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Show THE ZEPHYR] DECEMBER 2008-J ANUARY 2009 From the Shadows: the Art of Censoring Climate Scientists By Scott Thompson .. the first line of the NASA mission is “to understand and protect our home planet.” Maybe that can be changed to “...protect special interests’ backside.” James Hansen, March 2007 When people have no identification with the wildness of the land — do not experience it as sacred — a tiny seed of evil possibility lies dormant in their minds. The seed sprouts when there is a dire threat to what they do hold sacred. This is the tale of the twisted kudzu thickets threatened brains grew. Those threatened brains belong to a subterranean network of Bush administration political appointees from the White House Council on Environmental Quality; the Office of Science and ters of the National Aeronautics and Space Adminand within the Commerce tential to trump what authority figures say. Science has prestige in our culture; even evolution-denying fundamentalists fear the shadow of Darwin. Hence the commissars’ second strategy: suppress the emerging scientific findings on climate change in order to protect the credibility of the lie. Here are some baseline practices and events in the history of this suppression. Philip Cooney, an attorney with no scientific credentials, was chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality from 2001 until 2005. The CEQ oversees the U.S. Climate Change Program, the bureaucracy responsible for integrating the roughly $2 billion of annual climate research from 13 separate federal agencies. Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President; the Office of Public Affairs in the headquaristration; So far the lie has been effective in confusing the public. In a CNN poll in June of this year 45% of those responding believe either that global warming is caused by natural cycles in the weather or that it is an unproven theory. (4) But as good propagandists the commissars knew that scientific findings have the po- Department, which rides herd on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And elsewhere in the Bush administration. These people typically have professional backgrounds in the energy industry or substantive connections with it or as public relations professionals or both. I call them the Bush climate commissars. Cooney and a CEQ staff associate made at least 181 edits to the Administration’s Strategic Plan of the Climate Change Science Program in order to exaggerate or emphasize scientific uncertainties. In addition, they made at least 113 edits to the plan in order to diminish the importance of the human role in global warming, according to a memorandum submitted to a hearing of the Congressional Here is the threat: the best climate scientists in the world, James Hansen being the exemplar, have in the last five or six years amassed evidence convincing to any fair-minded person that humanity has only 30 or so years to accomplish the following: House Oversight Committee. (5) Andrew Revkin, a reporter for The New York Times, broke the story in June, 2005. Two days later Phase out coal-fired power plants not sequestering carbon dioxide, and... . Vastly reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gases, and black soot. Much of this research has been on melting ice sheets and deep ice core samples. Failure to achieve the foregoing will in all probability generate positive feedback loops escalating the process of global warming So human es When that happens we will be powerless to stop: Sea level rises of six or more feet in this century, totaling 50-80 feet or more over the next two or three centuries, and (1) Cooney resigned and went to work for ExxonMobil. In Revkin’s interview with Amy Goodman later that month he said that scientists from the many government agencies spent months on their reports coming up with language they thought framed the science correctly, so that when they said the Earth is experiencing significant climate change they meant precisely that. And when Cooney edited the line to say that the earth may be experiencing significant climate change, they were horrified, especially given Cooney’s lack of scientific training and long-standing bias against the findings of global warning science. (6) On Cooney’s bias: before he arrived at the CEQ he was a lawyer for ten years or so for The American Petroleum Institute, the leading lobbying organization for the oil industry. In his final assignment there he was the “climate team leader,” endeavoring to forestall international treaties limiting greenhouse gas emissions. When people have no identification with the wildness of the land - do not experience it as sacred — James Hansen is Director of Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA. Examples of generic suppression within his GISS are: press releases about global warming went from Headquarters to the White House for approval and editing. A professional writer at the Public Affairs Office at GISS told Hansen about this practice and Hansen referenced it in a 2004 speech. Afterward the writer was “dressed down’ and told to “mind his own business” by an administrator from headquarters Office of Public Affairs. And: another GISS staff member was asked at a “practice” press conference what if anything could be a tiny seed of evil possibility lies dormant in their minds. ~ The seed sprouts when there is a dire threat to what they do hold sacred. * Extinction of 40-50% of the species on Earth. (2) So much for human coastal civilization and the planet's essential biodiversity. But to the climate commissars the dire threat from global warming is not to the millions of people who will eventually die if the necessary changes are not made in time, nor to the many millions if not billions who will live in refugee camps akin to those in Palestine and the Sudan, nor is it to the vast species facing extinction. It is not even to the well being of our children and grandchildren. And certainly it is not to the health and stability of the Earth’s ecosystems. The threat that freezes their brain stems stiff is to the short-term profitability and stock values of mega fossil fuel companies. In order to stave off this dastardly threat the commissars settled on a two-part strategy. First, they relied on a time-honored propaganda tool: the lie. Now the chosen lie must be simple, plausible, ear-catching, and repeated continuously by relevant authority figures in order to enhance its credibility. It must come across as sincere and since itsperpetrators must stay on message, organizational discipline is vital. The lie they selected is that climate scientists are not yet in substantial agreement about the need for drastic action to redress global warming. This is the same brand of lie the tobacco industry used for decades: it isn’t yet clear that cigarettes cause no cancer. Here is the form the lie takes in the 2008 Republican Party Platform: ”...the scope and long term conse gnences of this [global warming] are the subject of plgeing scientific research...,” thus implying a lack of consensus toward rapid, far-reaching panes. “Any policies should be...based on sound science and technology...” (3) The term “sound science” implies that mainstream scientists are often left-leaning and that their scientific findings are therefore suspect. Failure to achieve the foregoing will in all probability generate positive feedback loops escalating the process of global warming beyond human control. When that happens we will be powerless to stop. done to forestall accelerating sea ice melts. He was told that his answer, that we should reduce greenhouse gas emissions, was “unacceptable” and that scientists are not allowed to make comments that relate to “policy.” And: still another GISS staff wrote a story based on a paper he had authored that the oceans are less able to remove human-made CO2 than had been previously believed. The Office of Public Affairs refused to allow its dissemination to the media. In the fall of 2005, following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the*National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center flatly stated that, “recent hur- ricane intensification is due to a natural cycle of Atlantic Ocean temperatures, and has nothing to do with global warming.” NOAA scientists were instructed not to disagree with the Hurricane Center’s conclusion in public, even though most climate scientists believe that global warming will cause more intense hurricanes. (7) Then matters intensified in the following sequence. |