Government scientists report political interference in their work

About half of government scientists responding to a poll have experienced pressure by the Bush administration to downplay data that shows global warming, and:

43 percent of respondents reported edits during review of their work that changed the meaning of their findings.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16886008/?GT1=8921

A senior scientist for NASA went public about attempts to silence him, forcing the administration to back off, but many scientists were not able to do that. They report hundreds of alterations in reports that change them substantially.

With democrats in Congress eager to find dirt on Dubya, he seems to have been eager to help them.

 

And there's no chance these guys are lying right?

Ah, the scientists are the liars. That's the ticket. They are, after all, "reality-based", which is a dirty word in the White House right now.

"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

This kind of craziness is 20% 1960s "make your own reality", 50% greed, and 30% postmodern arrogance. Bush doesn't have the intellectual wherewithal to figure out just how nutty those ideas actually are.

Someone's had a little fun with your trust in them. Even Bush now admits that it's a fact, and that it's probably due to human activities.

The new information is even more grim:

CCSM3 shows global temperatures could rise by 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in a hypothetical scenario in which atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are suddenly doubled. That is significantly more than the 2 degree Celsius (3.6 degree Fahrenheit) increase that had been indicated by the preceding version of the model. William Collins, an NCAR scientist who oversaw the development of CCSM3, says researchers have yet to pin down exactly what is making the model more sensitive to an increased level of carbon dioxide. But he says the model overall is significantly more accurate than its predecessor. "This model makes substantial improvements in simulating atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial processes," Collins says. "It has done remarkably well in reproducing the climate of the last century, and we're now ready to begin using it to study the climate of the next century."
http://globalchange.gov/#CCSM

The more accurate we get, the worse it looks. That's part of the reason why a group of CEOs from large corporations have asked Bush to get a plan together to reduce CO2 emissions.

There will be some winners in a warmer world, but the US won't be among them.

 

Congressional investigations are gearing up now. We already know of examples.

Previously it was reported that Mr. George Deutsch, the young public-affairs officer at NASA headquarters who was accused of political interference with material written by NASA scientists (see 4 February), was a "2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M". However, blogger Nick Anthis discovered[6] that Mr. Deutsch in fact left Texas A&M in the summer of 2004, without a degree, to join George Bush's re-election campaign. According to school records he never returned, Mr. Antis reported.
http://arshermeneutica.org/besieged/Incidents_2006#February_6.2C_NASA.27s_Deutsch_Faked_Credentials

"George C. Deutsch, who tried to muzzle top NASA climate scientist James Hansen and ordered NASA web designers to add the word 'theory' to every mention of the Big Bang, has resigned. The New York Times reports that NASA declines to discuss the reasons for his resignation, but that it came the same day that Texas A&M University, from which Deutsch claimed on his resume to have graduated, revealed that he had attended the university but did not complete his degree."
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/08/1240226

Deutsch apparently learned well about the undesirability of reality-based thinking; unfortunately for Deutsch, Texas A&M seems to have retained a tie to reality.

Hanson, one of the best climatologists around, took umbrage at attempts to doctor research findings, and his public denunciation of the attempt led to the removal of this yahoo.

 

In Texas we say that even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then.

 

Now that the government isn't in the hands of just one group, expect more truth to leak out.

The problem is obviously greater than previously suspected. We will likely be learning just how much greater.

 

You've been had on that one, Larry. I remember what scientists were saying back then. I first read of concern over greenhouse gases and global warming from Paul Erlich in 1968. By the 70s, a lot of scientists were concerned about warming. Don't remember any predicting a new ice age.

Although there was a cooling trend then, it should be realised that climate scientists were perfectly well aware that predictions based on this trend was not possible - because the trend was poorly studied and not understood (for example see reference[10]). However in the popular press the possibility of cooling was reported generally without the caveats present in the scientific reports.

The term "global cooling" did not become attached to concerns about an impending glacial period until after the term "global warming" was popularized. In the 1970s the compilation of records to produce hemispheric, or global, temperature records had just begun.

Wikipedia

Scientists disagree with you. A vast body of data has made that impossible to deny. Even many former doubters and politicians whose supporters had financial reasons to deny warming, now admit the obvious. The climate is warming, and at an increasing rate. Would you like to see some of the hard data?

<deleted - LE>

Barbarian is pointing out that even deniers like Bush are now admitting the truth. There's no point in denial now.

<personal attack, etc. deleted - LE>

You've not kept up to date on your talking points. The spin now, is "yes we have global warming, but it's natural."