[Marxism] Global warming expert says that NASA tried to silence him

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, January 29, 2006
Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to
stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for
prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA
headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming
lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for
interviews from journalists.

Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. "They feel their job is
to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said.

Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space
agency, said there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. "That's not the way
we operate here at NASA," he said. "We promote openness and we speak with
the facts."

Mr. Acosta said the restrictions on Dr. Hansen applied to all National
Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel whom the public could
perceive as speaking for the agency. He added that government scientists
were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should
be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen.

Dr. Hansen, 63, a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, is a
leading authority on the earth's climate system. He directs efforts to
simulate the global climate on computers at the Goddard Institute on
Morningside Heights in Manhattan.

Since 1988, he has been issuing public warnings about the long-term threat
from heat-trapping emissions, dominated by carbon dioxide, that are an
unavoidable byproduct of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels. He has
had run-ins with politicians or their appointees in various
administrations, including budget watchers in the first Bush administration
and Vice President Al Gore.

In 2001, Dr. Hansen was invited twice to brief Vice President Dick Cheney
and other cabinet members on climate change. White House officials were
interested in his findings showing that cleaning up soot, which also warms
the atmosphere, was an effective and far easier first step than curbing
carbon dioxide.

He fell out of favor with the White House in 2004 after giving a speech at
the University of Iowa before the presidential election, in which he
complained that government climate scientists were being muzzled, and said
he planned to vote for Senator John Kerry.

But Dr. Hansen said that nothing in 30 years equaled the push made since
early December to keep him from publicly discussing what he says are
clear-cut dangers from further delay in curbing carbon dioxide.

In several interviews with The New York Times in recent days, Dr. Hansen
said it would be irresponsible not to speak out, particularly because
NASA's mission statement includes the phrase "to understand and protect our
home planet."

He said he was particularly incensed that the directives affecting his
statements had come through informal telephone conversations and not
through formal channels, leaving no significant trails of documents.

Dr. Hansen's supervisor, Franco Einaudi, said there had been no official
"order or pressure to say shut Jim up." But Dr. Einaudi added, "That
doesn't mean I like this kind of pressure being applied."

The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls
after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American
Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said that significant
emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in
the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United
States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different
planet." The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow,
but not reverse, the growth of emissions.

After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing
that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at
the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs
officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire
consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen
said in interviews.

Among the restrictions, according to Dr. Hansen and an internal draft
memorandum he provided to The Times, was that his supervisors could stand
in for him in any news media interviews.

In one call, George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at
NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public
Radio to interview Dr. Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs
officer responsible for the Goddard Institute.

Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, Ms. McCarthy said
Mr. Deutsch called N.P.R. "the most liberal" media outlet in the country.
She said that in that call and others Mr. Deutsch said his job was "to make
the president look good" and that as a White House appointee that might be
Mr. Deutsch's priority.

But she added: "I'm a career civil servant and Jim Hansen is a scientist.
That's not our job. That's not our mission. The inference was that Hansen
was disloyal." Normally, Ms. McCarthy would not be free to describe such
conversations to the news media, but she agreed to an interview after Mr.
Acosta, in NASA headquarters, told The Times that she would not face any
retribution for doing so.

Mr. Acosta, Mr. Deutsch's supervisor, said that when Mr. Deutsch was asked
about the conversations he flatly denied saying anything of the sort. Mr.
Deutsch referred all interview requests to Mr. Acosta.

Ms. McCarthy, when told of the response, said: "Why am I going to go out of
my way to make this up and back up Jim Hansen? I don't have a dog is this
race. And what does Hansen have to gain?"

Mr. Acosta said that for the moment he had no way of judging who was
telling the truth. Several colleagues of both Ms. McCarthy and Dr. Hansen
said Ms. McCarthy's statements were consistent with what she told them when
the conversations occurred.

"He's not trying to create a war over this," said Larry D. Travis, an
astronomer who is Dr. Hansen's deputy at Goddard, "but really feels very
strongly that this is an obligation we have as federal scientists, to
inform the public, and this kind of attempted muzzling of the science
community is really rather dangerous. If we just accept it, then we're
contributing to the problem."

Dr. Travis said he walked into Ms. McCarthy's office in mid-December at the
end of one of the calls from Mr. Deutsch demanding that Dr. Hansen be
better controlled.

In an interview on Friday, Ralph J. Cicerone, an atmospheric chemist and
the president of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's leading
independent scientific body, praised Dr. Hansen's scientific contributions
and said he had always seemed to describe his public statements clearly as
his personal views.

"He really is one of the most productive and creative scientists in the
world," Dr. Cicerone said. "I've heard Hansen speak many times and I've
read many of his papers, starting in the late 70's. Every single time, in
writing or when I've heard him speak, he's always clear that he's speaking
for himself, not for NASA or the administration, whichever administration
it's been."

The fight between Dr. Hansen and administration officials echoes other
recent disputes. At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took
calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is
approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a
public affairs officer is present or on the phone.

Where scientists' points of view on climate policy align with those of the
administration, however, there are few signs of restrictions on
extracurricular lectures or writing.

One example is Indur M. Goklany, assistant director of science and
technology policy in the policy office of the Interior Department. For
years, Dr. Goklany, an electrical engineer by training, has written in
papers and books that it may be better not to force cuts in greenhouse
gases because the added prosperity from unfettered economic activity would
allow countries to exploit benefits of warming and adapt to problems.

In an e-mail exchange on Friday, Dr. Goklany said that in the Clinton
administration he was shifted to nonclimate-related work, but added that he
had never had to stop his outside writing, as long as he identifies the
views as his own.

"One reason why I still continue to do the extracurricular stuff is because
one doesn't have to get clearance for what I plan on saying or writing," he
wrote.

Many people who work with Dr. Hansen said that politics was not a factor in
his dispute with the Bush administration.

"The thing that has always struck me about him is I don't think he's
political at all," said Mark R. Hess, director of public affairs for the
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., a position that also covers
the Goddard Institute in New York.

"He really is not about concerning himself with whose administration is in
charge, whether it's Republicans, Democrats or whatever," Mr. Hess said.
"He's a pretty down-the-road conservative independent-minded person.

"What he cares deeply about is being a scientist, his research, and I think
he feels a true obligation to be able to talk about that in whatever fora
are offered to him."


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