Republican Science

Given that President Bush believes intelligent design deserves the same respect in science classes as does evolution, news of the administration’s muzzling of science that does not agree with its political agenda is not a surprise. David Baltimore, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist and president of the California Institute of Technology, commented on the Bush administration’s misrepresenting scientific findings to support its policy aims. He told an audience of fellow researchers Saturday

It's no accident that we are seeing such an extensive suppression of scientific freedom. It's part of the theory of government now, and it's a theory we need to vociferously oppose. Far from twisting science to suit its own goals, the government should be the guardian of intellectual freedom.

Recently, NASA attempted to stop one of its leading climate scientists, James Hansen, from speaking about global warming. Once this was made public, a President-appointed press officer, who was instrumental in censoring scientific information at the agency, resigned in disgrace when his false academic credentials were exposed.

The 2/20/06 New Republic, in an article written by John B. Judis, related a similar suppression story at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). At a November news conference, agency officials responding to a question on whether global warming affects hurricanes said that the storm's intensity was:

part of the multi-decadal signal that we see. It's not related to greenhouse warming. … there was simply no conceivable connection between global warming and hurricanes.

Their denial of a link echoed the statements of other top NOAA administrators and those posted on the organization's website.

But as Judis reports:

Many respected climate scientists, including some who work for NOAA, believe the organization's official line on the link between global warming and hurricanes is wrong. What's more, there is reason to believe that NOAA knows as much. In the broader scientific community, there is grumbling that NOAA's top officials have suppressed dissenting views on this subject--contributing to the Bush administration's attempt to downplay the danger of climate change. Says Don Kennedy, the editor-in-chief of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, "There are a lot of scientists there who know it is nonsense, what they are putting up on their website, but they are being discouraged from talking to the press about it.

In the last year, two important studies have suggested that there is an observable link between global warming and the growing intensity of hurricanes

Perhaps the most telling indictment of NOAA comes from Jerry Mahlman. Mahlman joined NOAA in 1970, the year it was established, and served from 1984 to 2000 as the director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Retired from NOAA, he is now a senior research associate at the National Climactic Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. Mahlman, who has continued contact with NOAA scientists, says that dissenting scientists are being intimidated from talking to the press and that their papers are being withheld from publication. Mahlman tells me, "I know a lot of people who would love to talk to you, but they don't dare. They are worried about getting fired."