Bush appointees censor scientists at government agencies

At a conference on science and the environment at the New School in New York City last week, Hansen said that officials at another agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), had similarly prevented scientists from discussing their findings on global warming.

Hansen’s accusations have prompted denials from the heads of both agencies, calls for congressional investigations, editorials in the New York Times and Washington Post, and the departure of at least one official from NASA.

Hansen is a climatologist and the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He has worked for the agency since 1967 and since 1998 has been warning the public about the long-term greenhouse effects caused by carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal and petroleum products.

In a series of interviews with the New York Times, he outlined the attempts by NASA to silence him after December 6 when he gave a lecture to the American Geophysical Union. In his talk, he suggested that without the leadership of the United States in making substantial cuts in the emission of fossil fuels, climate change would in time make the earth “a different planet.”

On December 15, Hansen released data that showed that 2005 was the warmest year in at least a century. Officials in NASA’s public affairs office, apparently speaking on behalf of their superiors, said Hansen would suffer “dire consequences” if he continued making such statements. Hansen has produced internal memorandums warning that if he persisted he would be replaced by supervisors in future news interviews.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/nasa-f15.shtml