More Hot Air

Yesterday I complained about how Global Warming evangelists insist that they are being oppressed. The Washington Post has an article making these claims.

Scientists doing climate research for the federal government say the Bush administration has made it hard for them to speak forthrightly to the public about global warming. The result, the researchers say, is a danger that Americans are not getting the full story on how the climate is changing.

How is this being done? Well, for one thing, the Bush administration increased their funding.

None of the scientists said political appointees had influenced their research on climate change or disciplined them for questioning the administration. Indeed, several researchers have received bigger budgets in recent years because President Bush has focused on studying global warming rather than curbing greenhouse gases. NOAA's budget for climate research and services is now $250 million, up from $241 million in 2004.

The charges seem to be caused mainly because existing rules are being enforced (horrors).

Administration officials said they are following long-standing policies that were not enforced in the past. Kent Laborde, a NOAA public affairs officer who flew to Boulder last month to monitor an interview Tans did with a film crew from the BBC, said he was helping facilitate meetings between scientists and journalists.

"We've always had the policy, it just hasn't been enforced," Laborde said. "It's important that the leadership knows something is coming out in the media, because it has a huge impact. The leadership needs to know the tenor or the tone of what we expect to be printed or broadcast."

What about the assertions by James Hansen?

NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin issued new rules recently that make clear that its scientists are free to talk to members of the media about their scientific findings and to express personal interpretations of those findings.

Two weeks later, Hansen suggested to an audience at the New School University in New York that his counterparts at NOAA were experiencing even more severe censorship. "It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States," he told the crowd.

NOAA Administrator Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr. responded by sending an agency-wide e-mail that said he is "a strong believer in open, peer-reviewed science as well as the right and duty of scientists to seek the truth and to provide the best scientific advice possible."

"I encourage our scientists to speak freely and openly," he added. "We ask only that you specify when you are communicating personal views and when you are characterizing your work as part of your specific contribution to NOAA's mission."

There's is an unofficial rule-of-thumb in judging debates - the first party to bring up a Hitler reference loses. Hitler and Stalin had people arrested and killed for saying the wrong thing in public. Anyone who says in public that things are that bad is instantly proving himself wrong.

Eric Alterman refers to the article this way:

Anti-intellectual liars who are sabotaging our future and contemptuous of free speech and scientific inquiry. That’s who fifty percent of your voted for. What the hell were you thinking?

This makes you suspect that he didn't make it past the first paragraph before linking to it.

In the meantime, warming is becoming a holy crusade in some churches. Lutheran Bishop Hanson warned:

"The forces unleashed by global climate change are literally washing away the earth," the bishop somberly preached, like Noah of old. "How will the rest of us respond to global climate change and its threat to the well-being of all creatures and species around the earth?" he asked darkly.

His solution? According to the article:

The "repentance" required by the Religious Left includes all the demands of the secular Green Left: comply with the Kyoto Accord, reduce economic growth, regulate the economy more, increase taxes, reduce U.S. sovereignty, maximize U.S. aid to the supposed global victims of America's pollution and greed.

This goes back to my other point from yesterday - if Global Warming is real and is a danger then this is an inadequate response. Following these recomendations will delay Global Warming (assuming it is happening) a couple of years. No one is talking about the real cuts needed to reverse CO2 levels and no one will - it's too costly.