NASA boss: Rename us 'Offices of Propaganda'

Editor's note: The current global warming frenzy is exposed as never before in the March edition of WND's acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, in an issue titled, HYSTERIA: Exposing the secret agenda behind today's obsession with global warming."

NASA's James Hansen

A NASA scientist outspoken about the dangers of global warming claims the White House is interfering with climatologists at the space agency, and suggests renaming scientific public affairs offices as "Offices of Propaganda" if politics are not removed from them.

"Interference with communication of science to the public has been greater during the current administration than at any time in my career," said James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, during testimony before the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee. "In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it has now."

Hansen said in his view, the problem stems from the fact that public affairs offices at the headquarters level of America's science agencies are headed by political appointees. He said no matter which political party was in control, the inevitable result is a pressure for science to show the answers that the party in power prefers to see.

"The best solution to this problem would be to have the public affairs offices professionally staffed, with no political appointees," he said. "If this is not possible, they should be renamed as Offices of Propaganda."

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Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said it was reasonable for the executive branch, which oversees NASA, to ask him not to publicize views that did not agree with the administration's policy.

"I am concerned that many scientists are increasingly engaging in political advocacy and that some issues of science have become increasingly partisan as some politicians sense that there is a political gain to be found on issues like stem cells, teaching evolution and climate change," Issa said.

Hansen invoked the names of America's Founding Fathers, including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, as he continued his assault on the Bush administration.

"Franklin, Jefferson and the other revolutionaries must be distraught by recent tendencies in America, specifically increasing power of special interests in our government, concerted efforts to deceive the public, and arbitrary actions of government executives that arise from increasing concentration of authority in a unitary executive, in defiance of the aims of our Constitution's framers. These tendencies have dramatic impact on the global warming story," Hansen said.

In September, Hansen claimed there was no more than 10 years left before warming would result in environmental disaster.

"I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change ... no longer than a decade, at the most," he said.

Despite the recent claims, the idea the Earth is heating up is hardly a universal belief.

As WND previously reported, a NASA-funded study noted some climate forecasts might be exaggerating estimations of global warming.

The space agency said climate models possibly were overestimating the amount of water vapor entering the atmosphere as the Earth warms.

The theory many scientists work with says the Earth heats up in response to human emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, causing more water to evaporate from the ocean into the atmosphere.

WND also reported that Dr. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, maintains there has been little or no warming since about 1940.

"Any warming from the growth of greenhouse gases is likely to be minor, difficult to detect above the natural fluctuations of the climate, and therefore inconsequential," Singer wrote in a climate-change essay. "In addition, the impacts of warming and of higher CO2 levels are likely to be beneficial for human activities and especially for agriculture."

In July 2004, the London Telegraph reported on a study by Swiss and German scientists suggesting increased radiation from the sun – not human activity – was to blame for climate changes.

"The sun is in a changed state," said Dr. Sami Solanki of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany. "It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently – in the last 100 to 150 years."

The research adds credence to the beliefs of British professor David Bellamy, president of the London-based Conservation Foundation.

"Global warming – at least the modern nightmare version – is a myth," Bellamy told the Telegraph. "I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy-makers are not.

"Instead, they have an unshakeable faith in what has, unfortunately, become one of the central credos of the environmental movement: humans burn fossil fuels, which release increased levels of carbon dioxide – the principal so-called greenhouse gas – into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to heat up. They say this is global warming, I say this is poppycock."

Yet another study this week teaming scientists at the Planck Institute with others in the U.S. and Switzerland claimed the energy from the sun has varied only slightly in the past 1,000 years, suggesting human factors were to blame for any increase in temperatures on Earth.

"Overall, we can find no evidence for solar luminosity variations of sufficient amplitude to drive significant climate variations on centennial, millennial or even million-year timescales," the report said.

"Our results imply that over the past century climate change due to human influences must far outweigh the effects of changes in the sun's brightness," said Tom Wigley of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research.

In December 2003, NASA reported global warming on Mars, even though the red planet is not subject to pollutants of human habitation.

Is NASA rover to blame for global warming on Mars?

"One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age," William Feldman of the Los Alamos National Laboratory told Space.com.

In July 2004, WND reported on a controversial study released by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation suggesting white people were most to blame for global warming.

The study alleged responsibility for the problem does not lie primarily with blacks, stating, "African-American households emit 20 percent less carbon dioxide than white households. Historically, this difference was even higher."

 

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Editor's note: The current global warming frenzy is exposed as never before in the March edition of WND's acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, in an issue titled, HYSTERIA: Exposing the secret agenda behind today's obsession with global warming."

 

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