Rewriting Environmental Science

Aqua OS X writes to tell us CBS News is reporting that government scientist James Hansen recently spoke out against the White House in an appearance on 60 Minutes. From the article: "Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science."

Comments

Video of 60 Minutes Report

[ortcutt]

Windows Media

Quicktime

Re:Video of 60 Minutes Report - Link Here

[ortcutt]

The links above don't work. Go here instead and click on the links.

Some notable quotes and comments from the article

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

You can't spin this as a liberal versus conservative thing, this is science versus politics:

Politically, Hansen calls himself an independent and he's had trouble with both parties. He says, from time to time, the Clinton administration wanted to hear warming was worse that it was. But Hansen refused to spin the science that way.

The Clinton administration, however, didn't go so far as to muzzle the scientist:

"In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public."

One of the worst ways to interfere with communications is to put words in someone's mouth. The article says that before Hansen's reports were published the Council on Environmental Quality's chief of staff would rewrite them. What credentials did the chief of staff have for changing the work of a climatologist? He used to be a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute. He's at Exxon Mobil now.

The other important, if not newsworthy, quote was

"Even to raise issues internally is immediately career limiting," says Piltz. "That's why you will find not too many people in the federal agencies who will speak freely about all the things they know, unless they're retired or unless they're ready to resign."

An organization with a culture like that might be right about something someday, but only by coincidence.

Re:Indian Wisdom: "The Earth Does Not Belong to Ma

[1u3hr]

As for the how ... well people aren't gonna like it, but its gonna have to happen

Actually, if not for immigration, most of the first world would already be in population decline. When people get reasonably comfortable, and childhood mortality is negligible, children are deferred and one or two are sufficent for most to satisfy their need for procreation. We've got one and that was enough for us.

Re:How to quote a misspelling

[rubato]

Sigh. No good deed goes unpunished.

Instead of just complaining about the bad spelling and grammar around here, I thought I would take a moment to show how it should have been done. There are a great many SD readers whose native language is not English. (Unfortunately they are learning the language from SD posts.) Not all of them, at least, would know about "sic".

As to your point, it doesn't matter where the submitter's italicized text came from; the relevant point is that it is verbatim and not the submitter's own writing. In such circumstances it is not pedantic to include "sic"; it is just good usage, colloquial or otherwise.

I don't know whether the submitter recognized the error or not. I'm really not convinced that it's obvious from the posting.

I do agree with you that the editor might have fixed it. The "editing" of Slashdot scarcely deserves the name.

Proof Provided in Thornburgh Report

[Derling Whirvish]

And in fact, the documents were never proven to be forgeries.

The documents were proven to be forgeries by Peter Tytell, proof of which was even included in CBS's own Thornburgh-Boccardi report. It's in Appendix 4.