Good climate-change journalism: Revkin edition

A story on the suppression of climate scientist James Hansen 4

Wow. Here it is only Saturday night and already the weekend's seen two stellar pieces of reporting on global warming, from two of environmental journalism's top stars, on page A1 of their respective newspapers.

First up is Andy Revkin's latest revelation on the Bush administration's ongoing defensive maneuvers against, uh, reality. In this case, reality was being described by the closest thing climate science has to a wise man: James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Administration officials have -- not officially, but clearly, in informal phone calls and memos -- let it be known that he needs to shut up about policy responses to global warming.

The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 ... he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet."

..

In one call, George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public Radio to interview Dr. Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute.

Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, Ms. McCarthy said Mr. Deutsch called N.P.R. "the most liberal" media outlet in the country. She said that in that call and others, Mr. Deutsch said his job was "to make the president look good" and that as a White House appointee that might be Mr. Deutsch's priority.

I have trouble working up umbrage about this stuff any more, it's so routine. What strikes me most is the absurdly counterproductive politics of it is. Hansen's going to have 10 times the soapbox now -- and they can't touch him.

Update [2006-1-29 15:26:20 by David Roberts]: More inside details from RealClimate.

David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.

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  1. Payton Chung's avatar

    Payton Chung Posted 5:38 pm
    28 Jan 2006

    They hate our freedom"only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone."
    Wow. Scientists in America, like visitors to North Korea, need to have government minders monitoring their words at all times.

    .pc

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  2. billofrights Posted 2:06 am
    29 Jan 2006

    Censorship of James HansenLet me see if I can recall two of the main lodestone words of the Republican Right from their past quarter century of dominating the air waves in America: freedom and liberty, which we are busy bringing to rest of the world.   And what is, in the Right's own view, one of their major accomplishments? Of course their claim to have overthrown the Soviet Empire.   And what did we all deplore, among many terrible things,  behind the Iron Curtain?  It was those state officials, subtle or not, that accompanied western tours and hovered near anyone, authors, scientists, researchers or "ready to jump" the border restless citizens - a universal indicator of rigid ideology.  This is a true sign of the fear of competing ideas, and even of the scientific method, and ought to be loathsome to every citizen in America.  
    But there have been many warning signs about the unspoken qualified meanings of these powerful words for the Republican Right.  The Washington Consensus in economics was an economic formula so rigid and doctrinaire that it has made enemies and caused countless suffering in economies from Southeast Asia to South American.  One celebrated globalizer, Thomas Friedman used metaphors that perhaps revealed more than he intended: we're bringing you the "Golden Straightjacket," and if you don't get with the program you're "roadkill."
    Mr. Friedman has seen the light on global warming and dependence on foreign energy, but in economics he is as rigid as a Wall Street Journal editorial on the "free market."
    I don't know whether it's consolation to you , Dr. Hansen, but writers in other fields, like William Greider of "One World, Ready or Not..." and Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, have felt the chill, in more unofficial ways,  even in an era of global warming.



    William R. Neil

    Rockville, MD

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  3. jdhlax Posted 4:57 pm
    29 Jan 2006

    How Pathetic ...that when reporters actually do their jobs, for a change, it calls for celebratory complements.  The phony "objectivity" demanded by the corporate propagand machine, err, I mean media, that requires equal space for points of view with no credibility -- such as those who won't admit that humans are wrecking our atmosphere with industrial pollutants and that one consequence of that is global warming -- is baloney.  If the press were actually trying to keep us informed instead of propaganizing for the corprorate right and the rest of the ruling class, no one would be questioning whether global warming was real or that humans were causing it.  Of course, that doesn't mean that people would be willing to give up material goodies in order to save the planet as we know it, but that's another issue.

    Jeff Hoffman

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  4. Stafford Posted 7:58 am
    31 Jan 2006

    Stop the Gag on Global Warming -We're working to get 10,000 comments in to NASA on this via our online petition -
    http://www.environmental-action.org/gw.asp?id=1319&id3=EAglobalwarming&id4=EAAA&
    Please pass it along!
    Dan at Environmental Action



    www.environmental-action.org/blog

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