| WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ | |
 http://csua.com/feed/ | |
| ||||||
| 11/22 |
| 2006/1/28-29 [Science/GlobalWarming, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:41578 Activity:high |
1/27 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html "The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out ... was particularly incensed that the directives ... had come through informal telephone conversations ... leaving no significant trails of documents. ... relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be 'dire consequences' if such statements continued ... 'The inference was that Hansen was disloyal.' ... 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." "If America shows uncertainty or weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy." -GW Bush (Sep 2, 2004) \_ oooh spoooookeeeey.... "informal telephone conversations" .... ... "no signnificant trails of documents" .... "relayed the warning .... would be 'dire consequences'" .... "inference was that ... was disloyal" .... "and then only if a [agent representing the administration] is present" ....... So has the NYT sunk to new journalistic lows or was it always this bad? Wasn't there once a time when reporters actually went out and *investigated* allegations instead of writing single sourced propaganda like this? I guess doing actual fact checking is *work*. Maybe this is going on, maybe it isn't but we don't know from sensationalist junk like this. Might as well read the Daily Cal. Same quality and it's free. \_ What you are saying is completely false. \_ Uhm, yeah, you have totally convinced me with that well supported statement. If you have nothing to say, which you don't, say nothing. In the mean time, I'm going to go find a Daily Cal so I can read something well researched instead of the crap the NYT is spewing out. \_ Most of your "points" are complete hokum. \_ Most of your "points" are complete hokum. \_ If you actually had a point or something to say, you would have said so by now. You're still hovering around the "i no u r but wut am i?!" level. The Daily Cal quite most excellent even though it was last week's Tuesday edition. Very timely! I look forward to reading tomorrow's on Friday. \_ What you are saying is completely false. \_ Holy time travel, Batman. Here's a Wapo story from 1/2005 about it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19162-2005Jan18.html Does he like pop up once a year to talk about how he's been pressured not to talk? Any bets on his story on 1/2007? \_ Anyone who ranks lower would be hesitant to come out for fear of losing their livelihood. \_ Absolutely. Come January next year, I'm sure we'll once again hear about how he was pressured to keep silent. |
| 11/22 |
|
| www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html ANDREW C REVKIN Published: January 29, 2006 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 linked to global warming. Goklany's Papers on Climate Change 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. "They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said. Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen applied to all National Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel whom the public could perceive as speaking for the agency. He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen. 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. Dick Cheney and other cabinet members on climate change. White House officials were interested in his findings showing that cleaning up soot, which also warms the atmosphere, was an effective and far easier first step than curbing carbon dioxide. He fell out of favor with the White House in 2004 after giving a speech at the University of Iowa before the presidential election, in which he complained that government climate scientists were being muzzled, and said he planned to vote for Senator John Kerry. Hansen said that nothing in 30 years equaled the push made since early December to keep him from publicly discussing what he says are clear-cut dangers from further delay in curbing carbon dioxide. In several interviews with The New York Times in recent days, Dr. Hansen said it would be irresponsible not to speak out, particularly because NASA's mission statement includes the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet." He said he was particularly incensed that the directives affecting his statements had come through informal telephone conversations and not through formal channels, leaving no significant trails of documents. Hansen's supervisor, Franco Einaudi, said there had been no official "order or pressure to say shut Jim up." Einaudi added, "That doesn't mean I like this kind of pressure being applied." Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet." The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen and an internal draft memorandum he provided to The Times, was that his supervisors could stand in for him in any news media interviews. In one call, George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public Radio to interview Dr. Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute. |
| www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19162-2005Jan18.html All RSS Feeds Players: James E Hansen Putting Some Heat on Bush Scientist Inspires Anger, Awe for Challenges on Global Warming By Juliet Eilperin Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, January 19, 2005; Page A17 In his worn navy windbreaker, 63-year-old climatologist James E Hansen looks more like the Iowa farm native that he is than a rebel -- but he's both. Hansen, a lifelong government employee who heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, has inspired both anger and awe in the nation's scientific and political communities since publicly denouncing the Bush administration's policy on climate change last year. NASA's James E Hansen denounced the Bush administration's policy on climate change in a speech last year in Iowa. Education: Bachelor's of science in physics and mathematics, University of Iowa; Career highlights: Helped identify the properties of clouds that covered Venus so later researchers could determine the clouds were made of sulfuric acid; showed how scientists could use large volcanic eruptions to help predict climate change. Recent reading: "Galileo's Mistake" by Wade Rowland and "Galileo in Rome" by William R Shea and Mariano Artigas. Pastimes: Teaching his grandchildren astronomy with his new telescope. Friday's Question: It was not until the early 20th century that the Senate enacted rules allowing members to end filibusters and unlimited debate. How many votes were required to invoke cloture when the Senate first adopted the rule in 1917? Sign Up Now Speaking in the swing state of Iowa days before the presidential election, Hansen accused a senior administration official of trying to block him from discussing the dangerous effects of global warming. In the University of Iowa speech, Hansen recounted how NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe told him in a 2003 meeting that he shouldn't talk "about dangerous anthropogenic interference" -- humans' influence on the atmosphere -- "because we do not know enough or have enough evidence for what would constitute dangerous anthropogenic interference." But Hansen said that scientists know enough to conclude we have reached this danger point and that their efforts to get the word out are being blocked by the administration. "In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it has now," Hansen said. He added that although the administration wants to wait 10 years to evaluate climate change, "delay of another decade, I argue, is a colossal risk." Senior administration officials deny Hansen's charges: O'Keefe spokesman Glenn Mahone said the administrator doesn't "recall ever having the conversation" on climate change that Hansen described, adding that O'Keefe "has encouraged open dialogue and open conversation about those issues." But Hansen, who has worked for NASA since he was 25, has continued to chide the administration for not moving swiftly enough to address global warming. In a recent interview, he called Bush officials "reasonable people" who need to be convinced that climate change is an urgent matter. "As the evidence gathers, you would hope they would be flexible," Hansen said in the slow, measured tones he has retained from his years growing up on an Iowa farm. The ongoing sparring match between Hansen and his superiors underscores a broader tension between President Bush's top policy advisers and many senior US scientists, who have loudly blasted the administration's approach to environmental questions in recent months. After the barrage of criticism, John H Marburger III, Bush's top science adviser, told Science magazine that if the researchers continue their protests, they might alienate influential lawmakers who set federal science budgets. Hansen, who also took on Bush's father, President George HW Bush, on the question of climate change in the late 1980s, is undeterred. An advocate for caps on carbon dioxide emissions and stricter fuel standards for automobiles -- two policies that Bush advisers say would hurt the US economy -- Hansen said he has to oppose what he said is the government's choice to delay action on new regulations to limit emissions under the guise of seeking more scientific research. We should not be influenced in any way by funding," Hansen said. In 1989, he accused the Office of Management and Budget of watering down his congressional testimony on climate change to make the situation appear less dire. "I'm strictly trying to understand the Earth as a planet," said Hansen, who started his career studying the clouds around Venus but switched in 1978 to climate modeling. |