Political(izing) Science
Growing numbers of researchers, both in and out of government, say their findings--on pollution, climate change, reproductive health, stem-cell research and other areas in which science often finds itself at odds with religious ideological or corporate interests--are being discounted, distorted, or quashed by Bush administration appointees.
--"The Political Science Test," TIME Magazine, February 13, 2006
The administration has sought to influence the policy debate by muzzling the people who disagree with it or--as was the case with two major reports from the Environmental Protection Agency in 2002 and 2003--editing out inconvenient truths or censoring them entirely.
--"Censoring Truth," New York Times editorial, February 9, 2006
As I recall, when former Vice President Al Gore was running for president back in 2000, his Republican opponents made many condescending sneers at the book he had written back in the early 90's, called Earth in the Balance, about the dangerous and growing menace of global warming.
Global warming doesn't exist, Republican pundits insisted. It's a liberal myth. Many scientists don't even agree on the matter. The earth may be getting warmer, but this is cyclical. When you measure climate by centuries rather than years, you will see that such cycles are normal. It'll cool off again eventually.
So certain of this was the Bush administration that they refused to even discuss it for the first term of his presidency. When scientists working for government agencies attempted to publish their legitimate findings on global warming, based on deep-core research of the polar ice-caps (which DOES measure temperatures by the century) and other methods, certain segments of their reports were literally BLACKED OUT before being released to the media.
Though privately-funded scientists from all over the globe who were not in jeopardy of getting fired by the Bush administration continued to howl loud and long, they were ignored.
And it wasn't just global warming science that the Bush administration attempted to manipulate for political gains. During the past two years, the Union of Concerned Scientists has collected the signatures of more than 8,000 scientists, including 40 Nobel laureates, 63 National Medal of Science recipients, and 171 members of the National Academies--all of whom accuse the Bush administration of an unprecedented political intrusion into their world.
At the Food and Drug Administration, for example, the director of the Office of Women's Health recently resigned because she believed that the administration was twisting science to stall approval of over-the-counter emergency contraception. Scientists, some who've worked for the government through numerous presidents and from such diverse areas as the Department of Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Agriculture Department have complained that Bush administration public affairs officers screen their appearances, published papers, and utterances more carefully than ever before.
(White House appointed public affairs officer) George C. Deutsch…tried to prevent senior NASA career scientists from speaking and writing freely, especially when their views on the realities of climate change differed from those of the White House. Mr. Deutsch prevented reporters from interviewing James E. Hansen, the leading climate scientist at NASA, telling colleagues he was doing so because his job was to "make the president look good."
--"The Politics of Science," Washington Post, February 9, 2006. (Mr. Deutsch was later revealed by a blogger to have lied on his resume about having received a degree from Texas A&M University and was subsequently fired. Apparently, his appointment to the space agency did not require a basic resume check.)
At one point during his tenure at NASA, George C. Deutsch insisted that scientists use the word "theory" after every written mention of the Big Bang, on the grounds that the accepted scientific explanation of the origins of the universe "is an opinion" and that NASA should not discount the possibility of "intelligent design by a creator"--in spite of the fact that several county and state school boards across the nation have come to just the opposite conclusion.
I'm just waiting for a Bush administration official to make a public statement, to the effect that "nobody could have seen it coming"--you know, like they said about terrorists flying commercial airliners into skyscrapers, Hurricane Katrina, and the bloody insurgency and civil war in Iraq.
It seems that while President Bush was giving all kinds of lip-service to scientific endeavor in his speeches and State of the Union addresses, his administration was gagging the very scientists he claimed to respect, trying to force them to stick to the political talking points of THEIR (un)scientific vision.
This reminds me of what happened to Medieval map-makers who took information given by returning explorers and drew maps that did not depict the Garden of Eden as being in the center of the world, as the reigning church fathers and political rulers believed the Bible taught. It's similar to what they did to scientists such as Galileo, whose scientific findings did not match church and state teachings. He was locked up under house arrest for years and prevented from publishing his findings.
It's nice to know that, here in the 21st century, we have come so far.
