Climate Scientists Under Threat

2/20/2006 12:28:06 PM - GearBits

The New York Times has an interesting article wherein NASA's top climate scientist, Dr. James E. Hansen, claims his ability to discuss his research with the public is being curtailed by NASA and White House administrators. Other instances of this have been widespread (e.g., "Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us"), so this is just one more example of the US administration's unwillingness to upset its relationship with the power lobbyists.

Perhaps equally interesting is a paper by Dr. Hansen refuting Michael Crichton's critique (PDF) of scientists whose work finds that global warming is happening, nearly all of whom attribute it to industrialization's release of various pollutants into the environment. It uses actual data to debunk Crichton's factless claims...imagine! That paper is publicly available from Dr. Hansen's public webpage at Columbia University.

Rare throughout history has it been for a majority of the world's scientists to agree on something and then later for that to be found false. Even when churches and governments hold steady to whatever belief best fits their ideology/platform/foundation of power, science tends to prevail in the long term. I believe we will see the same outcome related to global warming decades or centuries into the future, but by then it may be too late to restore the planet's thermal cycle to a more natural, and stable, state.