science through rose colored glasses

Crazy doesn't even begin cover it. I wrote a long post about this subject last week but never even posted it here because I was afraid I had moved beyond writing and had turned into weirded out screaming nutcase. I'm probably doing the same thing today, but maybe I just care a little less if I sound like a crazywoman.

This is a snippet from a Washington Post editorial published this morning:

Mr. Deutsch prevented reporters from interviewing James E. Hansen, the leading climate scientist at NASA, telling colleagues he was doing so because his job was to "make the president look good." Mr. Deutsch also instructed another NASA scientist to add the word "theory" after every written mention of the Big Bang, on the grounds that the accepted scientific explanation of the origins of the universe "is an opinion" and that NASA should not discount the possibility of "intelligent design by a creator."

You may want to read the whole article, which goes on to describe how the Bush administration is twisting around or silencing science coming out of other agencies as well in order to fit it to their agenda. Such a fun read.

Here's the last paragraph:

In every administration there will be spokesmen and public affairs officers who try to spin the news to make the president look good. But this administration is trying to spin scientific data and muzzle scientists toward that end. NASA's Mr. Hansen was right when he told the Times that Mr. Deutsch was only a bit player. "The problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies," he said. We agree.

Oh, so the thing Dr. Hansen did was to present results at the AGU meeting in San Francisco last December that suggested in order to curb the warming trend, we need to slow down our emissions of CO2. You can imagine how I reacted to hearing he was being muzzled. I don't know Jim Hansen personally but certainly know of him and have collegues that work with him and by all accounts, he is a very reasonable guy and an excellent, top-notch scientist. So when he got fed up last week and went to the NY Times with his complaint, I had NO doubts he was telling the story accurately.
OK, are any of you astute readers (all 3 of you) thinking - "hey, YOU were at that meeting! How was his talk?" ...to which I reply, "Uhhhhh. I was here that day. And proud of it."

Well then, let's get back to this Deutsch guy (whom I can't help but picture wearing diapers and throwing bibles at people). He's 24, a mere baby, but was selected by George W. Bush (gasp, what a surprise) to work in some top position at NASA's public affairs office. Turns out he has NO, zip, nada training in any kind of science. Nothing. He has a journalism degree from Texas A&M, and that's it. No WAIT!!!! (I get gleeful here). He doesn't really even have that! It's a lie! Seriously, he lied on his resume and never actually, uh, graduated. Here's a story of what happened from a oh, somewhat biased source.
By the way, this guy just quit his job at NASA yesterday.

Lovely. Is this giving you a nice warm fuzzy feeling about the guys who are in charge of our future yet? NASA scientists? EPA research? Don't like what you see? OK. We'll just mmmmmm, change it!!! There. Done. We're not running into ANY climate problems anymore. Pollution really isn't worse in impoverished areas. Nope. And those scientists at the Department of Human Health and Department of Agriculture that are afraid to even talk to the media because they'd be fired? Oh, they're just paranoid. Really.

OK. I'm getting a bit overly sarcastic in this post even for myself. This is a big and a serious problem though. The Union of Concerned Scientists has been harping on the lack of scientific integrity in this administration for a long time. They've got lists of examples of this that just really frighten me. And look, I know that UCS and (gasp) even me myself, we have our own biases. But I truly believe this is happening. And it is so very dangerous. Because look - global warming/climate change is happening. And it is happening because humans have emitted unprecedented amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere in such a short time that on a climate scale it's pretty much instantaneous. And CO2 absorbs radiation and warms the atmosphere. There is really not any scientific debate on those facts, despite what the Bush-puppeted media machine would have you believe. Seriously.

Sigh.

Is it possible that we still have another THREE YEARS of this administration?