At any rate, it appears that the nonexistent global warming which is not happening, is melting the polar ice caps at a much faster and more accelerated pace than even un-gagged scientists thought. Glacier shelves are dropping off into the sea, icebergs are vanishing, mountain-spring thaws are coming too fast to replenish streams in time for killer summer droughts in the plains below, severe weather extremes are punishing the planet from Indonesia to Australia to to Europe to North America--even the famed Iditerod dogsled race in Alaska had to change its historic route because the temperatures were too warm.
Nobody can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like earth. Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crises is upon us.
--"Global Warming Heats Up," TIME cover story, March 26, 2006
So, you've got a little public affairs PIPSQUEAK who lied on his resume but boy did he support George Bush--telling NASA scientists what they can and cannot say about global warming, until one 29-year veteran, well-respected scientist, James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, went to the NY Times and said, "Enough."
This happened a month ago, and since the unmuzzling, a virtual avalanche of scientific data proving the growing ecological and environmental and economic crises has surfaced.
Meanwhile, a news media who's beginning to awaken from their hypnotic stupor of simply repeating administration talking points and calling it journalism, are starting to take camera crews way north and way south, and they're filming huge chunks of polar ice disappearing at a rate that increases by the minute.
A consensus of scientists worldwide now agree that if something isn't done, and done quickly, to suppress CO2 emissions over the next few years, that by the end of the century, sea levels will have risen by 20 feet.
In fact, so many scientists concur that it's no longer even being debated. This planet is sick, fighting a high fever, and if we don't call an ambulance, it will eventually convulse, choke on its own vomit and die--and we'll all die with it, or if not us, then our children or our children's children.
And if you think I'm being pessimistic or alarmist or a tree-hugging liberal, well, just picture a room with no windows, doors, or drain pipes for sewage. A room packed with people. How long do you think it would be before they would suffocate on their own CO2 exhales of breath and their own waste?
Although the United States is not the only emitter of CO2 gasses from such things as automobile transmissions and factory emissions--China's a growing contender--we are, so far, responsible for a whopping 25% of all those emissions, worldwide.
We did not so much march toward the environmental precipice as drunkenly reel there, snapping at the scientific scolds who told us we had a problem. The scolds, however, knew what they were talking about…we're finally coming to appreciate the knife-blade margins within which life can thrive.
--"Global Warming Heats Up," TIME Magazine cover story March 26, 2006
So…in the meantime, here in this country anyway, we have in place, running just about every government agency, Bush political cronies who are poorly qualified for their jobs, ("You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie") overseeing scientific research and telling scientists what the administration's "talking points" are for that week. (I'm not making this up. See the Washington Post, "The Politics of Science," February 9, 2006.)
But while we wait for drugs to be approved or climate extremes to be studied or environmental concerns cleaned up or pollution levels controlled, the White House worries about their image and their agenda.
In the lead-up to the Iraq war, on-the-ground generals who objected to the administration's course or pointed out growing problems such as the insurgency, were either forced into early retirement, re-assigned, or simply ignored. Soon, those who wanted to keep their jobs learned to keep their mouths shut.
Three years later, Iraq careens toward chaos.
Government scientists and meteorologists warned this administration that a hurricane with the strength and power of Katrina could cause a disaster of Biblical proportions on the Gulf coast, but on the day the storm hit and the levees were giving way, Bush was out in Arizona, cutting a birthday cake with Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
Warnings are sounded before preventable disasters, time and time again, but they are ignored by this inept president and his useless colleagues.
It's not that I'm blaming the Bush administration for global warming. But this ongoing and repetitive PATTERN of UNIMAGINABLE INCOMPETENCE from the TOP DOWN in this administration in every single thing they attempt to handle, from war to disaster relief to scientific inquiry…this chronic disabling addiction to putting POLITICAL CRONIES in positions of serious importance so that this administration can continue to lie to the American people on everything from why we started the Iraq war in the first place to whether global warming even exists, and to manipulate public opinion to their fawning favor…has plunged us into a quagmire in Iraq, squandered a surplus and bankrupted the economy, and left thousands bogged down in a hopeless morass down on the Gulf coast, among other disasters.
This latest demonstration of the damage they are continuing to put this country through WILL LEAVE SUBSEQUENT ADMINISTRATIONS STAGGERING UNDER PROBLEMS THAT WILL TAKE GENERATIONS TO REPAIR.
It took only ONE brave scientist to talk back against Bush administration morons and to do it loudly. Let's hope more scientists with guts and honor will speak out, risking losing their grants or worse…and let's hope and pray that somebody, somewhere, will be listening.
