When it comes to global warming, the Bush administration is not beneath muzzling scientists. For example, James Hansen, the longtime director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has spoken out repeatedly, explaining to anyone who will listen that administration officials have tried to censor scientific information about climate change. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s scientists have reported similar problems.
In one particularly egregious example from last September, weather experts at NOAA set up a seven-member panel to prepare a consensus report on the views of agency scientists about global warming and hurricanes. When the data suggested that global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the Bush administration blocked the release of the report. It led Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) to argue that “the administration has effectively declared war on science and truth to advance its anti-environment agenda.”
What’s startling, however, is that in some cases the administration doesn’t have to proactively censor experts, researchers, and scientists — in some instances, the professionals now recognize the need to censor themselves.
The Smithsonian Institution toned down an exhibit on climate change in the Arctic for fear of angering Congress and the Bush administration, says a former administrator at the museum.
Among other things, the script, or official text, of last year’s exhibit was rewritten to minimize and inject more uncertainty into the relationship between global warming and humans, said Robert Sullivan, who was associate director in charge of exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
Also, officials omitted scientists’ interpretation of some research and let visitors draw their own conclusions from the data, he said. In addition, graphs were altered “to show that global warming could go either way,” Sullivan said.
“It just became tooth-pulling to get solid science out without toning it down,” said Sullivan, who resigned last fall after 16 years at the museum.
White House spokeswoman Kristen Hellmer said Monday: “The White House had no role in this exhibit.” Oddly enough, I suspect that’s probably true.
The White House and the then-GOP-led Congress had already muzzled enough scientists, and made perfectly clear that reliable, quality information was anathema to the Republican agenda, that they no longer had to interfere.
As Sullivan explained, “The obsession with getting the next allocation and appropriation was so intense that anything that might upset the Congress or the White House was being looked at very carefully.”
In this case, the exhibit, “Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely,” opened late because of an extensive review to ensure that it didn’t upset GOP politicians. Some current Smithsonian officials said changes to the exhibit were minor and inconsequential, but there’s reason to believe otherwise. Sullivan noted “several scientists whose work was used in the exhibit objected to the changes.” John Calder, a lead climate scientist at the NOAA who consulted on the project, added, “I remember them telling me there was an attempt to make sure there was nothing in there that would be upsetting to any politicians.”
Ultimately, I guess this is all to be expected.
“I see it in some ways as similar to the sort-of debate that has taken place with regard to the science of evolution,” said Professor Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Center. “Just as I would hope that the Smithsonian would stand firmly behind the science of evolution, it would also be my hope that they would stand firmly behind the science that supports influence on climate. Politically, they may be controversial, but scientifically they are not.”
There goes the reality-based community again, forgetting how the rules are different in Bush’s America….