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News » April 4, 2007

Resisting the War on Science

By Jacob Wheeler

The Union of Concerned Scientists' "A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science"

Sound science counts itself as one of the many victims of the Bush administration’s assault on reason, and sound science is fighting back—finally, with support from Congress. Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation held a hearing on Feb. 7 to explore allegations that the government has attempted to censor 150 climate scientists by pressuring them to delete references to “global warming” or “climate change” from scientific papers and reports, and avoid talking with the media.

One of the driving forces behind Inouye’s hearing was a petition signed by more than 10,000 scientists this past December, decrying administration attempts to politicize science. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) circulated that petition along with an “A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science” that documents hundreds of instances of censorship and political interference. Signatories include 52 Nobel Laureates, 63 National Medal of Science recipients and almost 200 members of the National Academies of Science.

At the same time it has gagged scientists who warned of climate change, the Bush administration has amplified voices of “experts” from the oil and gas industry. Philip A. Cooney worked as a lawyer for the American Petroleum Institute before being ushered into the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality. Following accusations in 2005 that he edited government reports to raise doubts about global warming and downplay the findings of mainstream scientists, Cooney left the White House for a job with ExxonMobil Corp.

Tampering with science didn’t begin with Bush. Under the leadership of Newt Gingrich, in 1995 the Republican-controlled Congress withdrew funding for the Office of Technology Assessment, which since 1972 had provided reliable scientific counsel.

Before that, the work of NASA scientist, and one of the first whistleblowers about global warming, James Hansen was censored by the first Bush administration. Last year Hansen accused NASA administrators of trying to influence his public statements about the causes of climate change.

“The scientist statement makes clear that while science is rarely the only factor in public policy decisions, this input should be objective and impartial,” says Francesca Grifo, the director of the UCS’s Scientific Integrity Program. “Sustained protest from scientists, individual Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and the nation’s leading editorial pages has not been enough to make the abuse of science stop.”

The UCS presented its “A to Z Guide” in the form of a mock Periodic Table of Elements with a different color to represent each subject. The violations of scientific integrity date back to 2002, and range from “Abstinence Only Sex Education Science” to “Ground Zero,” from “Arms Control Advisory Panel” to “School Vouchers.”

Some issues are more political than scientific—like the Department of Justice’s suppression of a racial profiling study in August 2005—while others focus on issues of health and safety. The guide reports that in October 2002 “nominees selected by the staff of scientists” were rejected from the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Panel and replaced by appointees “with financial ties to the lead industry.”

But the meat of the guide is the section on the environment. For example, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists criticized a 2004 EPA report that found hydraulic fracturing (“literally pumping water or another fluid into rock under such high pressure that it creates new cracks around an oil reservoir”) when drilling for oil “poses little or no threat” to drinking water, even in the midst of aquifers. However the Bush administration and its oil allies supported hydraulic fracturing, so the EPA scientists were overruled.

“From airborne bacteria to Ground Zero, science continues to be misrepresented for political gain,” says Grifo. “The new Congress should enact meaningful reforms so decisions within federal scientific agencies and advisory committees are based on objective and unbiased science.”

The UCS continues to gather signatures from scientists and laymen alike. The group’s Web site, www.ucsusa.org, provides an online form through which scientists can add their name to the list. Non-scientists can sign a separate statement of civilian concern.

Jacob Wheeler is an assistant editor at In These Times.

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  • Reader Comments

    It is so tempting to sound authoritarian on such a “heated” topic — and not difficult to arouse people on something which will be unproved in our lifetimes.

    One of the advantages of growing old is being able to remember so many terrible disasters which never came to be.

    • It was either TIME or NEWSWEEK which in 1950 (or there abouts) predicted that by 2000 the “Population Explosion” would have us all standing shoulder to shoulder.

    • The Soviet Union and the U.S. would unite to fight off the hoards of Chinese military as they launched a move to take over the world. (Less messy to do it economically.)

