Rewriting The Science: How the Bush Administration is Lying to You!

James Hansen

Rewriting The Science

As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn't want you to hear but he's going to say them anyway.

Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science.

...

"In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public," says Hansen.

Restrictions like this e-mail Hansen's institute received from NASA in 2004. "… there is a new review process … ," the e-mail read. "The White House (is) now reviewing all climate related press releases," it continued.

...Hansen went public a year and a half ago, saying this about the Bush administration in a talk at the University of Iowa: "I find a willingness to listen only to those portions of scientific results that fit predetermined inflexible positions. This, I believe, is a recipe for environmental disaster."

Yeah, yeah, heard it already, right? Keep reading...

Dozens of federal agencies report science but much of it is edited at the White House before it is sent to Congress and the public. It appears climate science is edited with a heavy hand. Drafts of climate reports were co-written by Rick Piltz for the federal Climate Change Science Program. But Piltz says his work was edited by the White House to make global warming seem less threatening.

"The strategy of people with a political agenda to avoid this issue is to say there is so much to study way upstream here that we can’t even being to discuss impacts and response strategies," says Piltz. "There’s too much uncertainty. It's not the climate scientists that are saying that, its lawyers and politicians."

Piltz worked under the Clinton and Bush administrations. Each year, he helped write a report to Congress called "Our Changing Planet."

Piltz says he is responsible for editing the report and sending a review draft to the White House.

Asked what happens, Piltz says: "It comes back with a large number of edits, handwritten on the hard copy by the chief-of-staff of the Council on Environmental Quality."

Asked who the chief of staff is, Piltz says, "Phil Cooney."

Piltz says Cooney is not a scientist. "He's a lawyer. He was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, before going into the White House," he says.

Read these choice lines:

..."He would put in the word potential or may or weaken or delete text that had to do with the likely consequence of climate change, pump up uncertainty language throughout..."

...References to human health are marked out...

..."Even to raise issues internally is immediately career limiting..."

...in one federal report submitted for review. Government scientists wanted to tell you about the ice sheets, but before a draft of the report left the White House, the paragraph on glacial melt and flooding was crossed out and this was added: "straying from research strategy into speculative findings and musings here..."

...Hansen says his words were edited once during a presentation when a top official scolded him for using the word danger...

Come on, people, I can understand differing scientific views, but is this what is going on here?

May our children forgive us our STUPIDITY!!!!



[edit on 20-3-2006 by loam]

Thank you Loam.

I've now seen this story all over the internet, at the most credible and prestigious websites also.

Its about time the lid is blown off this stupid farce.....

www.cbsnews.com...

And Cicerone, who’s an atmospheric chemist, said the same thing every leading scientist told 60 Minutes.

"Climate change is really happening," says Cicerone.

Asked what is causing the changes, Cicernone says it's greenhouse gases: "Carbon dioxide and methane, and chlorofluorocarbons and a couple of others, which are all — the increases in their concentrations in the air are due to human activities. It's that simple."

But if it is that simple, why do some climate science reports look like they have been heavily edited at the White House? With science labeled "not sufficiently reliable." It’s a tone of scientific uncertainty the president set in his first months in office after he pulled out of a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"We do not know how much our climate could, or will change in the future," President Bush said in 2001, speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House. "We do not know how fast change will occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it."

:shk:

Love you Loam, truely, you are one of those who make ATS worthwhile, so pretty, pretty please, don't be offended by my alternative 'view', Please?

Right..., now my second reference to Terry Pratchett in two posts, I won't quote, (my bookshelf's running on "l" space) but... if you want people to believe something is fact, "officially" deny it, deny it, deny it, or even better still, claim 'the government' is denying it.

If 'they' say it ISNT'T true, it must be, and vice versa.

Oh I do believe there is climate change, but as God (and science) told us; ocean temperatures effect atmospheric temperatures, and with all the volcanic and tectonic plate activity... God told us where the fires would come from....

