WASHINGTON – The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday.
…The report drew a prompt response from Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg D-N.J., who charged that “the administration has effectively declared war on science and truth to advance its anti-environment agenda … the Bush administration continues to censor scientists who have documented the current impacts of global warming.”
via C&L
Hey, someone should write a book about this sort of thing. Maybe give away a companion to the book for good measure. (Admittedly, this report may be premature – the report about the report, that is. The actual Nature article title ends with a question mark, “Is the US hurricane report being quashed?”)
I didn’t mention this in my previous post: Mooney’s book
{ 24 comments }
ed 09.26.06 at 11:15 pm
The Bush administration hasn’t declared war on science. Nothing is preventing scientists from conducting research, they just can’t publicize their findings if it makes the administration look bad.
bi 09.26.06 at 11:31 pm
War on Science, War on History… Now all we need is a War on Law.
Wait, there’s already one.
bad Jim 09.27.06 at 3:22 am
Somewhere between the “Clear Skies” and “Healthy Forests” initiatives my Orwell meter pegged and I lost the ability to laugh at their lying.
Some of their followers even blame Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle for the twentieth century’s dalliance with moral relativism.
First they come for the photons. Then they came for the electrons.
bi 09.27.06 at 5:32 am
Oh yes, I missed this:
“Hey, someone should write a book about this sort of thing.”
Happens that I actually have fluffy pie-in-the-sky plans for another sort of book, but probably no one will read it anyway, so there.
bad Jim: Photons, protons, electrons, neutrons, these are all anti-American things. The only kind of particle worthy of study is the godtrino.
Todd 09.27.06 at 8:33 am
Why is no one talking about the large (and growing) number of scientists who are challenging the notion that global warming is causing all of these problems? Why are THEY being silenced?
Last year, these so-called scientists blamed our terrible hurricane season on global warming and said that it was only going to get worse. How come no one has called them on this? How do they explain the extremely mild hurricane season this year? Let me guess…global warming.
Science does NOT know whether our warming period is part of a normal, cyclical weather pattern the earth has experienced for millions of years, or whether it is caused by human actions. There is still ALOT of research to be done. In the mid-70’s, we had scientists warning us of the coming Ice Age. Now it’s global warming. Be nice if they’d make up their minds already…
Jon 09.27.06 at 8:33 am
The hockey stick has been debunked. Dr Mann is a fraudster.
http://tinyurl.com/n8g6g
Henry 09.27.06 at 9:58 am
jon – you don’t know what you’re talking about. If you’re actually interested in this topic (as opposed to making bogus claims about the hockey stick), you should be reading Tim Lambert’s Deltoid blog which has a lot to say on this topic.
bi 09.27.06 at 10:05 am
When the Scientific Establishment(tm) rejects papers, it’s called censorship. When the Bush administration rejects papers, it’s called…
…freedom, I guess.
Steve LaBonne 09.27.06 at 10:08 am
If I had to guess, the reason is probably that they’re imaginary.
roger 09.27.06 at 10:51 am
Todd, actually, too many people are talking about the small number of scientists who are ‘challenging’ the notion of global warming. They are massively overcited in the popular press. I would guess the about the same number of scientists could be found who believe that AIDS is not a disease related to HIV, but somehow, while newspapers do seem willing to impose petro-lobbying scientists on us, they don’t begin every story with AIDS by trying to “report the debate.”
Todd 09.27.06 at 11:22 am
Sorry, Roger, but you’re way off base. Nature and Science have both been caught supressing articles critical of global warming, and printing ones that are rife with false information. Scientists have resigned from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying that the IPCC was “motivated by pre-conceived agendas” and was “scientifically unsound”. This is the group that many alarmists like to cite to back up their global warming claims.
Not only is the number not small, it’s growing. And these are scientists who are experts in climatology and come from reputable universities such as MIT.
This fallacy that scientists are all on the same page regarding global warming is ludicrous. It seems those raising questions are the only ones concerned with the actual science. The alarmists seem only to be concerned with their personal agenda.
bi 09.27.06 at 11:28 am
Eh, Todd, CT has gone there before.
bi 09.27.06 at 11:34 am
Coincidentally, there’s this via BoingBoing.