Are you listening?
--"The Political Science Test," TIME Magazine, February 13, 2006
The administration has sought to influence the policy debate by muzzling the people who disagree with it or--as was the case with two major reports from the Environmental Protection Agency in 2002 and 2003--editing out inconvenient truths or censoring them entirely.
--"Censoring Truth," New York Times editorial, February 9, 2006
As I recall, when former Vice President Al Gore was running for president back in 2000, his Republican opponents made many condescending sneers at the book he had written back in the early 90's, called Earth in the Balance, about the dangerous and growing menace of global warming.
Global warming doesn't exist, Republican pundits insisted. It's a liberal myth. Many scientists don't even agree on the matter. The earth may be getting warmer, but this is cyclical. When you measure climate by centuries rather than years, you will see that such cycles are normal. It'll cool off again eventually.
So certain of this was the Bush administration that they refused to even discuss it for the first term of his presidency. When scientists working for government agencies attempted to publish their legitimate findings on global warming, based on deep-core research of the polar ice-caps (which DOES measure temperatures by the century) and other methods, certain segments of their reports were literally BLACKED OUT before being released to the media.
Though privately-funded scientists from all over the globe who were not in jeopardy of getting fired by the Bush administration continued to howl loud and long, they were ignored.
And it wasn't just global warming science that the Bush administration attempted to manipulate for political gains. During the past two years, the Union of Concerned Scientists has collected the signatures of more than 8,000 scientists, including 40 Nobel laureates, 63 National Medal of Science recipients, and 171 members of the National Academies--all of whom accuse the Bush administration of an unprecedented political intrusion into their world.
At the Food and Drug Administration, for example, the director of the Office of Women's Health recently resigned because she believed that the administration was twisting science to stall approval of over-the-counter emergency contraception. Scientists, some who've worked for the government through numerous presidents and from such diverse areas as the Department of Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Agriculture Department have complained that Bush administration public affairs officers screen their appearances, published papers, and utterances more carefully than ever before.
(White House appointed public affairs officer) George C. Deutsch…tried to prevent senior NASA career scientists from speaking and writing freely, especially when their views on the realities of climate change differed from those of the White House. Mr. Deutsch prevented reporters from interviewing James E. Hansen, the leading climate scientist at NASA, telling colleagues he was doing so because his job was to "make the president look good."
--"The Politics of Science," Washington Post, February 9, 2006. (Mr. Deutsch was later revealed by a blogger to have lied on his resume about having received a degree from Texas A&M University and was subsequently fired. Apparently, his appointment to the space agency did not require a basic resume check.)
At one point during his tenure at NASA, George C. Deutsch insisted that scientists use the word "theory" after every written mention of the Big Bang, on the grounds that the accepted scientific explanation of the origins of the universe "is an opinion" and that NASA should not discount the possibility of "intelligent design by a creator"--in spite of the fact that several county and state school boards across the nation have come to just the opposite conclusion.
I'm just waiting for a Bush administration official to make a public statement, to the effect that "nobody could have seen it coming"--you know, like they said about terrorists flying commercial airliners into skyscrapers, Hurricane Katrina, and the bloody insurgency and civil war in Iraq.
It seems that while President Bush was giving all kinds of lip-service to scientific endeavor in his speeches and State of the Union addresses, his administration was gagging the very scientists he claimed to respect, trying to force them to stick to the political talking points of THEIR (un)scientific vision.
This reminds me of what happened to Medieval map-makers who took information given by returning explorers and drew maps that did not depict the Garden of Eden as being in the center of the world, as the reigning church fathers and political rulers believed the Bible taught. It's similar to what they did to scientists such as Galileo, whose scientific findings did not match church and state teachings. He was locked up under house arrest for years and prevented from publishing his findings.
It's nice to know that, here in the 21st century, we have come so far.
At any rate, it appears that the nonexistent global warming which is not happening, is melting the polar ice caps at a much faster and more accelerated pace than even un-gagged scientists thought. Glacier shelves are dropping off into the sea, icebergs are vanishing, mountain-spring thaws are coming too fast to replenish streams in time for killer summer droughts in the plains below, severe weather extremes are punishing the planet from Indonesia to Australia to to Europe to North America--even the famed Iditerod dogsled race in Alaska had to change its historic route because the temperatures were too warm.