As usual loam

My favorite bit:

"The strategy of people with a political agenda to avoid this issue is to say there is so much to study way upstream here that we can’t even being to discuss impacts and response strategies," says Piltz. "There’s too much uncertainty. It's not the climate scientists that are saying that, its lawyers and politicians."


So - it's not the scientists saying the science is uncertain, it's the politicians and lawyers. ...And this does not apply only to climatology - it's true across the board.

[iAll our science is reviewed as a legal position, not as science. Lawyers and politicians demand proof of direct cause-and-effect relationships - and dismiss proofs of interractions in complex systems.

Duh. Science does not follow the one-on-one adversarial rules of the justice system. But they're trying to make it do that.

Thank you for the information, Loam. .
We have the right to access all kind of information, positive or negative.
But, I am sure this - censure - happens everywhere.

In my opinion, even though it is said that the global climate change would happen even if humans were not on Earth (as it happened previously), I have to say that (in the event of being true) changes can happen quicker if we "help" the planet with our - pollution - and global warming... We cannot avoid admitting our own fault by contributing to the Earth´s severe reactions: quakes, hurricanes, volcanoes eruptions, drought, etc.


Keep on the good work.

I don't know whats worse, that our government is tring to downplay something as potentially serious as this issue is, or the fact that big business and special interest lobbyist controling these types of issues.
It's really sad to see the direction this country is going in. There seems to have been a time when the United States would have been the one taking the leading roll in solving this type of problem. Now the main concern seems to be catering to big oil companys while attempting to convince it's people that all is well.

Although I do believe it is possible that the white house is doing what Hansen is saying, there is something that I still can't fathom.

They say that "it is clear that climate change is happening because of human activity".... Well, what about the global warming that is currently happening on Mars?.... We don't have human colonies on Mars that I know of....

Global Warming on Mars?

A study of the ice caps on Mars may show that the red planet is experiencing a warming trend.

After decades of thinking that the ice caps on Mars were mostly carbon dioxide (dry ice), planetary geologists are starting to think that those caps may be mostly fresh water ice instead.

Caltech planetary scientists have been keeping a close eye on the dozens of deep, wide pits in the southern martian ice caps. These pits have been growing larger every year, but they never get any deeper.

Excerpted from.
www.mos.org...

One of the most profound benefits of being able to continue photographing Mars in the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Extended Mission is the opportunity to go back and re-image a site that was seen in the previous martian year. New MGS Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) images have provided a startling observation: The residual martian south polar cap is changing. The fact that it is changing suggests that Mars may have major, global climate changes that are occurring on the same time scales as Earth's most recent climate shifts, including the last Ice Age.

Excerpted from.
www.msss.com...

What about the global warming that is going on on Venus?..... No humans there either.....

Global warming isn't just restricted to Earth. Both our neighbouring planets, Venus and Mars, are warmed by the effects of greenhouse gases in their atmospheres. In fact, from comparing these three rocky worlds, scientists have gained an invaluable insight into how the quantity of greenhouse gases in a planet's atmosphere can radically affect the climate and surface conditions – conditions which are crucial for life.

On Earth, the majority of carbon lies not in the atmosphere, but in the oceans and rocks. Just 0.00035% of Earth's atmosphere is made of carbon dioxide. However, this carbon dioxide, along with water vapour and other small amounts of greenhouse gasses, is enough to raise the average surface temperature of Earth by around 30°C. Without it, Earth would be frozen.

By comparison, the atmosphere of Venus is composed of 96% carbon dioxide (260,000 times more than Earth) and is much denser, containing around 100 times more gas than Earth's. The thick dense carbon dioxide atmosphere on Venus has led to a 'run away' greenhouse effect, with surface temperatures soaring to around 460°C, hot enough to melt lead, and three times greater than otherwise expected.

Mars too has an atmosphere made mainly of carbon dioxide (95%), but there the atmosphere is over 100 times thinner than Earth's. So even though, like Venus, the Martian atmosphere is almost solely made of carbon dioxide, it's actually so thin that the effect of greenhouse warming lifts the global temperature by just 6°C.

Excerpted from.
www.channel4.com...

