A former White House official accused of improperly editing reports on global warming defended his editorial changes Monday as reflecting views expressed in a 2001 report by the National Academy of Sciences.House Democrats said the 181 changes made in three climate reports reflected a consistent attempt to emphasize uncertainties surrounding the science of climate change and undercut the broad conclusions that manmade emissions are warming the earth.Philip Cooney, former chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, acknowledged at a House hearing that some of the changes he made were “to align these communications with the administration’s stated policy” on climate change.
The extent of Cooney’s editing of government climate reports first surfaced in 2005. Shortly thereafter, Cooney, a former oil industry lobbyist, left the White House to work at Exxon Mobil Corp.
So the government is so deeply into the pockets of big business that they will go to any length to silence scientists trying to warn us about Global Warming.
Doesn’t surprise me one bit.
Waxman’s committee also heard from James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the country’s leading climate scientists, who said the White House repeatedly tried to control what government scientists say to the public and media about climate change.
“Interference with communications of science to the public has been greater during the current administration than at any time in my career,” said Hansen, who was one of the first to raise the problem of climate change in the 1980s.
Hansen’s battles with NASA and White House public affairs officials are not new and resulted in an easing of NASA’s policies toward scientists talking to the media about their work.
But that was not always the case.
Hansen said that in 2005 he was told by a 24-year-old NASA public affairs official he could take no part in an interview with National Public Radio on orders from senior NASA public affairs officials. Instead, three other NASA officials were offered for the interview.
The young press officer, George Deutsch, now 26, sat next to Hansen at the witness table Monday and told the committee he had simply been “relaying” the views of higher-ups at NASA that Hansen was not to participate in the interview.
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa suggested that Hansen was not being muzzled at all, and there is nothing wrong with government scientists being subject to some limits in what they say.
A Republican Representative says that censoring scientists is ok because they work for the government? How do you put limits on a person who’s job is to uncover facts?
Source: Huffington Post
The entire idea of government controlled research has seen much better days, this event will hopefully be a huge step toward taking the scientists away from the government.