    Certainly this is an issue which should be looked into, but Al — more heat & light than anyone needs — Gore aside, the scientific community, wherever and whoever they may be, is anything but unanimous on IF this is a problem and if so, WHAT or WHO is the cause.

    Google on global warming dissent for a wide variety of views. Here’s just one which I picked due to the common point involving censorship. The censorship issue is a more urgent problem than the scientific one.

    -----------------
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/01/wglob01.xml

    Leading scientific journals ‘are censoring debate on global warming’
    By Robert Matthews, Last Updated: 2:08am BST 01/05/2005

    Two of the world’s leading scientific journals have come under fire from researchers for refusing to publish papers which challenge fashionable wisdom over global warming.

    Posted by whattheheck on Apr 4, 2007 at 9:35 AM

    WTH, another great posting ! Science has been wrong many times and is not immune to fashionable cultural-intellectual trends as the current
    global warming hysteria indicates. There was the forthcoming Ice Age
    of 1975 lore. Al Gore is a big phony and thank god he never got elected.
    With Zionist neocon Lieby, they would have gotten us into the same wars but domestically they would never have cut taxes. So we’d be worse off.

    Posted by blondemike on Apr 4, 2007 at 2:52 PM

    WTH,

    Climate change can happen very quickly once it has hit a tipping point and this one probably will be within our lifetime. Past flips from glacial periods to interglacial has happened in a few decades and the current warming is unprecedented as to any known geologic record. The main argument today is whether what we are experiencing is man-made or a natural cycle. By FAR, most climate scientists consider it man-made and among them there are various scenarios of what they expect in the future. Some feel warming is happening very fast and that climate changes will occur in a madcap way. Others feel the warming will continue to be gradual. Others think that the Earth will indeed flip into a glacial period as a response to this quick warming period. That’s BM’s 1975 ice age theory, it’s still around and not as he tried to portrait it, it wasn’t some consensual theory back then. It never had the massive consensus that global warming has today. Yet, it still has merit, as a quick flip, the Earth trying to re-balance itself.

    Many climatologists believe the Earth has already reached a tipping point or soon will. The problem is trying to understand what this warming will provoke or elicit. For instance, vast stretches of Siberia are thawing, exposing long frozen peat bogs that release methane. Methane unlike carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that has a shorter lifespan in the atmosphere, but as the Earth has been warming more methane has been added at the same time that carbon dioxide continues to be added, a sort of double attack that didn’t exist even a few decades ago.

    There is the Atlantic conveyor, warm water that circulates from the south moving north along the North American coast until near Greenland it sinks, circulates east and then back south. There is a theory that this conveyor will be shut down by melting from the Arctic and Greenland. The theory has it that if the conveyor does shut down than the Northern hemisphere will begin to cool again. This may lead to that flip back to an ice age.

    There is a sort of competing theory that it is the Equatorial belt that drives warming and cooling. That as the Earth continues to warm that prevailing winds will change and put places like the South American tropical rain forest in danger of less rainfall and the possibility of drying it out producing conditions that make them more fire prone. Tropical rain forests have a tough time in drought conditions. Another consideration is that changes could occur in the timing of the monsoons (this is already probably happening) and that the Saharan Desert actually could become wetter.

    I could go into so much more, but the worry is that places all over the world will have different regional adjustments for the people that live there. India for instance so dependent on a reliable monsoon season could be devastated if it changes (less rain or shorter season). In America if the desert Southwest increases desertification (which is currently happening) smacking against its’ increasing population, places like Phoenix and Las Vegas in just a couple of decades may have to go through some major depopulation. Already the Midwest has had a lowering of it’s aquifier partially due to corporate farming practices and partially due to mild droughts.

    At any rate, only a few climatologist have some set-in-stone dire predictions, most are merely collecting data that points to possibilities. Most are raising their eyebrows at what the data is pointing to, and wondering what the future will be. They worry, but they don’t scream about it, but they do want a public airing of the possibilities, as do I.