What about the reports by other scientists who are saying the Sun's activity is increasing and it is going to increase 30% to 50% starting from 2007-2008 and peak on 2012?.... I am sure 100% that there is no human life on the Sun....

Global warming and extreme climate change doesn't end with Mars, Venus and Earth. Every planet on the solar system is experiencing global warming, and extreme climate change.

In what is largely a reversal of an August announcement, astronomers today said Pluto is undergoing global warming in its thin atmosphere even as it moves farther from the Sun on its long, odd-shaped orbit.

Pluto's atmospheric pressure has tripled over the past 14 years, indicating a stark temperature rise, the researchers said. The change is likely a seasonal event, much as seasons on Earth change as the hemispheres alter their inclination to the Sun during the planet's annual orbit.

They suspect the average surface temperature increased about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit, or slightly less than 2 degrees Celsius.

Excerpted from.
www.space.com...

Even as Pluto is moving farther away from the sun it is experiencing an exponential global warming. This tells me that the sun is not the main cause of global warming on the Solar System. Something else is happening here.

Jupiter's New Red Spot
.................
The official name of this storm is "Oval BA," but "Red Jr." might be better. It's about half the size of the famous Great Red Spot and almost exactly the same color.

Oval BA first appeared in the year 2000 when three smaller spots collided and merged. Using Hubble and other telescopes, astronomers watched with great interest. A similar merger centuries ago may have created the original Great Red Spot, a storm twice as wide as our planet and at least 300 years old.


Sign up for EXPRESS SCIENCE NEWS delivery

At first, Oval BA remained white—the same color as the storms that combined to create it. But in recent months, things began to change:

"The oval was white in November 2005, it slowly turned brown in December 2005, and red a few weeks ago," reports Go. "Now it is the same color as the Great Red Spot!"

Excerpted from.
science.nasa.gov...

Even Moons on the different planets are experiencing global warming, something i just found out now.

MIT researcher finds evidence of global warming on Neptune's largest moon
June 24, 1998


CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- We're not the only ones experiencing global warming. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher has reported that observations obtained by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based instruments reveal that Neptune's largest moon, Triton, seems to have heated up significantly since the Voyager space probe visited it in 1989. The warming trend is causing part of Triton's surface of frozen nitrogen to turn into gas, thus making its thin atmosphere denser.

Excerpted from.
web.mit.edu...

So what is happening in the solar system?

Are human activities causing all the global warming that the whole solar system is currently going through?.... simply put, no.

So there is something else going on that scientists like Hansen are not looking at, or don't understand and are not aware of.

So, could it be possible that there is another reason why there is this restriction on global warming on Earth?

Perhaps some of you ahve heard this before, perhaps you haven't. I have given before links and excerpts from Russian scientists, and from Nasa itself, who both say that the solar system is passing through a cosmic cloud, and this cloud is exponentially increasing up to the year 2013, if i remember correctly, but what is this cloud? is it just a cosmic cloud we are entering which is altering and changing our solar system?

I have my own opinion about that, but I am still not sure if it is true.

[edit on 20-3-2006 by Muaddib]

While the possibilty exist that humans are not entirely resposible for all the global warming, might the contribution that we are making make it worse than has to be?
Yes we may simply be going through a natural cylce with warmer temps, but it may also be to our extreme misfortune to have timed our industrialization and it's consequences to coincide with this cycle.

Always be wary of "Gloom and Doom' Scientists.

Who gets the grants or recognition? The scientist that says everything is fine, or the one that says the sky is falling?

Originally posted by amisn1957
While the possibilty exist that humans are not entirely resposible for all the global warming, might the contribution that we are making make it worse than has to be?
Yes we may simply be going through a natural cylce with warmer temps, but it may also be to our extreme misfortune to have timed our industrialization and it's consequences to coincide with this cycle.

I do agree that human activity to some degree has made things worse, but global warming itself seems to be caused by something else, something not from the Earth, and not caused from the Sun's activity.

Muaddib, call me foolish, but i think our scientists are looking at this warming from the earth's prespective. I am no scientist but i do beleive Mars' different compositions would apply to Mars only.

I may be wrong.

