Oil Nazis goose step across the rice paper that is our environment
Bongblaster
>From The New York Times article by Andrew C. Revkin:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001920362
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," Mr. Acosta said. "We promote
openness and we speak with the facts."
He said the restrictions on Dr. Hansen applied to all National
Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel. He added that
government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but
that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed
spokesmen.
Mr. Acosta said other reasons for requiring press officers to review
interview requests were to have an orderly flow of information out of a
sprawling agency and to avoid surprises. "This is not about any
individual or any issue like global warming," he said. "It's about
coordination."
Dr. Hansen strongly disagreed with this characterization, saying such
procedures had already prevented the public from fully grasping recent
findings about climate change that point to risks ahead.
"Communicating with the public seems to be essential," he said,
"because public concern is probably the only thing capable of
overcoming the special interests that have obfuscated the topic."
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