    Posted by Jon B on Apr 5, 2007 at 7:03 AM

    Jon B,

    Well, we’re in agreement that this should be addressed by scientists.  Obviously you have been interested enough to read a good deal of the competing theories. (more than I have) I have read about most of what you point out here, but have read nearly as much (non-media hyped—more scientific) in opposition to the urgent arguments as in favor.

    I am consistently skeptical of nearly everything which gets the kind of media attention this has. I suggest that some of your comments are media influenced, for example:

    • “By FAR, most climate scientists consider it man-made...”

    How many climatologists are there in the world?  What are the percentages as believers, disbelievers and merely interested?  Real data — not an AP/UP or other news assertions.

    • “It never had the massive consensus that global warming has today.”
    How can we accurately compare 1975 reporting with 24/7 reporting of 2007?  Every sex crime with a pretty girl involved gets global coverage on a soap opera’s schedule. We hear what happens in the most remote corners of the world whether we are interested or not.

    Consensus is built on repetition: pro-war or anti-war, Barack Obama/Hillary, good economy/bad economy. We are a nation obsessed with polling and speed, not accuracy.

    There is always an abundance of “expert” testimony on distant events. You get as much pay and attention for being wrong as for being right. Ask people about this afternoon and they will hedge their comments.

    What really bugs me is the attention and calls for spending on this questionable issue and the avoidance of those things which to many of us are happening, we anticipate very soon or worry about for our kids.

    Global warming takes a back seat for me compared to lowering of job quality, the Social Security/Medicare shortfall, the millions of people with no health insurance, the cost and quality of education, the influence of lobbyists on legislation…

    Global warning is a godsend to politicians everywhere.

    Posted by whattheheck on Apr 5, 2007 at 7:51 AM

    WTH,

    When I say “by far” that’s from books I’ve read on the subject. It’s like 80%. Climate scientists number in the mid 100s. I don’t have the actual stats on me, and don’t really want to spend the time searching the net right now (maybe later), but I’m not far off. When I speak of consensus, it has nothing to do with the media, that’s from the scientific community.

    You know how it works. One person (or team) who is concentrating on a specific aspect will eventually propose a theory. It then goes through a debate within the scientific community undergoing plenty of criticism because any new idea usually will compete with a prior theory and old theorists don’t go quietly into the night, even against overwhelming evidence. The media does pick up on the debate, they read science journals for stories.

    Very few science ideas and theories have 100% consensus. Some opposition to any idea base it on personal opinion or an agenda. Look at creation science, there are “scientists” who still claim bones were put there by God to fool us. Much of even the plausible creation science is filtered to agree with a Biblical Genesis.

    And an agenda is what the accusations are in regards to global warming. As the article pointed out, it seems convincing that opposition to man-made global warming really comes from the fossil fuel industries who hire scientists to fix the theory to their agenda. And from the deniers of global warming comes accusations that the agenda from the other side is simply an attack on the fossil fuel industries.

    But to me I look at Occam’s Razor, you know “the simplest solution...” Considering the impact of the industrial revolution on the atmosphere and what if we could somehow erase all that. It’s visually obvious that we affect the air, just look at major cities all across the world and the choking smog. A few months back I saw some show that was highlighting the longest burning tire fire. It was in California and lasted more than a year. Back when I saw it I had Googled tire fire and found that tire fires are not uncommon.

    Consider whether Mother Nature has ever assembled the numerous chemicals that go into making a tire, then collect up millions of them, throw them into a huge pile and wait for lightning to strike or some stupid arsonists (both causes of tire fires) to come along to burn it.

    When has Mother Nature assembled Earth-locked coals, gas, minerals, etc. and then set them on fire and do that in a relatively short period of time? But I’m not against the thought that global warming is in a natural cycle as the deniers will explain, but then I think about tire fires and coal plants and cars and, and, and, realize that it’s more than likely we are adding a wrinkle to the natural cycle that Mother Nature never did.

    Posted by Jon B on Apr 5, 2007 at 4:23 PM

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