Global Warming

Scientists muzzled for Bush election campaign
By Andrew RevkinFebruary 17, 2006
The New York Times

POLITICAL appointees in NASA's press office exerted strong pressure during the 2004 presidential campaign to cut the flow of press releases on glaciers, climate, pollution and other earth sciences, public affairs officers at the agency say.

The disclosure comes two weeks after the space agency's administrator, Michael Griffin, called for "scientific openness" at the agency. In response to the call, NASA researchers and public affairs officials described how political appointees altered or limited news releases on scientific findings that could have conflicted with Bush Administration policies.

Examples have been reported to senior scientists and administrators who are assembling complaints as part of a review demanded by Mr Griffin.

Press officers said much of the pressure in late 2004 was placed on Gretchen Cook-Anderson. At the time, she was in charge of managing the flow of earth science news at NASA.

In a conference call in October 2004, the colleagues said, Cook-Anderson said that Glenn Mahone, who was then assistant administrator for public affairs, had told her a planned news conference on fresh readings by a NASA satellite, Aura, that measures ozone and air pollution, should not take place until after the election.

Cook-Anderson this week said she could not discuss the matter, but added, "I won't disagree with that description of what took place." Mr Mahone has since left NASA. Dean Acosta, a political appointee who was Mr Mahone's deputy and is now Mr Griffin's press secretary, said he had never pressed Cook-Anderson to cut back on news releases.

But archives of the NASA website show a sharp decline in the number of news releases issued - from about 48 in 2004 to 12 last year.

Mr Griffin announced the review after complaints last month by James Hansen, the agency's top climate scientist, that political appointees were trying to stop him from speaking out on global warming. After those complaints were reported, other staff came forward with similar stories.

In another example of political pressure at the agency, press officers and scientists cited an email sent last July from NASA's headquarters to its jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena.
The message said a web presentation describing the uncontroversial finding that Earth was a "warming planet" could not use the phrase "global warming". It was "standard practice", the message said, to use the phrase "climate change".

NASA officials said the aim was to use the most general term to describe climate fluctuations.
But other public affairs workers and some scientists called it an effort to avoid mentioning a rise in global temperatures. They said it was a standing unwritten order from political appointees in public affairs.

"There was this general understanding that when something in this field was written about that it was to be described as climate change and not global warming," said Elvia Thompson, who recently retired from the same office.

Allegations of political interference appear to reflect an intensifying debate between a cluster of presidential appointees at NASA and civil servants and scientists at the agency's research centres around the US. "The issue is where does science end and policy begin," said David Goldston, a Republican spokesman.