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NASA expert says officials try to muzzle climate alerts
By Andrew C. Revkin
New York Times News Service
January 29, 2006
NEW YORK -- 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.
James Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said NASA officials had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the institute's Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.
Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions.
Dean Acosta, the agency's deputy assistant administrator for public affairs, said the restrictions applied to all NASA personnel the public could perceive as speaking for the agency. He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policymakers and those appointed to speak for NASA.
Hansen, 63, a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, is a leading authority on Earth's climate system. He directs efforts to simulate the global climate on computers at the Goddard Institute in New York.
In several interviews with The New York Times in recent days, Hansen said it would be irresponsible not to speak out, particularly because NASA's mission statement includes the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet."
The fresh efforts to quiet him, Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said significant emission reductions could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change eventually would leave Earth "a different planet."
The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions.
On Friday, Ralph Cicerone, the president of the National Academy of Sciences, said Hansen had always seemed to describe his public statements clearly as his personal views.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/...artner=homepage
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By Andrew C. Revkin
New York Times News Service
January 29, 2006
NEW YORK -- 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.
James Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said NASA officials had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the institute's Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.
Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions.
Dean Acosta, the agency's deputy assistant administrator for public affairs, said the restrictions applied to all NASA personnel the public could perceive as speaking for the agency. He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policymakers and those appointed to speak for NASA.
Hansen, 63, a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, is a leading authority on Earth's climate system. He directs efforts to simulate the global climate on computers at the Goddard Institute in New York.
In several interviews with The New York Times in recent days, Hansen said it would be irresponsible not to speak out, particularly because NASA's mission statement includes the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet."
The fresh efforts to quiet him, Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said significant emission reductions could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change eventually would leave Earth "a different planet."
The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions.
On Friday, Ralph Cicerone, the president of the National Academy of Sciences, said Hansen had always seemed to describe his public statements clearly as his personal views.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/...artner=homepage
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