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Government Censorship of Scientists
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Twan
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Dec 11, 2006 23:24 PST
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More scientists are coming forward and speaking out about being banned
by U.S. government officials about their scientific research if the
findings aren't in line with the untruths that the current
administration wants to spread.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5205550,00.html
Climate scientist says that the word 'Kyoto' has been barred.
Investigators eye censorship claims about White House
By Jim Erickson, Rocky Mountain News
December 11, 2006
A federal climate scientist in Boulder says his boss told him never to
utter the word Kyoto and tried to bar him from using the phrase climate
change at a conference.
The allegations come as federal investigators probe whether Bush
administration officials tried to block government scientists from
speaking freely about global warming and attempted to censor their
research.
The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement - never ratified by the
United States and opposed by the Bush administration - that requires
nations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for
global warming.
Pieter Tans, a senior scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's Boulder laboratory, said the ban on using
the word Kyoto was issued about four years ago.
"We were under instructions not to use the word Kyoto, which of course
is absurd," said Tans, who measures levels of carbon dioxide at NOAA's
Global Monitoring Division. He has worked for the agency since 1990.
Tans said the order was issued verbally by his boss, David Hofmann, the
division director. Another senior researcher at the Boulder laboratory,
NOAA physicist James Elkins, said Hofmann told him the same thing.
Elkins studies greenhouse gases and has worked at NOAA for more than 20
years. He said he can't remember when the directive was issued, but it
was "probably in 2000 or 2001."
"When I asked why we weren't supposed to use Kyoto, I was told that
we're not supposed to use it in the policy context," Elkins said. "I'm
not supposed to be talking about policy."
Hofmann, however, called the allegations "nonsense" and said there was
no ban on using the word Kyoto.
"I never said it specifically in those words," Hofmann said. "I probably
said that since the Kyoto Protocol is not ratified - is not part of the
U.S. program - stay away from talking about Kyoto when you give a
presentation."
"It has nothing to do with the science we're doing here," Hofmann said
of Kyoto.
The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997 and
went into effect in February 2005, following ratification by Russia.
Elkins said the prohibition against using the word was lifted after
Russia ratified the protocol.
"Once Russia signed Kyoto, it was a done deal," he said.
Last month, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., announced that inspectors
general from NASA and the Commerce Department - NOAA's parent agency -
had launched "coordinated, sweeping investigations of the Bush
administration's censorship and suppression" of federal research into
global warming.
Auditors from the inspector general's office at Commerce have been
interviewing NOAA employees, agency spokesman Jordan St. John said
Thursday. At the same time the Government Accountability Office, the
investigative arm of Congress, is conducting a separate review, St. John
said.
Tans said he welcomes the investigations.
"I tell the truth," he said. "Whatever the consequences are, I will tell
them (investigators) what my experiences have been. Period. Whether
anyone likes it or not, I don't care.
"There is suspicion at the moment," Tans said. "And that detracts from
my credibility as a scientist because people might now think, well, can
we trust this guy or is he just saying things that are officially
approved?"
Tans stressed that no one has ever tried to alter or suppress his
research results. But besides the use of the word Kyoto, there was a
second incident with Hofmann, he said. It occurred in late 2005, while
Tans was organizing the Seventh International Carbon Dioxide Conference
in Broomfield.
Hofmann called Tans into his office before the September conference and
told him the words climate change could not appear in the titles of any
of the presentations, Tans said. The incident was reported by The
Washington Post in April.
Carbon dioxide is produced by the combustion of fossil fuels and has
been linked to human-caused climate change.
Hofmann said Tans misinterpreted what he said.
The words climate change were not barred from presentation titles,
Hofmann said. But the focus of the conference was global carbon dioxide
measurements, not climate change.
Hofmann said he told Tans that the presentations should stick to that
topic and that organizers should "not let the conference get involved
with climate change and so on."
But Tans said it makes no sense to bring together the world's leading
experts on carbon dioxide measurements, then refrain from discussing the
link between the greenhouse-gas buildup and climate change. Tans said he
ignored Hofmann's instruction and included presentations with titles
that contained the words climate change.
A schedule posted at the conference Web site shows that the
presentations included one by D.G. Victor entitled Climate Change:
Designing an Effective Response.
"If we as scientists neglect, systematically neglect, to mention in
public that there is a link between our emissions and potential climate
change, I think we are really depriving the public of essential
information," Tans said.
"I am a public servant," he said. "I have to say it. If not, I am
irresponsible."
In February, congressional leaders asked NASA to guarantee its
scientific openness. They complained that an agency public affairs
officer changed or filtered information about global warming and tried
to limit reporters' access to James Hansen, a prominent NASA climate
scientist.
The public affairs officer, George Deutsch, resigned.
Hansen said his NOAA colleagues were experiencing even more severe
censorship.
"It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United
States," he told a New School University audience in New York, according
to The Washington Post.
In response, NOAA Administrator Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr. sent an
agencywide e-mail to employees stating, in part, "I encourage our
scientists to speak freely and openly."
Tans said those words don't square with Hofmann's actions. But Tans
blames the Bush administration, not local NOAA officials.
"They don't want to hear what the reality is about climate change," Tans
said of administration officials. "They only want to hear what they want
to hear."
In September, the journal Nature said that NOAA officials on the East
Coast blocked the release of a fact sheet that discussed purported links
between global warming and stronger hurricanes. NOAA denied the
allegation.
That prompted New Jersey's Lautenberg and 13 other Democratic senators
to request that the inspectors general from the Commerce Department and
NASA take a look.
Hofmann said that he and other NOAA division directors were asked last
month to provide the inspector general's office with information about
the agency's news media policy, climate-related news releases, and the
allegedly suppressed hurricane fact sheet.
"It was basically information related to NOAA's policies or procedures
related to media issues, whether there were any difficulties with doing
press releases on certain subjects," Hofmann said. "And quite a few
requests for information on the hurricane fact sheet."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Copyright 2006, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.
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