Nobody can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like earth. Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crises is upon us.
--"Global Warming Heats Up," TIME cover story, March 26, 2006
So, you've got a little public affairs PIPSQUEAK who lied on his resume but boy did he support George Bush--telling NASA scientists what they can and cannot say about global warming, until one 29-year veteran, well-respected scientist, James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, went to the NY Times and said, "Enough."
This happened a month ago, and since the unmuzzling, a virtual avalanche of scientific data proving the growing ecological and environmental and economic crises has surfaced.
Meanwhile, a news media who's beginning to awaken from their hypnotic stupor of simply repeating administration talking points and calling it journalism, are starting to take camera crews way north and way south, and they're filming huge chunks of polar ice disappearing at a rate that increases by the minute.
A consensus of scientists worldwide now agree that if something isn't done, and done quickly, to suppress CO2 emissions over the next few years, that by the end of the century, sea levels will have risen by 20 feet.
In fact, so many scientists concur that it's no longer even being debated. This planet is sick, fighting a high fever, and if we don't call an ambulance, it will eventually convulse, choke on its own vomit and die--and we'll all die with it, or if not us, then our children or our children's children.
And if you think I'm being pessimistic or alarmist or a tree-hugging liberal, well, just picture a room with no windows, doors, or drain pipes for sewage. A room packed with people. How long do you think it would be before they would suffocate on their own CO2 exhales of breath and their own waste?
Although the United States is not the only emitter of CO2 gasses from such things as automobile transmissions and factory emissions--China's a growing contender--we are, so far, responsible for a whopping 25% of all those emissions, worldwide.
We did not so much march toward the environmental precipice as drunkenly reel there, snapping at the scientific scolds who told us we had a problem. The scolds, however, knew what they were talking about…we're finally coming to appreciate the knife-blade margins within which life can thrive.
--"Global Warming Heats Up," TIME Magazine cover story March 26, 2006
So…in the meantime, here in this country anyway, we have in place, running just about every government agency, Bush political cronies who are poorly qualified for their jobs, ("You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie") overseeing scientific research and telling scientists what the administration's "talking points" are for that week. (I'm not making this up. See the Washington Post, "The Politics of Science," February 9, 2006.)
But while we wait for drugs to be approved or climate extremes to be studied or environmental concerns cleaned up or pollution levels controlled, the White House worries about their image and their agenda.
In the lead-up to the Iraq war, on-the-ground generals who objected to the administration's course or pointed out growing problems such as the insurgency, were either forced into early retirement, re-assigned, or simply ignored. Soon, those who wanted to keep their jobs learned to keep their mouths shut.
Three years later, Iraq careens toward chaos.
Government scientists and meteorologists warned this administration that a hurricane with the strength and power of Katrina could cause a disaster of Biblical proportions on the Gulf coast, but on the day the storm hit and the levees were giving way, Bush was out in Arizona, cutting a birthday cake with Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
Warnings are sounded before preventable disasters, time and time again, but they are ignored by this inept president and his useless colleagues.
It's not that I'm blaming the Bush administration for global warming. But this ongoing and repetitive PATTERN of UNIMAGINABLE INCOMPETENCE from the TOP DOWN in this administration in every single thing they attempt to handle, from war to disaster relief to scientific inquiry…this chronic disabling addiction to putting POLITICAL CRONIES in positions of serious importance so that this administration can continue to lie to the American people on everything from why we started the Iraq war in the first place to whether global warming even exists, and to manipulate public opinion to their fawning favor…has plunged us into a quagmire in Iraq, squandered a surplus and bankrupted the economy, and left thousands bogged down in a hopeless morass down on the Gulf coast, among other disasters.
This latest demonstration of the damage they are continuing to put this country through WILL LEAVE SUBSEQUENT ADMINISTRATIONS STAGGERING UNDER PROBLEMS THAT WILL TAKE GENERATIONS TO REPAIR.
It took only ONE brave scientist to talk back against Bush administration morons and to do it loudly. Let's hope more scientists with guts and honor will speak out, risking losing their grants or worse…and let's hope and pray that somebody, somewhere, will be listening.
Are you listening?
posted by Deanie Mills at 12:31 PM
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