The Bush administration is censoring scientists? You don’t say. (thanks to Gridlock for the heads-up)
Internal memorandums circulated in the Alaskan division of the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service appear to require government biologists or other employees traveling in countries around the Arctic not to discuss climate change, polar bears or sea ice if they are not designated to do so. […]
Over the past week, biologists and wildlife officials received a cover note and two sample memorandums to be used as a guide in preparing travel requests. Under the heading “Foreign Travel — New Requirement — Please Review and Comply, Importance: High,” the cover note said:
“Please be advised that all foreign travel requests (SF 1175 requests) and any future travel requests involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice and/or polar bears will also require a memorandum from the regional director to the director indicating who’ll be the official spokesman on the trip and the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears.”
The sample memorandums, described as to be used in writing travel requests, indicate that the employee seeking permission to travel “understands the administration’s position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues.”
Deborah Williams, an environmental campaigner in Alaska and a former Interior Department official in the Clinton administration, said the memos are discouraging. “This sure sounds like a Soviet-style directive to me,” Williams said.
It’s difficult to see this any other way. Fish and Wildlife scientists, in Alaska, can’t talk about polar bears with international colleagues unless Bush administration officials sign off on their comments.
What’s more, let’s not lose sight of the broader context.
The administration is defending these directives, emphasizing the importance of “protocol.” That might be a more credible response if the Bush gang hadn’t been cracking down on scientists for years.
Let’s not forget, for example, that [tag]James Hansen[/tag], the longtime director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has spoken out repeatedly, explaining to anyone who will listen that Bush administration officials have tried to censor scientific information about [tag]global warming[/tag].
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has had repeated problems of its own.
Scientists doing climate research for the federal government say the Bush administration has made it hard for them to speak forthrightly to the public about global warming. The result, the researchers say, is a danger that Americans are not getting the full story on how the climate is changing.
Employees and contractors working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a U.S. Geological Survey scientist working at an NOAA lab, said in interviews that over the past year administration officials have chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether.
For example, Christopher Milly, a hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, said he had trouble writing a press release on how climate change would affect the nation’s water supply without running into trouble from officials at the Interior Department. In 2002, Milly was told that his release would cause “great problems with the department.” A few years later, officials allowed Milly to issue a statement on his research, but only after certain key words — “global warming,” “warming climate,” and “climate change” — were removed.
Scientists at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory told the WaPo they’ve had so many problems getting clearance to speak with journalists, a lot of reporters have just stopped asking, leading to a public that only has “a partial sense” of what government scientists have learned about climate change.
One of them said, “American taxpayers are paying the bill, and they have a right to know what we’re doing.”
It’s not a sexy campaign issue, but I can only hope the Dem candidates incorporate respect for science into the 2008 race.