Originally posted by dgtempe


Muaddib, call me foolish, but i think our scientists are looking at this warming from the earth's prespective. I am no scientist but i do beleive Mars' different compositions would apply to Mars only.

I may be wrong.

What a coincidence that every planet in the solar system is experiencing an increase in temperature, or what is called global warming. Even their moons are experiencing global warming....

DG, I have been talking about this, and given links and excerpts for the two years i have been on this site, yet people who know all this want to still claim global warming is being caused by human activity. That's too simple and it obviously has political connotations.

I am not saying that some of the human activity has not made things worse, but let's call it what it is. Something else is causing the global warming that the entire solar system is experiencing.

Of course, if scientists like Hansen don't know what is happening in the solar system, and they see an increase in temperatures, global warming, on Earth and human activity is increasing, he will probably think that human activity is the cause of global warming, but it is not only happening to the Earth.

Hansen is a scientist, and as a scientist he should be looking at every possible cause for global warming, yet he doesn't, he has already made up his mind when the evidence suggests that something else is happening.

[edit on 20-3-2006 by Muaddib]

Another great thread from a great member.
You never cease to impress me with your great thread/articless.

As for the subject matter of this thread, well all I really have to say is, I'm not surprised, it's what happens when you get an overly religious oil tycoon in office.

Oh and;

You have voted loam for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have one more vote left for this month.

I can understand the temptation to have yet another debate in this thread about whether man is responsible for Global Warming...I , in fact, remain undecided concerning the degree to which we are responsible, or the extent to which we can do anything about it.

However, what I find MOST disturbing is that NON-scientists in our government are rewriting, spinning or hiding the scientific opinions (and even fact) of its own scientists. I find that UNACCEPTABLE.

[edit on 20-3-2006 by loam]

Solar cycles have been changing over at least the past century. As cycle length in years shorten, tempretures increase. Since these solar cycles would effect all the planets with increased output, they would all experience this climate change.
And since CO2 by it's nature retains heat any natural cooling between these cycles would be reduced in relation to increased CO2 content within the atmosphere.

After reviewing i realize that I have gotten off topic, I belive the topic of this thread pertains to how the government is editing a scentist report to meet it's own needs, and not of what is causing global climate change, apologies.
Makes one wonder after this how many other impotant studeis have been buried or altered to suit the needs of this and other administrations. It's a shame that our leaders can't see that as each of these are discovered and brought to light it only serves to increase the distrust it's citizens have in their leadership.

Originally posted by Muaddib
I am not saying that some of the human activity has not made things worse, but let's call it what it is. Something else is causing the global warming that the entire solar system is experiencing.

I agree, human activities probably are the factor with the biggest impact to climate change on the planet, but I can't ignore those reports on warming on Mars and Pluto.

I was thinking, perhaps this is the reason:
NASA Detects 'Totally New' Mystery Explosion Nearby


A quick search on Google revealed this interesting piece:

Intergalactic Cosmic Rays and "Global Warming"

However, the author of that last link downplay human factors to warming considerably. In fact, most proponents of the 'cosmic ray-global warming' theory downplay human factors.

I think this is a mistake. The sudden increase in temperature may be beyond our control, but releasing greenhouse gases at the rate we do will only make the heat trapped within our atmosphere remain for a longer period.

Therefore human causes of global warming should not be dismissed. What the American Government is doing in regards to this issue is extremely short-sighted, like most of their recent policies

Related Internet Links:
Science Daily: Cosmic Rays Linked To Global Warming
New Scientist: Cosmic ray link to global warming boosted

OMG!

...I agree with Mauddib. Sort of.

Mauddib - this thread is about how lawyers and politicians rewrite science. ...They do, and I suspect you know they do.

RE: global warming. I suspect that galactic events are an important factor influencing climate cycles. Is that what you're saying?

...Could you take your info and discussion about this elsewhere? Like here for example?

Ancient Interstellar Collision: May Help Explain Climate Change

No one from the left uttered a peep of protest when the clinton White House directed scientific analysis to be rewritten to conform to his political agenda.