con's :SIB

Definition of neocon: Supports constitutional amendment to require going to Church on Sunday.:00hour

 

[djv]

Is that why they started Saturday service. Sunday is a day of rest. :mj07: Oh and football, nascar and buckets.

 

[Amfan1]

Is that why they started Saturday service. Sunday is a day of rest. :mj07: Oh and football, nascar and buckets.

could be!