Maynard Handley 09.27.06 at 11:50 am
“Last year, these so-called scientists blamed our terrible hurricane season on global warming and said that it was only going to get worse. How come no one has called them on this? How do they explain the extremely mild hurricane season this year? Let me guess…global warming”
My understanding is that
(a) it has been known for some time that El Nino suppresses hurricane activity
(b) it is not yet known quite what triggers El Nino events, so they are not predictable
(c) there was an El Nino event this year (unpredicted see b) which suppressed hurricane activity (see a).
Anyone who knows more about climate science than me is welcome to fill in/correct this.
Todd 09.27.06 at 12:43 pm
Bi,
Ummm, what about all of the OTHER issues which Nature and Science has covered up. I saw none of them covered there.
bi 09.27.06 at 1:18 pm
Other issues? Well, it’ll be good if you can provide specific references instead of repeatedly making bare fact-free assertions.
dave heasman 09.27.06 at 1:49 pm
“what about all of the OTHER issues which Nature and Science has covered up”
Those damned mind-control rays, for one. Or two.
Steve LaBonne 09.27.06 at 2:16 pm
The voices in my head told me that George W. Bush is the greatest scientific thinker of our time. Yet the liberal scientific journals have conspired to suppress this fact.
Todd 09.27.06 at 2:49 pm
Bi,
Sheesh, Bi, how about you stop being lazy and do a little research. Takes just a few moments on Google. Of course, when you’re locked into a mindset, why make the effort.
Find out why prominent scientists and researches have been ignored by these two journals. Why is it that immediately after the publishing of an article in 2003 that was critical of global-warming alarmists, Roy Spencer and his team were no longer sent articles to review by Science and Nature, even though those 2 magazines considered them world leaders in the field.
How about Dennis Bray? Ola Johannessen? How about the fact that no one ever reports about the funding of global warming alarmists by left-wing groups? All we ever hear is that the skeptics are being funded by the energy industry. James Hansen has ties to Al Gore and received grant money from the Heinz foundation. Surprise, surprise. He endorsed Kerry for President. Objectivity? I think not.
The whole point is that honest, open discourse SHOULD be taking place, but it’s not. Science has always been the bastion of fact-finding, of honest debate, of the intellectual quest for truth. It’s been corrupted by ideologically driven groups with an agenda.
Until these special interest groups and partisan hacks get out the way, this issue is never going to be resolved scientifically. I don’t see it happening any time soon.
Steve LaBonne 09.27.06 at 2:53 pm
Dude, the “special interest groups” would be the energy companies that lavishly fund the tiny but noisy band of denialists. Those are the folks who actually have a material interest in this phony “debate”.
The only correct statement in your rant is “I think not”. It shows, believe me.
bi 09.27.06 at 3:04 pm
Todd, in the universe where I come from, “honest, open discourse” means that when you make a claim, the onus is on you to provide the evidence to prove your case. Also, see my comment #4.
Plus, what Steve LaBonne said.
rogergathman 09.27.06 at 3:37 pm
todd, interesting you’d quote Bray. This is a precis of the survey he did in 1996 concerning the opinions of climatologists about global warming:
http://www.downbound.com/Global_Warming_s/321.htm
“A survey in 1996 by Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch of the Meteorologisches Institut der Universitat Hamburg generated responses from over 400 German, American and Canadian climate researchers and was reported in the United Nations Climate Change Bulletin. See scientific opinion of global warming for further discussion of this and other opinion surveys of scientists. The survey reported the response of scientists in this field, to the statement that it is “certain that, without change in human behavior, global warming will definitely occur sometime in the future”. Scientists polled gave this statement an average score of 2.6 on a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 indicated complete agreement and 7 indicated complete disagreement.”
Huh, sounds to me like we have, statistically, just what you would expect — no growing dissent, but agreement that — vide a survey done by Science magazine in 2004 — is growing stronger, not weaker.
So, again: the overreporting on the dissenters is the curious thing.
Walt 09.27.06 at 4:15 pm
This quote, or one like it, is clear evidence that someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about: “In the mid-70’s, we had scientists warning us of the coming Ice Age. Now it’s global warming. Be nice if they’d make up their minds already…”. In the 70s, some scientists speculated that we’d have a coming Ice Age. _Other_ scientists were already speculating that we would have global warming (and already in the 70s the latter sounded more plausible). The first group was wrong, and the second group was spectacularly right.
greg 09.27.06 at 8:10 pm
Isn’t an ice age a possible consequence of global warming due to growing instability? If I’m right (so I’m lazy and haven’t double checked my facts) then weren’t the ‘some scientists’ or the ‘other scientists’ both on the right track way back in the 70’s ?
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